Wes Craven had a knack for vivid nightmares

Wes Craven made his name with the 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream franchise.

FILE AUGUST 30: Writer/Director Wes Craven, best known for horror franchises Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream died on August 30, 2015. He was battling brain cancer. HOLLYWOOD, CA - APRIL 11: Director Wes Craven arrives at the premiere of The Weinstein Company's "Scream 4" Presented by AXE Shower held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on April 11, 2011 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

He was the man who blurred the lines between nightmare and reality with creations such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. Wes Craven became a household name in the horror genre when he brought Freddy Krueger to screens in 1984, then turned terror into dollars again with the highly successful Scream franchise. “Horror films don’t ­create fear,” Craven said. “They release it.”

It wasn’t all gore and violence, though. In 1999, he directed the inspirational Meryl Streep drama Music of the Heart. Still, Craven would attain most of his fame for directing the 1984 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, which introduced Freddy Krueger, the knife-fingered slasher monster played by Robert Englund, as well as a then unknown actor named Johnny Depp. The film spawned a franchise, but Craven didn’t direct any more of the titles until 1994’s New Nightmare, a meta-fictional thriller that hinted at the new direction Craven would take in horror films. “He was a consummate filmmaker and his body of work will live on forever,” says Bob Weinstein, whose Dimension Films produced Scream. “My brother (Harvey Weinstein) and I are eternally grateful for all his collaborations with us.”

Craven died of brain cancer at his Los Angeles home surrounded by family. A statement from them read: “Our hearts are broken.”

Wesley Earl “Wes” Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on Aug­ust 2, 1939, to a strictly Baptist family. Though he earned a masters degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University and briefly taught as a college professor in Pennsylvania and New York, his start in movies was in pornography, where he worked under pseudonyms.

Craven’s feature debut under his own name was 1972’s The Last House on the Left, a horror film inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, about teenage girls abducted and taken into the woods. Made for just $87,000, the film, though graphic enough to be censored in many countries, was a hit. American film critic Roger Ebert said it was “about four times as good as you’d expect”.

Craven went on to make another gritty cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes, in 1977. Both films were the subjects of Hollywood remakes in recent years. But it was A Nightmare on Elm Street that made Craven a legend of the teen slasher genre. The first film was hot on the heels of Halloween and Friday the 13th in redefining box-office horror and there were eight films in total, plus a remake of the original, grossing more than $US300 million worldwide.

The concept, Craven said, came from his youth in Cleveland, specifically an Elm Street cemetery and a homeless man who inspired Krueger’s ragged look. Krueger, who wore a scruffy fedora and had a glove with razor blades attached to the fingers, would visit his victims in their dreams and slash them to death.

“He made nightmares seem real, the things that scare you in your subconscious can harm you, get to you,” says Richard Potter, a film writer and producer who worked with Craven on the Scream franchise.

Along with John Carpenter’s Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street defined a horror tradition where helpless teenagers are preyed on by knife-wielding, deformed killers in cruel morality tales; usually promiscuous girls were the first to go.

“There is something about the American dream, the sort of Disneyesque dream, if you will, of the beautifully trimmed front lawn, the white picket fence, mom and dad and their happy children, God-fearing and doing good whenever they can,” Craven once said. “And the flip side of it, the kind of anger and the sense of outrage that comes from discovering that that’s not the truth of the matter, that gives American horror films, in some ways, kind of an additional rage.”

The formula worked again for Craven with Scream, albeit with an added layer of self-aware spoof. Scream, written by Kevin Williamson and featuring a cast including Drew Barrymore and Neve Campbell, played off the horror cliches Craven helped create. It spawned three sequels, all of which he directed. Courteney Cox, who starred in all Scream films, said on Twitter: “Today the world lost a great man, my friend and mentor, Wes Craven. My heart goes out to his family.”

By 1996, the Craven-style slasher was a well-known type, even if it wasn’t always made by him. The first Scream film was a huge success, grossing more than $US100m at box offices around the world. Three sequels pushed the total past $US600m and confirmed Craven’s status as one of the most successful horror directors, writers and producers. Some of his other film credits include Red Eye, a 2005 thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, and Paris, je t’aime, in which he was one of 22 directors.

Craven was also a published author (the 2000 novel The Fountain Society) and an ardent bird conservationist, serving as a long-time member of the Audubon California board of directors. He recently penned a monthly column, “Wes Craven’s The Birds”, for Martha’s Vineyard Magazine.

In 2010, he told the Los Angeles Times: “My goal is to die in my 90s on the set, say ‘That’s a wrap’ after the last shot, fall over dead and have the grips go out and raise a beer to me.”

He had been suffering from ill health for the past three years but had still been working on projects, including a new Scream series for MTV as well as a graphic horror novel series.

Craven received lifetime achievement awards from the New York City Horror Film Festival and the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. He is survived by his wife Iya Labunka, and by a son, a daughter and a stepdaughter.

Wes Craven. Director, writer and producer. Born Cleveland, Ohio, August 2, 1939. Died Los Angeles, August 30, aged 76.

The Times
Additional reporting: The Wall Street Journal, AP, AFP