Alex Moss EditorIt is with great sadness that the death of film writer and director Wes Craven was announced. The filmmaker died this morning of brain cancer at the age of 76 at his home in California.
Starting his career as a porn director, under various pseudonyms, Craven soon courted controversy as a horror director with his often harrowing debut film The Last House On The Left in 1972. From there he made such notable films in the genre as The Hills Have Eyes and Swamp Thing before hitting the big time with seminal horror A Nightmare On Elm Street. With Elm street Craven introduced the world to one of horror’s most iconic characters in the shape of Freddy Krueger. Craven would return to Elm Street in a writing capacity for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and then again as a director for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare in 1994, a film that essentially looked to reboot the franchise long before reboots were a “thing” in Hollywood.
In 1996 he teamed with Dawson’s Creek writer Kevin Williamson to introduce the world to a new horror legend in the form of Scream‘s Ghost Face. The Scream franchise lasted four films, all directed by Craven, and spawned a TV series. The Scream films summed Craven up; shocks and horror all mixed together with a dark, self-referential sense of humour. As if to highlight this Craven appeared in Scream as a school janitor dressed in Freddy Krueger’s iconic hat and stripped jumper. Scream 4 would be Craven’s last movie that he directed in 2011.
Wes Craven was a filmmaker who created nightmares that will live long in the memory thanks to their terrifying realities and often satirical sense of humour. RIP Mr. Craven and thank you for all the demons you gave us to haunt our waking and sleeping days.
