Films: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (Heather Langenkamp / meta-Nancy)
Performed By: Heather Langenkamp
Created By: Wes Craven
All Films Rated “R” – Not Recommended for anyone under 13 years old (or per parental discretion)
Spoilers Ahead
We’re starting out with a big influence for me as a preteen / younger teenager. Horror movies always get a bad reputation for misogyny and exploitation of women – and there are definitely some like that – but I feel many great characters are overlooked under this lens. Many of my favorite characters as a young, horror loving teen were these heroines. They made me feel empowered when the film ended.
In the original “Nightmare,” Nancy is an average fifteen year old girl. She has a group of friends she hangs out with and a boyfriend she loves.
She is a child of divorce with and an alcoholic mother and parents that can’t seem to get along, even for her benefit. When the nightmares start, she begins losing her friends one by one to Freddy Krueger’s blades, and has to learn to rely on herself if she wants to survive.
Nancy is resilient and resourceful, making her the perfect heroine to stand against Freddy’s vendetta. She is strong and only becomes more so as Freddy slowly takes everything from her. She is intelligent and does her research noting helpful things that ultimately lead up to her final showdown with Freddy. Nancy doesn’t listen to those who try to gaslight her – she knows who Freddy is and what she has to do to stop him and no one can tell her she is wrong. She bases her knowledge on irrefutable evidence and won’t cease her quest to stop Freddy because bullheaded adults refuse to believe.
When the final battle between the two happens, she is the
one who initiates it. Once she learned she could pull things out of her dream
she began to plan Freddy’s demise. She booby traps her house
and goes into the dream to find Freddy, tackling him when her alarm starts going off in order to bring him into the real world where he can hopefully be stopped.
She leads him through a series of traps – from sledge hammers to the abdomen to explosive trip wires – taunting him the entire way, “Come on Freddy, can’t you catch me?”
Eventually Nancy realizes Freddy feeds on the fear of his victims and the only way to stop him is to turn her back on him and take away his power.
“I take back every bit of energy I gave you. You’re nothing, you’re shit!” This forces Freddy back into the dream world, where he can’t hurt her anymore.
Kristen has the ability to pull people into her dreams when she’s scared – as a little girl she did it to her father and as a teen she reached out to the first person she could trust, Nancy.
Once in the dream, Nancy wastes no time jumping into action to save her patient – grabbing a jagged piece of mirror glass, stabbing it into Freddy’s eye and getting Kristen to safety. She refuses to let these kids become more fodder for Freddy’s glove.
As an adult now Nancy has a bit more power to persuade people into understanding the real threat that hovers over these kids. She gets one of the doctors on board with her and together they try to work out a plan with the kids on how to stop the nightmare. After the discovery of Kristen’s ability to pull people into her dreams, the other kids reveal their powers – and these are what ultimately help them defeat Freddy.
Once again, Nancy doesn’t let anyone stop her from doing what needs to be done to save these kids. When Kristen is sedated and put in “the quiet room” (solitary confinement), Nancy and the others decide to go into the dream to protect her.
While the doctor Nancy has befriended goes after Freddy’s remains in the real world, Nancy and the others work their way through Freddy’s maze to locate Kristen and keep her safe. When, unfortunately, Freddy gets one over on Nancy, she turns his glove on him with her last dying breath.
While other final girls in this series have followed in Nancy’s footsteps (I plan on covering Alice as well), Nancy has been the quintessential adversary for Freddy. In “I Am Nancy,” the documentary Heather Langenkamp made about the character’s legacy, Wes Craven, the creator of the first film, told her, “I want it to be known that when I got the chance to come back to the Nightmare franchise, I knew it had to be centered around you. You are really the heart and soul of the series.” So that’s what he did.
In “New Nightmare” Heather plays herself as she slowly transforms into Nancy. Wes, also playing himself, is almost possessed writing a new script. The problem: everything he writes becomes reality, negatively impacting Heather’s life. Her son is being terrorized in his dreams by “the mean man,” her husband dies in a horrific car accident, and she’s receiving creepy calls from an unknown stalker. Ultimately, to protect her son, she must, as Wes tells her, “play Nancy one last time.”
Just like Nancy would do, Heather dives headfirst (literally) into the hellscape that is her son’s nightmare where she has to face off with her own personal Freddy. She goes in armed with a kitchen knife, but ultimately uses whatever is at her disposal to take him down. In a combined effort with her son, they put an end to this evil wearing a fictional demon’s face, and come out stronger for it.
When it comes to fans of the Nightmare franchise, it’s “Freddy-mania.” The fans have Freddy tattoos and the line for Robert Englund’s (the actor that brings him to life) photo opportunities and autographs is always incredibly long. There is seemingly endless Freddy merchandise, yet rarely, if any for Nancy. Heather Langenkamp decided to make a documentary to determine what Nancy really means to the fandom.
In “I Am Nancy,” she interviews fans, Wes Craven, and Robert Englund regarding their thoughts on the character. Wes describes Nancy as “courageous, stead-fast and emergent,” and states “It’s the Nancys of the world that make changes.” Robert tells Heather, “You represent the feminist spine that is the Nightmare franchise.”
To the fans, Nancy represents courage and strength. This character has aided many in facing their fears and inspired them during tough times. One fan told Heather that Nancy helped her during her recovery from a car accident; another told her Nancy gave him the strength to come to terms with his abusive father. Nancy helped me deal with middle school bullies. While Robert may get the longer lines, there are still many who want to meet the woman behind the character that shaped them, and they actually get time to talk to her. I know I can’t wait for my chance to meet her someday.
In sum, Nancy Thompson is a character that has found her way into the hearts of many. She is kind, courageous, intelligent, resilient, resourceful and strong. No one can gaslight her, no one can take her strength, even when everything else is gone. If no one will help her, she’ll do what she has to do on her own. She is Freddy’s nemesis, whether as Nancy or Heather, her good will and resilience will always beat him in the end. Freddy may get the glory of being a horror movie icon, but Nancy is the one that saved people, both on and off the screen.
