R.I.P. Wes Craven

Writer-producer-director Wes Craven died Sunday at the age of 76.

It is late here on the East Coast, and I am in shock. It is about 11:15 p.m. as I write this, and I just learned of the death of Wes Craven. The horror master behind such great films as A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and Scream was 76. According to a release from his family, he died of complications related to brain cancer.

It does little justice to Craven to list his credits, though the films he worked on are nearly all exemplary of his particular genius. He was more than his films. He was the influence and impact his films had on a generation of filmmakers such as Sam Raimi, Frank Darabont, and Eli Roth, among many others. He was an absolute legend, and though his last film was 2011’s underrated Scream 4, his impact is felt still in a million places.

Craven on the set of Scream.

On a personal level, Craven’s work was formative for me. As a child who grew up watching way too many horror movies for my age, I loved Craven’s films above all others. I have vivid memories of being 9 years old and sitting in the den of a friend’s house, watching a taped copy of the Scream director’s cut. It was recorded off HBO onto a VHS I only replaced with a DVD last year. I was the Ghostface Killer for Halloween three years in a row. The first time I saw a movie on opening night was the release of Scream 3, and I took a first date to see Scream 4.

None of that, however, compares to my relationship to A Nightmare on Elm Street. To this day, I will argue Freddy Krueger is the perfect horror villain, a creation entirely of Craven’s own making. If one can have scars in a good way, the Nightmare films left them on me. My grandparents were convinced enough of my maturity when I was a child to let me rent the Nightmare on Elm Street films and watch them in the living room during the summer days at their house while my dad was at work.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

I remember my grandmother taking me to the library, and I checked out a Freddy Krueger novella and a behind-the-scenes, making-of Nightmare on Elm Street book. I was convinced I could copy the formula for fake movie blood and tried, though I do not know now, nor was I probably certain then, just what I planned on using it for. All I knew was the Nightmare on Elm Street people used it, so I wanted to use it. I still cite that book as one of the reasons I have always wanted to be a filmmaker.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, well, there are your good scars. I was maybe 9 or 10. I was up late in an unfamiliar home and could not sleep, so I stayed up, pulled a VHS copy of New Nightmare off the shelf, and watched it all night. One of the clearest movie-related memories of my childhood is the babysitter in New Nightmare being dragged across the ceiling of a hospital room. I was not afraid, just quietly in awe. That image has stayed with me, and I hope it stays with me forever – a good scar.

Maybe I am rambling now. It is hard to put your thoughts together in times like these. The movie world is a worse place without Wes Craven in it, but we are all better for having had him in our world. I feel sorrow for his family, his friends, and anyone who knew him. And I feel shock. Be well friends.

31 Days of Horror: Scream

You can run, and you can hide, but if you break the rules, you probably will not escape in Scream.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 16: Scream (1996) 

As I said in the introduction to this month of the macabre (linked above), the best way to watch most of these movies is on VHS. The now-outdated technology has a delightful graininess to it that cannot be replicated on DVD. Something about a roll of tape moving reel to reel gives it a physical essence, and though I have not had to “be kind and rewind” in years, I think we lose an element of our past every time we leap forward in technology.

Maybe that is a discussion for another day, but I bring it up here for two reasons. First, Scream is absolutely obsessed with the past, which we will get into in a minute. Second, my introduction to this movie was on VHS, and that will always be an integral part of my memory.

Back in the bad old days of home cable, HBO was a bit of a rarity. Not everyone had it, and you could not just share your HBOGO password with your friends. On Demand did not exist as we now know it. You could call and order Pay-Per View, or you waited for what you wanted to see to come around in the rotation. DVR was not around, so you went to the store and bought a blank tape. Our friend, Tom, used to record tons of movies this way.

The director’s cut of Scream – with added gore and, therefore, added value – was the second half of one such tape. The first half was the Clint Eastwood movie Absolute Power. Because rewinding a tape is an inexact science, I have seen the ending of Absolute Power a number of times, but I have seen Scream dozens of times. I watched it over and over and can still recite much of it. I was the Ghost Face killer for Halloween three years in a row. All of this is to say: I like Scream.

Writer Kevin Williamson (creator of Dawson’s Creek) penned the right script at the right time, and old horror master Wes Craven was the right director for the material. This is a Generation X horror movie through and through – ironic, self-referential, too cool to care, and obsessed with a preference for the past over the present. It should be terribly annoying. Instead, it is riveting and entertaining in equal measure.

It asks more of its audience than any of the similarly minded late ’90s horror-thrillers that followed (the Williamson-penned I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legends, Final Destination, etc.). Scream is enjoyable as a masked-madman movie, but if you are on its wavelength, the rewards are endless. From the moment the killer asks the now-immortal question, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” we are aware that we are in for a horror fan’s horror film. After all, how often do we get to watch characters who watch movies?

Even as they mock the characters of horror movies past, they gleefully engage in many of the behaviors they chastise. The characters go so far as to list the rules they need to follow in order to survive, then openly flout those rules, only to be swiftly and brutally punished. It is a belief system that reflects the MTV generation this movie targets (Scream actually won Best Film at the MTV Movie Awards): We now the rules. Damn the rules. If there are consequences, well, fair enough.

The who’s who ensemble of actors, led by Neve Campbell but which includes Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, and Drew Barrymore, is a perfect assemblage of talent for this story, and all walk the thin line of playing self-aware material straight. It is a glorious high-wire act under the sure, guiding of Craven, and it never falters.

Tomorrow, the most recent entry we will discuss plays around with horror tropes in the interests of laughs and gore.

31 Days of Horror: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Freddy's coming for you in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 15: A Nightmare on Elm Street

One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, better stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again.

You will have to take my word for this, but I can still recite that poem from memory. I probably will be able to do that for the rest of my life. Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was formative for me. I was interested in horror and the macabre from a young age, but the Nightmare movies and Freddy Krueger blew the door wide open. This was my introduction to real horror, and for that reason, it will always have a special place in my heart.

A lot of horror filmmakers rightly believe the scariest villains are the faceless ciphers who lack even basic tenets of humanity, à la Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers from the previously discussed Friday the 13th and Halloween films, respectively. In many instances, they are right. But I will say that in childhood, I had nightmares about just three characters: the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt, embarrassingly the Chuckie doll from Child’s Play, and Freddy Krueger.

What the three villains who haunted my dreams have in common is personality, and for personality, Robert Englund’s performance as Freddy Krueger has no equals. Englund plays Freddy Krueger with the kind of smirking insolence usually reserved for the hero of the story, and for a lot of fans, he is the hero of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. In film after film, people tune in to see the villain chew the scenery, kill teenagers in inventive ways, and finally let his hubris get to him so he can be killed, only to be brought back to life in the next sequel.

We can be honest here. Most of the sequels leave something to be desired, and the overall mythology behind Freddy Krueger gets pretty muddled, but there is always Englund, and there is always Craven’s first film – the director having had nothing to do with the sequels until the masterful Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

The genius of a stalker who kills people in their dreams cannot be overstated. If we look at real-world solutions to horror-movie problems, they have some basis in logic. If you are haunted, you can move; if you are hunted by a giant shark, stay out of the water; and so on. But despite the poem, never sleeping again is not a viable option. Coffee, pills, noise, light, whatever usually keeps you awake will only work for so long. At some point, your eyes will close, and you will be forced to confront the demon in your dreams.

Freddy Krueger is that demon, and the delight he takes in confronting his victims may be the scariest aspect of his reign of terror. He has grudge against the parents of Elm Street. Their vigilante justice took his life but gave him the power to live forever in the dreams of their children. He promised the town it would never be safe, and try as it might, it seems it never will be.

Tomorrow, we let Wes Craven take us into the modern age of self-referential meta-horror.