In a Land of Passive Horror Movie Victims,
Nancy Thompson Elevates Above the Pack.
Nancy Thompson
fromA Nightmare on Elm Street
is smart, tough and refuses to be a victim. When BHM asked contributor
Jennifer G. who her favorite horror movie heroine was, there was no
question in her mind.
Article by: BHM Contributor Jennifer G. November 13,
2006
Hero: Nancy
Thompson Villain:
Freddy Krueger Movies:
A Nightmare on Elm Street
(1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
(1987), New Nightmare (1994) Actor:
Heather Langenkamp
When thinking of my favorite horror film heroine, images of Jaime Lee
Curtis, a.k.a. Laurie
Strode
fighting off Michael
Myers
come to mind. So does the main character in Argento’s film, Suspiria
, struggling to convince her peers that something is just not right at
the ballet academy. Then, there are the more passive heroines, scores
of them, getting attacked in showers, falling out windows and running
through forests.
The heroine who stands out in my mind and
one of my favorites, however, is Nancy Thompson from A
Nightmare on Elm Street
.
One thing that I always found genius about A Nightmare on Elm
Street
was the fact that Freddy Krueger could very well have been a figment of
the teens’ imaginations, some monster collectively passed
down
through their parents’ guilt for killing him. Is Freddy real,
or
just a manifestation of family problems in the suburbs?
In
A Nightmare on Elm Street II
the new family living in Nancy’s old house talk about a girl
whose mother committed suicide right in front of her, in their now
living room. Later, the new teen in Nancy’s house, named
Jesse,
finds Nancy’s journal in the closet. Nancy talks about a man
that
comes to visit her at night, with razor-like claws and a burnt face.
Jesse and his girlfriend Lisa interpret the diary as just a
girl’s recordings of her bad dreams until Freddy makes his
full-
fledged appearance later in the film.
Nancy Thompson may not be in A Nightmare on Elm Street II,
but the mythology of her character lives on and the question of her
experience only becomes more intriguing when she returns in the later
installments.
How many of us have faced our own private
demons in dreams and how many
of us have conquered them? Those demons could be anything from a
drunken relative to guilt for misdeeds passed down from generation to
generation. Nancy Thompson faces her demons head on and with gusto.
Never the passive victim, she responds to the challenges of her
environment with cunning and innovation.
At first, she questions the reality of
Freddy, until she brings his hat
back with her through her nightmare. This gives her the idea to
booby-trap her house so she can bring Freddy out of her dreams and trap
him. Angry that her friends are being killed off one by one, she never
pities herself. Rather, she questions everyone around her to get to the
bottom of these murders and her dreams. In the end, she knows what she
must do - she must confront Freddy face to face in order to get her
life and friends back. Whether she succeeds or not is up to question.
Freddy seems to have the last laugh, pulling Nancy’s mom
through
a window and trapping her friends in a car. But Nancy returns later in
the Elm Street movies to help other teens conquer
their “demons.”
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In
A Nightmare on Elm Street II
the new family living in Nancy’s old house talk about a girl
whose mother committed suicide right in front of her, in their now
living room. Later, the new teen in Nancy’s house, named
Jesse,
finds Nancy’s journal in the closet. Nancy talks about a man
that
comes to visit her at night, with razor-like claws and a burnt face.
Jesse and his girlfriend Lisa interpret the diary as just a
girl’s recordings of her bad dreams until Freddy makes his
full-
fledged appearance later in the film.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Technorati
Y!
MyWeb
