A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART III: THE DREAM WARRIORS
A film review by Sean L. Gilley
Copyright 1987 Sean L. Gilley
I really enjoyed the first of these three movies -- you never knew what was real and what was not, and you never knew what was going to happen. The idea of making the violence that happened in the dreams actually become real -- i.e. you get burned in a dream, the burn stays around in real life -- was the most compelling part of the film.
But in part two, everything got screwed. Freddie came out into the real world and thus negated the interesting parts of the story. It turned into a simple slasher film with no real interesting parts. In fact, I didn't manage to stay awake through the second time I saw it. Boring.
But Wes Craven didn't have anything to do with the second film. He did with the third. I can imagine a situation in which the studio execs came to Wes after the first film and said `We've got a hit here. Make another one.' and Wes said no. So they got someone else to write and direct the film. Wes saw what atrocities they had committed to his ideas, and when they asked for a third film he wanted to regain some of the ideas from the first, so he agreed.
From what I can tell, the third film is a true sequel to NIGHTMARE I. The ideas contained in the first film are continued, the actress playing the lead returns. We have an explanation of why Freddie is doing what he does. But most importantly, it all happens in dreams, with the affects of the dreams holding over to real life. None off this Freddie comes out of a body to kill people crap.
The third film nicely ties up the loose ends of the first film. Even, to some extent, explaining the ending. It's not as good, but it beats all heck out of part II. In fact, if someone had not seen any of the three, I wouldn't bother to suggest that they see part II. See one and three, and you've seen the real story.
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Sean L. Gilley Phone: (606) 272-9620 or (606) 257-8781
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