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

Smart Egg Pictures

## Overview

In 1987, a year after the events of the previous film, teenager Kristen Parker dreams Freddy Krueger is chasing her. He attacks her in her bathroom after she thinks she already awoke, making it look like she slit her wrist in the real world.

Believing Kristen to be suicidal, her mother admits her to Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, where she is placed under the care of Dr. Neil Gordon. At the hospital, Kristen fights the orderlies who try to sedate her because she fears falling asleep. The new intern therapist, Nancy Thompson, calms her down and befriends her by reciting part of Freddy's nursery rhyme. Nancy is introduced to the rest of Dr. Gordon's patients: Phillip, a habitual sleepwalker; Kincaid, a tough kid from the streets who is prone to violence; Jennifer, a hopeful television actress prone to cigarette burns; Will, who uses a wheelchair due to a prior suicide attempt; Taryn, a recovering drug addict;

and Joey, the youngest, who is too traumatized to speak. One night, Freddy attacks Kristen in her dreams, but she unwittingly pulls Nancy into her dream, allowing them to escape.

Kristen reveals that she has been able to pull people into her dreams since she was young. Over the next two nights, Freddy throws Phillip off a roof and kills Jennifer by smashing her head into a television. In their next group session, Nancy reveals to the remaining patients that they are 'the last of the Elm Street kids,' the surviving children of those who banded together and burned Krueger to death many years ago. Both Nancy and Neil encourage them to try group hypnosis so that they can experience a shared dream and discover their dream powers. In the dream, Joey wanders off and is captured by Freddy, leaving him comatose in the real world; Nancy and Neil are relieved of duty. A nun, Sister Mary Helena, tells Neil that Freddy is the son of a young woman on the hospital staff who was accidentally locked in a room with hundreds of mental patients who raped her continually, and that the only way to stop him is to lay his bones to rest.

He and Nancy ask her father, officer Donald Thompson, where the bones are hidden, but he is uncooperative. Nancy rushes back to the hospital when she learns that Kristen has been sedated. Neil stays behind to convince Donald to help them. Nancy and the others again engage in group hypnosis to reunite with Kristen but are all separated by Freddy. Taryn and Will are killed by Freddy while Kristen, Nancy, and Kincaid find one another. The trio rescue Joey but are unable to defeat Freddy because he has become too powerful due to the souls he's absorbed. Sensing that his remains have been found, Freddy appropriates his own skeleton and kills Donald before incapacitating Neil. Freddy returns to attack the others but Joey uses his dream power voice to repel him. Donald tells Nancy that he is crossing over but he is revealed to be Freddy and stabs Nancy in the stomach, and tosses her aside. Freddy, believing that Nancy is dead, comes upon Kristen in order to kill her but a still-alive Nancy stabs him with his own glove. Neil manages to recover and purifies Freddy's bones, killing him. After Nancy dies, Kristen manages to awaken everyone and return them to the real world. During the patients' funeral, Neil finds Amanda Krueger's tombstone and discovers that she is Sister Mary Helena. That evening, he goes to sleep with the Malaysian doll Nancy gave him and Kristen's papier-mâché house nearby, and suddenly Kristen's house lights up from the inside, suggesting that Freddy is not completely defeated.

## 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
* Clayton Landey as Lorenzo
* Brooke Bundy as Elaine Parker
* Dick Cavett as Himself
* Zsa Zsa Gabor as Herself
* Stacey Alden as Nurse Marcie
* Paul Kent as Dr. Carver