#the whole aspect of the dolls being alive and mature but silly and still a bit childish is super cute

[citnamora]

I'm reading the Raggedy Ann book series written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle. Yesterday I watched Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure. Immediately after, I stayed up watching Raggedy Ann: The Musical Adventure [the bootlegs of the show that were previously lost media(?) from what I recall].

...I think I have a new hyperfixation, LOL.

[amplesalty]

Day 17 - A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Three, four, better lock your door...

Featuring nonother than 'Larry' Fishburne himself. I guess he went through one of those mature phases and started referring to himself as Laurence instead.

Between the return of Wes Craven as one of the writing team and Nancy Thompson from the first movie, I can't help but wonder if they were trying to distance themselves from 2. 2 was part of the fairly vast 'watched but not reviewed' last from last year and as I said in my summary of that, I really liked it. Apparently it wasn't reviewed very favourably though, 43 on Metacritic, 40% on Rotten Tomatoes...not the best. This one did a lot better though.

Surely Nancy was killed at the end of the first movie though? Like, their whole car transformed into the Freddy colours and locked them inside before driving away. I thought the implication was that just when they thought they'd escaped, he had the last laugh. Nancy does describe her movie as having 'died in her sleep'. You mean when Freddy pulled that doll through the glass in the front door?

The movie is centered around a hospital dealing with troubled teens, including Kristen Parker who has a run in with Freddy. Only, when he mother finds her, she's holding a razor blade so the all the cuts are deemed to be self inflicted. Apparently the subject of suicide was much heavier in earlier plans for the movie so things changed slightly with it being such a touchy subject. It's still touched on here but it's only perceived as suicide by outsiders, really it's Freddy pulling the strings.

Literally, as in the unfortunate demise of Phillip. The other kids and staff think nothing of him sleepwalking but in dream land, Freddy has actually ripped the veins out of his body and is dragging him around by them like a puppet on a string. Really nasty image.

Still, the sight of Freddy towering over a building, walking a poor kid to his death...as gruesome as that might be, it underlines the potential that the whole dream aspect brings to the series and the creative ways they can use it. Sure, Jason Vorhees stabbed someone. He rammed a pole through a port-a-potty and impaled someone. But has he ever turned into a snake and tried eating them alive? Ever morphed into some sort of anthropomorphic television, screamed 'you're in prime time, BITCH!' and then rammed her head through the screen?

Aside from the creativeness of the kills, in general we're still treading fairly new ground with each sequel. 1 is obviously your introduction to Freddy and the mythos around him, 2 more Freddy toying with one victim long term and his descent into madness and here, it's exploring this group dynamic and teaming up to take the fight to Freddy.

You'll have a tough time getting these kids to fall asleep in the first place though. Kristen's method is taking a spoonful of coffee and downing it with a Diet Coke. Certainly more mundane that the one kid that cut his own eyelids off. Sheesh.

Or you could just try and play D&D all night like some of the kids here do. I'm not sure actually what the non-copywright infringing name they went with is. The DM screen the kid has says 'Wizard Master' so, I dunno, Wizards and Warriors? Mazes and Monsters? That's a far out game...

I don't know what they hope to achieve by letting the mute kid play with them though. The DM chastises this one girl for not RP'ing properly, but just going by the numbers on the dice and not proclaiming that she strikes out against the hellish fiend in the good name of Prince Liraius (or whatever he's called) but the mute kid's hardly going to be hamming it up, is he?

All the kids are sharing these same visions of Freddy but the doctors aren't buying this theory. One stuck up doctor proclaims that it's all down to guilt and overt sexuality. Yeah, it's always about the kids and their shagging in these movies, isn't it?

Nancy, being something of an expert on these particular brand of night terrors, shows up as an intern who's ready to believe them. Eventually she tells them the real story of Freddy and that they're the last of the Elm St kids he's out for revenge on. Hey, this franchise has a good few sequels yet left, you can't go planting your flag in the ground like that. Who's he meant to kill in the next few movies?

We also find out more about Freddy's past as a nun shares the story of how Freddy was conceived at this very hospital when a young staff member ended up isolated with the inhabitants, locked away for days on end and subject to repeated attacks. He's labelled as the bastard child of one hundred maniacs. Grim.

During a funeral for one of the kids, she asks one of the doctors what he has faith in. When he replies science, she proclaims that to be a very sad existence. You know, people make a lot of all the homoeroticism in the second movie, I wonder if they do the same for all the theological stuff in this one. Freddy is fought off with a cross and holy water at one point and they have to bury his remains on sacred ground.

Those remains being a skeleton that re-animates itself in the middle of a scrapyard full of possessed cars. Really awesome scene as it fights Nancy's father and one of the docs. Got the whole stopmotion thing going on here, as well as in and around that whole 'puppet master' scene where Freddy temporarily possesses one of the kids puppets.

Overall, it's another good entry to the series. I hear it starts to go downhill right about now, there's another 4 left for me but I'm infinitely more inclined to watch those than I am another Friday the 13th. I still don't feel Freddy has got quite so silly and over the top as you're led to believe looking at this series as a whole as an outsider, but even if he were, that's still more interesting to me than Jason knifing another bunch of kids.

Still, funny the ones I've watched this year sort of mirrored each other by centering around a bunch of unstable kids.