At a glance
| Born | August 2, 1939, Cleveland, Ohio |
| Died | August 30, 2015, Los Angeles |
| Known for | A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes |
| Role | Director, screenwriter, producer |
Overview
Wes Craven made two of the films that defined American horror after Psycho. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) put the killer in dreams and gave him a name, Freddy Krueger. Scream (1996) made a slasher about people who had already seen slashers. Between them he directed The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors only as a writer and producer, not as director. He died of brain cancer in 2015.
He taught college before he made films. The academic background shows up in the later work as jokes about genre rules, not as lectures. Scream is the film where that habit paid off. New Nightmare (1994) tried the same idea earlier, with Freddy crossing into the real world of the actress who played Nancy, and most audiences were not ready for it.
Career
Last House on the Left is a revenge film borrowed from Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, shot ugly on purpose. Hills Have Eyes stranded a family in the desert against another family that hunted them. Both films are cruel in a way Elm Street is not. Swamp Thing (1982) was a comic-book job. Nightmare on Elm Street was the hit: teenagers who die when they sleep, a burned janitor with a glove of blades, and Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson.
He did not direct the first batch of Freddy sequels. Dream Warriors (1987), which he co-wrote, is the one fans treat as the real follow-up. New Nightmare is his return to the character, and it is the film that predicts Scream. Scream, written by Kevin Williamson, opened in December 1996 and restarted the slasher cycle. Craven directed all four of the original Scream films. He did not direct the 2022 revival or the later legacy entries.
Other films include The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The People Under the Stairs (1991), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), and Red Eye (2005). Music of the Heart (1999) is the non-horror outlier, with Meryl Streep. The career is usually reduced to two titles. The other films explain why those two titles feel different from each other: one is a nightmare, the other is a movie about movies.
Notable credits
- The Last House on the Left (1972) — director, writer
- The Hills Have Eyes (1977) — director, writer
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) — director, writer
- Dream Warriors (1987) — co-writer, executive producer
- Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) — director, writer
- Scream (1996), Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4 — director
Trivia
- Freddy’s sweater and hat were Craven’s choices. Robert Englund built the performance on top of them.
- The glove was made by a special-effects crew from Craven’s sketch. The original prop is in a private collection.
- He has a cameo as a janitor in Scream and as himself in New Nightmare.
- Scream’s opening, with Drew Barrymore, was shot to trick audiences who expected her to survive.
- He died on August 30, 2015. Scream (2022) is dedicated to him.
- He did not direct Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Chuck Russell did. Craven wrote it with Bruce Wagner.