Wes Craven, Horror Maestro, Dies at 76 | Hacker News Reader

Wes Craven, Horror Maestro, Dies at 76

hollywoodreporter.com

76 points_JamesA_4 comments

As a huge fan of his work I'm sad we don't get to see another reinvention of horror akin to what he did with scream.

Craven sort of puttered in the first 20 years of his career - first a professor, then a porn director (why not), then with a couple of smaller hits (last house on the left).

prior to Scream his big moment was clearly nightmare on elmstreet - he was 45 when it came out.

And I think the HN crowd that's gone through fundraising can relate to how this risky director with a big, crazy idea had to work to put it together:

"the film's original investors backed out at one point or another during pre-production. The original budget was merely $700,000. "It ended up at $1.1 million ... Half the funding came from a Yugoslavian guy who had a girlfriend he wanted in movies."[1]

How cool, will miss this guy who clearly brought the hustle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street

Craven was certainly a giant in horror, but Scream was an amazing script and Kevin Williamson doesn't get the kudos he deserves in reimagining that genre with that script.

Wes Craven was a master of horror and a brilliant director. Nightmare on elmstreet is definitly among the most frightning horror film ever seen and ranks at the same spot than Halloween in the movies that made horror matter as an artistic form. he was an author and an artist from the brilliant "the last house on the left" till the end of his carreer.

I remember being a little bit obsessed with the "Nightmare" movies as a kid (like maybe around age 11-12). I think part of it was that those gory, R-rated movies were "forbidden" as they were meant for older kids and my dad didn't like me watching them. But a big part of it was the mix of dark humor and some of the more genuinely frightening concepts I'd ever seen in a monster movie at the time.

Admittedly my experience with the genre was limited at that age but up until then, I just thought of horror movies as the stereotypical "stalking monster" type thing. Monster is out there somewhere. Protagonist has to escape the monster and hopefully learn how to kill it or at least stop it.

The thing that always got to me about those early viewings of the Nightmare movies was that the protagonists were teenagers (often troubled ones) so there was the element of "the grownups will never believe me". As a kid you're familiar with the disconnect between children and adults so that's already a source of anxiety that the movies tap into.

The other part was that you couldn't escape the Big Bad by hiding in your house or even in a fortress. Freddy came after you in your dreams and sleep is something you just can't avoid. So many times the hero would think they were safe only to see something weird happen and realize that they were still trapped in a dream. It was that sort of surreal, almost Lovecraftian idea of the sinister, evil reality that exists alongside this one which legitimately scared the crap out of me as a kid. I'm pretty sure that when I first watched those movies, I wondered if I'd have the courage to fight a "Freddy" or whether I would just commit suicide rather than live in a world with no certain realities where I was forever in fear of my life and sanity.

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