A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS
Last night’s Halloween flick, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, holds a special place on my pop culture shelf. It came out when I was a pimple-sketched teen knee-deep in roleplaying games and Marvel comics.
It got me hooked on fantasy-horror, eventually leading me to H.P. Lovecraft and other rubber reality chillers (Hellraiser, Videodrome, Jacob’s Ladder). Most importantly, it showed a bunch of beaten-up, fringe-dwelling misfits (not the usual assortment of horror victim cliches, but artists, former junkies, and geeks) find their inner-powers and standing their ground against a collective threat. Not a bad message for a film where Dick Cavett tries to murder Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Footnote: kudos to my father, who relented to his underaged son to take him to a rated R flick. The Prince George theatre where it was playing made him sign some kind of disclaimer and answer 101 questions before letting us in.
