A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
DIRECTED BY: Chuck Russell
STORY BY: Wes Craven & Bruce Wagner
SCREENPLAY BY: Wes Craven & Bruce Wagner and Frank Darabont & Chuck Russell
MUSIC BY: Angelo Badalamenti
DISTRIBUTOR: New Line Cinema
STARRING: Heather Langenkamp; Patricia Arquette; Laurence
Fishburne; Craig Wasson; Ken Sagoes; Rodney Eastman; Jennifer Rubin;
Penelope Sudrow; Ira Heiden; Nan Martin; and Robert Englund as Freddy
Krueger; Special Apperances by Dick Cavett; Zsa Zsa Gabor; John Saxon;
RUNNING TIME: 96 Minutes
PLOT:
After an apparent suicide attempt Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) is
sent to a mental hospital where she is put in a special ward with several
other suicidal teens. All of them have been having dreams about Freddy
Krueger. No one believes that the dreams represent a real danger, until
Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) who is now a graduate student
with a particular expertise in dreams shows up. Having Already fought
Freddy in part 1 Nancy believes them and wants to help them. Kristen has
the psychic ability to pull people into her dream, which Nancy uses to bring
them all into the same dream to fight Freddy. Another doctor, Neil
Goldman, finds out from a Nun that Freddy can be stopped by giving his
hidden remains a proper barrel. Dr. Goldman enlists the help of Nancy's
father Lt. Thompson (John Saxon) in finding Freddy's remains.
MYTHOS INFORMATION:
After the events in part one Nancy left town to go to college where she studied to be a psychologist specializing in dreams. When she left she stayed away from everything in Springwood, including her father.
Guilt over his role in what Freddy became and his own daughter's
departure drove Lt. Thompson (John Saxon) into depression and
alcoholism.
Amanda Kruger worked at the Springwood Psychiatric Hospital during the 1940s. She
was accidentally locked into the section that housed the violent inmates. They raped her
hundreds of times before the staff found her several days later. She was pregnant with
Freddy, making him "the bastard son of 100 maniacs".
In this film Nancy identifies the old decrepit house that Kristen has been dreaming about as her old house, but in this film and later ones they say that it is Freddy's old house, not the Thompsons. According to the folks at Newline (in the book The Nightmare Never Ends, great book BTW) they are 2 different houses. Both houses are on Elm Street, but are a few blocks apart. As is often done in small towns house designs are re-used by the building contractors. The house with bars on the windows is 1428 Elm Street and is the house from the first 2 movies, where Nancy and her mother lived in part 1. The old decrepit house that is all boarded up (and has no bars on the windows) is 1665 Elm Street, and is where Freddy lived before he was killed. It was Freddy's house that appeared in Kristen and Alice's dreams, Nancy was simply figured that it was her house because it looked so much like hers. The other distungiushing feature is Nancy's house has a portch that is 2 steps above the ground, while Freddy's house has a portch that is 3 steps above the ground.
Nancy's house in part 1. In the time between 1 & 2 the front door went from blue to red which really made it look like Freddy's house.
Freddy's House
BEHIND-THE-SCENES
Kevin Yagher once again did the Freddy make-up. This time people
finally got to see more of the detail that he had put into it, because Freddy
was brought into the light more than in the previous ones.
The sequence where Freddy's skeleton attacks Lt. Thompson and Dr.
Goldman was stop motion animated in front of a rear projection screen.
The actors practiced the movements with Robert Englund. The animators
matched the skeleton's movement with film of Englund so that it would
move like Freddy does.
The clay marionette turning into Freddy was done by sculpting 48 clay
heads for the marionette. The first looked exactly like Freddy the last was
just a blob of clay. They quickly dissolve between all of them and played it
in reverse to create the illusion of the clay morphing to look like Freddy.
The clay hand getting claws was also shot in reverse. The claws were
shortened each time and the clay formed a fist than a blob of clay.
The "Freddy-snake" that almost eats Kristen (Patricia Arquette) was
actually being pulled off of Arquette; the film was than played in reverse.
They certainly did a lot of that reverse effect in this movie didn't they.
Freddy's chest of souls was an armature that fit over Robert Englund's body. Cables used to animate the faces on the chest were run down Englund's leg.
One of the best bargains that they got on an effect was when Kristen
enters the nightmare house and sees a roasted pig that starts barking at
her. The special effects guys were coming up with $300,000 estimates for
how much a prosthetic pig would cost to build and animate; they could not
afford that. Finally they got 2 REAL roasted pigs. One was decorated to
look like it was ready to eat; the other was made to look demonic. A crew
member, who lost a coin toss, got under the table and stick his hand up
into this dead pig to make it work
Made $44 million.
DEATHS:
Phillip (Bradley Gregg): Has his arteries pulled out of his arms and
legs like strings on a puppet by Freddy. Freddy walks him to a ledge
where he cuts the strings and lets Phillip fall to his death.
Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow): Picked up by the arms of a Freddy
possessed TV and slammed through the screen.
Taryn (Jennifer Rubin): Injected by with hypodermic needles that
Freddy turns his fingers into
Will Stanton (Ira Heiden): Claws to the chest
Lt. Thompson (John Saxon): Thrown into a sharp piece of mettle by
the Freddy-skeleton
Nancy (Heather Langenkamp): Claws to the abdomen
SEX/NUDITY
In Joey's dream Marcie (Stacey Alden) seduces him, wearing only a
thong