I was quite the A Nightmare on Elm Street fanboy back in the day. The film was *possibly* the video tape I rented the most in the 80’s (although Supergirl and Watcher in the Woods came very close).

The sequel was released with startling artwork by the genius artist Graham Humphries here in the UK, and when I saw it on video, it was, erm, interesting, but not really what I wanted from a sequel to my favourite horror film.

Things were looking up for the third instalment in the series, however. I remember reports in the horror magazines that I was buying back then that Nancy Thompson was returning, as was Wes Craven (but not directing).

I also bought the paperback that had just been released that contained the novelisations for the first three films, including the as-yet-unreleased Part Three, subtitled Dream Warriors. I was intrigued by Part 3, as the novel involved, at one point, a character turning into a dragon. Hmmm, I thought. 

But on finally seeing the film (after phoning my local video shop at exactly 9am on the day of the video’s release!), I loved the movie and finally thought it as a worthy sequel to the first film.

The film concerns a bunch of teens at Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital who are thought to have numerous psychiatric issues but, in fact, are having their dreams terrorised by Freddy Krueger. Nancy starts working at the hospital as a psychiatrist specialising in sleep disorders (never has the concept of ‘lived experience’ been so vital for a job role) and quickly sees what’s really going on. 

Will I feel the same about the film that I loved as an innocent 12-year-old now that I’m a rather more jaded 49-year-old?

There’s plenty to like about the movie. I love the fact that Freddy’s terrorising the teen’s dreams is being made to resemble the teen’s attempts at suicide (we see in the first scene that Kristen Parker has her wrists slit by Freddy in her dream but in reality is seen holding a razor blade as if she’s just tried to kill herself). Krueger is using a recognised and alarming epidemic in teen suicide to his own advantage and to mask his dastardly deeds.

It’s also great that the film brings back Nancy Thompson and her father, Don. There is shown to be a character arc with both of them as Nancy is now in her very apt choice of career (a knowing wink to the first film), and her father is shown as a shell of a man and drinking far too much, again after what viewers saw happen in the first instalment. Some reviewers questioned Nancy’s coming back, with Kim Newman saying that he had difficulty believing Nancy as he saw her as the world’s only teenage psychiatrist to exist.

I also liked that snatches of the original film’s soundtrack are used for specific sequences in this sequel.

Some of the kills are brilliant in their execution and twisted imagination. The puppet walk murder of Philip (again, Freddy making his murder look like a successful suicide attempt) is grotesque and painful to watch (which is perfect for a horror movie). Freddy slashes Phillip’s limbs and makes all of his veins come up out of his wounds so that they can act as puppet strings for Freddy to operate and lead him to the top floor of the facility and then cut these ‘strings’ so that he falls to his death. 

There’s also the seduction of mute patient Joey by the sexy nurse he’s had his eye on. She undresses, and they start to kiss, but then she reveals herself to be Freddy. There are production pictures that show that it was originally intended for the audience to see this metamorphosis in full, with Freddy’s head on the body of the topless nurse. Indeed, the first time I saw the soundtrack album in one of my local record shops, this picture was on the back cover. Joey isn’t killed by Freddy straight away but is used as bait so that the other teens with Nancy will come into the dream world to try and rescue him. The scene in which we see the message written in slashes by Freddy into his body (‘Come and get him, bitch’. Krueger has a way with words) reminds me of the ‘Help me’ message that appears on Regan’s body in The Exorcist.

Patient Jennifer hopes to be a TV star and is seen watching television in the communal rec room. To stop herself from falling asleep, she is seen stubbing a cigarette out on her hand. Her death involves her seeing Johnny Carson suddenly turning into Freddy on his chatshow whilst he is interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor. When she goes to try and fix the TV after it breaks down immediately after this, it sprouts arms made from all of the internal parts of the appliance and picks her up with Freddy’s head sprouting from the top of the television set. He says this is her big break into TV and pulls her headfirst into the TV screen.

We also have the worm scene. Kristen first shows that she can bring others into her dreams when she is being eaten by a giant worm that contains Freddy’s face. Freud would have had a field day if he was still alive and had a penchant for ’80s horror franchises. It reminds me of the psycho-sexual leanings of the bathtub sequence from the first film. The giant worm was used in posters for the film in foreign territories such as Thailand. Kristin brings Nancy into her dream during this sequence.

The fact that Kristen can bring people into her dreams is another great development and shows that the filmmakers and screenwriters were developing the ideas initiated in the first film. If only they had used this idea more in Part 3. 

Yet another great kill is that of Taryn. The ex-junkie confronts Freddy, who makes the trackmarks on her arms become like mouths that are hungry for the heroin she used to be addicted to. Freddy’s fingers become needles as he injects them into her. Apparently, they wanted to show that the effect of this on her was that, eventually, the top of her head would explode, but they had to tame this for the MPAA ratings board.

Another great thing about the film is that we get the great Priscilla Pointer cast as a no-nonsense doctor who thinks that all the teens need is a good night’s sleep, e.g. what will kill them. She’s great here and reminds me of Mary Whitehouse. In fact, when Nightmare 3 was released in the UK, there was another smaller Video Nasty moral panic taking place as Sam Raimi had dared to release The Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn. This proved to be as good a time as any for the media to start campaigning for tougher censorship laws again and extol that horror movies were the work of the devil. 

But the greatest thing about Nightmare 3, in my opinion, is Freddy himself. This point is a positive for the movie but is also a nice sequeway into what I didn’t like about the sequel. Nightmare 3 is akin to a slasher film in which a bunch of teens I feel nothing for, or in some cases, I find repulsive, are lined up to be dispatched by the killer, in this case, Krueger. If only the teens had been true ‘dream warriors’ and akin to a bunch of dream ninja teens who would go into Freddy’s world and do battle. But within the film, in almost all cases, the kids ‘superpowers’ are shown to be woefully weak next to Freddy’s capabilities.

In fact, the scene in which the group try group hypnosis so they can all appear in the dreamworld together is one of the most cringeworthy scenes I think I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. Each teen reveals their ‘dream powers’, and they’re all crap! Kristen shows that in her dreams, she can now do very basic gymnastics (the filmmakers should have made more of her ability to bring people into her dreams), Kincaid is shown to possess superstrength and demonstrates this by bending a chairs legs a tiny bit (!), Will is shown to be able to stand (whereas in real life, he has to use a wheelchair because of an earlier suicide attempt) and able to conduct wizard-like magic. He demonstrates this by changing a metal ball into a butterfly, which will prove very useful when trying to defeat a sadistic child-killer like Krueger. In fact, the makers of Nightmare 3 may have been capitalising on the success in the States of the Dungeons and Dragons craze that was soon to be paired with the Satanic Panic moral panic.

Nightmare 3 also seems to boil over into camp histrionics far too much. This is shown early on as Kristen is indicted into the facility but freaks out, grabs a scalpel and slashes a male nurse’s arm (this nurse is played by Laurence Fishburne, no less) and starts reciting the ‘One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you’ rhyme. She almost completes the macabre nursery rhyme, but it is completed by Nancy (her big entrance into the film resplendent with grey streak she acquired from the first film but which appears to be on the wrong side of her head. Oops), who takes the scalpel from Kristen and they instantly hug even though they’ve never met before. This was the first point of the film in which I rolled my eyes. 

 

It’s the scenes in which all of the teens are together that were the worst for me. They seem like they are part of some kind of after-school special or as if Nightmare 3 was made as if it was an episode of Goosebumps. The group sessions are all overly emotive and superficial, especially the contributions of Taryn. In fact, her contributions to the film are cringe-worthy to the max. Her ‘dream power’ involves her suddenly acquiring an embarrassing hairstyle and, wielding two knives that look as lethal as pen knives and exclaiming that in her dreams, she’s ‘beautiful and bad’. You forgot hysterical as well. This seems to be the case in real life also, as anyone who’s seen the Trump Derangement Syndrome on her Twitter account will testify.

In fact, this direction for the film as a ‘teen’ movie as well as a horror vehicle seems to have been the intent of the makers of the film. There’s a production shot for Nightmare 3, which satirises that other popular 80’s teen film, The Breakfast Club.

I also found myself eye-rolling at the scene in which all of the kids are in the hall of mirrors, with the usually mute Joey finding his ‘dream power’ of being able to break all of the mirrors with his newly found voice. ‘Oh please!’ I thought. I wonder if his voice will be able to shatter the blades on Freddy’s glove. There’s only one way to find out, Joey.

Another eye-roll of a scene is the ending in which Freddy kills Nancy after pretending to be her father. Kristen then holds Nancy’s dead body in her arms whilst she weeps hysterically as if Nancy is some kind of martyr figure. Enough of the overly emotional teeny crap.

Just as everything was in place for the first film to be a really nasty horror film with substance, but was marred by the occasional lapse into camp and fantasy (the dreadful ending, Nancy’s mother disappearing into her bed after she’s been attacked by Krueger, the starburst Freddy disappears into after Nancy turns her back on him), the third film seems to do the same but more so. Nightmare 3 could have been a nasty horror film with innovative kills and a team of teens who provide some kind of payback by kicking Freddy’s ass. The plotline regarding suicidal and self-harming teens could have also provided real substance to proceedings. 

I will always hold a great deal of affection for Nightmare on Elm Street 3, but I still have a feeling that this film could have been as dark as hell whilst garnering brilliant reviews and handsome receipts at the box office but without the camp histrionics. Oh well. 

2.5 out of 5 stars