Who writes this stuff?

I know Mondays are usually a "review" day*, but I couldn't resist sharing something with you. While working on the "Home is Where the Monster Is" piece, I had the nagging sensation that the Cap'n was incorrectly identifying Nancy Thompson as the resident of 1428 Elm Street. Despite the fact that I've seen A Nightmare on Elm Street many times, every now and then a baseless yet persistent doubt will enter my brain, so I decided to check and make sure.

Instead of going to IMDB, the catch-all solver of "was that really the name of _____ character?" I instead decided to look at the back cover of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which I foolishly assumed might identify Heather Langenkamp's character and solve my erroneous doubts. Instead, I found this:



Apparently, Nancy is "the hottie mcsmarty" who "figures out a way to flambe the fiend." I mean seriously, who wrote the paragraph for the back of this disc? I like that the description mentions "another film debut" while not mentioning what the first one is (I'm guessing they took it for granted that the other "debut" is Freddy Krueger as a character).

Why had I never looked at the summary up to this point? Well, when you've seen the movie before, there's not much incentive to reread the synopsis, so I never noticed the alliterative descriptions or hurried grammar "(Scream movies)" which seem more like a series of Tweets than studio approved press copy.

At any rate, since Hottie McSmarty was almost certainly not the character's name, I checked VideoHound's Cult Flicks & Trash Picks, which also didn't identify the character by name (although both clearly mention Heather Langenkamp), so I went for the path of least resistance, the internet, and sure enough it was Nancy Thompson.

Still, I thought you'd get a kick out of the back of the Nightmare disc, as I did. Plus, it gives me an excuse to repost the other synopsis that makes me chuckle every time, if only for it's closing (barely) punnery:


And on that note, I'll see you tomorrow for a Retro Review...



* Mostly out of habit - I watch something on Sunday after taking Friday or Saturday off and posting a Trailer Sunday.