Masters
of Horror Series: Wes Craven
On
August 2nd 1939 the bold, imaginative and innovative genius that is
Wes Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Wes had a strict upbringing by his
hyper religious Mother who was extremely judgemental towards Wes causing him
severe insecurities. Due to the way he was treated by his Mother, Wes was too
scared to talk too girls until he went to college and he believes this caused
him to marry too young. His first marriage was to Bonnie Broecker with whom he
had two children Jonathan and Jessica.
This marriage ended in divorce in 1970.
Prior
to becoming a director, Wes was a humanities Professor at Clarkeson University,
New York. In 1972 he wrote, directed and
edited his first feature film, The Last
House on the Left. Craven admitted in the documentary ‘Inside Deep Throat’ that he had worked directing many porn movies prior
to this to perfect his craft as a director. In 1982, he married Millicent Eleanor Meyer. Unfortunately
this marriage was also doomed. Wes said it ended when he realised it ‘was no
longer anything but a sham.’ However the rumour for the end of this marriage
was the Meyer had an affair with Sharon Stone.
In
1977 he wrote and directed the cult classic ‘The Hills Have Eyes,’ this movie did fairly well when it was
released. Wes won ‘Prize of the International Critics' Jury' in the
"Sitges – Catalonian International Film Festival" for this movie.
1984
saw the release of another cult classic, A
Nightmare on Elm Street with New line Cinema and Craven’s most famous creation,
Freddy Krueger. Wes has always had a
knack for discovering fresh new talent and he hit the nail on the head here by
casting Johnny Depp in his first feature film role. This movie was an instant
success and resulted in a whole franchise and a stream of sequels. Wes only
worked on parts 1, 3 and 7 and these are actually the best ones in the series
of movies, without Wes New Line just did not seem to get it right. He was
actually set to direct Beetlejuice
but dropped out to work on the third Nightmare movie. Wes said the idea for Nightmare on Elm Street came from a
series of stories he had read in the LA Times about young men who were dying in
their sleep. The character of Freddy was based on an old man he seen when he
was 10 years old. One night he looked out the window of the apartment he lived
in and a drunk man dressed similar to Freddy was looking directly at him and
continued to stay there looking at the window for several minutes. This scared
him so much that he thought this would be the perfect image for Freddy. It is
also rumoured that the name Freddy Krueger comes from a boy who bullied Wes as
a child. In 1985 this movie won 'Critic's Award' at the "Avoriaz Fantastic
Film Festival".
Other
movies to his credit in the 80’s were Swamp
Thing, Shocker. The Serpent and the
Rainbow and Deadly Friend. He also
made a sequel to The Hill have Eyes which
he later disowned. Between1985 and 1986 he worked on some Twilight Zone episodes. Then in 1991 came The People under the Stairs. Like many of Wes’ creations this was
also based on a story he had seen in the news of parents who lock their kids up
and never let them go outside. This was one of Wes’ favourite movies that he
worked on and he has talked about the possibility of a remake. In 1992, the
Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film presented him the Pegasus
Audience Award for the thriller The People under the Stairs. Some
of Wes’ trademarks in his movies are booby traps and secret passageways due to
the fact that he loved that kind of stuff as a kid. In 1992 he also created the
short lived TV show Nightmare Café. This saw him reunited with Nightmare on Elm
Street star Robert Englund. Unfortunately low ratings led to its cancellation.
In
1995 he directed Vampire in Brooklyn starring Eddie Murphy who wrote the
script. This movie did not receive great reviews and was seen as one of Wes’ poorer
movies but he was about to reach a whole new level of success with the release
of Scream in 1996. Craven directed this movie which received Best Movie at the
MTV Movie Awards that year. The
Gérardmer Film Festival granted him the Grand Prize in '97 for Scream
and he was also nominated for Best Director for Scream at the
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA, in 1997. Scream introduced us to the new slasher
character Ghostface and was such a
success it spawned a trilogy. In 1999
between Scream movies he got offered the opportunity to direct a movie outside
the horror/thriller genre called Music of the Heart which seen Meryl Streep
earn a nomination for best actress for lead performance.
The
noughties saw the return of Freddy in Freddy v’s Jason, where two of the
greatest slasher movie characters of the 80’s came head to head in a fight to
the finish. This movie was directed by Ronnie Yu. This was well received by
fans of these two fiends. During this decade Wes also remade some of his most
popular movies The Hills have Eyes,
Last House on the Left and Nightmare on Elm Street. In 2004, Craven
married Iya Labunka. She frequently works as a producer on Craven's films. In
2005 he directed thriller Red Eye
which received great praise from publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine and The
New York Times. Since 1994’s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare he had not both
wrote and directed a movie and made his return to both roles in 2010 with the
movie My Soul to Take. He collaborated
with wife Iya Labunka who helped produce the movie. This movie was slated by critics. But in Wes
Craven style a comeback was on the cards and it came in the form of the much
anticipated 2011 movie Scream 4 which
seen Craven once again praised for his directorial talents.
Wes
Craven is high on the list of the masters of horror. He knows what makes the
audience tick and how to delve into our worst nightmares. When talking about
horror movies he stated that……. "It's
like boot camp for the psyche. In real life, human beings are packaged in the
flimsiest of packages, threatened by real and sometimes horrifying dangers,
events like Columbine. But the narrative form puts these fears into a
manageable series of events. It gives us a way of thinking rationally about our
fears."
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