After the slight detour of Freddy's Revenge we are
reintroduced to Nancy, now six years older and an intern/ psychiatrist
specializing in dream therapy in a hospital ward that is treating sleep
deprives suicidal teens. Nancy recognizes the signs that Freddy has been
terrorizing them and skates the line of being a professional and telling the
children outright what danger they are in.
The movie starts out full bore with Kristen (Patricia
Arquette) having a nightmare and slowly reintroducing Freddy to the audience.
It's an excellent set of scenes involving the house on Elm Street, the spirits
of dead children and of course the familiar "Freddy's coming for you"
rhyme.
I remember liking this movie the best out of the three when
I was younger. It was before I got into comics so the concept of having powers
unique to the individual probably was laying the foundation for my discover of superheroes a few years later.
Conversely speaking, having rewatched the first three movies I find that this
movie is now my least favorite. There's several reasons why, but I want to
mention the reason that it still ranks highly for me. Nancy is back, she's
stronger and she's a mentor to the people facing the terror for the first time.
Once again, this follows my admiration for characters like Sarah Conner and
Ellen Ripley who returned in their respective sequels stronger for having
survived.
One of the things that I noticed that doesn't fit the allure
of the first two movies is that not all the adults are obtuse and an unwitting
threat to the teens. Sure, the senior
doctors at the hospital are directly responsible for some of the deaths but we
have Nancy, Neil, and Max (Fishburne) who is by far the most charming character
in the series to date. I know it had to be done as such because the formula is
shattered once Nancy becomes an adult and remains a protagonist. It's just something subtle that I'm focusing
as the main reason why this one doesn't work as well for me.
A major flaw in logic, especially after the criticism of
Freddy's Revenge by Craven, is the fact that we see Freddy again affecting
objects and killing in the waking world. No dream sequences for the reanimated skeleton
scene. It's a cool scene, don't get me
wrong; I loved it as a kid but now the logic is faulty at best.
Other than the legendary line of Freddy being "the
bastard son of a hundred maniacs" it really doesn't add anything to the
story. Others disagree, but I don't want to know that Freddy wasn't breast fed
and that's why he was a child killer. Evil is evil and I want my villains to be
pure death not a child that is acting out because he wasn't raised right. Nit
picking? Yes, of course, but just a reminder that Darth Vader was the baddest
son of a bitch in the universe until the prequels when he became whiney Ani. It
rarely works, let's keep our mass murderers untouched by sympathy.
I'll wrap up my bitching the only way that I can...by
bitching more! Too many survivors! We lost Nancy, a true tragedy but we had
four teen survivors plus Dr Gordon. I need a higher death count, this is Elm
Street after all not The Goonies. That's al I have. I liked it, but I'm going
to take a break for a while before continuing the series. Maybe I'll blog, or
bloog as Dan like to call it, about the subsequent FIVE movies. Maybe I won't.
Watch this space for more scattershot thoughts and mental
meanderings from my mutated brain.
-Bobgar
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is written by
Wes Craven, Bruce Wagner, and others and stars Heather Langenkamp, Patricia
Arquette, "Larry" Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, and Robert
Englund.
