Nancy Thompson

Nancy Thompson is the fictional heroine of the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film. She also reappeared in the third, and to some extent the seventh. She is played by Heather Langenkamp. Nancy was the first person who defeated Freddy Krueger, the dream killer.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Nancy is a teenage girl attending Springwood High School. She has been having nightmares about a mysterious, disfigured man in a red and green sweater with knives for fingernails, which he scrapes along things. She finds out that her friend Tina had a horrific nightmare the night before as well. Nancy isn't bothered about it, and reassures a distraught Tina that "everybody has a bad dream once in a while."

Nancy, Tina, and Glen Lantz, Nancy's boyfriend, have a sleepover to comfort Tina. Rod Lane, Tina's on-off boyfriend, crashes the party and stays for the night, taking Tina to bed. While Rod and Tina are asleep, Tina has another horrific nightmare, getting caught by the mysterious figure and brutally murdered in her sleep while a disoriented Rod screams for help. When Glen and Nancy find Tina's body, Rod has disappeared.

Shortly afterwards, at the police station, Nancy explains to her father, a police captain, that the reason for the sleepover was that Tina had had a horrible nightmare and didn't want to sleep alone, and that she thought Rod and Tina had settled their differences. Rod becomes the chief suspect for the murder.

The next day, Nancy goes to school since she did not get enough sleep the previous night. While walking to school she is accosted by Rod, who swears that he is innocent. Rod is apprehended by her father and locked away in jail.

At school Nancy falls asleep in class and has another nightmare, but manages to escape from the creepy killer by burning her arm on one of the heating pipes in the terrifying boiler room in which her dream is taking place. She is sent home from school only to find that the arm she burned in her dream is actually burned. A visit to Rod in his jail cell, who insists he didn't touch Tina and that he saw four razors cutting her at the same time convinces Nancy that he is innocent and that something more sinister is afoot.

That night, she falls asleep in the bathtub and is once again attacked, but she discovers a bottle of Stay Awake pills which she decides to use to combat sleep. Her boyfriend Glen appears and she asks him to stay awake and guard her while she goes to sleep to try and find the person stalking her in her dreams. Unfortunately Glen also falls asleep and Nancy is once again nearly killed. She and a sceptical Glen rush to the police station to talk to Rod, but he has been killed in his cell, strangled by his own bedsheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide. At Rod's funeral, she tells her father:

"I don't know who he is, but he's burned. He wears and dirty brown hat, and he wears a red and green sweater. And he uses these knives like giant fingernails."

Nancy's mother takes her to a Dream Therapy Clinic, where she has another horrible nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut four times but she finds that she has taken something out from her dream, the killer's battered hat. She learns from her mother of Freddy Krueger, a serial killer of children who was burned to death by vengeful parents after he was freed from prison on a technicality. Nancy becomes convinced that he is exacting his revenge on the children of his killers from beyond the grave.

Her mother then says he's dead and can't get to her now and proves it when she shows Nancy the four clawed glove Krueger has been using in the dreams of the children. With that she assures Nancy that she can sleep now.

However, Nancy instead forms a plan with Glen to bring Krueger out from her dream, knock him out and have him arrested. However, Glen succumbs to sleep and is brutally killed, chewed up and spat out into a mountain of gushing blood by his own bed. Nancy has to face Krueger on her own, setting booby traps and luring him out of the dream world into reality, where he kills Nancy's mother. When he returns to finally kill Nancy, she turns her back on him and drains him of all his energy, causing him to disappear. However, Krueger is far from vanquished and kills Nancy's mother at the very end of the filmaway.

Dream Warriors

6 years later, Nancy returns in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. This time she is a new doctor at Westin Hills (Freddy's birthplace) where she meets Phillip, Jennifer, Joey, Kincaid, Will, Taryn, and Kristen, teenagers who are having the same problems as she used to have. She also befriends Neil Gordon. She loses her job in four days, however, after two of her patients die and one falls into a coma. Neil and Nancy find out from a nun (Sister Mary Helena) that Freddy's bones must be laid to rest, and only her father now knows where they are. They go to him at a bar and try to convince him to tell them where the bones are. But only Neil manages to get him to tell him because Nancy had to go back to Westin Hills to save Kristen, who was already sedated. Neil and Donald find the bones in a junkyard, but now it is haunted. They encounter Freddy's bones, bury him and cover him in holy water. Donald dies trying.

Back at Westin Hills, Will, Taryn, Kincaid and Nancy find Kristen in the dream world, but are separated. Will and Taryn die, and Kristen, Nancy, and Kincaid are the only ones left. They find Joey and save him, and then fight Freddy, who reveals that he has gotten stronger than before because of the "souls of the chidlren." They end up in a mirror room and only Joey saves them with his dream power. Donald appears and tells Nancy he has "crossed over," apologises for what he has done, and says he will always love her. Just then, Freddy reappears and stabs Nancy in the abdomen, and subdues Kristen after she tries to save Nancy. Nancy saves her by stabbing Freddy in the stomach. The knife goes through Freddy's body, which had been weakened by the holy water, and with the help of Neil and Nancy, Freddy dies. It is too late to save Nancy, however, and she succumbs to the wounds Freddy inflicted.

• Nancy returns, to some extent, in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Langenkamp is given the role of Nancy one last time by Wes Craven himself, as she and her son fight Freddy.

REPORT OF INVESTIGATION OFFICE OF THE CORONER MEDICAL EXAMINER, DREAM WORLD 1428 Elm Street, Springwood, Ohio 66666
Decededent: Residence Address: Tel No. Weight: Hair: Eyes:	Nancy Thompson 1428 Elm St. 666-7080 130 Brn Brn
Scars/Tattoos & Other identifying features: Circumstances of Death Victim was stabbed by man who witnesses say was pretending to be her father. In truth the assailant was identified as Fred Krueger, a mass murderer believed to have been dead for over 20 years.