DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

DRIVE•INSTATURDAY

HUNGARIAN GOULASH

Edouard Dauphin

What do Dick Cavett, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Freddy Krueger have in common? Nothing, you say? Wrong, Starchhead! All three appear in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the latest horror sequel and a film with the longest title since 1969’s Anthony Newley/Milton Berle starrer, Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe And Find True Happiness? (The answer to that title, by the way, was: “Just say no.”).

Cavett and Zsa (those of us who know Ms. Gabor well like to call her that) are depicted in Nightmare 3 as participants in a television talk show which is suddenly interrupted when an uninvited Freddy—everybody’s favorite dream monster, if you don’t count Bob Eubanks—bursts forth from Cavett’s body to pounce upon the Hungarian Shrew-lash, wheezing obscenities and seemingly undaunted by her redfeathered outfit which resembles some long forgotten drag from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust days. It’s a cinematic moment you won’t soon forget, unless you’re taking those prescription “memory sponging” capsules The Dauph has relied on for years and are part of his probation.

If this sequence is the highlight of Nightmare 3, that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other reasons to slide your hard earned denarii through the box office window for it, even though it is a sequel to a rather lame follow-up to the classic original. If you saw Nightmare 2, you may be skeptical, but trust The Dauph—the new one marks a return to snipand-quip form for a horror series which may well go on to outdistance the already blunted Friday The 13th serial. (Rumor has it that somewhere down the road there may be a Freddy Meets Jason movie, in which case I’m betting all my CREEM preferred stock on the man who uses a chisel on his fingernails.)

Back in Nightmare 3—after wisely doing an El Paso on its predecessor—is Heather Langenkamp, who, in the first film, got tongued by Freddy through her telephone and was nearly bikiniwaxed via his stainless steel massage when she made the serious mistake of* dozing off in the bathtub. No longer the likable ingenue of Nightmare 1, Heather has blossomed into an adult who can’t act. But her eyes widen in horror very nicely, thank you, and she can still scream on cue, so let’s not be picky. This picture has very little to do with acting—it’s about keeping your eyes peeled for Freddy so you don’t have your skin peeled by Freddy.

In the past, the Elm Street brats terrorized by visions of Freddy in their dreams have struggled to stay awake, but in Nightmare 3 a brand new collection of potential victims decides to venture into Krueger’s landscape willingly; hence the second half of the title: Dream Warriors. They are encouraged in their decision by the Langenkamp character, who, in a mere two-and-a-half years, has gotten her doctorate and is now a psychiatrist specializing in dream disorders. Suicide-prone, every last one of them, this crew of seven includes an ex-junkie, a sleepwalker, a wheelchair-bound bozo and a would-be actress Freddy eventually demolishes by an unusual weapon: he rams her head into a television set, bellowing, “This is it, your big break in TV, welcome to prime time, bitch!” Nice touch, that one, though the set should have been tuned to Star Search at the time, just to really make it fitting.

Freddy is more than a match for several of the other “warriors,” dispatching the former addict by transforming his razor nails into— what else?—ten hypodermic needles. Another youth thinks he’s being seduced by a sexy blonde only to find himself tonguetied, quite literally, on the bed. These are the sort of sly executions one has come to expect from Freddy but not one is as amusing as the revelation given us about halfway through the movie by a mysterious nun who says solemnly that Krueger is “the

bastard son of a hundred maniacs.” Wasn’t that the name of a Frank Zappa film?

As you might guess, special effects are the name of the game throughout, and, despite its modest budget, Nightmare 3 delivers on this score. Everyone will have their favorite Freddy moment, but The Dauph enjoyed character John Saxon being impaled on the fin of a 1950s Cadillac, and the scene in the final reel where Freddy takes off his sweater to reveal a peculiar kind of chest that Ozzy Osbourne would kill for. See Nightmare on Elm Street 3—and if you’re reading this column, Zsa, I think you and Freddy make the best couple since David Lee Roth and his mirror.