As I mentioned in my review of the first two Nightmare movies, the concept has all kinds of potential that never really quite got reached, but Dream Warriors comes the closest. Widely regarded as the best of the bunch, I’ve got to agree so far. The idea in this sequel is that a bunch of kids in an asylum have to face off against Freddy with the help of Nancy from the first movie who is now a dream expert grad student and a helpful shrink.

Freddy starts to get a little snarky in this one, but for the most part, he’s still a pretty scary dude who has some fantastic abilities. For the first time, the kids actually seem to have some power by using their dreams to fight Freddy (like one kid dreams of being super strong, so he is against Freddy), though they are still mostly out of their league, so it leads to a good amount of tension. The story’s solid and the acting pretty good (including future stars Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne), plus we get to meet Freddy’s nun mom and hear a little about how he came to be, but the real draw in this film is the special effects.

Man, they’re cool. From the kid who gets turned into a meat puppet to the Freddy puppet to the syringe fingers, this one gets really close to if not flat out surpassing the effects in the first one. Really, though, it doesn’t matter if they’re better or worse, the Dream Warriors kills are so well thought out and so interesting, that it easily makes this the best of the bunch, though the Freddy skeleton thing doesn’t look so good.

I’d say, even if you’ve got no interested in Freddy or the Nightmare franchise as a whole, that you should still check out Dream Warriors. It’s that good.

Dream Master, on the other hand, was fairly unmemorable, which so far makes all the even numbered Freddy flicks nonstarters for me. Mind you, I was doing work while both movies were on, yet I remember much more about Warriors than Master, possibly because the story isn’t as well put together or interesting. It kind of picks up where Warriors left off with a few of those characters getting pulled into someone’s dreams. I don’t remember a ton, but there is the scene where the tough chick’s arm’s fall off to reveal huge bug arms and the kid karate fighting with an invisible Freddy and his visible glove knives. Oh and the person-in-the-waterbed gag which was a nice surprise because your mind automatically goes to exploding blood fountain from the first flick.

I really have to call “my bad” on this being a generally crappy review. After loving Warriors, this one left me flat and I can barely remember why thanks to me tap tap tapping away on the keyboard, though still in the same room. Oh, I also remember the crazy opening sequence back in the junkyward with all the cars and whatnot. That was fun.

I need to give this one another watch, though probably not anytime soon because, well, I just watched it and I’ve still got Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead and New Nightmare to get through.