In 40 years of making movies, Wes Craven, who died at age 76 due to brain cancer, acquired the nickname, “The Master of Horror.” His 23 films, save for the Meryl Streep drama, “Music from the Heart,” were of the horror or thriller genre. Craven was never the visual stylist like Mario Bava, or allegorical storyteller like his contemporary John Carpenter. But he exploited the fears of everyday people, whether dreams, a seatmate on the plane or self-aware horror fans.
Craven was always a contradiction, of sorts. He was an intellectual in a film genre that can often be low brow. His start in the film industry was, appropriately enough, in porn. That influence can be seen in his first feature as film director, “The Last House on the Left” (1972). The film is a direct remake of Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 film, “The Virgin Spring,” but is filmed and edited with the feel of an X-rated porno. The film is notable for its realistic depiction of rape, which is enhanced with its gritty cinematography, and the ad campaign which urges viewers to remind themselves that, “It’s only a movie.”
“The Last House on the Left” is indicative of the formula that the most successful Craven movies follow. He would often take a widely-used scenario and exploit it for maximum terror and suspense. "The Last House on the Left," depicts the hell that two teenage girls face when they go into the city overnight. In this way, he takes a lot from one of his idols, Alfred Hitchcock.
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Craven didn't reach his magnum opus with this formula until he made the 1984 film, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Nowadays, Freddy Kreuger is a pop culture icon, a villain who is more humorous than scary. However, with “A Nightmare on Elm Street," Craven used sleep as the ultimate enemy working from reports of teenagers saying that they would die if they fall asleep. The film is the best encapsulation of Craven as a filmmaker. The dreamscapes allow him to play with perception and image. As a storyteller, Craven was able to remake the classic boogeyman in a terrifying way. After a $25.5 million return on a $1.8 million budget, the film became a series. Aside from writing “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors,” Craven's involvement ceased, and the films became a joke, focusing on "creative" ways to murder each new batch of teenagers, rather than preserving Craven's original work.
It wasn't until 1994 that Craven returned to the series with “Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare," personally my favorite film in his filmography. In a way, this served as a precursor to “Scream,” as it is simultaneously a satirical take on Hollywood and fandom as if it was a Robert Altman dramedy and a horror film. Yet, the film was the least successful of the Kreuger series to date.
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Craven bounced back by creating another staple horror franchise, “Scream” (a personal favorite of the editor in chief). The idea of a meta-horror film in which everyone who is involved knows the tropes of a slasher movie was welcoming to the '90s VHS generation of moviegoers. The most famous scene of the film is an interaction between Drew Barrymore -- in what is essentially the Janet Leigh big-star-dies-early-on role -- and the Ghostface killer discussing their favorite scary movies. This sets the tone for the rest of the series as it becomes more and more self-aware and, additionally, the most successful films of Wes Craven’s career. The success of "Scream" also marked the beginning of a new trend of teen screams in the late '90s, like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Urban Legend." Appropriately enough, his last film was “Scream 4” in 2011.
By the end of his career, Craven’s name was used as a marketing tool. The term, “Wes Craven’s,” was a desired brand above subpar genre films. What they were missing was Craven’s ability to use people’s natural fear as the base point of a film. He was called the “Master of Horror” for good reason. He lived a life in which two of his films spawned multiple film franchises and three remakes of his own film. More importantly, his legacy will lie in the nightmares of teen viewers to come.
