By Freddy Krueger’s third teen massacre, we all knew that he was here to stay. He’s slinging out more wisecracks here than Conan O’Brien and slicing up more red meat than the butcher at Tom Thumb. He’s comfortable. He’s cozy. He flashes those finger blades like a teen idol flashes his perfect teeth and dons the famous sweater like an icon. The fun thing about the Elm Street movies is that the makers put a little more creativity into it than you often find in slasher films. Freddy Krueger is a dream figure who can do anything. He can transform into a giant snake, he can turn his finger blades into drug-filled syringes, he can jump inside your TV and invade the talk show you’re watching, he can possess his skeletal earthly remains and make it kill John Saxon. If Jason Vorhees is conservative Elvis, Freddy is the psychedelic Beatles.
So, in this one he goes up against a group of kids who’ve figured out how to become superheroes in their dreams. Everybody’s going to have a favorite Dream Warrior. Some might like the young Yaphet Kotto lookalike strong man. Some might enjoy the Wizard Master, wheelchair bound in real life, but an upright Dungeons and Dragons character in his dreams. Others may prefer Patricia Arquette (in her first movie) as an ultra-agile somersault queen. Me, my favorite is the sullen Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club girl who transforms in her dreams into a knife-wielding, mohawk-sporting Wendy O. Williams type (“I’m beautiful and bad,” she exclaims with grand camp). Freddy turns most of them into tomato paste, as we expect, but it’s not easy.
Dokken’s totally 80s hair-metal theme song over the closing credits is the cherry on the sundae.