A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

**A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors** is a 1987 American fantasy/slasher/horror film directed by Chuck Russell which was released on February 27, 1987 by New Line Cinema.

It is the third film in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" film franchise.

## Plot

Kristen Parker is admitted to a psychiatric facility after she has her wrists slit in a nightmare involving Freddy Kruger where she joins a group of troubled teenagers. One of the physicians, Nancy Thompson, who had battled with Freddy years ago, helps Kristen & the other teens out when Freddy begins invading their dreams.

## Cast

* Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger
* Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson
* Craig Wasson as Dr. Neil Gordon
* Patricia Arquette as Kristen Parker
* Ken Sagoes as Roland Kincaid
* Rodney Eastman as Joey Crusel
* Jennifer Rubin as Taryn White
* Larry Fishburne as Max Daniels
* Bradley Gregg as Phillip Anderson
* Ira Heiden as Will Stanton
* Penelope Sudrow as Jennifer Caulfield
* Nan Martin as Amanda Krueger/Mary Helena
* John Saxon as Donald Thompson
* Priscilla Pointer as Dr. Elizabeth Simms

## Production

### Development

Following the critical failure of "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge", New Line Cinema was unsure if they would continue with the series.

Wes Craven (who wrote and directed the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street") did not participate in the first sequel. He had not wanted the original to evolve into a franchise but co-wrote the screenplay for the third installment with the intention that it would end the series. The success of "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" prompted a continuation of the series.

Craven's very first concept for the film was to have Freddy Krueger invade the real world: Krueger would haunt the actors filming a new "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequel.

New Line Cinema rejected the metacinematic idea, but years later, Craven's concept was brought to the screen in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Craven himself would be unavailable for directing because he was tied up with filming "Deadly Friend" around the same time.

Before it was decided what script would be used for the film's story, both John Saxon and Robert Englund wrote their own scripts for a third film.

In Saxon's script (titled "How the Nightmare on Elm Street All Began" which would have been a prequel story), Freddy would ultimately turn out to have been innocent, or at least set up for the murders by Charles Manson, who along with his followers would have been the main culprit of the murders; Freddy would be forced by the mob of angry parents to make a confession of the crimes, which would enrage them further. After they lynch Freddy, he comes back to avenge his wrongful death by targeting the parent's children.

In Englund's treatment called Freddy's Funhouse, the protagonist would have been Tina Gray's older sister (who would have been in college by the time Tina was murdered) and ends up coming back to Springwood to investigate how she died.

In the script, Freddy had claimed the 1428 Elm Street house for his own in the dreamworld, setting up booby traps like Nancy did against him. According to Englund, part of it later ended up being used in the pilot episode of "Freddy's Nightmares" after the script had been lying around unused for a few years.

### Writing

Wes Craven said that he and Bruce Wagner wanted to take the franchise in, that "we decided that it could no longer be one person fighting Freddy. It had to be a group, because the souls of Freddy's victims have made Freddy stronger."

He also called Heather Langenkamp to ask her if he may include her character Nancy in the script, which she agreed to.

In interviews with cast and crew in the DVD extras, it is revealed that the original idea for the film centered around the kids separately traveling to a specific location to die by suicide. Later it would be discovered that the common link between the youths was that they dreamed of Freddy Krueger. Since suicide is a taboo social issue, the storyline was abandoned. Some aspects of the idea remained in the film.

In Craven and Wagner's original script, the characters were somewhat different from what was eventually filmed. Nancy was not a dream expert nor any kind of mental health professional. Kristen (named Kirsten in this script) only stayed in the institution for a short while; she had a father and her mother was named Alice.

Neil's last name was Guinness and his character was much younger. Dr. Simms' last name was Maddalena, Taryn was African-American, Joey was the one who built the model of a house and had trouble getting around (although he did not use a wheelchair), and Philip was a thirteen-year-old. Will's name was originally Laredo, he had long hair, did not use a wheelchair, and was the one who made the clay puppets; this script also described the ranch house where Krueger was born and that is the house that shows up in the kids' dreams rather than the Elm Street house.

Wes Craven specifies the house in his original script to be "an architectural portal to [Freddy's dreamscape]. It is virtually a limitless world of the human psyche in all of its dimensions ... So you can enter this other world through the house or dreams or madness or hallucinations or special psychic states that various people have."

Contrary to the film, Donald Thompson knew from the start that Krueger was real and still alive. Krueger was missing and Nancy wanted to find him. When she finds him, Nancy learns that Krueger is obsessed with finding the house where he was born so he could burn it down.

In the original script, there is a romance between Nancy and Neil and they have sex. There are scenes and lines that are reminiscent of the first film.

There is no mention that Krueger's mother had been a nun or that Freddy was born of rape. Both Joey and Kincaid are killed. The deaths in this script were more grotesque; Krueger was not as talkative and he was more vulgar. Freddy is killed by Nancy by using his own glove, not by holy water, and she sees through his shapeshifting trick even though she still dies.

On "Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy", director Chuck Russell states that Wes Craven's original script was darker and more profane while Rachel Talalay thought that the script seemed like a *"20 million dollar script."*

Discussing the more humorous elements in the film, Russell stated, *"I looked at what [series creator] Wes Craven did and said, 'This is absolutely great and terrifying.' But I felt that by the time I came along on 3, the way to go was to make the whole idea of dreams and nightmares into a carnival and go further into the dreams and make Freddy Krueger more outrageous and add more of an element of dark humor. That worked and the series went in that direction from then on."*

### Casting

Lisa Wilcox and Lezlie Deane, who would later be cast as Alice Johnson and Tracy respectively in the following installments, have both reported to have had auditions for roles in Dream Warriors previously.

Patricia Arquette was close to being recast early into the shooting, but Chuck Russell intervened and had her stay in the film.

According to producer Sara Risher, the role that the producers spent the most time interviewing and auditioning for was Marcie (Stacy Alden), the "sexy nurse" who seemingly seduces Joey in his dream but turns out to be Freddy.

Nurse Marcie (while seducing Joey) was originally supposed to turn into a "She-Freddy", with Alden wearing Freddy's mask; Roy H. Wagner had second thoughts about this after seeing how "She-Freddy" looked like in practice, stating that "Freddy with breasts, it was too off-kilter". The concept of "She-Freddy" was substituted with having the nurse shoot prehensile tongues at Joey to trap him and then be switched with Englund-Freddy.

In the shooting script, Sally Kellerman was supposed to appear on Dick Cavett's talk show, but Cavett allegedly handpicked Zsa Zsa Gabor personally after being given the opportunity to choose who he thought should appear in his show and be slaughtered by Freddy.

According to Robert Englund, all of her reactions and dialogue were completely improvised: “*Ms. Gabor, who was probably just grateful to be asked to appear in a movie again, apparently didn’t read the script or bother to do any research on the Nightmare flicks. I guess her agent told her, “I have a job for you,” and all she said was “Great. Vhat time zhould I zhow up, dahlink?” not realizing that she was about to throw down with a burnt-to-a-crisp serial killer. During the fake talk show where she’s interviewed by Dick Cavett, all her reactions seen on film were 100 percent genuine. She didn’t know who the f\*\*k Freddy was, so when I jumped out, she had a mild freak-out.”*

### Filming

Filming for "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" began on October 15, 1986 and ended in November of 1986. It was filmed on location in Los Angeles, California.

The storyboards used for shooting was supplied by Pete von Sholly. Russell originally hired a cinematographer whom line producer Rachel Talalay perceived to be "Eastern European"; Talalay had the cinematographer fired after he had insulted Penelope Sudrow and replaced him with Roy H. Wagner.

The Royce Hall building on the University of California, Los Angeles campus was used for the exteriors of the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, while St. Brendan Catholic Church was used for the church scenes.

The scenes in Freddy's boiler room were filmed at a converted warehouse across the street from Los Angeles County Jail.

Mark Shostrom (who was also doing work on the set of "Evil Dead II") possibly smuggled the Freddy glove used in "Dream Warriors" and used it as a background prop for one day, explaining why the glove appeared in that film released the same year.

## Box Office

"A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" debuted at #1 at the box office, grossing $8,880,555 during its opening weekend, which was a record for an independent film at the time and New Line Cinema's first film to open nationally.

In the United States, the film grossed $44,793,222 at the domestic box office, making it the highest-grossing film for New Line Cinema that year, the 24th highest-grossing film of 1987 and the third-highest grossing film of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" film franchise (after "Freddy vs. Jason" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master").

Overall, the film grossed $44,793,222 worldwide.

## Critical Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" has an approval rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 36 reviews with an average rating is 5.97/10. The consensus reads: *"A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors offers an imaginative and surprisingly satisfying rebound for a franchise already starting to succumb to sequelitis."*

Variety wrote that Chuck Russell's poor direction makes the film's intended and unintended humor difficult to differentiate.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film one and a half out of four stars; he liked the production values, but said that it *"never generated any sympathy for its characters."*

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote: *"The film's dream sequences are ingenious, and they feature some remarkable nightmare images and special effects."*

Although he criticizes Heather Langenkamp's acting, Kim Newman wrote in Empire that the *"film delivers amazing scenes in spades, bringing to life the sort of bizarre images which used to be found only on comic book covers."*

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune called the film a *"third in a hyper-violent and rather stupid series of thrillers about an adult child killer."*