After Meat Cleaver Max (Brion James) is executed in the electric chair, his spirit enters the furnace of the policeman who arrested him, Detective Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen). As Lucas has visions of the dead man, Max kills again and again.
Quick Review: Did you see A Nightmare On Elm Street? Would you like to see a hack version? Here’s your chance. It would be nice if the constant dreaming done in this flick was done when people were asleep. James, who is capable of a good performance (as in Blade Runner), gives a comical one, which would be fine if he was funny, but he’s not. Henriksen, normally a reliable character actor, just bangs his chest and screams. Perhaps there’s a reason they haven’t been given other starring roles. Not that other actors could have saved the pathetic screenplay. Why doesn’t Lucas end up in jail? Why do some dead people turn out fine? Why did they make this film?
To add another level of scum to this project, the film was given the title of House 3 when released in some markets so that it could be claimed to be part of the House series. It isn’t. That confused matters such that the actual third House movie was called House IV.