Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 5,723
|
Horror director Wes Craven dies at 76.
Quote:
Wes Craven, the famed writer-director known for the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, died Sunday after a battle with brain cancer. He was 76.
His Freddy Krueger character horrified viewers and became an iconic horror character. He is credited with re-inventing the teen horror movie.
A blend of horror and morbid humor, the “Nightmare” movies were a box-office phenomenon. He claimed to have gotten the idea for Elm Street when living next to a cemetery on Elm Street when growing up in the Midwest.
Similarly, Craven's Scream series was a box-office sensation. In those scare-'em-ups, he spoofed the teen horror genre: Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3 with Scream 4 set for 2010. The Scream movies frequently referenced other horror movies.
Similarly, in 1994 Craven even referenced his own Nightmare players - Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon - who played themselves in Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
There were eight (count at time of death) Nightmare on Elm Street films, including a cross-over Freddy vs. Jason. Although he was considered the “auteur” of the series by the horror crowd, Craven only directed two: A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
In 1989, Craven switched gears by producing a TV sitcom centered on a cartoonist whose characters would spring to life.Craven departed from horror intermittently: In 1999, he directed Meryl Streep in The Music of the Heart, an inspirational drama about a teacher in Spanish Harlem. He directed a suspense thriller Red Eye, amid his Scream eruptions.
He began his horror career in 1972 with Last House on the Left, a rape-revenge movie that appalled some viewers while generating big box-office. His early shockers in the late 1970s and early '80s included: The Hills Have Eyes, Summer of Fear, The Evolution of Snuff, Deadly Blessing and Swamp Thing, his biggest budget film up to that point.
During the '80s, he also directed some of the revival episodes of Twilight Zone.Wesley Earl Craven was born on Aug. 2 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio. Raised in a strict Baptist household, Craven graduated from Wheaton College in English and psychology and earned a masters degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins.
He briefly taught English at Westminster College. He was also a humanities professor at Clarkson College where he was a disc jockey for the campus radio station.
More at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...ro-dies-818806
|
I can't believe this. It doesn't feel real. May you rest in peace Wes Craven.  He was one of my inspirations and such an amazing filmmaker.
|
|
|
|
