#33 – A Horror Sequel that I Will Try And Prove IS Better Than The Original – (89%)

The clever or observant amount you may have noticed that I had missed one of Freddy Krueger movies out from previous reviews. So, you may not be surprised to see I finally caught up with ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 – The Dream Warriors’ and the third movie sits on the thirty third spot on my list. Released in February 1987 this movie was made on a budget of less than $5m before hitting the box office and returning with a $44.8m. It sees the return of Robert Englund as always, but it did see the return of Heather Langenkamp after her absence in the second movie. Also appearing was Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, and Craig Wasson. Not only financially rewarding this was the most well liked of all of the sequels according to the critics but we won’t be troubling the scorers here. IMDb gave this a 6.6 out of 10 whilst Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 72%. This is a movie that honestly, I haven’t seen in years but was always a beacon in the middle of the franchise as a great movie among some of the scary movies out there. Onto the plot?

After previous events of previous movies teenager Kristen Parker dreams, she is chased by Freddy Krueger. She wakes up and goes to the bathroom and is attacked again with Freddy slicing her wrist. Believed to be suicidal she is sent to Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital under the care of Dr Gordon. Not wanting to be sedated she is struggling to cope there until a new therapist arrives – Nancy Thompson. Earning her trust by reciting Freddy’s rhyme. Nancy meets the rest of Dr Gordon’s patients Philip, Kincaid, Jennifer, Will, Taryn, and Joey the youngest who is too scared to talk. Kirsten is attacked in her dream again and without knowing pulls Nancy into her dream this helps them both escapes. Discovering this power Nancy has a plan to form a band of Freddy beating bad asses that Kirsten can summon to do battle with this Demon of the Dreamworld. Let battle commence.

Wow, this is great movie and develops the first movie and I’ll breeze over the second movie as I was not a big fan of that one. Well, here we are at the difficult third album and this one smacked it out of the park form me. The character of Freddy is a great one and is played to perfection by Robert Englund, for a character that evil and nasty which has become so loved by so many people speaks volumes. This evil child killer stalks the minds of the youngsters of Elm Street but still people like him. Well in this version of an Elm Street movie a group of ‘mental’ youngsters decide to fight back but using their dreams against Freddy. Setting up an epic battle and making this what should have been the sequel which for me rescued the franchise which could of easily of been wavering after the second movie. This movie drags the story back into the fast lane after the squib of the second movie. I loved this movie and would recommend watching this after the first one, the fourth movie missed a trick by not following this one closely enough. It took it off in another direction which kept the story going for another four movies but for me it peaked with this one and steadily rolled downhill there after and for me used this one’s reflective glow to extend the story for a long as it did. If you want to see Freddy at his best, then watch this one or the first one and you will have ticked that box. Fantastic battle to watch, ignore everything else and go watch it.

Next up is another horror movie which unlike this movie was the first of a long franchise, rather than being part way through…