Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (August 2, 1939 - August 30, 2015) was an American film director, producer, and writer, and was the creator of many iconic and genre-defining horror films. He was probably best known for his creation of Freddy Krueger, the dream-haunting villain introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). He also found great success a decade later with the movie Scream (1996), a deconstruction of the slasher sub-genre that launched a slew of late '90s imitation horror films.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Craven was raised by a Baptist family and was reportedly a target for bullies (including one with the same name as his most famous creation). After leaving home, he gained an education in English Literature, Psychology, and Writing; he then married, and started a family. His marriage ended after five years, and his children left with his ex-wife. He moved to New York, and eventually directed The Last House on the Left, followed five years later by The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The success of these movies made him a seminal name in horror cinema.
Additionally, he directed a number of episodes of The Twilight Zone (1985) and, quite bizarrely, the biopic Music of the Heart (his only PG-rated movie). Craven joked that he went "from violence to violins" in directing a movie about a music educator played by Meryl Streep.
He has also written one novel, Fountain Society, which deals with scientists doing brain transplants.
His personal website is located here
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He died of brain cancer on August 30, 2015. He was 76.
Films Include:
- The Last House on the Left (1972)
- The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
- Deadly Blessing (1981)
- Swamp Thing (1982)
- Invitation to Hell (1984)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
- The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984)
- Chiller (1985)
- Deadly Friend (1986)
- The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
- Shocker (1989)
- The People Under the Stairs (1991)
- Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
- Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
- Scream (1996)
- Scream 2 (1997)
- Music of the Heart (1999)
- Scream 3 (2000)
- Cursed (2005)
- Red Eye (2005)
- My Soul to Take (2010)
- Scream 4 (2011)
Common Tropes in Craven's Work Include:
- Action Girl: Nancy Thompson and Sidney Prescott being the most notable examples.
- Adults Are Useless: Either that or the adults are a serious part of the problem.
- Deconstruction: Scream (1996) was so successful that it made the 80's slasher impossible to take seriously anymore. It did however lead to a resurgence of slasher movies in the late 1990s and the 2000s, typically self-aware or at least lampshading several genre tropes.
- Decoy Protagonist: Most of his films start out with a character who is set up to become the protagonist, only to die so that the focus can be shifted to someone else for the remainder of the story.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: Virtually all of his movies.
- Final Girl: In most films, although Shocker features a Final Guy.
- Gorn: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), in particular.
- Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: On A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The People Under the Stairs and My Soul to Take.
- Police Are Useless: Cops are usually incompetent, though well-meaning. Oftentimes they're a complete hindrance to the main characters.
- Postmodernism: Wes Craven's New Nightmare and the Scream movies take this Up to Eleven.
- Practically Joker: Most of his Evil Is Hammy Slasher Movie villains are this, best examples are Freddy Krueger and anyone who is Laughably Evil as a Ghostface.
- Rape as Drama: His characters tended to either be raped, are implied to be raped, are raped as a backstory, or are rapists themselves.
- Shout-Out:
- The Last House on the Left is a loose retelling (with a Setting Update) of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring.
- In one scene during A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead is playing on a TV in the background, which itself is a Shout-Out to Sam Raimi putting a poster of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes in the background of The Evil Dead.
- Slasher Movie: Two of the most famous examples, too.
- Take That!: One of the working titles for The Last House on the Left was Krug & Company. That title and the name "Freddy Krueger" were both taken from a bully from Craven's childhood.
- The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.
