A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was the third film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. The film was directed by Chuck Russell and starred Robert Englund, Patricia Arquette, Heather Langenkamp, and Craig Wasson.
Plot
Taking place six years after the events of the first film (one year after the events of the second film), with no mention of Jesse Walsh (the protagonist in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge), Kristen Parker falls asleep and dreams of a young girl running into an old, condemned house, which bears resemblance to Nancy and Jesse's house in the previous films. As Kristen follows the little girl she begins to realize that she's in trouble. She finds the girl in a boiler room. As she hears someone walking above them, the little girl exclaims, "Freddy's home!" Kristen then grabs the girl and flees from Freddy. After gaining some ground on the madman, she then realizes that the little girl she is carrying is nothing more than a decomposing skeleton. Waking in a panic, she heads to the bathroom and attempts to turn on the water faucet to the sink when the knobs contort into a makeshift version of Freddy's hands. He then appears in the mirror and slashes at Kristen. When her mother forces her way into the room, Kristen is standing there with a slashed wrist and a razor in her hand. Upon realizing this Kristen immediately loses consciousness.
Kristen is placed in Westin Hills, a psychiatric hospital after the "attempted suicide." When a nurse tries to sedate her, Kristen fights back and cuts one of the orderlies, Max, with a scalpel. As she backs into a corner chanting a rhyme she heard in her dreams, new staff member Nancy Thompson suddenly appears in the room and finishes it for her. Nancy soon realizes that Freddy is not dead, and that Kristen and the other patients, Joey, Taryn, Kincaid, Phillip, Jennifer and Will, are the "last of the Elm Street children" - the last remaining children of the vigilantes who killed Freddy.
After seeing Freddy in a dream, Nancy realizes she has to protect the remaining children. Unfortunately, before Nancy can do anything, Freddy kills Philip by tearing the tendons from his arms and legs enabling Freddy to control him like a puppet, making him walk up to the top story, then cutting them to let him fall to his death. He also kills Jennifer by making the television grow arms, grab her, and smash her head into it.
Meanwhile, Dr. Neil Gordon, the psychiatrist who works with the kids, begins to receive visits from a mysterious nun, who introduces herself as Sister Mary Helena. She informs Neil that Freddy Krueger was born in the abandoned wing of the same hospital, Westin Hills, after 100 maniacs raped his mother, Amanda Krueger, a staff member who was accidentally locked inside over Christmas holidays, and that Krueger was never properly buried and must be laid to rest in consecrated ground. Soon after, Joey is kidnapped by Freddy in his dream, who seduces him in the form of a sexy nurse, and in the real world he lies in a coma. Nancy and Neil are fired because they try to tell their superiors that the dreams are real; the remaining kids are forced onto a regime of nightly sedation. As Neil and Nancy's father, Lt. Donald Thompson, embark on a journey to find Freddy's corpse and give him a proper burial, Nancy and the kids attempt a group sleep session to try and go in and free Joey and get to Kristen, who was thrown in the "quiet room" and sedated against her will.
As soon as the kids fall asleep, Freddy separates them. He first goes after Taryn, who tries to stand against him for a while, and manages to cut him. But she weakens when he offers her heroin, and kills Taryn with massive amount, He then attacks Will, making his wheelchair grow spikes and attack him, which destroys his legs. The chair returns to attack Will, but Will is armed with magic, and uses it to destroy the chair, to Freddy's surprise. Will's fatal mistake is trying to charge Freddy and use his sorcery against him, because it doesn't work, allowing Freddy stabbing him before the others can save them. However, Kincaid manages to fight his way through Freddy's barriers and reunite with Nancy and Kristen. Kristen had initially found Nancy after she was separated from her and put back into the film's opening dream sequence, only this time featuring Freddy decapitating her mother, holding the head up to Kristen, and proceeding to speak to her about ruining it for mom every time she brings a man home. Kristen runs out of her bed and runs up the wall then flips over Freddy. She jumps into her bedroom window, breaking it, and falls into Nancy's home.
Nancy, Kristen, and Kincaid find Joey dangling above a huge fiery pit. Nancy manages to save him while Kristen wrestles with Freddy. Nancy realizes that Freddy is stronger than he once was, to which he replies "the souls of the children give me strength." It becomes clear that Freddy does not simply kill his victims; he holds their souls gruesomely captive. Kincaid tries to take Freddy, but is overpowered. Before Freddy can kill Kincaid, he realizes that his bones are being disturbed - Neil and Nancy's father are about to bury Freddy in a true grave, near an old junkyard. Freddy takes possession of his bones and fights off Neil; he throws Lt. Thompson onto the tail fin of an old car, killing him.
Freddy returns to the children but is again foiled, this time by Joey. Nancy and the kids rejoice at their apparent victory. Nancy's father visits her in the dream world as a spirit, explaining that he has "crossed over". He apologizes to her and hugs her. As Nancy and her father embrace, Nancy is stabbed by Freddy's glove. If it was her father at all, Freddy had now taken his place. Kristen tries to save Nancy, but it's too late and Freddy grabs Kristen as well. Just as he is about to finish her, Nancy takes Freddy's hand and stabs him with his own glove. At the same moment, Neil awakens and pushes Freddy's bones into the grave. He brandishes a bottle of holy water and begins to fling it upon the bones. In the dream world, the holy water is burning Freddy and bright light pours out from within his body. Neil takes a crucifix from his pocket and places it on the skull. A cross shape is burned into Freddy's head, killing him.
Nancy, however, is beyond any help and dies. At the funeral, as others are weeping in silence over the loss, Neil sees the nun that helped him. When he goes to thank her, she vanishes. He is left standing by a gravestone. On the stone there is a name, Amanda Krueger, just below that is another name, her name in Christ: Sister Mary Helena, showing that the nun was the spirit of Freddy's mother. At the end, Neil falls asleep with a toy house next to his head, and a light suddenly comes on in it, just before the credits roll.
Cast
Production
Elm Street creator Wes Craven, who did not participate in the first sequel and indeed did not want the Elm Street franchise to be a franchise at all, intended for this film to end the series, but its success made that impossible.
Craven's very first concept for this film was to have Freddy Krueger invade the "real" world, emerging to haunt the actors filming a new Elm Street sequel. New Line Cinema rejected this metacinematic idea at the time, but years later, Craven's concept was finally brought to the screen with Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Also, Wes Craven did not want Nancy killed off. Much as in the original film, which Craven wanted to have a happy ending, but which ended up with a studio-mandated and sequel-ensuring shocker twist, the end of this one was altered as well. Writers Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont ensured that Nancy die, but they changed the role to have Nancy return and comfort the children.
The "dream suppressant" drug Hypnocil which Neil researches is also featured and written into this film, yet more prominently figures in Freddy vs. Jason and is mentioned in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. The psychiatric hospital Westin Hills reappears in both A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Freddy vs. Jason.
In interviews with cast and crew in the DVD's extras, it is revealed that the original idea for the film centered around the phenomenon of children traveling to a specific location to commit suicide, with dreams of Freddy Krueger eventually discovered to be a common link between the youths. Suicide, at the time, was a taboo social issue and this led to the abandonment of that storyline, though some aspects remained within the filmed version which still depicts suicide and self-mutilation, though they were deemed less controversial because these acts are committed with Freddy's distinct influence, inserting enough fantasy into the acts to remove it from the supposed controversial exploitation of disturbed youths in America.
In the original script by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner the characters were somewhat different from what was eventually filmed. Nancy was not a dream expert or any kind of mental health professional, Kristen stayed in the institution for only a while and had a father, Neil's last name was Guinness, Dr. Simm's last name was Maddalena, Taryn was African-American, Joey was the one who built the model of a house and has trouble getting around (although not wheelchair bound), and Philip was a thirteen year-old. Will's name was originally Laredo, with long hair, is not bound by a wheelchair, and the one who made the clay puppets. This script also showed the ranch house where Krueger was born, and is the house that shows up in their dreams rather than the Elm Street house. Contrary to the film, Lt. Donald Thompson knows from the start that Krueger is real and still alive. He had been missing and Nancy was intent on finding him, she finds him and learns that he was obsessed with finding the Krueger house and burning it down. There are scenes and lines that are very reminiscent of the first film. There is no talk of Krueger's mother having been a nun or Freddy being "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs," and both Joey and Kincaid are killed. The deaths in this script were much more grotesque, with Krueger not as talkative and more vulgar.
Reception
Commercial
The film had a wide release of 1,343 making $8.9 million its opening weekend. Domestically, the film grossed $44.8 million, making it the third highest grossing Nightmare movie.
Critical
Unlike its predecessor which received mainly negative reviews, the third installment to the Nightmare series generally received more positive reviews. The film has garnered an average score of 69% 'fresh' on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 32 professional reviews.[1]
Soundtrack
The theme song of the movie, Dream Warriors, was written and performed by the American heavy metal band Dokken. The success of the single led to the following sequels to include a heavy metal song in its soundtrack.
In the original VHS release of the film, during the opening sequence, a hard rock instrumental version of the song Quiet Cool is playing. The original version of that song, performed by Joe Lamont, was written for the movie with the same name in 1986. When Dream Warriors was released on DVD, the song that was on the original theatrical release, Into the Fire by Dokken, was reinserted.
References
External links
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Films directed by Chuck Russell |
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| 1980s |
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) · The Blob (1988)
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| 1990s |
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| 2000s |
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