Nightmare on Elm Street

Next time you have one, just tell yourself that’s just all it is, right while you’re having it, y’know? That’s the trick. Once you do that, you wake right up. At least it works for me.

TINA looks at GLEN sharply. He kisses NANCY and darts off for class.

TINA Hey! You have a nightmare too?

But GLEN’s gone.

TINA (CONTD) Maybe we’re gonna have the Big Earthquake. They say things get weird just before that…

BELLS ARE RINGING, and STUDENTS crowding; TINA and NANCY are

drawn into the crush.

FADE TO BLACK

8. EXT. A VALLEY STREET. NIGHT. 8.

ANGLE ON A MODEST HOME; no car, just a couple of BIKES in the

drive. Every light in the house and yard is turned on. We HEAR

the rock group MADNESS played at a ‘No adults home’ volume.

9. INT. TINA’S LIVING ROOM. NIGHT. 9.

ON GLEN, dialing. Nancy and TINA are watching, giggling.

TINA I can’t believe his mother let him

come over here.

NANCY Right. Well, she didn’t, exactly…

GLEN shoves a cassette into TINA’s Ghetto Blaster.

GLEN

(to TINA) See, I got this cousin who lives near the airport, that it’s okay for me to stay with, right? So I found this sound effects tape at Licorice Pizza, and…

The phone is answered. GLEN jerks the tone arm off the record with a SCRUUPT!!

GLEN (CONTD) Hello, Mom? (pushes the ‘play’ button)

Yeah, out here at Barry’s.

A JET PLANE begins to make itself heard on the tape. GLEN moves the machine closer to the phone. It’s a big plane — sounds like a 747 coming in for a landing.

GLEN (CONT)

Huh? Yeah, noisy as usual. Glad we don’t live here — huh? Yeah, Aunt Eunice says hello.

The Jet is SCREAMING IN now, full flaps and howling like a monstrous banshee. NANCY and TINA dissolve into muffled giggles.

GLEN (CONT) (shouting over the din) Right, right — I’ll call you in the morning! Right! Huh? Yeah, sure, I, huh?…

Suddenly the tape goes silent. GLEN blanches. Next moment another ENGINE is heard, but this one is a FORD LOTUS screaming by at 180 mph.

GLEN (CONT) (reacting to his mother’s reaction)

Uh… some kid’s drag racing outside, I think…

The sound effect changes abruptly to a SPEEDING SEDAN — and the ages-old SCREECH of BRAKES, last-second SCREAM and horrible COLLISION. NANCY gamely tries to find the right button to turn it off, but misses. There’s a loud SCREEK of fast-forward mayhem

— Glen improvises desperately.

GLEN (CONT) Listen, Mom, I got to go — I think there’s been an accident out front — I —

NANCY jumps back from the cassette player — WORLD WAR II bursts out at top volume — MACHINE GUNS, HAND GRENADES, DIVING BEARCATS and SHOUTS of charging Huns. GLEN makes a last-ditch dive and flings the cassette out of the machine.

Blessed silence at last.

GLEN (CONT) Right. I’ll call the police. No, just some neighbors having a fight, I guess. I’m fine, I’m fine! Call you in the morning!

He hangs up and sags back.

NANCY Worked like a charm.

GLEN Jesus.

TINA shoves another cassette in, and MICHAEL JACKSON’S ‘THRILLER’

blasts from the STEREO. The kids relax, the CAMERA GLIDES PAST THEM TO THE WINDOW.

The WIND is moving the bare TREE BRANCH outside. CAMERA PANS BACK to the comfortably threadbare room, uneasy. We see NANCY poking at a flame in the hearth as TINA comes FOREGROUND to draw the drapes.

NANCY Nice to have a fire.

TINA Really. Turn ‘er up a little.

NANCY turns a nearby valve handle, and the gas fire climbs

brightly over its artificial log. TINA joins her, heartened.

NANCY Maybe we should call Rod, have him come over too. He might get jealous.

TINA

Rod and I are done. He’s too much of a maniac.

GLEN He should join the Marines, they could make something out of him. Like a hand grenade.

TINA laughs despite herself. NANCY brightens.

NANCY See? You’ve forgotten the bad dream. Didn’t I tell you?

TINA shakes her head, wishing she had forgotten.

TINA All day long I been seeing that guy’s weird face, and hearing those fingernails…

NANCY looks up with a flinch.

NANCY Fingernails? (blinks, laughing) That’s amazing, you saying that. It made me remember the dream I had last night.

TINA looks up.

TINA What you dream?

NANCY I dreamed about this guy in a

dirty red and yellow sweater; I dream in color, y’know; he walked into the room I was in, right, right through the wall, like it was smoke or something, and just stared at me. Sort of

…obscenely. Then he walked out through the wall on the other side. Like he’d just come to check me out…

The story has left the room deathly quiet. Especially TINA seems effected.

TINA (quietly) So what about the fingernails?

NANCY remembers, imitating the frightful coincidence.

NANCY

He scraped his fingernails along things — actually, they were more like fingerknives or something, like he’d made them himself? Anyway, they made this horrible nose —

(imitates) sssssccrrrtttt….

TINA pales.

TINA Nancy. You dreamed about the

same creep I did, Nancy…

The girls stare at each other.

GLEN That’s impossible.

They look at him. He looks away, as if suddenly listening.

TINA What?

GLEN Nothing.

TINA

There’s somebody out there, isn’t there…

NANCY I didn’t hear anything…