From Scream Queens To Warrior Women: The Women of Nightmare On Elm Street: Nancy Thompson/Heather Langenkamp

Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson A Nightmare On Elm Street New Line Cinema

I’m into survival. — Nancy Thompson

Female characters being strong in horror films really started to take off in the 70s but one of the pioneers of this trend in the 80s was Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson in Nightmare On Elm Street Parts 1. 3 and 7. It is a legacy Heather remains proud of to this day and she has every right to be because her performances in all three films transformed her from a scream queen to a warrior woman.

We first meet Nancy in Nightmare 1. She is a bright, easygoing teenager and when her friend Tina is brutally murdered by a man she has been seeing in nightmares her transformation begins. Her battle begins in reality first, where she goes in search of answers as to who this man called Freddy is and why he is haunting her and the others and what she discovers horrifies her.

It turns out the mysterious Freddy was a real person, a child serial killer named Fred Krueger who was allowed to walk free due to procedural errors the police department her own father was a part of made during the criminal investigation. The parents of the town decided that if the courts weren’t going to punish him for his crimes they will do it themselves. They burn him to death in the boiler room he used to take his kids to. Tina, her boyfriend Rod and Nancy’s boyfriend Glenn are all children of the people who killed Freddy and they are the ones paying the price for it.

Nancy knows that unless she finds a way to stop Freddy, she and Glenn are next on Freddy’s kill list. Armed with what she’s learned in reality she goes into the dream world to find out if Freddy has a weakness and she discovers that she has the ability to transport objects out of the dream world into reality. She theorizes that if she can transport an object belonging to him out she may actually be able to transport him out without all his powers and defeat him while he is mortal again.

Before she goes back into the dream world she rigs booby traps around the house, that if successful. will slow his pursuit of her once she brings him out. Now ready, she goes back in to the dream world but when she wakes up Freddy is not there. She starts to believe she has gone crazy from grief over the losses of Tina, Rod and Glenn until Freddy finally appears. She lures him down to the basement where she douses him with gasoline and sets him on fire. She thinks she’s won but when he escapes and kills her mother she realizes he still has some of his powers in reality. Nancy then remembers a discussion she had with Glenn about a culture where they learned how to defeat dream monsters and decides to use it. She confronts Freddy again and takes back the energy her fear gave him. He vanishes and it seems she gets her mother and friends back but as it turns out she is still dreaming and they are still dead.

When Nancy returns in Nightmare 3, her research into pattern nightmares is seen as groundbreaking by the staff at Westin Hills, the hospital where the last children of the people who killed Freddy are struggling to survive and many of them are losing the battle. Nancy has come to Westin Hills to teach the children how to fight and survive as she has. She believes the keys to their survival are the dream powers each one has and the most powerful one appears to be Kristen Parker. Kristen has the ability to bring others into her dreams and take them back out and Nancy proves her own theory that the kids are stronger if they fight together but Freddy is picking them off one by one.

Aiding Nancy in her quest to turn the Westin Hills patients into warriors is Neil, a doctor at the clinic. He is skeptical until he enters the dream world himself and sees what they see. He is also seeing a mysterious nun in reality who gives him some history on Freddy that Nancy didn’t know, that his birth was the result of his mother being brutally raped hundreds of times by former patients of Westin Hills. The nun tells him Freddy’s remains have to be found and buried in hallowed ground and only one man knows their location, Nancy’s father.

Nancy has been estranged from her father since the events of the first movie and when he refuses her pleas for help she realizes she has to go back in the dream world again. While she is in there she is horrified to discover that Freddy has been taking the souls of his victims and they have made him stronger than before but Joey unleashes his own power and it appears they’ve won the battle. Nancy then sees her father’s spirit telling her he has crossed over. it’s not her father, it’s Freddy and he takes what he feels is his long overdue revenge on Nancy and stabs her. But Nancy is not ready to go down without a fight. She grabs hold of Freddy with his own knives turned on him, forcing him back into his bones in reality while Neil performs the burial ceremony. Only when she sees him vanish in holy light does she surrender to death.

Though it is supposed to be a standalone movie, Nightmare 7 has Heather playing a fictionalized version of herself trying protect herself and her son while Freddy is trying to escape from fiction into reality. Like in the movies, he sees her as his greatest threat and wants to take her out. As Freddy’s power grows, reality and fiction start to merge and Heather realizes she has to become Nancy again to defeat him and save her son. She steps back into the role that made her famous easily because it was as much her creation as Wes Craven’s. He wrote her but it was Heather who gave her life and power. By becoming Nancy again she’s brought Freddy back into reality and this is where she has her final victory over him in both roles.

I’ve seen so many horror film franchises over the years and seen many scream queens but I’ve also seen many warrior women and Heather’s Nancy ranks second out of all of them with only Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode from the Halloween franchise surpassing her. Jamie’s Laurie was on a bit of a hiatus in the 80s so it was up to Nancy to lead the charge and she led it well.