Remembering Wes Craven

Wes Craven was indirectly responsible for my introduction to horror. I was nine years old, and afraid of the idea of horror movies – but I had never actually seen one. A friend of mine suggested I watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, promising me it wasn’t scary; it was funny. I watched, it was, and my obsession with horror was born on that day.

Craven wasn’t directly involved with Elm Street 5, but without him, the Elm Street franchise wouldn’t exist. After viewing Dream Child, it was all over. My appetite for horror became voracious, and I started with the rest of the Elm Street franchise. The original A Nightmare on Elm Street remains one of my favorite movies of all time, and even as a pre-teen, I kept an eye out for Wes Craven’s name on a video box.

Craven’s film history spans over forty years, mostly in horror. In the late 1990s, Craven tried to break away from horror with Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep. He wanted a change of pace, but it wasn’t a fit, so he returned to horror, where he flourished. 

He was working right up to his death. He had written and was about to direct a segment of WGN’s upcoming Ten Commandments mini-series. A People Under the Stairs TV series was in the works, and he was a producer on MTV’s Scream series and the upcoming thriller The Girl in the Photographs. 

The loss of Wes Craven is a deep loss, not just for the horror community, but for the entertainment industry and film lovers. The Last House on the Left may not be for everyone, Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street are so deeply embedded in cinematic history that I defy you to find someone who hasn’t seen at least one of them.

In the gallery below, you can check out a selection of Wes Craven’s filmography.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

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