From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors movie poster
Directed by	Chuck Russell
Produced by	Robert Shaye
Written by	Wes Craven Frank Darabont Chuck Russell Bruce Wagner
Starring	Heather Langenkamp Craig Wasson Patricia Arquette Robert Englund
Music by	Angelo Badalamenti Dokken
Cinematography	Roy H. Wagner
Editing by	Terry Stokes Chuck Weiss
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	February 27th, 1987
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4,000,000
Preceded by	A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
Followed by	A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

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, John Saxon, Craig Wasson, Jennifer Rubin, Rodney Eastman, Laurence Fishburne, Ken Sagoes, Ira Heiden, Bradley Gregg, and Penelope Sudrow .

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dick Cavett have cameo roles.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Production 3 Early Script 4 Trivia 5 External link

Taking place several years after the events of the first film, with no mention of Jesse Walsh, Kristen (Patricia Arquette) falls asleep and dreams of a young girl running into an old, condemned house. 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, a new staff member arrives, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), 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 is able to kill Philip and Jennifer 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.

As soon as the kids fall asleep, Freddy separates them and kills Taryn and Will before the others can save them. However, Kincaid manages to fight his way through Freddy's barriers and reunite with Nancy and Kristen.

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 children have made me strong." 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.

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 surreal idea at the time, but years later, Craven's concept was finally brought to the screen with 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.

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 Guiness, 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 a "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.[1]

• The song in the beginning of the movie, Dokken's Into The Fire, is not present on the VHS releases due to New Line not being able to acquire the rights to the song for the VHS release. The stand alone DVD has the alternate song used on the VHS when the audio is changed, this is also true of the United Kingdom version of the DVD included in the boxset but not the version released in the United States.

• The quote in the beginning of the movie, "Sleep - those little slices of death, how I loathe them," is credited to be by Edgar Allan Poe however the quote does not appear in any of his work. A very similar quote has been attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Sleep... Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death," however it too has been disputed to not be by Longfellow. In the 1959 movie Journey to The Center of the Earth, the character Count Saknussemm (Thayer David) says "I don’t sleep. I hate those little slices of death" in response to why he was not resting. This line does not appear in the original novel by Jules Verne. [2], [3], [4]

• This was Jennifer Rubin's first movie and Patricia Arquette's second.

• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at the Internet Movie Database
• A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors at The Nightmare On Elm Street Companion