Nightmare on Elm Street
I didn’t kill her, Nancy!
The car’s door slams and ROD is gone. NANCY turns to her father, livid.
NANCY You used me, daddy!
LT THOMPSON (exasperated) What the hell you doing going to school today, anyway — your mother told me you didn’t even sleep last night!
NANCY spins angrily and walks away.
LT THOMPSON Nancy! Hey!
But she just keeps going.
FADE TO BLACK
43. INT. CLASSROOM. DAY. 43.
FADE UP ON an ENGLISH TEACHER and CLASS, NANCY among the kids, trying to concentrate.
TEACHER According to Shakespeare, there
was something operating in Nature, perhaps inside human nature itself, that was rotten — a canker, as he put it.
The TEACHER’S eyes glance across the room. ANGLE ON NANCY; yawning but listening.
TEACHER (CONTD) Of course Hamlet’s response to this, and to his mother’s lies, was to continually probe and dig — just like the gravediggers — always trying to get beneath the
surface. The same was true in a different way in Julius Caesar. Jon, go ahead…
She nods to a SURFER who’s been waiting uncomfortably in front of the class. He squints at his book and begins, the recitation a struggle between baked and salted brain and the poetry of the
Bard.
SURFER (reading aloud) Uh, In the most high and palmy state of Rome…
WISEGUY STUDENT (O.S.) California’s the most high and palmy state, man.
The SURFER halts with a grin; KIDS snicker.
ENGLISH TEACHER
Can it.
She glares them back into silence. The SURFER starts over, as we CUT TO NANCY.
She’s nodding off now, barely able to keep her eyes open in the warm, close boredom of the classroom.
SURFER (O.S.) In the most high and palmy state of Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell… (NANCY’s head pitches forward; she jerks it
back up, barely awake) The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman street…
44. NANCY’s head has sunk again, eyelids drawn as if by enormous 44. weight. By the time her cheek’s against the desk, the SURFER’S
VOICE is ECHOED and DISTANT. But another voice, TINA’S, is very near, very much present. A sad, thin plaint.
TINA (O.S.) Nancy.
NANCY gives a start. Her eyes lock onto something.
45. REVERSE. TILTED SIDEWAYS, IN HER HEAD’S POV, we look straight 45. out through the open doorway of the classroom into the hall. There, standing in a black pool of fluid, is a full-sized rubber body bag. Dark red and yellow. Weaving slightly, the merest suggesting of movement within it.
46. BACK ON NANCY, sitting upright, wiping the sleep from her eyes, 46.
shaking her head like a punchy prozefighter. She looks back out the door.
47. REVERSE IN ‘NORMAL’ POV — the hallway is empty. But there’s a 47. dark smear on its floor tiles.
48. NANCY looks nervously towards the rest of the class. No one else 48. has noticed a thing outside the door. All are dumbly spellbound
by the SURFER, who now recites like a deep-voiced robot, his face wreathed by white hair.
SURFER O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not
that I have bad dreams…
49. ANGLE BACK ON NANCY. She slips from her seat, eye warily on the 49. teacher and class. But no one turns as she disappears through the doorway.
50. INT. SCHOOL HALLWAY. DAY. 50.
NANCY turns and looks both directions. No sign of anybody.
TINA (O.S.) (distant) Nancy.
NANCY wheels and sees the bag, prone on the tiles at the far end
of the hall, at the end of a long snail’s trail of slime. A pale hand thrusts out of it. A moment later, as if pulled by invisible gravity, the bag slides out of sight into an intersecting corridor.
NANCY Tina!
NANCY starts running for it.
51. ANGLE AT THE CORNER as NANCY races blindly around the turn and 51. smashes straight into a BODY lunging at her from the opposite direction! Both go down.
52. ANGLE AT THE FLOOR. A dazed freshman HALLGUARD cranks herself up 52. on one elbow. She wears a plastic plaque on her red and yellow
sweater that reads ‘Hall Guard’. Her nose is bleeding from the impact.
HALLGUARD Y-you’re not supposed to run. W-where’s your pass — you got a pass?
NANCY leaps up —
NANCY Screw your stupid pass!
53. She turns — sees the body bag halfway down this darker, narrower 53. hall, upright again. But just as she sees it, it tips and
pitches headlong through a doorway — like some godawful rotten
tree finally timbering down. She can hear the sickening CRUNCHING of it falling down a long flight of stairs.
NANCY runs for it again. The HALLGUARD staggers up FOREGROUND, bleeding profusely from her eyes and ears.
HALLGUARD Hey, no running in the halls!
The HALLGUARD raises her hand and we see it’s tipped with long metal spikes.
REVERSE ANGLE AT THE DOOR as NANCY runs up. NANCY turns to check
out the HALLGUARD. She’s vanished. NANCY turns and looks down through the open door. The MUSIC sweeps through a strange, brooding movement of strings, mounting towards the NIGHTMARE THEME.
54. INT. A STAIRWELL. 54.
NANCY edges into the stairwell and looks down. Looks like there’s a fire somewhere down there, from the way the orange light dances. But there’s only a low WHITE NOISE.
NANCY Tina?
No answer. NANCY starts down the stairs.
55. INT. BOILER ROOM. DAY. 55.
NANCY comes off the stairs into a dank boiler room. The smear trail is there. It runs behind a cracking, red-hot boiler the size of a diesel locomotive. Everything about the place feels
dreadfully wrong, and the MUSIC is deep into the NIGHTMARE THEME when it pauses.
TIGHT ON NANCY. Slow terror moves into her face. There’s a low, sinister GIGGLE.
56. REVERSE IN HER POV — we see a tangle of pipes, shadows, and the 56. tainted fire of the huge boiler. Then from behind this, deeply
shadowed but still identifiable, steps TINA’s KILLER. The same filthy red and yellow sweater and slouch hat, the same melted face twisting into a smile, the same GARBLED LAUGH as he slides the long blades from beneath his shirt and fans them on the ends of his bony fingers.
NANCY
Who are you?
MAN Gonna get you.
57. The leering MAN brings the bloodied scalpel-fingernails across 57. his own chest, splitting a nipple. Yellow fluid pours out. MAGGOTS and WORMS.
NANCY forgets the question — jerks around and flees in blind panic into the first opening she sees — a dark pipe tunnel.
58. INT. PIPE TUNNEL. 58.
ANGLE IN THE NARROW PASSAGEWAY. In the BACKGROUND the killer shambles towards her; FOREGROUND NANCY breaks into a run.
The killer sprints — NANCY tears ahead into darkness.
She flees deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of steaming, SIZZLING pipes, squeezing through smaller and smaller openings. The killer is just yards behind her, and soon she’s trapped, just as TINA was before her.
She presses her back to the wet bricks. There’s no hope of fighting him off, for NANCY is not as strong as TINA. But she is smart as hell, and thinking even in this nightmare. So by the time the creep has raised his knives to strike, NANCY has realized something. She wheels and shoves her arm against one of the scalding steam pipes. In the sme split second we HEAR her
flesh scald, we
CUT TO:
59. INT. ENGLISH CLASS. DAY. 59.
NANCY lurches up SCREAMING, arm raised to ward off the invisible blow, books clattering to the floor — other GIRLS nearby SCREAM
in surprise as she stumbles over them. Then she stops, confused and groggy from the nightmare.
WIDER ANGLE. EVERYBODY is staring at NANCY as if she’s gone
mad. The ENGLISH TEACHER rushes over, herself frightened by the terror in the girl’s eyes.
TEACHER Okay — Okay, Thompson! Every- thing’s all right now — Nancy!.
60. NANCY jerks around with panicked eyes, expecting the killer to 60. leap from any direction. But there’s only the sea of staring eyes.
NANCY begins methodically picking up her books.
