A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a 1987 American fantasy slasher film[4] directed by Chuck Russell in his feature directorial debut.

The story was developed by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner and is the third installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and stars Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.

[5] Nancy Thompson, now a psychiatrist, and Kristen, a patient who can bring others into her own dreams, team up with other kids to launch a daring rescue into the dreamland and save a child from Freddy Krueger.

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.

Nancy meets the rest of Dr. Gordon's patients: Phillip, a sleepwalker; Kincaid, a tough kid from the streets; Jennifer, a hopeful television actress; Will, who uses a wheelchair due to a prior suicide attempt; Taryn, a recovering drug addict; and Joey, who is too traumatized to speak.

Nancy reveals to the remaining patients that they are "the last of the Elm Street kids," the surviving children of those who burned Krueger to death years ago.

A nun named Sister Mary Helena tells Neil that Freddy was the son of a young woman on the Westin Hills hospital staff who was accidentally locked inside with hundreds of mental patients over the holidays.

Following the critical failure of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, New Line Cinema was unsure if it would continue with the series.

He had not wanted the original to evolve into a franchise, but due to immense dissatisfaction with Freddy's Revenge, signed on to co-write the screenplay for the third installment with the intention that it would end the series.

[7] In interviews with cast and crew in the DVD extras, it is revealed that the original idea for the film centered around the kids separately traveling to a specific location to die by suicide.

Dr. Simms's last name was Maddalena, Taryn was African-American, Joey was the one who built the model of a house and had trouble getting around (although he did not use a wheelchair), and Philip was a thirteen-year-old.

[7] Discussing the more humorous elements in the film, Russell said, "I looked at what [series creator] Wes Craven did and said, 'This is absolutely great and terrifying.'

Lisa Wilcox and Lezlie Deane, who would respectively be cast as Alice Johnson and Tracy in later installments, have both reported to have auditioned for roles in Dream Warriors previously.

[25] The scenes in Freddy's boiler room were filmed at a converted warehouse across the street from Los Angeles County Jail.

The landfill closed in Oct 31, 2013[27] The special effects were created by a team led by Peter Chesney and included Kevin Yagher and Mark Shostrom.

[28] The skeletal version of the girl that Kristen is holding in the intro sequence was originally a surreal mechanical corpse dummy created by Shostrom, but turned out to be too good for its purpose; Russell was so unnerved by its appearance that he did not dare to put it in the film, but had it replaced by a simpler "decayed skeleton".

Shostrom went to the Simon Wiesenthal museum for inspiration, looking at photographs of burned children from the Auschwitz concentration camp and needed ten weeks to complete the original dummy, and its replacement was created within hours at Russell's insistence.

The band's manager Cliff Burnstein was acquainted with Wes Craven and was able to get a copy of the film script as reference for the lyrics.

[34] The opening sequence of the original VHS release of the film has a hard rock instrumental version of the Joe Lamont song "Quiet Cool".

[35] New Line Cinema's distributing partner Media Home Entertainment recorded a promo reel with Robert Englund as Freddy advertising the VHS release of the film primarily to video rental shop and other vendors, including a promised chance to one winner to appear in the sequel (The Dream Master).

[41] In the Australian state of Queensland, the movie was banned by the Bjelke-Petersen government because of its drug references, specifically the scene where Freddy's glove becomes a row of syringes and he injects Taryn with an overdose.

The site's critics consensus reads, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors offers an imaginative and surprisingly satisfying rebound for a franchise already starting to succumb to sequelitis.

[44] Variety wrote that Russell's poor direction makes the film's intended and unintended humor difficult to differentiate.

[46] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "The film's dream sequences are ingenious, and they feature some remarkable nightmare images and special effects.

"[47] Kim Newman wrote in Empire that the "film delivers amazing scenes in spades, bringing to life the sort of bizarre images which used to be found only on comic book covers" but believed that Langenkamp was "miscast here as the world’s only teenage psychiatrist, and a white streak in her hair doesn’t help her get away with it.

[50] In the comics Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors, the drug is referenced when Maggie Burroughs taunts Dr. Neil Gordon for being a "Hypnocil junkie" and that if he hadn't been, he would have seen her betrayal and corruption by her demonic father coming.

[61] A joint novelization of the first three films, The Nightmares on Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story, was released in 1987, written by Jeffrey Cooper.

In the Dream Warriors chapter, the original Craven and Wagner version of the Nightmare 3 script is adapted, rather than the Russell and Darabont rewrite.

[51] The two video games released for the franchise, the Commodore 64/IBM-PC (1989) and the NES adaption (1990), are independently based primarily on the Dream Warriors concept, characters, and film.

[73] Sets including Elaine Parker's severed head and "Tuxedo Freddy" and of Kristen being devoured by the Freddy-snake were released as part of the Cinema of Fear series.