After the much-criticized second installment (I actually really enjoyed it, as it has a lot of European flair and its subject matter seems like a middle finger in the face of teenage boys who would seem to be its biggest audience),Wes Craven returned to write the script, which was inspired by the phenomenon of children traveling to a specific location to commit suicide (think Japanese murder forests).

Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell took that direction and convinced New Line that the series should go further into Freddy's dream world. The success of this film proved that A Nightmare on Elm Street would be a franchise, as this film made more than the first two movies put together. The team would go on to create 1988's remake of The Blob before Darabont went into making Stephen King adaptions and Russell would direct The Mask, The Scorpion King and Collateral.

Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) is obsessed with the abandoned house on Elm Street (which one assumes is the last house on the left),making papier-mâché sculptures (which makes for a great compressed credit sequence, showing headlines of what has gone on before) and dreaming of Freddy chasing her. She awakens from her nightmare to discover that she's slicing her own wrists as her mother Elaine (Brooke Bundy) has to interrupt her sleepover dare to save her daughter's life.

Kristen ends up in Westin Hospital, run by Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson, Body Double),battling the orderlies and doctors who want to sedate her. Check out a young Laurence Fishburne here as orderly Max Daniels! She's eventually helped by the new therapist - Nancy Thompson! - who recites Freddy's nursery rhyme to her. Continuity be damned, Nancy's grey streak is now on the opposite side of her head.

We meet the rest of the patients, who will soon become the Dream Warriors: Phillip the sleepwalker (Bradley Gregg, Class of 1999),wheelchair-bound Will (Ira Heiden, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark),streetwise Kincaid, actress Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow, After Midnight),the silent Joey and Taryn, a former drug addict.

The Dream Warriors is pure entertainment. Freddy makes his move toward being more of a joking character while transforming into a snake, a TV set, a gigantic puppet master and even turns his fingers into drug-filled hypodermic needles. Kristen can pull the rest of the teens into her dreams, which they'll need as Freddy and all of their doctors are pretty much against them.

Enlisting Nancy's dad (John Saxon returns!),Neil digs up Freddy's bones, which are stilly deadly, while Nancy tries to save as many of the kids as she can within the dreamworld.

The film puts an end to Nancy's saga while setting things up for a new cast of characters to do battle with Freddy. At least that's what you're supposed to think, as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master pretty much wipes the slate clean within the first ten minutes.

The third entry in the Freddy Krueger series still manages to walk the fine line between comedy and horror and pull it off successfully in what is a fun but rather formulaic movie, typical of the late '80s teen horror in that it features lots of cheesy action and close scrapes with the killer, some goofy but amusing one-liners on the part of the villain, and lots of gooey and impressive special effects, with Kevin Yagher and Doug Beswick teaming up to deliver a range of imaginative and often stunning creations for the film. The casting is pretty good too, packed as it is with familiar faces and welcome returns from the first episode in the series (incidentally the first sequel is totally ignored for this one). The setting for the film this time around is a dark and creepy mental asylum in which an assorted bunch of teenage clichés (including the swearing streetwise black guy, the nerdish Dungeons & Dragons player, the scared mute kid, and the pretty blonde victim) find themselves picked off one by one by the killer with steel claws.

What this means is that there's a series of staged deaths for the teenagers in gory and usually spectacular ways, followed by retaliation and an overdone conclusion. The film really benefits from the atmospheric and creepy nightmare sequences which highlight some great moments, including my favourite in which Freddy is revealed as a huge, slimy Lovecraftian worm creature who then proceeds to half eat one of the heroines! A later moment involving one sleepwalking boy being used as a puppet with his veins for strings is memorably grotesque, whilst a buxom stripping nurse fantasy turns into a literal descent into the pits of Hell for one victim! The film also benefits from some surprising use of stop-motion animation, including the best skeleton fight seen on film since JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS! To make things even cooler, the man fighting the skeleton is none other than genre icon John Saxon, returning from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. John Saxon + stop-motion skeletons = a darned good time in this viewer's book.

Also returning from the first film is Heather Langenkamp giving a fairly matter-of-fact performance as grown-up warrior Nancy, although fans of her in the first will be disappointed that she lacks the same bite this time around. Patricia Arquette does kooky and disturbed very well indeed but her character is somewhat underdeveloped. There's also a key role for the underrated Craig Wasson as an investigating doctor who proves to be a little bit more open-minded than most. Other familiar faces include Laurence Fishburne (still 'Larry') as a hospital orderly and Zsa Zsa Gabor in a hilarious cameo appearance, playing herself as an interviewee who gets attacked by Krueger! Robert Englund returns to his most famous role and once again invests it with a pleasing level of dynamism and enthusiasm. Not to be described as a great film, this is however a good attempt at a much-maligned genre movie and quite watchable. The series went notably downhill from here.

It's six years after the original movie. Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) has been having awful dreams about Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Her mom thinks she attempted suicide and sends her to the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is the new intern at the hospital. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) is the doctor in charge of the kids. The kids all dream about Freddy Krueger and Kristen has the ability to pull others into her dream. Laurence Fishburne has a smaller role as an orderly.

The franchise is revived after the inferior second movie. Nancy is back and so is Wes Craven. The kids are interesting and so are the kills. There is actually a plot. Patricia Arquette has a nice central role. The pacing is a bit slow at times and the production is still a bit lower grade. Nevertheless, it is really nice to have Nancy there to tie it back to the original.