Nancy Thompson remains one of the greatest final girls in horror movie history. She is also one of the most evolved, receiving a full character arc in part because the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise needed it and because her portrayer, Heather Langenkamp, is just that great in the role. But Langenkamp hasn’t portrayed Nancy in three decades (not that the franchise has exactly been boiling). So is it time to bring back Nancy Thomspon for a full Nightmare on Elm Street revival? Langenkamp sees no reason why not.
Appearing on the Nightmare on Film Street podcast, Heather Langenkamp said that if she had the opportunity to reprise Nancy Thompson, she absolutely would. “God, yes. I mean, of course. She’s a great character. How could you say no?. I just need somebody to get that off the ground. Especially considering Nightmare on Elm Street Part 7, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. I do think there’s a lot of really great opportunities for new and excellent battles still to come.”
In 1994’s New Nightmare – surprisingly the most recent non-crossover or remake in the franchise – Heather Langenkamp finds herself coming face to burnt face with Freddy Krueger, who invades the real world to slice and dice cast members of the original 1984 movie. For my money, the clever, meta New Nightmare ranks in the top three of A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, up there with the original and 1987’s Dream Warriors, my pick for the best in the franchise.
On Dream Warriors, Heather Langenkamp got the chance to flesh out Nancy Thompson even more, having sat out 1985’s Freddy’s Revenge. “We get to see and follow her in a really natural way, through being a teenager here and then being a young adult in Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3, and then being a woman and a mother. And it’s very rare to have a character who can span that many different experiences, not only for just a woman, but for a person going through so much experience.”
With so much developed history, Nancy Thompson was given opportunities that so few horror heroines get, with a genuine character arc that sits up there with Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott. And despite so many entries without Nancy, Langenkamp knows there is always a place for her, remembering, “Wes always told me that he just really believed that Nancy and Freddy were like a unit, like two sides of a different coin. And he always liked us together, you know, that’s why he wrote those scripts, to have us always battling each other.” With 30 years to let the character simmer, I think most of us would love to see Heather Langenkamp face off against Freddy one more time.
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