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WES CRAVEN

In Memoriam

He was counted amongst the giants in the horror genre; George A Romero, Dario Argento, Tobe Hooper, Stephen King, Lucio Fulci... and Wes Craven. In a career spanning 43 years, Craven has delivered some of the most spine chilling horror films, created three hugely successful horror franchises, and introduced two of the biggest icons still in horror today; Ghostface and Freddy Krueger. Sadly, one year ago today, Wes Craven passed away at his home in Los Angeles, at age 76. He was survived by his third wife, Iya Labunka. But he left behind a legacy of 28 feature films (and either wrote, produced, or photographed/edited another 25 films), created 3 television shows, and was the proud father of two children; Jonathan and Jessica Craven. Join us as we take a look back on the fascinating life of the "King of Horror", Wes Craven.

Born on August 2nd, 1939, to Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Eugene Craven, the young Wesley Earl Craven was raised in a strict Baptist family in Cleveland, Ohio. He had a highly dysfunctional relationship with his parents, mainly having been raised by his severe, hyper-religious mother (whom he never allowed to watch any of his films) and never having a close relationship with his distant, violent-tempered father. Craven later earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and a master's degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. At 25, Craven married his first wife, Bonnie Broecker in 1964, their first son, Jonathan being born a year later. Craven would later remark that it was his mother's judgmental influence that caused him to be too terrified to talk to a girl until he was at college and lead him to marry, in his opinion, too young (and arguably contributed to the angry, bleak themes of his early films). Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (later named Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York, additionally teaching at Madrid-Waddington High School in Madrid, New York. It was during this time that Craven's second child, Jessica, was born in 1968.

When his friend Tom Chapin informed him of a messenger position at a New York City post-production company run by his brother, future folk-rock star Harry Chapin, Craven moved to Manhattan with his first creative job in the film industry being a sound editor for Chapin's firm. Recalling his early training, Craven said in 1994, "Harry was a fantastic film editor and producer of industrials. He taught me The Chapin Method [of editing]: 'Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts! Get rid of the shit!'" Craven afterward 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). Sadly in 1970, Craven and Bonnie divorced, with Craven also leaving the academic world behind for good to concentrate solely on a filmmaking career.

In the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Craven says on camera he made "many hard core X-rated films" under various pseudonyms during the early 1970's, most of his early known work involved writing, film editing or both. In early 1971, Craven was approached by director Sean S Cunningham to synchronize the dailies from the three- to four-day re-shoot of his feature film Together (from footage shot for Cunningham's earlier version, The Art of Marriage), which also featured a young Marilyn Chambers, billed under her real name, Marilyn Briggs, before she starred in Behind the Green Door. Craven then became assistant editor, and he and Cunningham had to mix under sparse conditions and no money. Luckily, numerous erotic scenes shot with Chambers "aroused" the interest of Hallmark Releasing, whom bought the film for $10,000. Together proved to be a hugely successful film, grossing over $100,000, the second for Cunningham and the first for the 33-year old Craven.

Cunningham was offered $90,000 by Hallmark to do a "scary film", with Cunningham serving as producer and Craven as debut writer and director. The original script was intended to be a graphic 'hardcore' film, with all actors and crew being committed to filming it as such, and was shot entirely on location in New York City, as well as Long Island and rural locations outside of Westport, Connecticut. The Last House on the Left would be heavily censored in many countries on it's release in 1972, and was particularly controversial in the United Kingdom, where it was refused a certificate for cinema release by the BBFC in 1974 due to "scenes of sadism and violence". But Craven's debut film proved incredibly successful at the box offcie (grossing over $3 million against a $87,000 budget) and with the critics, with Roger Ebert giving the film four and a half stars, writing,"Last House on the Left is a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect. There is a moment of such sheer and unexpected terror that it beats anything in the heart-in-the-mouth line since Alan Arkin jumped out of the darkness at Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark." Despite the early success, it would be another five years before Craven would direct another film, The Hills Have Eyes, in 1977.

Craven's reputation as a successful horror director was cemented by the $25 million performance of The Hills Have Eyes at the box office. After serving as a cinematographer on The Evolution of Snuff (with Roman Polanski) and Here Come the Tigers (directed by friend Sean S Cunningham), Craven was approached by TV producers Max A. Keller and Micheline H. Keller and worked on three projects with the duo between 1978-81; Stranger in Our House (later released in cinemas as Summer of Fear), Kent State, and Deadly Blessing. The following year, Craven would direct his first (and only) science fiction film, Swamp Thing. Filming primarily on location in Charleston, South Carolina, and nearby Johns Island (standing in for the Florida Everglades), and starred Adrienne Barbeau, Dick Durock, Louis Jourdan, and Ray Wise. Craven was very proud in delivering the movie on time and on budget at $2.5 million, and was yet another hit for Craven. Also in 1982, Craven married a woman who would become known professionally as actress Mimi Craven (the two would later divorce in 1987, with Wes Craven stating in interviews that the marriage dissolved after he discovered it "was no longer anything but a sham" - amid rumors his wife was having an affair with his Deadly Blessing star, Sharon Stone!). After Swamp Thing, Craven directed his last TV movie, the supernatural horror film Invitation to Hell, before starting production on the film that would ultimately bring him worldwide acclaim and introduce one of horror's biggest legends!

A Nightmare on Elm Street was partly inspired by an article printed in the LA Times in the 1970's about a group of Khmer refugees, who, after fleeing to the United States, started suffering disturbing nightmares, after which they refused to sleep; some men even died! For the film's villain, Freddy Krueger, Craven drew heavily from his own experiences in early life. One night, a young Craven saw an elderly man walking on the sidewalk outside the window of his home. The man stopped to glance at a startled Craven and walked off. Craven would base the character based on the memories of that man, and later named him Freddy Krueger, after a bully that used to torment Craven at school. Craven strove to make Krueger different from other horror-film villains of the era. "A lot of the killers were wearing masks: Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason," Craven recalled in 2014. "I wanted my villain to have a 'mask,' but be able to talk and taunt and threaten. So I thought of him being burned and scarred." Writing the screenplay after finishing production on Swamp Thing, Craven pitched the script to several studios, but each one of them rejected it for different reasons. The first studio to show interest was Walt Disney Productions, although they wanted Craven to tone down the content to make it suitable for children and pre-teens, which Craven declined. Another early suitor was Paramount Pictures; however the studios passed on the project due to Nightmare on Elm Street's similarity to Dreamscape (1984). It would also be rejected by Universal, with Craven (by now in desperate personal and financial straits) later framing their rejection letter on the wall of his office.

Finally, the fledgling and independent New Line Cinema corporation, led by producer Bob Shaye — which had up to that point only distributed films, rather than making its own — gave the project the go-ahead. Although New Line has gone on to make much bigger and more profitable films, Nightmare holds such an important place in the company's history that the studio is often referred to as "The House That Freddy Built". With principal photography beginning in June 1984, the shoot was fraught tension and tight shooting schedules. At one point, with the deadline rapidly approaching, Craven enlisted his old friend Sean S Cunningham to direct one of the films chase sequences (but remained uncredited). Craven originally planned for the film to have a more evocative ending: Nancy kills Krueger by ceasing to believe in him, then awakes to discover that everything that happened in the film was an elongated nightmare. However, Robert Shaye demanded a twist ending, in which Krueger disappears and the film all appears to have been a dream, only for the audience to discover that they are watching a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, where Freddy reappears as a car that "kidnaps" Nancy and her friends, followed by Freddy reaching through a window on the front door to pull Nancy's mother inside. Craven, never intending A Nightmare on Elm Street to be an ongoing series, later dropped out of developing the sequel Freddy's Revenge, which strained Craven's relationship with Shaye for the next ten years.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was a huge international success, and Craven was now a highly in demand filmmaker, with Warner Bros. quickly hand-picking Craven to helm their next sci-fi horror film, Deadly Friend. However, Craven and the studio would have differing opinions on the direction of the movie, with studio head Mark Canton demanding gorier/scarier scenes with script re-writes and reshoots. Craven's next studio movie would be The Serpent and the Rainbow for Universal studios. Based on the best selling book of the same name, author Wade Davis sold the film rights on the condition that director Peter Weir would helm the picture with Mel Gibson starring - although Craven would ultimately end up directing with Bill Pullman starring. Craven's next film for Universal was intended to be the first film in franchise (similar to the Nightmare on Elm Street series), Shocker, with Mitch Pileggi as the evil antagonist Horace Pinker. Unfortunately after the lukewarm box office reception of Shocker, the idea of a trilogy was dropped. Craven's final film with Universal, which would also be his most successful film made during his tenure with the studio, was The People Under the Stairs. Three years later, Craven would again team with Bob Shaye and New Line Cinema to bring a very different Freddy Krueger to the screen with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and teamed with Eddie Murphy the next year on the horror-comedy Vampire in Brooklyn - unfortunately neither of these big studio films performed well at the box office and received mediocre reviews from the critics. But Craven was yet to experience a career revival with his next project, a film he very nearly turned down!

Written and developed under the working title Scarey Movie by aspiring screenwriter Kevin Williamson, the screenplay was picked up by Bob and Harvey Weinstein through their genre production label Dimension Films. Bob Weinstein approached Craven early in the planning stages, because he felt Craven's previous work in the genre that combined horror and comedy would make him the perfect person to bring Williamson's script to screen. Craven was reluctant, even considering distancing himself from the horror genre as he was growing weary of the inherent misogyny and violence. Craven was approached again but continued to pass in spite of repeated requests, continuing to develop a remake of The Haunting. However, two important elements would convince Craven to direct Scarey Movie; the production of The Haunting collapased, and Drew Barrymore had signed on to the film. When he heard an established actress wanted to be involved, Craven reasoned that Scarey Movie might be different from other films of the genre he had previously undertaken, and he contacted Weinstein to accept the job.

Principal photography for Scream took place over eight weeks between April 15 and June 8, 1996, on a budget of $15 million, with filming, at Craven's insistence, taking place in the Californian cities of Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and the nearby Tomales Bay (the Weinsteins wanted to film in Vancouver as it was estimated that they could save $1 million in costs compared to shooting in the United States). The progress of filming was criticized early on by Bob Weinstein, who disliked the Ghostface mask (believing it was not "scary"), and, upon reviewing the dailies footage of the opening scene, the studio was concerned that the film was progressing in an unwanted direction to the point they considered dropping Craven from the project. To assuage their concerns, Craven and editor Patrick Lussier, developed a rough, workprint version of the opening 13 minutes of the film to demonstrate how the completed film might turn out. After viewing the new footage, the studio was content to let Craven continue as director and Weinstein, having seen the mask in action, was satisfied that it could be scary after all. The retitled Scream held its premiere on December 18, 1996 at the AMC Avco theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, to high critical praise and a grossing nearly $100 million in the box office alone - quite an achievement since it was the Christmas period where seasonal and family films were more prevalent. When Scream's first weekend takings amounted to only $6 million, it was considered that this release date gamble had failed, but the following week, takings did not drop but increased and continued to increase in the following weeks! Film4 cited Craven's own Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and its cast of self-aware characters as inspiration for Scream, but declared that while New Nightmare was a "noble failure – pretty smart, but crucially not very scary" that Scream was "not merely clever...it is, from its breathtaking opening sequence (with Barrymore as the woman in peril) onwards, simply terrifying."

With the horror genre, and Craven, hot property again in Hollywood, Dimension Films quickly rushed into production the sequel Scream 2, with principal photography beginning a little more than six months after the release of Scream, with a release date set for December, 12th, 1997. Returning with Craven were main actors Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and Liev Schreiber (playing heroine Sidney Prescott, retired deputy sheriff Dewey Riley, ambitious news reporter Gale Weathers, film-geek Randy Meeks, and exonerated killer Cotton Weary respectively), joined by newcomers; Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant and Laurie Metcalf. Scream 2 was even bigger success than it's predecessor, which led Craven to film the final film in the trilogy, Scream 3 in 2000 (although original writer Kevin Williamson did not write the screenplay for Scream 3 as he directing his first feature film, Teaching Mrs. Tingle). In between the productions of Scream 2 and Scream 3, Craven directed an Academy Award nominated performance from Meryl Streep in his one film made outside the horror genre, Music of the Heart (1999).

As Dimension Films released a slew of horror films branded as "Wes Craven Presents" (including; Wishmaster (1997), Don't Look Down and Carnival of Souls (both in 1998), Dracula 2000 (2000), and They (2002)), it would not be until 2005 that Craven would release his next two pictures; the horror-comedy film Cursed, with Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg and Joshua Jackson, and Red Eye with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy for DreamWorks Pictures. It was during the production of Red Eye that Craven would marry his third, and final, wife Iya Labunka. After seeing the successful remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, Craven and his producing partner Marianne Maddalena decided to produce a remake to Craven's own The Hills Have Eyes, personally selecting Alexandre Aja after seeing his film, Haunte Tension. With successful release of 2006's The Hills Have Eyes, Craven, Maddalena, and Sean S Cunningham came together to produce the remake of The Last House on the Left, again, another hit at the box office.

Craven's next project, after a 5-year hiatus (not counting his filming a small segment for the French film Paris, je t'aime), was the supernatural horror film, My Soul to Take. Although it was shot on film, Rogue Pictures decided to take advantage of the growing popularity of 3D and converted the film in post production. Unfortunately the film received largely negative reviews from critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes consensus: "Dull, joyless, and formulaic, My Soul to Take suggests writer/director Wes Craven ended his five-year filmmaking hiatus too soon." The following year, Craven would return to form with what would be his final film, Scream 4. Reuniting Craven with writer Kevin Williamson, producer Bob Weinstein, and the returning cast of Campbell, Arquette, and Cox, Scream 4 was praised by most critics with Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, stating "It's a giddy reminder of everything that made Scream such a fresh scream in the first place," while Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Scream 4 finds a way to live up to its gory past while it carves out new terrors in new ways."

After an undetermined period of illness, the world was shocked when it was announced that Wes Craven had died of brain cancer, at the age of 76. But even as the world mourned the passing of a great filmmaker, many took the time to look over his life's work and access his legacy within the horror genre. After an incredible career, Craven would be forever remembered for creating some of the most iconic villian's in cinematic history, having launched the careers of many young stars - Johnny Depp, Sharon Stone, and Kristy Swanson, to name but a few - and forged lifelong friendships with such contemporaries as Sean S Cunningham and Robert Evans. Wes Craven will forever be missed, but will remain in the hearts of his millions of fans the world over, and will leave a filmography yet to be discovered by the next generations of horror fans to continue his memory well into the future.

Wesley Earl Craven

August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015

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