#226 -- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Rating: 5 / 5
Director: Chuck Russell

I looked into a few reviews and comments about this movie, and it seems that some people think it is stupid. A new idea was introduced in this one, as well as a new trait in Freddy's personality. It's also the movie in which Freddy's nemesis was finally destroyed. Some people don't like that. It would be different if it had been done way later in the series; but at this point, the franchise was still young, so I think it was okay for them to switch things up a bit and make it more interesting. Personally, I think if they hadn't, Freddy wouldn't have become as much of an icon as he is. But that's just me.

Anyways, this one steers away from the direction the second movie took; meaning it's actually really good. I didn't understand the second one, really. In the first, Freddy was taking revenge on those who killed him by murdering their children. I guess he figured, kill their kids so they live the rest of their lives knowing it was their fault. That's more than enough to make someone's life miserable. But in the second, Freddy wanted to possess the main character, for whatever reason. But in this one, he returns to wanting all the kids dead. The story centers on Kristen, one of the many Elm Street children. She is sent to Westin Hills psychiatric hospital after what her mother believed was a suicide attempt (but which was actually an attack by Freddy, of course). She's joined by a group of other teenagers having the same problems: the dreams about the horribly burned man in the Christmas sweater. Heather Langenkamp returns as Nancy; she's all grown up, and she works at Westin Hills. She's been taking a drug called Hypnocil, which suppresses her dreams and keeps the boogeyman away. She wants to give it to the kids, but certain problems prevent that from happening.

Nancy soon discovers that Kristen has the ability to pull other people into her dreams, meaning that they can form a sort of army against Freddy. They also discover that they can do whatever they want in their dreams. Why no one figured this out before now, I have no clue. Kristen is a gymnast in her dreams; Taryn is a badass chick; Will, wheelchair-bound after a suicide attempt, can walk in his dreams. And he's also the Wizard Master. Kincaid, the tough guy, is super strong when he dreams; Joey, the cute mute guy, has a very powerful voice in dreamland. And Nancy is just Nancy, I guess. So, once they realize that they can have all these powers in their dreams, they decide to go in after Freddy, in hopes that, together, they can take him.

What I love about this one is just that: the dream powers. If Freddy can do all these crazy things, why shouldn't the kids be able to have powers? And they are dreams, after all; anything is possible. This one also has one of my favorite death scenes ever. A guy named Phillip has the tendons in  his arms ripped out, and they're used as marionette strings, with Freddy as the puppeteer. He ends up making Phillip jump out of a window. It just looks so amazing. So, I love that they introduced the dream powers in this one, and I'm not actually sure if they ever used it again. I know everyone always brought Freddy into the real world, but I can't quite remember if they ever had special powers in their dreams. But, anyways, I loved that. This is also the movie where Freddy's sense of humor really started. He got silly. Some people might not like that, but honestly...Freddy wouldn't be the same otherwise. Just think about if you were in the kids' shoes. There's this scary dude trying to kill them. They're going to be mad at him to begin with, right? Well, on top of that, he's making fun of them too. They've got to be pissed. But we, as audience members, just find it hilarious. That's what makes everyone love Freddy. He's scary, but he's also funny. You don't know whether to laugh or run away and hide.

So I loved how they switched it up in this movie, but I have a few questions. We know why Freddy exists. He was killed by the parents of Elm Street, and his revenge was to kill all of their children. In this one, Nancy says that the kids in Westin Hills are the last of the Elm Street children. Since Nancy was killed in this one, and remaining kids were killed in the next movie, why did Freddy continue killing? This question wasn't answered until, I believe, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Freddy said that, when he died, he was offered a "job" by some demons. So, it was his job to kill children then. I guess he just decided that, if he had to kill some, he might as well get some revenge while he was at it. And once he was finished with his revenge, he still had a job to do, so he just kept on going. That was until no one was scared of him anymore, and he had to bring in my husband to put some fear back into the hearts of the kids on Elm Street.

Another thing I liked about this movie was that it went a little deeper into Freddy's past. We learned how he was born, and how he got the nicknamed "bastard son of a hundred maniacs." We got to meet Freddy's mother, and it kind of gave us a clue of why he was so messed up in his life. We got to understand him better.

This has always been my favorite of the Nightmare movies, and I know it always will be. Dream powers, a nun being raped by 100 crazy men, and Dokken. Can't forget them. I actually knew nothing about them until I saw the movie, but the theme song to Dream Warriors is fantastic. You should definitely have a listen.

I don't have a problem with the new direction they took with Freddy. I'm glad they decided to make him a comical character. It's just another reason why A Nightmare on Elm Street is different from any other horror movie ever made.

#108 -- A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

Director: Jack Sholder
Rating: 4/5

1428 Elm Street was a place of nightmares for Nancy in the first film. Now it's five years later; Nancy is gone (to an insane asylum, as we learn from part 3), and a new family has moved into the house. Jesse begins having nightmares immediately after moving in. They cause him to wander off and do strange things. His dad thinks he's on drugs, his mom thinks he crazy, and his girlfriend Lisa thinks he's a psychic--that his dreams are premonitions. Jesse doesn't know what to think. All he knows is that there's something inside of him that wants to control him. That something, of course, is Freddy Kreuger. When Jesse and Lisa find Nancy's diary, Jesse starts to think that his dreams are more than just nightmares.

It seems that, since he was thwarted by Nancy in the first movie, Freddy lost a little bit of his mojo. We know he gets his power from fear, and I guess not enough people fear him yet. He's weak. He's still got his brains and desire to kill, he just hasn't got the body for it. That's where Jesse comes in. This movie is different from the first, because Jesse doesn't dream about his own murder, but rather other peoples'. He sees them dying in horrific ways, killed by Freddy. But when they're dead, he finds himself alone, covered in blood, and sporting Freddy's glove. In one dream, he meets his gym coach in a gay S$M bar, and they go back to Springwood High. After doing a couple of laps around the gym, he goes to the shower, only to be followed by Coach, who is being drug by an invisible Freddy via a jumprope. He's tied up to the shower heads, and invisi-Freddy starts whipping him on the ass with a towel. Everything in this movie implies that Jesse's got a little bit of homosexuality buried deep inside him. He doesn't know if he's going crazy, or if he is actually killing these people. But his will to live and the love that he and Lisa share just might be enough to get rid of Freddy for good. The action culminates in, of course, a boiler room, where Freddy is confronted by his old nemesis: fire.




I think this was a fairly interesting premise. I guess they wanted to go a different direction with the follow up to the original Nightmare. It was interesting, but it didn't completely work for me. I still prefer good 'ol fashion Freddy, doing the killing himself without the need of a host body. I'm glad they went back to the old formula after this one. It's cool going back and watching the earlier movies, because we can see just how much Freddy has changed in appearance. He always has his Christmas sweater, his fedora, and his glove, but the effects change drastically of course. Freddy looked weird in this one to me, because I've grown used to the newer ones (having watched Freddy vs. Jason about a bajillion times). But that doesn't change the fact that Freddy is awesome and always will be. Though this is my least favorite of the series, it's still a must for Freddy fans. And it's also (as far as I can remember) the only time a girl has ever, or ever will again, willingly make out with Freddy Kreuger.

#58 -- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Director: Wes Craven
Rating: 5 / 5

When a friend has a horrible nightmare, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) decide to stay the night with her in order to make sure that she's okay. They don't really think much of what their friend says, until she's mysteriously murdered in her sleep. The girl's boyfriend is arrested for the murder and taken to jail, but Nancy and Glen don't believe that he had anything to do with it. One by one their friends are murdered in their sleep, and they soon start to believe that maybe, these dreams are more than what they seem. Nancy begins to have the dreams as well. They feature a terribly burned man in a striped sweater and a brown hat, and that man is Freddy Krueger. Krueger was a child murderer who was burned to death by a bunch of locals, including Nancy's parents. Now, he's back to kill them, as a way to get revenge on their parents, by entering their dreams.

Okay, that's all the synopsis you're getting, because if you don't already know everything I just said...something's wrong with you. Even non-horror-lovers know about Freddy, so where in the hell have you been? Instead of more pointless synopsis, let's get into what makes this movie so incredible. Some people (like my boyfriend, what the fuck's his problem?) think that a killer who murders kids in their dreams is stupid. I guess it could have been stupid if it had been in the wrong hands, but thankfully, it was in the hands of Wes Craven. Here's what I think happened: Wes got together with whoever else helped him here, they decided that they wanted to make a horror movie. They wanted to do some weird things, and they knew that these things were silly, but they were smart about it. They came up with an idea which allowed them to do the stupidest, silliest, and weirdest things and all of that would be A-okay. The fact that Freddy is a dream demon means that everything makes perfect sense. Even the most far-fetched things are perfectly plausible because everyone knows that nothing is impossible in your dreams. It didn't matter what they did with him, there's no way that it could have been stupid. Brilliant. 

That's what I love about these movies. There's no limit whatsoever to what Freddy can do. Anything that he does makes sense because he's always inside someone's dream. Not only does this mean that there are no stupid kills, it means that there are tons of things in these movies that you'll never seen anywhere else. These movies have the most creative and unique kill scenes that you will ever see, and I absolutely love them for that. There's always something new and inventive, and you just can't wait to see what Freddy's going to do next. Again, this is brilliant film-making. 

Another thing that everyone love about these movies is Freddy himself. He is the goofiest serial killer ever, and we love him for it. He's got a very dark sense of humor, he's goofy as hell, and he's always got something to say. He's an asshole, of course, and he's always making fun of people before he kills them, but he does it in such a hilarious way that you can't help but love him. I know that other people have attempted to have those funny killers, but none of them succeed the way that Freddy does. In most cases, those killers end up not being funny at all. In the rare cases that they are actually funny, it only makes them less scary and ruins the horror aspect of the movie. Here, though, everything is executed absolutely perfectly. Freddy is funny as hell, but he's still scary. I don't know how they succeeded at this, but I can only assume it's because they're geniuses. 

Sometimes, when a series goes on for so long, people start to get bored with it. They're tired of seeing the same killer kill basically the same characters movie after movie, and always in the same way. That can't happen here, which is another great thing about it. Because of the dream aspect, with the limitless ways that Freddy can kill, he will never get old. They can keep making these movies for hundreds of years, and as long as someone has new ideas for Freddy's kills, there will always be something different and exciting. As long as it doesn't get into the wrong hands, Freddy will live forever. 

I didn't see these movies as early on in my life as I did Friday the 13th, but I was still pretty young. I still feel like I grew up with Freddy as well, so all these movies have a special place in my heart. I loved them then, I love them now, and I will love them forever. Freddy Krueger is one hell of a killer, one funny motherfucker, and it's no wonder he's become so iconic in the horror world. He's awesome, end of story. And Robert Englund played the part so brilliantly that it is completely, 100% impossible not to love him.