One of the most iconic directors of the horror genre lost his battle with brain cancer on August 30th. Peers, friends, co-workers, and fans have come together to mourn the loss of Wes Craven, director most well know for the Scream franchise and A Nightmare on Elm Street. If there was one director who had more of an influence on me in my young teenage years, it was Wes Craven. I found no greater reward than watching the entire Elm Street series culminate with New Nightmare; an incredibly creative and aware kind of film that trusted its audience and led them into a surreal introspection of Hollywood’s manufactured effect on horror films. This was very new and unique to me at the time and has continued to effect how I see and write horror. Today we see Scream as the essential deconstruction of the horror genre, but it’s always been amazing to me that Craven was able to crack the meta-ness in two very different ways. There are so many different pieces of Elm Street memorabilia sitting in my apartment right now, all of them brandishing proudly brandishing Craven’s name, and I am so sad to know that there will never be anything else made by him. His range in the horror genre will be talked about for years, for the violence, the suspense, the thrills, and the scares. I personally favor the more horror-fantasy ones, like the underrated Serpent and the Rainbow.

So today, in lieu of another obituary, I’m going to link to several pieces I’ve read recently and over the years relating to the great horror director himself (ala Dissolve On). There are so many people who have been inspired by the man’s work that have expressed themselves, that this should be considered as a forum for the late director so we can all share our thoughts on the man.

Devin Faraci of Birth.Movies.Death, writes for Craven’s obituary:

Personally he was one of the nicest guys I have ever met; the anger and darkness he felt coming out of his religious upbringing and that informed his first two masterpieces were long gone by the time young me met him at horror cons and signings, and definitely very, very gone by the time professional me met him again at all sorts of events.

Plus a very recent edition of (Brian Collins) Collins’ Crypt where he discusses the recent re-release of The People Under the Stairs on Blu-Ray.

1991’s People Under The Stairs, however, contains not one supernatural element of any kind. The plot is as relatable as they come – our hero is Fool, a kid who is facing eviction from their ghetto apartment and the likely death of his mother since they can’t afford the cancer treatments. Desperate, he agrees to help a shady acquaintance named Leroy (Ving Rhames) rob their landlords, who are said to have gold and other riches in their big suburban home. But soon after breaking in, they realize these are no mere slumlords, and getting back out won’t be as easy as getting in. So it takes on some basic traits of a haunted house movie, but there’s nary a ghost to be found – they’re trapped by standard booby traps (a Craven staple whether the movie takes place in reality or not), a very loyal guard dog, and of course, the owners, a brother-sister pair of nutjobs played by Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, then fresh from Twin Peaks.

Todd VanDerWerff of Vox cites what he thinks are the five essential Craven films (which I totally agree with!):

But looking at Scream now, it’s easy to see why the film took off so readily. For one thing,Kevin Williamson’s script is devilishly fun, and its central big idea — that the characters inside of this slasher movie know the rules of slasher movies — was a truly original one when the film debuted. Yes, many of the trends it kicked off very quickly grew tiring, but Craven keeps the tension ratcheted up as tightly as possible, beautifully blending horror movies with a straightforward mystery, where the killer could be anyone.

Clark Collis interviews Craven for Entertainment Weekly in a resurfaced 2007 interview:

Craven: I think I wrote the first draft of Nightmare on Elm Street in ’79. No one wanted to buy it. Nobody. I felt very strongly about it, so I stayed with it and kept paying my assistant and everything. At a certain point I was literally flat broke. I had to borrow five grand from Sean Cunningham [producer of Craven’s 1972 film The Last House on the Left and, later, director of Friday the 13th] to pay my taxes for that year. So I was five thousand in debt and had no job and I’m broke. I was close to the point where I was going, That’s it, my career’s over. So The Hills Have Eyes Part II literally got me out of debt and back directing again. 

Jim Hemphil of Filmmakers Magazine reposted a 2014 October interview with the director in honor of the 30th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Craven: By and large it was just a scramble, but the cast was great and we were getting all these amazing sequences. Robert Englund was just blowing everybody’s doors off, and the makeup turned out to be spectacular. I knew I had all the dramatic bases covered, because I had very carefully worked out the rules of how to beat Freddy and how he could kill you, and I felt like the audience would get it. It was wild but that would be part of the entertainment. There were the usual problems, where you run low on money and people are always saying cut this scene or cut that scene and everything else. But with the exception of the end scene, which I’ve talked about enough [Shaye imposed an unmotivated final scare on the film], by and large the movie really felt like something.

Lest we forget our beloved The Dissolve‘s own celebration of Nightmare‘s 30th anniversary, with their week long analysis of the film for their “Movie of the Week”. Starting here with the Keynote by Matt Singer.

Many filmmakers have explored the connection between movies and dreams. Federico Fellini famously said that “the cinema uses the language of dreams.” But few directors have ever made movies using the language of bad dreams more effectively than Wes Craven. Throughout A Nightmare On Elm Street, the characters slip between reality and dreams, and the scariest part about their journeys between the two is how indistinguishable one is from the other. They should be safe as long as they stay awake—but what if they’re already asleep and don’t even realize it?

If you’re in need of comedic comfort, I’ll also add in here two of my favorite online reviewers, The Cinema Snob and Phelous and their various reviews of Wes Craven’s films: The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Deadly Friend.

And there are dozens of interviews with the director on YouTube plus in the documentary Never Sleep Again, and on the commentaries of his films (I like the original Elm Street commentary where he’s joined with Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon). However we’ll close out here with an extensive interview Craven did with Fangoria in their Screamography series.

And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take. 

RIP.