Nightmare on Elm Street
MARGE All right.
126. INT. NANCY’S CELLAR/NIGHT 126.
MARGE drags NANCY headlong down the cellar stairs and across the room with a crazy fury, twisting her down near the foundation. And she thrusts her face so close to her daughter’s that NANCY reels from the alcohol.
MARGE
You want to know who Fred Krueger was? He was a filthy child killer who got at least twenty kids, kids from our area, kids we all knew. It drove us all crazy when we
didn’t know who was doing it — but it was even worse when they caught him.
MARGE draws herself up with a shake.
MARGE (CONTD)
Oh lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but someone forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place, and Fred Krueger was free, just like that.
NANCY
So he’s alive?
MARGE smiles grimly.
MARGE He wouldn’ve stopped. The bastard would’ve got more
kids first chance he got — they found nearly ten bodies in his boiler room as it was. But the law couldn’t touch him.
At the mention of “boiler room”, NANCY gives a shake. MARGE
misses this, too busy taking a pull on the bottle that’s never left her hand.
MARGE (CONTD) What was needed were some private citizens willing to do what had to be done.
She reels slowly, looking at NANCY is defiance.
NANCY (hushed) What did you do, mother?
MARGE cradles the bottle.
MARGE Bunch of us parents tracked him down after they let him go. Found him in an old boiler room, just like before. Saw him lying there in that caked red and yellow sweater
he always wore, drunk an’ asleep with his weird knives by his side…
NANCY (dreading it) Go on…
MARGE reaches over and taps a dusty two-gallon jug of gasoline near the lawn mower.
MARGE We poured gasoline all around the place, left a trail out the door, locked the door, then…
She mimes striking a match —
MARGE (CONTD) WHOOSH!!!
Her arms shoot up and her eyes go wide with the light of that fire. There’s awe in her voice. Then she drops her arms.
MARGE (CONTD) (hushed, remembering) But just when it seemed not even the devil could live in there any more — he crashed out like a banshee, all on fire
— swinging those fingerknives every which direction and screaming he… he was going to get us by killing all our kids…
She stops with a sudden quake and drinks for a long moment. But
the intake doesn’t hide the image. Her face bathed in tears, she looks at her daughter and shakes her head.
MARGE (CONTD) There were all those men, Nancy, even your father, oh yes, even him. But none could do what
had to be done — Krueger rolling and screaming so loud the whole state could hear — no one could take your father’s gun and kill him good and proper except me.
She sweeps her hand across the air in a terrific slash, then
stops, her hand shaking, her voice hoarse and terrified. She looks at her daughter, begging.
MARGE (CONTD) So he’s dead Nan. He can’t get you. Mommy killed him.
For someone who started this film at a very young seventeen, NANCY’s now the battle-tempered veteran as she takes her mother in her arms and rocks her.
NANCY Who was there? Were Tina’s parents there? Were Rod’s?
MARGE sags back.
MARGE Sure, and Glen’s. All of us. But that’s in the past now, baby. Really. It’s over.
(slyly) We even took his knives.
The woman twists around and opens the door on an old furnace — a furnace unused since the newer gas one nearby was put in. She fishes inside the cavity — as then we hear a touch of the familiar ‘SCRRIITCH’. Next moment she pulls out an object
wrapped in rags, opens it and displays the long, rusted blades and their glove-like apparatus.
MARGE (CONTD) See?
NANCY stares at the damn things, chilled.
NANCY All these years you’ve kept those things buried down here? In our own house?
MARGE (CONTD)
Proof he’s declawed. As for him, we buried him good and deep.
MARGE shoves the knives into their hiding place, closes the little iron door.
MARGE (CONTD)
So’s okay, you can sleep.
She lurches up and staggers upstairs.
NANCY shivers and looks down at her arm. The cut beneath her bandage has begun to bleed again. And from inside the furnace, as if from deep below, the PULSING of the boundless
nightmare-boiler room can be faintly heard.
127. EXT. ELM STREET. NIGHT. 127.
WIDE ON THE STREET AND BOTH HOUSES, GLEN’s on the right, NANCY’s
on the left. A TELEPHONE RINGS. ZOOM IN ON GLEN’S UPSTAIRS BEDROOM WINDOW.
128. INT. GLEN’S & NANCY’S BEDROOMS – INTERCUT. NIGHT. 128.
129. GLEN, yawning, crosses and picks up his telephone. 129.
GLEN Hello?
NANCY (telephone)
Hi.
GLEN Oh. Hi, how y’doing?
NANCY looks out the window and touches her hair.
NANCY (CONTD)
Fine. Stand by your window so I can see you. You sound a million miles away.
In the lighted window across the way, she can SEE GLEN move into sight. In his shot, we can SEE NANCY step into her window behind the bars.
NANCY (CONTD) Much better.
GLEN I heard your ma went ape at the security store today. You look
like the Prisoner of Zenda or something. How long’s it been since you slept?
NANCY
Coming up on the seventh day. It’s
okay, I checked Guiness. The record’s eleven, and I’ll beat that if I have to. (beat) Listen, I… I know who he is.
GLEN
Who?
NANCY The killer.
GLEN You do?
NANCY Yeah, and if he gets me, I’m pretty sure you’re next.
GLEN is appalled.
GLEN
Me!? Why would anyone want to kill me?!
NANCY Don’t ask — just give me some help nailing this guy when I bring him out.
GLEN pales.
GLEN Bring him out of what?
NANCY My dream.
GLEN How you plan to do that?
NANCY Just like I did the hat. Have a hold of the sucker when you
wake me up.
GLEN Me? (switching back to a more comfortable reality) Wait a minute, you can’t bring
