Nancy-Mania: Heather Langenkamp’s 'I Am Nancy'

It’s never cool to be the good girl. The one who’s kind to those she cares about, gets her work done, pays her bills on time, fends off undead killers plaguing your nightmares...

No, it’s way cooler to be a transgressor, a rebel, or hell, kind of a dick. Villains are transgressors, often seeming to speak the truth. The appeal of the villain is obvious, but what of the hero? Contemporary films would have us believe that our heroes are just as conflicted as the supposed villains, but within that we’ve lost the appeal the everyman (or woman) who rises to the challenge. Which brings us to Nancy Thompson.

Nancy Thompson is your all-American teen. She’s pretty but has uncontrollable hair. She’s funny and smart but her parents are messed up. She’s dating Johnny Depp and has a man coming after her and her friends in their dreams. Well, except for those last two things I think there are some pretty relatable characteristics for everyone. So, why isn’t Nancy Thompson as big a pop culture icon as her nemesis Freddy Krueger? Well, that’s why we now have I Am Nancy.

I Am Nancy is a documentary produced by and featuring Nancy herself - actress Heather Langenkamp. The film follows Langenkamp to six horror conventions and features interviews with writer/director Wes Craven and Robert Englund ("Freddy"). What comes across in the film is the deeply positive impact the character of Nancy has had on fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street and the genuine love they have for the series.

There has been a real return to loving original horror. The holy trinity of slasher films (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th) have been filmed as glossed-over, male-centric remakes in the last three years. It is an interesting conundrum that not only the makers of the genre face, but the fans as well: what role do women have in horror these days? As everything is being reinvented, are we not missing some of the innocence that created terror and tension in the originals?

“Wes decided to pick a girl for the lead role and he picked a girl because he wanted to get away from all boy heroes,” says Langenkamp from her home in L.A., “and Wes said that he thinks girls are better able to face the truth. In our society, in general, I think women are given the heavy, serious responsibilities like giving birth and that it’s always a very specific choice to make your hero a woman. I think that there are those choices made all the time and it’s up to the director to cast a person in that role that brings that character to life. It a combination of the person playing the role and the way a director envisions the role. In A Nightmare On Elm Street I really wanted to play that part because I wanted to bring all the things that were important to me, specifically, facing things head on. As much as [Nancy] was a girl, she was also a fighter and tackled her adversary with all her might.”

Of course the original versions of these movies were complete surprises when they took pop culture by storm. In 1984 no one knew who these characters of Nancy, Tina, Rod, Glen or Fred were or that any of this would build the New Line Cinema empire. So in the intervening years as sequel after sequel hit the screens culminating in New Nightmare and finally in a remake of the original, cultural critics took notice. The phenomenon of the Final Girl encapsulated in Carol Clover’s “Men, Women and Chainsaws” dealt specifically with gender and sexuality within the genre, changing the way many people saw these films.

“In the 90s I was reading books about horror like Men, Women and Chainsaws,” remembers Langenkamp, “and then I researched and read quite a few dissertations about the Final Girl theory and horror and, y’know, I just never really bought into it. As a person who played one of those characters I felt a little frustrated that a role was kind of being taken over by people who weren’t even there. I think it’s great that it’s opened up whole new discussions about the genre and now there are college classes about Final Girls, but it was coming out of people who weren’t even there. It’s like translating a poem from Latin , you’re so far away from the actual thing that are we even able to analyze it? If you’re reading a Shakespeare sonnet, did he really mean what I think it does? So I really felt like I was in a unique position when I was there and I know the people. I talked a lot to Wes about these themes and I felt like this whole other body of literature had been created and why don’t I give you a new perspective or add to everything now written about horror? I didn’t know of any examples of people who had written about horror who had actually played a heroine in a horror movie.” And such is the beginning of the twinkle of what would become I Am Nancy. A movie not set on disproving anyone’s thought or analysis, but one wanting to add more voices and experiences to the discussion.

“I feel like I have such a unique access to all the ingredients that came together to make that movie so great,” she continues, “I thought, 'no one ever asks us how we feel.' And I was lucky to have my sister-in-law, who wanted to direct but was not apart of the horror community at all, be able to throw a humorous spin on the whole thing of our question: why Freddy-mania and not Nancy-mania? There are plenty of examples of movies where the hero lives on but not in this case, it’s Freddy that’s living on. With this tongue-and-cheek question we decided to ask the fans. I bring in my point-of-view as well by interviewing Wes Craven and Robert Englund to create this new point of view about Nancy that hasn’t been brought out. I think that it’s going to make people laugh and ask the question to themselves because it’s not an obvious question with an obvious answer. The effect Nancy Thompson has had on the fans of the series has been very subtle and it’s not something that people necessarily talk about. I think guys are going to be surprised by it too. Every guy I’ve shown it to has been wiping away tears at the end of it. If there’s anything I want to show it’s that Nancy is the heart of the movie.”

If the Nancy and the Nightmare series seems to be on everyone’s mind of late it’s not by accident. 2010 saw the release of the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake and the 4 hour documentary Never Sleep Again (which was a love letter to the fans of the franchise). A highly detailed and interesting look at the series as well as the rise of New Line Cinema (aka The House That Freddy Built) proved that not only were there stories to be told about the series but there was an audience for it as well. The second disc of the DVD includes many extras including a preview for I Am Nancy an extra that whet the appetite of many fans. “[Never Sleep Again] kind of put the fire under me. Originally we wanted to release I Am Nancy and Never Sleep Again together,” explains Langenkamp, “and make I Am Nancy a really fancy bonus feature and then I Am Nancy became so complex and really difficult to edit, it took over a year to edit. It’s really fast paced and filled with information. And I was doing both simultaneously. The writers of Never Sleep Again showed me how to really shape a story as big as the Nightmare franchise. It was so experimental and so many risks were being taken, creative people were putting their money on the line... It made me really nostalgic for the 80s”

Indeed, it’s that nostalgia for the 80s that has led so many horror fans to revisit and reintroduce the films of their childhood to their children. If A Nightmare On Elm Street is about the sins of the parent, then the legacy of the films is that of strong and interesting characters that are not seen all that much anymore. Perhaps it’s rose-colored glasses but the 80s gave more creative license to filmmakers and studios seemed willing to take a risk. The love of A Nightmare On Elm Street has many seeds. For all of the ambition and scope of the film, it had a heart: Nancy Thompson. A girl who witnessed the things around her and saw the need to fight back and not just survive, but win.

“The first [Nightmare] was released in 1984 at the start of the VHS revolution,” says Langenkamp reflecting on on that very legacy. “We learned while researching the film we found out that 84% of our fans saw Nightmare in their home. We thought it was so cool that families were watching it together which helped the fans become younger and younger and younger. Parents who watched it in the 80s with their kids are in their 50s or 60s. I’ve met fans who are in their 70s. Now we’re reaching a critical mass where people of all ages have seen this movie and enjoy it and show it to their kids. It occurred to me on the 25th anniversary how many families were coming as groups. Three generations would all come at once to the table. When I was younger I worried that kids would be traumatized by the violence and now that our society is so violent and it’s everywhere, I don’t think Nightmare is going to traumatize too many people. I feel okay if a 4-year-old comes up to my table because they’re a fan, I mean, it’s not the worst thing they’re going to see all day.”