Having seen a lot of the later movies in the Nightmare series before watching the other ones, I found this one on re-watch to be a really joyful experience. It had the best of everything I loved about the series, from the fun to the scares, and the plot was pretty atypical for a slasher for that time period.
The film begins with our heroine, Kristen, mid-dream outside of the Thompson house which has served--and will continue to serve--as the series' anchor. She chases a girl into the home and meets Freddy. Ol' Fred is after the last of the Elm Street Children, a specific group of kids who are kin to the townsfolk that burned Freddy alive, and he's managed to lure them to a psychiatric facility.
This is a smart script, folks. For a horror movie with such a concept as dream slaying to put kids into a psychiatric facility that will try to administer them sleeping pills to help them conquer their anxiety is fucking smart. The adults who run this facility don't give a damn about the ramblings of a scary man haunting their dreams. They take the naturalist approach to try and explain this in as down-to-earth fashion as possible. These kids aren't actually being dream-stalked, they just need to be medicated and put to sleep! Fucking gold, Wes Craven. I know you helped write this. The brilliant writing in this movie heightens the tension, because as a viewer you understand what is going on and these kids are all likable enough to where you really don't want them to meet their eventual deaths.
Of course, the film's plot gets even more interesting when it is discovered that each of these children can manipulate their dreams in order to fight Freddy off. So basically they are like super-humans in their sleep with interesting abilities. This might sound stupid to some people, but they really made it work in the movie.
And the kills? The premise of this series once again shines out its genius, as it ensures that each kill is ridiculously interesting and gory. What the audience sees is what the kids and Freddy are dreaming, and in a dream, anything can happen. This means that you don't have to rely on more tits or overkill-gore to make these movies interesting. Their very premise allows them more freedoms, and that's why the Nightmare series comes out as the ultimate champ of the eighties/early-nineties slasher arms race.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Nancy and her dad are back! Fantastic performers Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon reprise their roles from the first film and work out all the issues that were left hanging. As a matter of fact, this film wraps up the original trilogy of films quite nicely until the fourth kind of destroys that little support structure and brings the house down.
This movie is well worth a watch if you are a fan of the original. Hell, its fair to give them all a watch, because everyone is different and has different tastes, but still. This one is a lot of fun. It gets flack from online reviewers as the first film to make Freddy silly, but I didn't see that as much. Freddy is more terrifying than ever, and the Freddy worm scene is one of his scariest moments for me. He does have what people call one-liners, but they are not really "haha, he said THAT!?" sort of lines like they are in the next couple of films. And they're not really funny. It's like the devil making fun of all your worst traits kind of humor.
I give A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors an A-. It's very nature as a sequel gets it knocked down from an A+, but that doesn't mean anything towards the actual quality of the movie. Peace out.
