Wes Craven: The Master Of Scream

At the end of the latest instalment in the Scream franchise, the screen pauses for a tribute to the man who started it all, Wes Craven. A master of the horror genre, Craven directed the first four Scream films, kick-started the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and rode the new wave of horror that terrified the ‘70s with his shocking debut The Last House On The Left (1972). His mid-western suburban upbringing was shattered, as many lives were, by the horrors of the Vietnam War. And like his contemporaries including Tobe Hooper (1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and George A. Romero (1968’s Night Of The Living Dead), their rage bled onto the screen.

Watching the nihilistic lo-fi horrors of The Last House on the Left (1972), it’s hard to connect the angry young filmmaker of yore with the slick franchise machine that introduced the world to Ghost Face in Scream (1996). Craven’s debut feature is a brutal scream of a movie. It’s an unremittingly grim and squalid wallow in the depths of human cruelty, and a debut feature that introduced Craven as a fierce advocate of the horror genre. David Hess, who also sung on and composed the film’s score, plays Krug, a sickening on-the-run sociopath who, along with his younger brother Junior (Marc Sheffler), Sadie (Jeramie Rain) and Weasel (Fred J. Lincoln), brutalise and murder two young teenage girls. Channelling Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1970), Craven has the tables well and truly turned when Krug and his cronies trick their way into the family home of one of the girls, but her parents discover the truth, and then wreak their bloody revenge. By the end of the harrowing experience, no one is left unscarred.

Michael Berryman in The Hills Have Eyes.

The film’s revolutionary promo campaign, “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it’s only a movie …only a movie …only a movie” saw it become a mainstay on the drive-in and midnight movie circuits. The cult classic The Hills Have Eyes (1977) followed, and saw Craven heading out into the arid Southwest Californian desert for a survivalist shocker about a family of parakeet chomping, baby-stealing cannibalistic mountain folk on the trail of a family of stranded vacationers. Starring Dee Wallace (E.T, Cujo) and Weird Science mutant Michael Berryman, The Hill Have Eyes was less defiantly antagonistic than Craven’s debut, which was often brandished by politicians and tabloids alike during the British Video Nasty scare of the 1980s. It still achieved notoriety, however, for its baby-in-peril storyline as the cannibals steal the youngest and “juiciest” member of the vacationing family.

A mix of television movies – Summer Of Fear (1978), Invitation To Hell (1984) – and box office flops followed. Craven’s occult horror flick Deadly Blessing (1981) saw Ernest Borgnine get nominated for a Razzie, and his adaptation of DC Comic’s Swamp Thing (1982) was an ill-judged wasted opportunity, turning the dark adventures of the swampy plant monster into a camp kids’ adventure flick… decidedly lacking in adventure.

Wes Craven with the young cast of A Nightmare On Elm Street.

It was 1984’s A Nightmare On Elm Street that finally brought Craven screaming into the mainstream and introduced the world to Johnny Depp in the process. The film introduced the world to Freddy Krueger, “the bastard son of 100 maniacs”, a somnolent serial killer with a handful of razor blades, a ratty fedora and a penchant for green and red striped jumpers who visits victims in their sleep and turns their dreams into living nightmares. Audacious and terrifying in equal measure, the film starred Heather Langenkamp as kick-ass teen heroine Nancy, and Robert Englund as the killer.

The surreal set pieces in which Freddy plays within the dreamscapes of his victims’ minds are brilliantly conceived. From tongue-wagging telephones and stairs that turn to sticky marshmallows to bodies being swallowed by killer beds and bloody body bags slivering down school corridors, Craven’s imaginative shocker broke new ground while Freddy broke bodies and gave the horror genre a new poster boy.

Wes Craven in A New Nightmare.

The film was a huge success, and saved backers New Line Cinema from bankruptcy, with the studio later nicknamed “The House that Freddy Built.” A Nightmare On Elm Street spawned six sequels, a television series, one much-maligned remake, and a franchise fusion that saw Freddy take on that other ‘80s slasher stalwart Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs Jason (2003). The only sequel directed by Craven, the murderously meta New Nightmare (1994), saw life imitate art as Langenkamp, Englund and Craven, along with John Saxon and New Line head honcho Robert Shaye, play stylised versions of themselves. They find themselves battling the fictional character of Krueger who, awakened by Craven’s dreams, has entered the real world and is haunting the cast and crew of the original classic as they plan to make the “ultimate” Freddy film.

Post A Nightmare On Elm Street, Craven’s career has been a rollercoaster of bloody highs and lacklustre lows. He dealt with censorship issues with the flawed Deadly Friend (1986), got his voodoo on with The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988), and suffered critical indignities aimed at the Eddie Murphy-starring bloodsucking fiasco Vampire In Brooklyn (1995).

Skeet Ulrich and Neve Campbell in Scream.

In 1996, Scream was a game-changer that resurrected a moribund genre. A witty wink for the horror aficionados still pining for the day when slasher movies were king, the film, written by Kevin Williamson, referenced Halloween, Friday The 13th and the director’s own horror franchise, and the obsessive fandom that those slashers created. From that iconic opening when Drew Barrymore picks up the phone and is asked, “Do you like scary movies?” to the ghost face mask that the killer dons while stabbing his way through all-too-knowing movie fans, Scream was not just a box office smash, it was a phenomenon that injected fun to dilute the ultra-violence on display.

The film’s main cast of Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette appeared in the three subsequent sequels directed by Craven, and are now treated like horror royalty in directing team Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett re-quel Scream. It’s bloody clever, throat-slashingly violent, and a fitting tribute to one of the genre’s finest.

SCREAM 5 – New to buy or rent on Digital.