Meet the Makers: The Rise of Wes Craven

Everyone’s heard of, if not seen the Nightmare on Elm Streetmovies, featuring the sharp-tongued, joke-cracking serial killer of your dreams Freddy Krueger. You could probably say the same about the Screammovies as well. While these two franchises are both huge, how many of us [especially the younger generations] are familiar with Wes Craven’s earlier films… the ones that first  earned him his street cred as a horror filmmaker?

The Last House on the Left (1972) was Wes Craven’s feature film debut and did he ever enter into “the Biz” with a bang! The movie follows two teenage girls who are going to attend a rock concert as a birthday celebration. Along the way, the girls decide to try and score some weed to enhance the experience, but manage to get themselves kidnapped by a gang of psychopaths who’re looking for a little fun of their own. This is by far Craven’s most raw and emotionally charged film to date, evoking extreme feelings of fear and helplessness as the kidnappers continue to torture the girls in ways that become difficult to watch. The film was so controversial, it was banned several times in the UK and still remains one of the most terrifying  movie watching  experiences a person can have.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is a fairly well-known and highly appreciated classic in the genre, having clearly influenced recent films with similar concepts. A retired detective and his family are traveling through the California desert with their trailer when they stop for gas at a small stereotypical service station and the attendant warns them to stay on the main road. Of course, the family doesn’t heed his warning and they take a shortcut past a nuclear testing site. They soon wish they had listened to the man when they wreck their vehicle and end up stranded in the middle of the desert. Bob sets out to seek help, but is captured by a twisted, deranged family of cannibalistic killers deformed by local radiation. Trapped by the murderous maniacs, Bob and his family must fight to survive while they try to somehow escape the family’s unwelcome dinner plans. The Hills Have Eyes   has withstood the test of time and has spawned sequels, remakes and similar films from other directors.

Deadly Blessing (1981) is a great little psychological horror film that few are likely to remember and fewer still have likely seen. The movie is center on a small rural town of Hittite’s, a strange Amish-like sect with a cult appeal. When a farmer is mysteriously killed by his tractor, his wife finds herself the victim of some unknown terror. Despite the film’s lack of acknowledgement, Craven is really on top of his game here, directing this eerily terrifying story through some great scenes of shock and suspense. Deadly Blessing   is an early film of Sharon Stone and also features Ernest Borgnine and genre regular Michael Berryman. The cinematography and the score by James Horner do an amazing number on the mind as the film progresses to an unexpected ending. It’s clear that Craven had a fascination with psychological horror and nightmares, even from this movie.

Swamp Thing (1982) is a personal favorite of mine. This was an early comic book adaptation, before comic books became a popular source of material in Hollywood. Unlike it’s tongue-in-cheek sequel, the original Swamp Thing   is a serious film that has has a Victorian feel to it, presenting it’s subtle horror in a fashion reminiscent of the Hammer Horror films from the 70’s. It’s fitting that Craven would choose a reluctant superhero character from the Marvel repertoire such as Swamp Thing, whose story is similar in theme to the Incredible Hulk.

Craven did the film justice by turning the environment and atmosphere in which  Swamp Thing  dwells into part of the character. Craven didn’t rely on elaborate special FX, developing a simple but effective design for Swamp Thing and relying on the actors and the locations to create the remainder of the film’s creepiness. Ultimately, this is a love story, but what good super hero character doesn’t have a love interest?

Of course, 1984 would prove to be Wes Craven’s biggest breakthrough in horror with his Nightmare on Elm Street movie, which would spawn one of the biggest horror franchises in history. Granted, he would not direct another Nightmare movie for ten years, when he returned to the franchise to make New Nightmare, a sort of crossover between the story and the reality of those characters  making the Nightmaremovies. A cool concept that works fairly well, but certainly not my favorite Freddy Krueger outing.

Now with massive success under his belt (and buku bucks, I’m sure), Craven tends to spend as much time producing as he does directing. I’ve liked a lot of his newer films, but what I’d really like to see is something new that has him working from the more extreme source of inspiration that got him going in the first place… just, not a remake!