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A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

DVD Cover (New Line Studios)
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> Top 10 Slashers
Overall Rating 65%
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Picking up where the original Nightmare left off, Nancy has grown up and become a psychiatrist specializing in dream therapy. She meets a group of children at a local hospital facing Freddy Krueger, the same demon she once encountered in her sleep. One of them is Kristen, who has the power to draw other people into her dreams. Working with a male doctor assigned to the case, Nancy helps the kids realize their special abilities within the nightmare world. When Freddy captures one of her charges, she leads a rescue attempt into Krueger's domain, in hopes of putting his spirit to rest once and for all. --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: December 30, 2006
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 may have been more of a nightmare for the viewers than for the characters involved with the storyline itself, but that certainly didn't stop it from raking in some serious cash during its theatrical run. It pulled in so much money, in fact, that a sequel was inevitable... and this time, Wes Craven was once again in charge of the script. It was definitely an improvement over the previous entry (hell, it couldn't have been much worse), and there were quite a few things to like about this one - and a couple of things to dislike as well, unfortunately enough.

Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) returns to battle Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, as always) once again, as we find out that she's now all grown up and makes a living practicing some sort of dream psychology. This leads to her landing a new job working alongside Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) at a mental institution that, strangely enough, contains a group of kids who are all suffering from mass psychosis. These kids believe that there's a "boogeyman" that comes after them while they're asleep, and they blame him for the recent surge in "suicides" at this hospital. Any of this sound familiar to you fine readers? Well, it definitely rings a bell for Nancy, who decides that passing out an experimental drug that will repress dreams is the best solution in this case until she can figure out how to once again stop Krueger. When the pills are taken away from the inmates, the final battle is on: and this time, the teenagers - Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette), former druggie Taryn White (Jennifer Rubin), temperamental Roland Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), and wheelchair-bound Will Stanton (Ira Heiden) - have learned how to fight back once inside their dreams.

Looking at the positive side of things, there's a lot to enjoy about this entry in the series. Freddy is, for the most part, his usual maniacal self and retains most of the characteristics that made him so memorable during the first two films. This is also the film where he started using the one-liners and comical methods of killing his victims that have become almost as much a part of the character as the glove and sweater, but thankfully, the writers didn't go overboard with them here like they would proceed to do in the later entries.

The best part of this entry is definitely the storyline contained within, as I felt that it accomplished everything that a sequel should do. The storyline from the original is expanded upon as we learn more about what happened to Freddy on the night he was burned alive and how he came to be, and the script found here actually serves a purpose other than getting from one victim to the next. As much as I enjoy a mindless slasher film, it's nice to see a horror film where the writers avoid the "establish a hero, spill some blood, kill the villain, hint towards a sequel" formula that a criminal amount of other films use time and time again.

There are some negatives to be found within the film, but not many. The obvious one (if you read my review for the previous film) is the fact that Freddy can once again affect things in the real world at will. This idea is only used once or twice, and while I assume that Craven did this in an effort to make the previous film somewhat relevant (either that or he was clueless on how to otherwise handle the scene), I still stand firm in my belief that they should have entirely stuck with the dream concept that sets Freddy apart from the thousands of other movie monsters. With the exceptions of Laurence Fishburne and Heather Langenkamp, some of the acting is a bit below average and I was hoping that someone would shove a gag in Patricia Arquette's mouth whenever she started screaming, but the acting thing is to be expected from a film like this and it honestly wasn't bad enough to truly bitch about.

While it's not as good as the original, it's certainly a huge step up from the abysmal Freddy's Revenge. That statement may not mean much to you if you hated the previous film as much as I did, but as far as sequels go, this is definitely one of the better ones. 7/10.
Tristan #1: Tristan - added August 31, 2007 at 2:10pm
I enjoyed this one much much more than Part 2. Like Chad said, there were a few instances that didn't fit in with the idea of Freddy only attacking you in your dreams, but I can overlook those as some of them were pretty neat. I also liked the idea that people were dispatched of by their "thing" in the movie. The TV girl, the wheelchair kid, and my personal favourite, "the tongue tied" kid. All very clever approaches to what could have been mindless kill scenes. 7/10
Rest Easy Soul #2: Rest Easy Soul - added December 22, 2009 at 3:15pm
I like the first one and this one the best. Some of the acting can be lame but the concept is genius.
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