The horror community has lost one of its greats. Wes Craven, who many refer to as the Master of Horror, passed away at the age of 76 after battling brain cancer.
I was much more distraught than I should have been hearing the news. Wes Craven’s movies affected my life more than I realized. He had a penchant for strong female characters, breaking classic formats that changed horror cinema and leaving viewers with scenes that they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Even those lacking appreciation for the horror genre can give Craven, and the ensuing Nightmare sequels that he wasn’t involved with, credit for launching many actors’ careers; Johnny Depp, anyone?
Wes Craven made me love horror more than I could have ever imagined. To this day I can still remember the first time I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street. How much I loved it yet was scared of it at the same time. No matter how much you love Craven’s character, he is evil to the core. That is what makes him different from prior movie villains who were products of their circumstances.
Craven took the slasher cinema format and added an antagonist that taunted his victims with a bravado that hadn’t been seen before. Freddy Krueger is a masterpiece character that only Craven could have invented. That persona will stay with audiences forever and in my humble opinion cannot be touched by anyone. The series faltered immensely without Craven at the helm of the ship. When you get right down to it, Krueger, although keeping the wit we know and love, lost his fear factor without Craven.
Craven gave us some of the strongest female characters in horror cinema. Nancy, from A Nightmare on Elm Street, was arguably the most masculine person in the film. She was the one who never surrendered to Freddy and realized that the way to take away his power was to remove her fear of him.
Sidney from the Scream franchise was portrayed in the same fashion. She was always a survivor no matter the circumstances that befell her. Craven thoroughly enjoyed strong female leads in his movies, and I think female horror fans really appreciate that.
Scream not only helped revive the horror genre but also poked fun at the horror format we had all become accustomed to.
Jaime Kennedy’s character lays out the horror movie rules in detail during the film. Craven even threw in jokes about what had become of the Nightmare franchise without him. Craven is also an executive producer of the popular MTV series based on the movie franchise.
Craven changed the format again with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the seventh, and what some refer to as the final, film in the Nightmare franchise. Craven had the actors, including himself, portray themselves as they are antagonized in the real world by Krueger. The film pays homage to the original, along with poking fun at what the franchise became, while implementing a new story. Craven made the series frightening and full of underlying motifs again, a factor it had lost in many of the sequels.
Craven made many horror films throughout his career including The Hill’s Have Eyes, The Hill’s Have Eye’s 2,The People Under the Stairs, Red Eye and The Last House on the Left. Craven was also involved in the remakes of those for newer audiences in the past decade.
There was also that regrettable A Nightmare On Elm Street remake that came out in 2010. Unfortunately, Craven was not consulted on the film and I think you can see that when watching it.
As the documentary, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy says, “New Line Cinema was the house that Freddy built.” We have Wes Craven, and everyone involved in A Nightmare on Elm Street, to thank for the decades of movies, like The Lord of the Rings franchise, that New Line Cinema gave us.
