Wes Craven, one of the greatest horror directors of all time, a man who directed classics in almost every decade of his professional life,passed away yesterday, August 30, of brain cancer in Los Angeles. Last October, Craven spoke toFilmmaker‘s Jim Hemphill about perhaps his most celebrated creation, A Nightmare on Elm Street. As a way of remembering Craven, we are reposting it today.
On November 9, 1984, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Streetopened in American theaters and changed the movie industry forever. Serving as a bridge between the primal ferocity of Craven’s earlier work (Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes) and the visually expressive professionalism of his later films (The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Red Eye), Elm Street also introduced one of the most iconic horror movie villains of all time and put New Line Cinema on the map. A make-or-break production for New Line and its founder, Bob Shaye, A Nightmare on Elm Street established a new franchise for the company and enabled an expansion that would lead to decades of important films – it’s entirely possible that without Craven’s classic there would be no Boogie Nights, no My Own Private Idaho, and of course no Lord of the Rings trilogy. The film also breathed new life into the stagnant teen horror genre, fusing the art house surrealism of Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolfand Bunuel’s dream films with the conventions of 80s body count movies to set the standard for years to come – until Craven himself reinvented the genre with Scream. On the eve of the picture’s 30th anniversary, Craven reflects on the creation of a horror masterpiece. MORE...
