forever together
OHH!!!
With the Dream Warriors
don't wanna dream no more
With the Dream Warriors
and maybe tonight
Maybe tonight, you'll be gone!
I'll go ahead and preface this with the following statement: this is my second favorite film in the franchise after 2. Yes, that's after Freddy's Revenge. I like this film and Freddy's Revenge better than I do the original. While the original is a classic and people rightly love it and cherish it and celebrate it, Freddy's Revenge and Dream Warriors are the only sequels that actually tried to do something different with the franchise.
...besides New Nightmare, but we'll get to that.
Dream Warriors, however, also marks the point where Freddy Krueger made the sharp turn from being a terrifying menace...into being a joke that only was frightening because of his dream powers...and his puns.
But our story seems to not acknowledge Freddy's Revenge at all, instead giving us a protagonist in the form of Kristin Parker (Patricia Arquette), a young woman who has been having nightmares involving a certain burn victim in a bad Christmas sweater, as well as the mysterious house at 1428 Elm Street. The opening of this film is truly the stuff of nightmares (no pun intended), with Kristin going through Freddy's House and is just dripping in a dark, oppressive, nightmareish (oh, there I go again) atmosphere that the series had become known for having within the dream world at this point.
After she gets injured by Freddy in the dream, Kristin's mother admits her to Westin Hills, a psychiatric facility, where she meets and forms a bond with Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), the sole survivor of Freddy's first rampage from the Dream World. This film is also notable for the appearance of Laurence Fishburne as an orderly...who, sadly, does not offer Kristin a choice between the red pill and the blue pill when it comes to fighting Freddy.
However, after an altercation where Kristin somehow manages to pull Nancy into her dream, Nancy strikes inspiration...and gets Kristin and the kids in her therapy group to start developing their own special dream powers to use against Freddy...which is a pretty inventive idea. If Freddy uses the power of nightmares to cause terror and murder, then the logical counter to that would be in using good dreams with positive feelings.
You know, the kind of dreams where you're an indestructible strong man...or a wizard from Dungeons & Dragons...or a roadie for Motorhead with a knife fetish....or Black Canary.
And, because we know there's a sequel, I'm sure that Nancy's tactic will work just as well as turning her back on Freddy did in the original, and we'll never have to worry about him ever again!
All joking aside, it is a very inventive idea to use Freddy's own power against him in that way. Granted, it doesn't work, but for the purposes of this film, it is a neat idea to play around with. It really isn't something that would get stale and overdone until the next film...where they took it in a really weird direction.
...and the puns got worse.
But what you'd expect from one of the good films in the Nightmare franchise, you find here. The kills are satisfying, there's time for character development and quiet moments. We get some resolution on things from the first film as well as bridging between that generation and this one. The dream scenarios are creative and entertaining, as well as absolutely terrifying when they need to be. And, while Freddy is starting to showing shades of the ham he will become, Robert Englund is still very menacing and poses a true, looming threat to the protagonists that we want to see defeated, which is how it should be!
Dream Warriors stands as my personal favorite in the series. As much as I sing the praises of Freddy's Revenge, Warriors is when the full swing of the 80s is felt in all its cheesy glory. And anyone who has been a long-time reader of this blog knows I'm a stickler for that in the biggest way. I'll happily cart this film out every Halloween with a smile on my face.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is available from New Line Cinemas.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
But our story seems to not acknowledge Freddy's Revenge at all, instead giving us a protagonist in the form of Kristin Parker (Patricia Arquette), a young woman who has been having nightmares involving a certain burn victim in a bad Christmas sweater, as well as the mysterious house at 1428 Elm Street. The opening of this film is truly the stuff of nightmares (no pun intended), with Kristin going through Freddy's House and is just dripping in a dark, oppressive, nightmareish (oh, there I go again) atmosphere that the series had become known for having within the dream world at this point.
After she gets injured by Freddy in the dream, Kristin's mother admits her to Westin Hills, a psychiatric facility, where she meets and forms a bond with Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), the sole survivor of Freddy's first rampage from the Dream World. This film is also notable for the appearance of Laurence Fishburne as an orderly...who, sadly, does not offer Kristin a choice between the red pill and the blue pill when it comes to fighting Freddy.
However, after an altercation where Kristin somehow manages to pull Nancy into her dream, Nancy strikes inspiration...and gets Kristin and the kids in her therapy group to start developing their own special dream powers to use against Freddy...which is a pretty inventive idea. If Freddy uses the power of nightmares to cause terror and murder, then the logical counter to that would be in using good dreams with positive feelings.
You know, the kind of dreams where you're an indestructible strong man...or a wizard from Dungeons & Dragons...or a roadie for Motorhead with a knife fetish....or Black Canary.
And, because we know there's a sequel, I'm sure that Nancy's tactic will work just as well as turning her back on Freddy did in the original, and we'll never have to worry about him ever again!
All joking aside, it is a very inventive idea to use Freddy's own power against him in that way. Granted, it doesn't work, but for the purposes of this film, it is a neat idea to play around with. It really isn't something that would get stale and overdone until the next film...where they took it in a really weird direction.
...and the puns got worse.
But what you'd expect from one of the good films in the Nightmare franchise, you find here. The kills are satisfying, there's time for character development and quiet moments. We get some resolution on things from the first film as well as bridging between that generation and this one. The dream scenarios are creative and entertaining, as well as absolutely terrifying when they need to be. And, while Freddy is starting to showing shades of the ham he will become, Robert Englund is still very menacing and poses a true, looming threat to the protagonists that we want to see defeated, which is how it should be!
Dream Warriors stands as my personal favorite in the series. As much as I sing the praises of Freddy's Revenge, Warriors is when the full swing of the 80s is felt in all its cheesy glory. And anyone who has been a long-time reader of this blog knows I'm a stickler for that in the biggest way. I'll happily cart this film out every Halloween with a smile on my face.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is available from New Line Cinemas.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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