Wes Craven arrives at The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films AFM cocktail party held at Hotel Shangri-La on November 7, 2010 in Santa Monica, CaliforniaMichael Tran—FilmMagic/Getty Images
Wes Craven’s name was synonymous with horror. Like Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg, he was a director whose name could be used as a prefix to signify authenticity—if you knew it was Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, you knew it was going to be terrifying. And it usually was.
But Craven, who died on Sunday at age 76, didn’t rest on his reputation as a creator of chills and jumpscares. Until the Scream franchise he made sequels only sparingly, directing only the original Nightmare on Elm Street and then a postmodern reboot that was less a sequel than a movie about the power of that first movie.
Throughout his career he repeatedly took the genre to new and unpredictable places. Here, three horror subgenres the “master of horror” helped reinvent:
The exploitation pic
Craven’s The Last House on the Left was a scuzzy, low-budget revenge pic that one-upped the Roger Corman-style exploitation picture to show the horrendous rape and murder of two teenage girls by a gang of thugs, who are then violently killed by one of the victim’s parents. Less outright horror than a “terror movie” with highbrow origins — Craven named Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring as an influence — its box office success inspired an entire subgenre of grisly revenge pics, from the outright knockoff Last House on Dead End Street to even scuzzier movies like I Spit on Your Grave. Without The Last House on the Left, there would be no Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which likewise advertised itself, falsely, as being based on a true story) and, in all likelihood, no ’00s torture porn like Hostel or Saw.
The monster movie
Craven did make traditional, woman-in-peril monster movies, such as Swamp Thing, but his most infamous monster—and the character for which he will forever be remembered—is Freddy Krueger, the demonic murderer with razorblade gloves who kills kids in their dreams. Before the Nightmare on Elm Street antagonist became a symbol of horror comedy thanks to inferior sequels and Simpsons parodies, he was an archetype of a particular kind of monster, something that had once been a man but had become a living personification of a nightmare. Freddy as a character was so powerful that he spawned an entire library of films, which gave him a mythology that Craven later subverted with New Nightmare.
The slasher pic
Craven resurrected the ’70s slasher movie with Scream, the 1996 hit that punctured (sometimes literally) the then-wearying end-of-millennium irony of Generation X. Baldly self-aware, down to the defined “rules” that govern the slasher movie the characters themselves are starring in, the movie was also terrifying, not least due to the nihilism of its dual murderers. Scream was followed by a host of imitators and some less impressive sequels, but perhaps its keenest influence was its subversion of the “final girl” trope—the lone woman, usually a virgin, who manages to escape the killer’s clutches. Sidney Prescott ended up an empowered heroine even after losing her virginity, not just taking revenge on the killers but saving the lives of her male friends.
The Most Controversial Films of All Time
The Interview, 2014 The James Franco-Seth Rogen movie hadn’t even been released when it made its greatest impact. The Interview, about two Americans on a mission to kill Kim Jong-un, has sparked conversations about the tastefulness -- or not -- of depicting the killing of a foreign head of state. But it also is widely seen as having sparked the Sony hacking scandal, as the hackers, known as the Guardians of Peace, have urged Sony not to release the film. The ripple effect of the email hack saw off-color remarks about Angelina Jolie, Aaron Sorkin, and President Obama between Sony executives go public.ColumbiaBirth of a Nation, 1915 Birth of a Nation is held in high esteem as one of the most ambitious and innovative early films. It has also, in the near-century since its release, been derided for its use of blackface to depict black men as sexually rapacious and its characterization of the KKK as heroes. Is it possible to admire a film’s technical excellence while acknowledging that its content is deeply offensive? Many film scholars, who point to Birth of a Nation as part of the foundation of modern film, believe so.Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe Great Dictator, 1940 Charlie Chaplin’s lampooning of Hitler came before the U.S. was necessarily ready to hear it -- the country hadn’t yet entered World War II yet. The Great Dictator was controversial both for its advancement of anti-Hitler rhetoric and, at the same time, its turning Hitler into a figure of comedy.
United Artists/Getty ImagesThe Lost Weekend, 1945 Billy Wilder’s frank depiction of alcoholism, anchored with a tragic performance from Ray Milland, was startling for its time. Though it won several Oscars and the Palme d’Or, it had been, before its release, far from a sure thing. The success of The Lost Weekend allowed for fuller depictions of social issues on film, even though it could be uncomfortable.Paramount/Getty ImagesLolita, 1962 This film was perhaps the first of director Stanley Kubrick’s to directly court controversy; the poster famously asked “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” and the question was very much worth asking. Lolita, the novel, is a strange and surreal look at an older man’s obsession with “nymphets,” or young girls; the film manages to carry across the same subject matter, though Lolita herself was aged up to avoid outright banning.MGM/Getty ImagesBonnie and Clyde, 1967 Arthur Penn’s depiction of the short, glamorous lives of two bank robbers kicked off the New Hollywood era and scandalized audiences with its over-the-top violence. Bonnie and Clyde made its subjects look like, well, movie stars -- and then killed them in a brutal, seemingly endless hail of gunfire.
Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesA Clockwork Orange, 1971 Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian drama features shocking sex and violence, to the degree that the film was restricted within the U.K. for decades. Its central notion, of behavioral therapy as a force for evil, has also provoked debate since the film’s release.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesKramer vs. Kramer, 1979 This domestic drama, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as a couple whose marriage ends, was upfront about the challenges of raising children and the degree to which married life could be fundamentally unsatisfying.Columbia/Getty ImagesBasic Instinct, 1992 This film made Sharon Stone, for a brief time, one of the most compelling movie stars on Earth. Her role as the voracious novelist and serial killer Catherine Tramell outraged gay audiences who viewed her as a homophobic stereotype, and spooked some men who were unaccustomed to Stone’s forthright sexuality. Either way, no one could stop talking about Catherine, or about Stone.TriStar/Getty ImagesEyes Wide Shut, 1999 Stanley Kubrick’s final film was perfectly in keeping with his careerlong interest in provocation. Eyes Wide Shut depicts a seamy New York underworld in which just about everyone is looking for sex, power, or both. Though the film’s graphic sexuality (including a scene at an orgy) was shocking, it was its depiction of the act of love as a transaction that really unsettled audiences.Warner Brothers/Getty ImagesRequiem for a Dream, 2000 Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough film, based on the work of Hubert Selby, Jr., was unabashed in its depiction of drugs’ effects. Each of the four principal characters suffers, brutally, for his or her addiction, culminating in one character’s psychotic break, another’s amputated arm, and a third’s descent into prostitution. The film’s miserabilist outlook, graphic sex, and body-horror imagery are as effective an antidrug campaign as exists.
Artisan EntertainmentFahrenheit 9/11, 2004 The 2004 presidential election was ugly to an unprecedented degree, with attacks on John Kerry’s service from the right’s Swift Boat Veterans for truth and this documentary-length Molotov cocktail tossed at George W. Bush from director Michael Moore. Moore, who’d previously been booed at the 2003 Oscars for an anti-Bush speech, mixed together insinuations about voter fraud in Florida and ties between the Bush and bin Laden families into an antiwar statement. In its sheer provocation and palpable anger, it was the perfect film for its polarized time; the fact that it was received very differently by audiences of different political persuasions seemed somehow apt.LionsgateThe Passion of the Christ, 2004 This film, depicting the torture and eventual death of Jesus, was one of the biggest hits of all time. But it hadn’t necessarily had a clear path to acclaim; pre-release, the film was pilloried for perceived anti-Semitism. As audiences flocked over the weeks preceding Easter, some criticized director Mel Gibson for an excessively violent and sadistic vision of Jesus’s death.NewmarketBorat, 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen’s depiction of a Kazakh immigrant interacting with real people stateside showed America in a terrible light; it was hilarious, painful viewing. But for months after the film’s release, questions over just how fair Borat had been to its participants persisted. And Baron Cohen’s career continued to push boundaries of taste, with subsequent movies lampooning gay men (Bruno) and Sub-Saharan African heads of state (The Dictator).20th Century Fox
