Sunday, July 26, 2009

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3

A few weeks ago my youngest son stated that he wanted to watch one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Kyle is only ten years old but he’s a huge fan of horror flicks although the number of horror films he has seen is quite limited.

It’s hard to find good horror that doesn’t contain a tremendous amount of adult language, sex or explicit gore. Some of Kyle’s favorite films are Poltergeist, The Fog, One Missed Call and The Messengers. He had never seen a Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street flick.

One of my favorite Freddy films is the third in the franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:Dream Warriors.

My recollection was that it was fun and action driven without being too explicit. My memory served me well except for one scene where a hot blonde nurse disrobes and “tongue-ties” one of the characters.

Kyle closed his eyes for this part.

The thing that struck me with this film and the reason I’m discussing it on a Halloween and papier mache blog is the film’s opening title sequence during which time the main character (Patricia Arquette) is constructing a miniature version of the house featured in the first Elm Street film.

The house is built with Popsicle sticks and papier mache, yup, papier mache.

The interesting thing is the technique used to coat the newspaper strips. Instead of dipping strips in a bowl of paste she puts the strip of newspaper on another sheet of newspaper and globs the paste onto the strip. Messy and not the best practice in my opinion but I will cut her a break because she is all sleepy and trying to avoid Freddy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is good old fashioned horror movie fun from 1987 and while Kyle may have found some of the effects rather clunky and cheesy I found the whole thing to be pre CGI goodness….even if the main character doesn’t know how to mache properly.

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