ScreenSlay – Watch, Write, Compare – Can an Amateur Screenwriter Come Close to… A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)?

EXT. ALLEYWAY – NIGHT

A light mist pervades the dirty, dingy alleyway. Silence consumes the space, waiting to be broken.

Tina pads out in nothing but a nightshirt, on the hunt for whoever is playing the whisper game.

From the dark, 20 feet away behind her, a trashcan lid rolls with a loud rattle breaking the oppressive quiet. It rumbles towards her for a few feet before succumbing to a death spiral, an exponential frequency increase in rattles —

Tina SPINS as it comes to it’s final end and stillness. Behind her again, on a wall at the end of the alley, a LOOMING SHADOW appears! The silhouette of a head with hat fills the wall. Its smoker’s breath makes Tina spin back around. Her nervous breaths audible too as she sees —

Freddy! Only a dark figure of a man in the dim light. Face in shadow from the brim of his hat. He approaches with a casual saunter. A small laugh of evil joy, he’s in control here and will enjoy toying with his pray.

Tina stares on. Scare but mesmerised and still, he’s far enough away to not be an immediate threat.

TINA

Shit!

Even though he’s at a good distance away, he’s in no hurry. Begins to chuckle as he extends out his arms — extends, EXTENDS, they keep going way beyond anything natural. Stretches them out even longer as he continues his evil chuckle. His arms span the entire width of the alleyway. A blockade with no means for Tina to pass back to her home, on a slow and inevitable advance.

The razor blade fingers of his glove scrapes and sparks against a metal fence wall. His low vile laugh backgrounds the SCREECH of the metal on metal. It sets your teeth on edge.

Tina stands frozen, unbelieving of what she sees.

TINA

Please, God.

Freddy jerks his razor fingers to his face. Tilts his head to the light to display his burnt and gory face.

FREDDY

This is God.

Tina’s flight sense kicks in, she turns and runs. Freddy’s long arms dance as he gives a joyful chase. Laughing all the way as Tina screams. A watchful eye over her shoulder as she careens forward. Turns to look ahead — FREDDY! Right in front of her, nearly barrels into his razor glove held aloft, a grin on his face.

She screams in surprise and runs back the other way. His mocking laugh follows her. Sprints for all her worth.

TINA

No! No!

Her bare feet splash in the thin puddles on the uneven road. Dashes back through the garden gate, SLAMS it shut.

EXT. GARDEN – CONTINUOUS

She continues her sprint through, past a THIN TREE — Freddy JUMPS out from behind it. No way it could hide his whole body. Calls after her:

FREDDY

Tina!

She spins — Freddy just stands there, he holds up the razor glove and his other hand. His eyes wide with glee. Tina remains frozen in surprise and fear. He gives the fingers on the non-gloved hand a wiggle.

FREDDY

Watch this.

Tina watches as commanded, petrified in place.

Freddy brings a blade towards his other hand — SWIP — LOPS off a couple of his OWN FINGERS! Glances back to Tina with manic glee. Stares back as a BILE GREEN BLOOD SPURTS from his stubs. Has a little laugh like a child doing something naughty.

Tina turns away in disgusted terror and runs again as he lunges after her. Sprints to the door, tears open the screen door and YANKS on the door proper — LOCKED! Freddy nearly upon her.

TINA

Nancy! Open the door! NANCY!

He pounces on her, throws her to the ground. JUMPS on top of her as she struggles to keep him away. Holds his razor glove hand at bay with one hand and maws at his face with the other — his SKIN sloughs off in her hand! He giggles as the bone and muscle of his face underneath glistens in reveal. Under his wide eyes and grin, Tina screams!

INT. TINA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Rod jerks wakes in the bed to the SCREAMS and thrashing of Tina under the covers.

UNDER COVERS

Freddy on top of Tina as she continues to try and wrestle him away just like the DREAM outside.

BEDROOM

Rod jumps away from the bed. Watches the trashing sheets, caught in indecision.

TINA

Help me!

He edges forwards, grips the corner of the sheets, RIPS the them away — Tina trashes on the bed against something he can’t see, NO FREDDY in body! He stares, no idea what to do as she flails on the bed. Watches from a distance too scare to approach.

ROD

Tina?!

Her SHIRT RIPS OPEN — FOUR CUTS SLICE down her chest. Blood spews forth as she tries to hold back the flow. Rod stares on, now even more scared. No idea what to do.

ROD

Tina!

Her body is LIFTED into the air by AN INVISIBLE FORCE. Her screams continue, now more gurgles as she drowns in her own blood. She twists this way and that suspended in mid-air.

Rod darts to help her — her body flung around like a doll. Cracks him in the head, knocks him back into the corner of the room. She is hurled upside down by the unseen Freddy into the opposite corner. Freddy’s laugh barely audible.

Rod recovers a little to see — Tina being dragged UP the wall leaving bloody prints on the wallpaper. She’s pinned against the ceiling defying gravity as she struggles and screams for release.

Rod dazed, watches on.

ROD

Tina!

She tries to crawl away across the ceiling. The blood soaks her nightshirt, her whole body, leaves smears across the pure white ceiling. She can do nothing to escape.

Rod reaches out for her as she reaches out to him in vain hope of help. Screams in desperation for relief from her torturous press up against the ceiling.

NANCY’S BEDROOM

Nancy rockets upright in bed as the screams penetrate her room and sleep.

BEDROOM

Rod continues to reach out to her.

ROD

TINA!

Tina screams her last. The fun over, she’s released. Drops from the blood covered ceiling onto the blood pool on the bed — sprays Rod with it and then flops from the bed onto the floor. DEAD.

Rod rushes towards her.

OUTSIDE BEDROOM

Nancy bangs on the bedroom door. Can’t get it open.

NANCY

Tina?!

ROD (O.S.)

I’ll kill you! Who did this?

Glen rushes up, scares the shit out of a preoccupied Nancy. She jumps and screams as Rod continues to rail inside the locked bedroom.

NANCY

Oh God, you scared me.

BEDROOM

Glen busts in the door. The aftermath of blood covers the room. It’s sprayed everywhere, the walls, floor, bed.

Nancy stares around the dim room, spots Tina’s bloody body. Dumbstruck, unable to speak, Rod nowhere to be seen. Looks to the broken window.

EXT. A SERVICE ALLEY. NIGHT.

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.

LOW REVERSE ACROSS LID TO TINA. Despite herself she comes over 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 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.

WIDER ANGLE IN THE ALLEY — a terrifying, all-out footrace

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.

EXT. TINA’S STREET. NIGHT.

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 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.

CLOSE ON HIM as he takes the blade on the end of his right index 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.

TINA staggers backward, GROANING, her foot now inexplicably 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.

INT. TINA’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

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.

IN HIS POV we glimpse the dark underside of the blanket — see 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.

CLOSER ON HIM as he struggles around. In the blue FLASHES OF 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.

REVERSE ON ROD — staring like a terrified child.

ROD

Tina —

REVERSE IN HIS POV — as the body falls like a sack of rocks onto the devastated bed, in SLOW MOTION, striking with a huge splash of blood. A sick, awful GIGGLE floats around the room, then ECHOES off into infinity. ROD staggers up, staring around as if hoping to see this phantom.

ROD

You motherfucker! I’ll kill you for that!

INT. TINA’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

NANCY is sitting straight up in bed, terrified. The CRIES of ROD are ringing through the whole house. She forces herself to move — bolting from the bed despite her terror and sense of dread.

INT. HALLWAY. NIGHT.

NANCY flies into the dark hall — crashing directly into SOMEONE who lurches out of the dark before her. She SCREAMS and jumps back —

GLEN

What the hell’s going on!?

NANCY

Oh — jeez — Glen! Rod’s gone ape!

ROD (OS)

(sobbing)

I’ll kill you!

NANCY grabs the door; it’s locked; she pounds on it. BAM! BAM! BAM!

Things fall into sudden, awful silence on the other side. GLEN’s voice cracks with fear.

GLEN

Rod?

(silence)

Rod, you better not hurt Tina…

ROD erupts into terrible HOARSE LAUGHTER AND SOBBING. Then they hear BREAKING GLASS.

GLEN barrels into the door like the football player he is. The frame splinters and they’re in.

INT. TINA’S MOTHER’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

Just inside the door NANCY slips and goes down hard. GLEN finds her in the dark more by touch than sight.

GLEN

You okay?

NANCY

Yeah. Something slippering all over here…

(FEELING)

Tina?

No answer. The room is quiet as a tomb. Except for a stead DRIPPING, from all over. Then GLEN finds a LIGHT SWITCH.

On the CLICK the devastation is revealed. There’s BLOOD everywhere: up the walls, over the clawed ceiling, soaking the killing floor of the bed, and pooling in the dark red puddle where NANCY has slipped and fallen.

GLEN

Oh, shit…

NANCY wobbles up and sees TINA in the center of the ravaged bed. Unmistakeably and utterly dead. NANCY presses against the wall, then contorts and chokes.