The Women of Elm Street: Nancy Thompson

It’s time. It is finally time.

Months ago, I began a series of posts in which I endeavored to celebrate the female leads of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. It’s my favorite horror franchise and has many excellent qualities, not the least of which is its celebration of female heroines, so the choice seemed an obvious one. I got through most of these leading ladies in a timely manner, but when it came time to write about the original and greatest protagonist of this series, I found myself incapable of accomplishing the task.

How could I put into words all that is so incredible about Nancy Thompson? How could I do justice to the character who is most responsible for my love of this series and, on a larger scale, the whole horror genre? I was locked in indecision and simply avoided the topic, but now that it’s October and I’m fully immersed in horror and the supernatural, it is finally time to finish this series.

Here we go. Spoilers after the jump.

The Women of Elm Street: Kristen Parker

Kristen Parker faced Freddy Krueger in the third and fourth installments of the Nightmare series. In Kristen’s debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors she was played by Patricia Arquette, and she was portrayed by Tuesday Knight in the following film The Dream Master.

Patricia Arquette

Tuesday Knight

These two films are two of my favorites in the series and Kristen really benefits from being in two of the most fun installments in the franchise. In her two-movie arc she goes from being the one who is learning about Freddy and who must reluctantly face him, to the character who teaches others about this mysterious killer and tries to take ownership of her dreams. Kristen is a little different from the other women I’ve talked about in this series because she’s not really the clear-cut lead of either of the films she’s in, but she still works as a heroine of the series. You’ll have to read on under the cut to see why!

The Women of Elm Street: The One-Offs

In the long history of the Nightmare series (at least seven films spanning 10 years, or nine films spanning 26 years if you count those apocryphal additions) there were of course some women who only led the fight against the villainous Fred Krueger for one film. These women are Lisa Webber of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and Maggie Burroughs of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.

Unfortunately, these are two of my least favorite movies in the series. Starting with Freddy’s Revenge, it had the problem that is so common when a surprise hit is given an unplanned sequel in that it didn’t understand what was great about the original and failed to re-capture its magic. Its main problems were replacing the female lead with a male and going with a concept that almost entirely did away with the nightmare aspect by having Freddy reincarnate himself in the real world.

Now, if this movie was so bad and didn’t even feature a female lead, why am I talking about it? Well, I do want to give it credit for trying to push the series into new territory rather than being a retread of the original (just because the risk didn’t exactly pay off doesn’t mean it wasn’t admirable) but also because it played with the typical gender roles of horror movies.

The Women of Elm Street: The Apocryphal

We will begin our series on the female protagonists of the Elm Street series with two movies which exist outside of the main arc of the seven-film series, and the women who lead them: Lori Campbell of Freddy vs. Jason and Nancy Holbrook of the 2010 remake A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I wasn’t sure if I would include Freddy vs. Jason or the 2010 version of A Nightmare on Elm Street in this series. I considered including FvJ since it is made in the same universe as the rest of the series, even if it doesn’t fit in perfectly with continuity, but I really had reservations about including the remake for a couple of reasons. It creates a new canon, for one, and is the first time Freddy Krueger is not played by Robert Englund, but more importantly, it ruins the series’ tradition of strong female leads and I just plain didn’t enjoy it or remember enough about it to include it. Like it or not, though, it bears the Elm Street name and including it gave me a good way to also include FvJ.

Let’s start off with Lori.

The Best Part of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Movies

It’s the kick-ass women, no lie. Even before I identified as a feminist, they were the main reason I loved this series. Back in October I mentioned my intent to talk more about this film series, and it’s time to make good on that promise.

The Nightmare on Elm Street series has always stood out from its contemporaries as a horror franchise with a focus on women as protagonists. Though female characters are often the focus of slasher films, they aren’t exactly what one would call a “protagonist”, and they usually fall into one of two categories: meat or Final Girl. (I wish I could remember the blog I got these titles from, but I can’t seem to find it) The meat are there often to be objects of lust, the comic relief, the mean ones, or some other minor role to fill, but ultimately they’re there to die. They are nothing more than fodder for the killer. The Final Girl is just what you’d guess from the title: she’s the one who makes it to the climax. She’s not necessarily the smartest or the strongest and she usually doesn’t do anything, she just lives the longest. She is the best avoider of death, typically through little to no effort on her part.

From the very beginning, however, A Nightmare on Elm Street was different. The first (and best, in my opinion) protagonist of the series is Nancy Thompson, played perfectly by Heather Langenkamp. Nancy is smart, resourceful, and determined. She was the first horror movie character who I saw take an active role in her own survival. She was proactive rather than reactive: she didn’t just wind up in a confrontation with the killer and have to fight her way out—she planned her attack. She learned all she could about her enemy and then researched methods of attacking him. Nancy Thompson is quite literally my hero.

The series continued to put women in roles of power and agency as it went on; some were more significant or worthwhile than others, but all of them managed to carry the film and, if not deliver the final blow themselves, had a direct hand in the climactic defeat of the villain. In the near future I’m going to take some time to discuss each of these women, from least to most prominent in the series, so if this post has piqued your interest in these movies (and I hope it has, because they’re awesome) you can look forward to hearing more about them soon!