Nightmare on Elm Street
Not a car or person in sight. A stricken breeze dies in the trees.
17. ZOOM IN on the window of the room where TINA sleeps. By the time 17.
we’re FULL IN CLOSE on it, the air is again still as death. A moment later a PEBBLE bounces off the pane. The NIGHTMARE THEME appears in the lower registers and holds its breath.
Another PEBBLE strikes, with a sharper RAP.
18. INT. TINA’S MOTHER’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. 18.
CLOSE ON TINA’S FACE as her eyes open.
19. REVERSE IN HER POV. Another PEBBLE clatters off the glass. 19.
20. TINA raises slowly. 20.
TINA ROD…
SNORES FROM ROD. TINA sits up.
PAST HER TO THE WINDOW. The WIND MOVES AGAIN; the trees brush the window with their shadows. Then another pebble. RAP! TINA slips to the window.
21. EXT. TINA’S BACKYARD. NIGHT. 21.
She looks out on an old yard with a patch of bananna trees rattling in the Santa Ana winds. It seems deserted, though the welling dark won’t let her be sure. Then another pebble — PAP!
— hitting with a sharp RACK FOCUS.
22. A LOW ANGLE TO WINDOW as TINA jumps back, startled. She hadn’t 22.
seen that one coming. But she’s drawn back to the glass out of curiousity, straining to see in the dark. It’s as if the stones are materializing out of thin air.
23. INT. TINA’S MOTHER’S ROOM. NIGHT. 23.
WHAP! This time a heavier stone, and a thin crack bristles
across the glass.
TINA (low) Who the fuck you think you are, whoever you are?
24. EXT. TINA’S BACK YARD. NIGHT. 24.
WIDE ANGLE ON THE REAR OF THE HOUSE. A LIGHT COMES ON. TINA
appears in the doorway.
TINA (listening)
Somebody there?
She can see through the backward to a yawning gate and the back alley. No one there. But a word is spoken, as if by wind.
VOICE (garbled)
Tina.
TINA straightens, unable to swallow. There’s a ragged, obscene GIGGLE. Deep in the throat. Phlegmy.
TINA Who the hell is that?
TINA charges across the yard and through the gate, the MUSIC chasing after.
25. EXT. A SERVICE ALLEY. NIGHT. 25.
She brakes in the middle of the alley and whirls around. Listening. Shivering in the same thin slashed nightgown.
A sharp crank of METAL, and fifty feet down the alley the lid of an ash can rolls from the dark like a huge tin coin and spirals noisily down.
26. LOW REVERSE ACROSS LID TO TINA. Despite herself she comes over 26. and touches it. She comes up with long worms on her fingers.
Next moment the exact same shambling MAN from her nightmare staggers into view fifty feet behind her. TINA falls back into the shadows, shaking the worms off her fingers in repulsion. The MAN turns and starts directly for her, something shining on his right hand as he spreads his arms wide. He starts scraping the steel FINGERNAILS along a cinderblock wall. Orange sparks spurt
out — his arms elongate until they reach from one side of the alley to the other — and TINA is cut off from her home!
CLOSE ON HER as the SCRAPING of the blades gets louder and
closer. She begins to shake uncontrollably.
TINA
Oh, shit, please God…
KILLER (softly, approaching) This is God…
He holds up his steel-tipped hand like a surgical-steel spider.
TINA runs for her life.
27. WIDER ANGLE IN THE ALLEY — a terrifying, all-out footrace 27. between the girl and her pursuer. The MAN is fast; the distance between them closes with each heartbeat. TINA overturns ashcans — claws her way through a rotten back fence, hammers against a window. Ashen FACES appear, recoil, pull curtains closed and
disappear in fright.
28. EXT. TINA’S STREET. NIGHT. 28.
TINA runs out onto front lawns, SCREAMING for help. No help comes. In fact, the only response is for all the porch lights on the block to be turned off. The MAN roars out from behind a tree
— a tree too narrow to have hidden him — nearly upon the girl! TINA runs in panic — at last making her own home, only to be trapped against its locked front door.
She hammers against its thick wood.
TINA
Nancy! Open the door — Nancy!
The MAN slows. He has TINA now and knows it.
MAN She’s still awake. Nancy can’t hear you.
TINA turns and looks full at the approaching MAN. Smudged by deep shadow, he’s big and hideous. He wears the same dirty yellow sweater from the first nightmare — from the wall-hanging and blanket too — and has the same sagging hat and leering grin over his misshapen face. And on his fingers are the steel talons.
29. CLOSE ON HIM as he takes the blade on the end of his right index 29. finger and lopes off one of the fingers of his left hand. Then another. We SEE the PIECES OF FINGERS fall past TINA’S face in SLOW MOTION.
ANGLE ON THE GROUND of the FINGERS squirming on the ground, one
flopping onto TINA’s naked foot.
TINA leaps back, sickened, and begins stamping on then as if they were huge bugs.
The MAN snaps up his arm and the FINGERS fly back into place on his hand. He leers at TINA — then suddenly lunges at her, sweeping with his cutting hand!
TINA’s no weak sister — blocks his arm, deflecting the spines, and grabs the MAN’s ugly face with her other hand. But the face only slides off to the bone. The MAN presses in, and TINA contorts in horror as the knives slash across her shoulder — cutting her deeply.
29A. TINA staggers backward, GROANING, her foot now inexplicably 29A. caught in bedclothes! She falls over her bed’s conformter, twists away from the man and, like a child, pulls the cover over her! The skull-faced MAN crushes down, and there’s a fierce grappling — punctuated by his GRUNTS and the girl’s DEAFENING SCREAMS — and they both become totally wrapped in the comforter — until
they’re beneath it, fighting for life and death.
30. INT. TINA’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. 30.
ROD lurches up into CLOSE UP in the lightless bedroom, half-awakened by the tremendous struggle somewhere, somehow inside the dark bed. ROD grabs groggily, lifting the blanket.
30A. IN HIS POV we glimpse the dark underside of the blanket — see 30A. TWO SHADOWY FIGURES flailing and clawing under the bedspread — TINA and the MAN — or a shape that could be a man — raging against each other.
ROD drops the blanket and leaps from the bed, scared full awake and terrified. Then the horrible TINA’s GASPS change to the
CRIES of a terribly wounded victim. ROD instantly jerks back the bedspread.
IN HIS POV we SEE TINA struggling and flailing along on the sheets, the MAN nowhere in sight.
ROD
T-tina!?
Suddenly TINA — eyes turned inward to her tormentor — give an awful jolt — her arms and legs are spraddled as if by overwhelming force and pinned to the bed. Next instant, her nightgown flies apart and four long gashes chase across her torso. From no visible instruments! A huge irrigation of blood
floods the bed.
Terrified, ROD dives for the light — but at the same moment something invisible grabs TINA, wielding her body in the air and bringing it around in a swift blow that knocks ROD crashing into the light — smashing it to bits.
31. CLOSER ON HIM as he struggles around. In the blue FLASHES OF 31. ELECTRICITY ROD sees TINA sliding up the bedroom wall in a dark smear, dragged feet first!
ANGLE ON ROD — paralized by terror!
ANGLE ON TINA’S DYING EYES — moving with her up the wall and
bumping around the corner onto the ceiling. She’s just looking
at who’s dragging her, eyes glazing.
REVERSE IN HER POV — to the shadowy, horrendously ugly MAN, dragging her with fierce glee across the ceiling, literally swabbing the ceiling with her bloody body. SEEN in FORCED PERSPECTIVE, the SHOT carries her across a great distance without seeming to get anywhere — as if the ceiling is an endless
plane.
ANGLE DOWN ON ROD — on his hands and knees — the lamp next to him blurting blue SPARKS and STROBING the nightmare room. ROD’S screaming up at TINA’S invisible tormentor.
ROD
What the hell’s going ON here! Tina!
ANGLE ON TINA — upside down, clawing at the hanging swag lamp
above her mother’s dressing table — desperate for some anchor. But she’s dragged away from it. The lamp swings back, it’s wires gushing more SPARKS.
CLOSER along the ceiling as TINA rakes a long furrow in the
ceiling with her fingernails. But her eyes are glazing, glazing. And then they fall closed.
WIDE, UP ON THE CEILING, as her body suddenly flops loose,
hanging for an awful moment by the feet over the bed.
