Wesley Earl Craven (August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Amongst his prolific filmography, Craven worked primarily in the Horror film, particularly , where he mixed horror cliches with humor. Craven has been recognized as one of the masters of the horror genre.
Craven created the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (1984–present), writing and directing the first film, co-writing and producing the third, (1987), and writing and directing the seventh, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). He directed the first four films in the Scream franchise (1996–2011). He directed cult classics The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), the horror comedy The People Under the Stairs (1991), and psychological thriller Red Eye (2005). His other notable films include Swamp Thing (1982), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), and Music of the Heart (1999).
Craven received several accolades across his career, which includes a Scream Awards, a Sitges Film Festival Award, a Fangoria Chainsaw Award, and nominations for a Saturn Awards. In 1995, he was honored by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films with the Life Career Award, for his accomplishments in the horror genre. In 2012, the New York City Horror Film Festival awarded Craven the Lifetime Achievement Award.
On August 30, 2015, aged 76, Craven died of a brain tumor at his home in Los Angeles.
In 1964–65, Craven taught English at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (later named Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York. He also taught at Madrid-Waddington High School in Madrid, New York. During this time, he purchased a used 16 mm film camera and began making short movies. His friend Steve Chapin informed him of a messenger position at a New York City film production co, where his brother, future folk-rock star Harry Chapin worked. Craven moved into the building where his friend Steve Chapin lived at 136 Hicks St. in Brooklyn Heights. His first creative job in the film industry was as a sound editor.
Recalling his early training, Craven said in 1994, "Harry was a fantastic film editing and producer of sponsored film. He taught me the Chapin method of: 'Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts! Get rid of the shit!'" Craven afterwards became the firm's assistant manager, and broke into film editing with You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat (1971).
Craven's first feature film as director was The Last House on the Left, which was released in 1972. Craven expected the film to be shown at only a few theaters, which according to him "gave me a freedom to be outrageous, and to go into areas that normally I wouldn't have gone into, and not worry about my family hearing about it, or being crushed." Ultimately the movie was screened much more widely than he assumed, leaving him ostracized due to the content of the film.
After the negative experience of Last House, Craven attempted to move out of the horror genre, and began writing non-horror films with his partner Sean S. Cunningham, none of which attracted any financial backing. Finally, based on advice from a friend about the ease of filming in the Nevada deserts, Craven began to write a new horror film based on that locale. The resulting film, The Hills Have Eyes, cemented Craven as a "horror film director" with Craven noting, "It soon became clear that I wasn't going to do anything else unless it was scary".
Craven frequently collaborated with Sean S. Cunningham. In Craven's debut feature, The Last House on the Left, Cunningham served as producer. They pooled all of their resources and came up with $90,000. Later, in Craven's best-known film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Cunningham directed one of the chase scenes, although he was not credited. Craven had a hand in launching actor Johnny Depp's career by casting him in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Depp's first major film role.
Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger appeared with Cunningham's Jason Voorhees in the 2003 slasher film Freddy vs. Jason, produced by Cunningham with screenwriter Victor Miller credited as "Character Creator". In the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left, Cunningham and Craven share production credits.
Although known for directing horror/thriller films, he worked on two films which are outside this genre: Music of the Heart (1999) and Paris, je t'aime (2006) (as one of the 22 directors responsible for it). Craven designed the Halloween 2008 logo for Google and was the second celebrity personality to take over the YouTube homepage on Halloween. In the mid-1980s, Craven worked briefly in the television industry by directing seven episodes of the 1985 reboot of The Twilight Zone, including an episode that was written by George R. R. Martin.
Craven created Coming of Rage, a five-issue comic book series, with 30 Days of Night writer Steve Niles. The series was released in digital comics in 2014 by Liquid Comics with a print edition scheduled for an October 2015 debut.
Several of Craven's films are characterized by abusive familial relationships such as The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under the Stairs, and others. Families in denial are a common thread throughout his movies, an idea Craven openly discussed:
The blurring of the barrier between dreams and reality, sometimes called "rubber-reality", is a staple of Craven's style.
A Nightmare on Elm Street, for example, dealt with the consequences of dreams in real life. The Serpent and the Rainbow and Shocker portray protagonists who cannot distinguish between nightmarish visions and reality. Following New Nightmare, Craven increasingly explored metafictional elements in his films. New Nightmare has actress Heather Langenkamp play herself as she's haunted by the villain of the film in which she once starred. At one point in the film, the audience sees on Craven's word processor a script he's written, which includes the conversation he just had with Langenkamp—as if the script were being written as the action unfolds.In Scream, the characters frequently reference horror films similar to their situations and at one point Billy Loomis tells his girlfriend that life is just a big movie. This concept was emphasized in the sequels as copycat stalkers re-enact the events of a new film about the Woodsboro killings (Woodsboro being the fictional town where Scream is set) occurring in Scream.
The first scholarly collection of work dedicated to Craven was published by Edinburgh University Press in July 2023.
Craven was married three times. Craven's first marriage, to Bonnie Broecker, produced two children: Jonathan Craven (born 1965) and Jessica Craven (born 1968). Jonathan is a writer and director. Jessica was a singer-songwriter in the group the Chapin Sisters. The marriage ended in 1970.
In 1984, Craven married a woman who became known professionally as actress Mimi Craven. The two later divorced, with Wes Craven stating in interviews that the marriage dissolved after he discovered it "was no longer anything but a sham."
In 2004, Craven married Iya Labunka; she frequently worked as a producer on Craven's films.Craven was a Birdwatching. In 2010, he joined Audubon California's board of directors. His favorite films included Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Virgin Spring (1960) and Red River (1948).
Craven was buried at the Lambert's Cove Cemetery in the town of West Tisbury on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
+Directed features !Year !Title !Distributor | ||
1972 | The Last House on the Left | Hallmark Releasing / American International Pictures |
1977 | The Hills Have Eyes | Vanguard |
1978 | Stranger in Our House ( Summer of Fear) | |
1981 | Deadly Blessing | United Artists |
1982 | Swamp Thing | Embassy Pictures |
1984 | A Nightmare on Elm Street | New Line Cinema |
1985 | The Hills Have Eyes Part II | Castle Hill Productions |
1986 | Deadly Friend | Warner Bros. |
1988 | The Serpent and the Rainbow | Universal Pictures |
1989 | Shocker | |
1991 | The People Under the Stairs | |
1994 | Wes Craven's New Nightmare | New Line Cinema |
1995 | Vampire in Brooklyn | Paramount Pictures |
1996 | Scream | Dimension Films |
1997 | Scream 2 | |
1999 | Music of the Heart | Miramax |
2000 | Scream 3 | Dimension Films |
2005 | Cursed | |
Red Eye | DreamWorks Pictures | |
2010 | My Soul to Take | Universal Pictures |
2011 | Scream 4 | Dimension Films |
In 1977, Craven won the critics award at the Sitges Film Festival for his horror film The Hills Have Eyes. In 1997, the Gérardmer Film Festival granted him the Grand Prize for the slasher film Scream. In 2012, the New York City Horror Film Festival awarded Craven the Lifetime Achievement Award.
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