A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Movie poster
Directed by	Chuck Russell
Written by	Wes Craven Frank Darabont Chuck Russell Bruce Wagner
Produced by	Robert Shaye
Starring	Heather Langenkamp Craig Wasson Patricia Arquette Robert Englund
Cinematography	Roy H. Wagner
Edited by	Terry Stokes Chuck Weiss
Music by	Angelo Badalamenti Dokken
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	February 27, 1987
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4,000,000
Box office	$44,800,000 (domestically)

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, with no mention of Jesse Walsh (the protagonist in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge), Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) 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 after 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 wakes up in a panic.

Kristen is placed in Westin Hills, a psychiatric hospital after an "attempted suicide." When a nurse tries to sedate her, Kristen fights back and cuts one of the orderlies, Max (Laurence Fishburne), with a scalpel. As she backs into a corner chanting a rhyme she heard in her dreams, new staff member Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) 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 (Rodney Eastman), Taryn (Jennifer Rubin), Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), Phillip (Bradley Gregg), Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow) and Will (Ira Heiden), 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, 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 to fall to his death. He also kills Jennifer by making the television grow arms, grab her, and smash her head into it, before Nancy can do anything.

Meanwhile, Neil (Craig Wasson), the psychiatrist who works with the kids, begins to receive visits from a mysterious nun, Sister Mary Helena (Nan Martin). She informs Neil 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, 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, (John Saxon) 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 and kills Taryn by injecting her with a massive amount of heroin from his claws, and Will by making his wheelchair grow spikes and attack him, then 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 preceding to speak to her about ruining it for mom every time she brings a man 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. It wasn't her father after all; it was Freddy. 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 the lights suddenly come on in it, just before the credits roll.

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 pretty much impossible. Craven would not work on the series again until Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

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. 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 Kreuger 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. The original script can be found here [1].

The theme song of the movie, Dream Warriors, was written and performed by the American heavy metal band Dokken. Into the Fire, another well known song by the band, was also featured in the movie.

The bar that Neil and Nancy encounter Lt. Thompson is is called "Little Nemo's". Little Nemo is a famous comic strip character who frequently has adventures in "Dreamland".

Box office

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.

External links

• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at IMDb
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at AllMovie
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at Rotten Tomatoes
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at Box Office Mojo
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at The Nightmare on Elm Street Companion