RIP Wes Craven

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Huffington Post

Legendary Horror Director Wes Craven Dead At 76
The "Scream" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" auteur redefined the slasher genre.

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Matthew Jacobs
Entertainment Editor, The Huffington Post
Posted: 08/30/2015 09:28 PM EDT | Edited: 25 minutes ago

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Wes Craven, the director of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream," died Sunday at 76. The celebrated horror master battled brain cancer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Craven is one of the past few decades' most recognizable filmmakers, having transformed the slasher movie with the aforementioned box-office triumphs, both of which spawned numerous sequels. "Scream," in particular, is credited with reinvigorating the teen horror film thanks to a tongue-in-cheek script that both parodied and praised the genre.

But long before "Scream" became one of 1996's highest-grossing releases, Craven cemented his status as the influential writer and director of exploitation films like "The Last House on the Left" (1972), "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) "Swamp Thing" (1982) and "The People Under the Stairs" (1991). He broke from his signature genre with the 1999 drama "Music of the Heart," for which Meryl Streep earned an Oscar nomination, and one of the shorts within the acclaimed 2006 anthology film "Paris, je t'aime." He returned to form with the thriller "Red Eye" (2005), the supernatural box-office dud "My Soul To Take" (2010) and the long-anticipated fourth installment in the "Scream" franchise (2011). At the time of his death, the Craven-produced MTV series based on "Scream" was days away from airing its Season 1 finale.

Craven was born in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in a strict Baptist family. He earned a Master's degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University. He taught college briefly before abandoning academia for the world of cinema, rapidly establishing himself as an auteur who imbued his chilling films with questions about the nature of everyday existence. But Craven said in a 2009 interview that his horror legacy was pure "coincidence," as his debut film, "The Last House on the Left," came about after he and producer Sean S. Cunningham were approached by financiers to make a scary drive-in feature. That launching pad allowed the remainder of his career to channel a singular vision that can be defined by Skeet Ulrich's quote in "Scream": "Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative."

The news of the director's death broke during the MTV Video Music Awards, but Hollywood took to Twitter to praise Craven's contributions to American cinema.

The Huffington Post contacted Craven's representatives for further comment but has not heard back.

I rather enjoyed Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, and enjoyed the return of the slasher genre in the late 90s and early 2000s. The man was great at making the genre fun to watch and making one trying to figure out who the killer was among a bunch of teenagers/ college students.

[biostem]

I feel like I grew up on his films! He'll be missed.

[Flagg]

Man, he didn't redefine it, he jumped on the bandwagon with 'Nightmare' and then totally subverted everything about the slasher genre with every single 'Scream' movie, with 'Scream 4' going so far as to subvert his own subversion. But now we have Michael Bay alone, with no towering voice above him telling him his work producing slasher remakes is total shit and that he should stick to making PG-13 action shitfests for stupid Americans based on popular 80's toy lines. Or maybe 'Bad Boys 3' where we'll see if he can out homophobe himself.

Still, 76, long life, but brain cancer is a bad way to go.

[Raw Shark]

Nightmare on Elmstreet 1 scared the shit out of me more than any other movie I've ever seen. I walked into watching it as a cynical 13-year-old who thought he'd seen all that horror had to offer, and it rocked my socks. R.I.P., Mr. Craven.