Key Directors- Wes Craven

Wes Craven is perhaps the most iconic horror director the world has ever known. Born Wesley Earl Craven in Cleveland, Ohio on August 2 1939 to a strictly Baptist upbringing, Craven got an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College, Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Despite promise for an academic teaching career, he left it all to pursue film making. His first taste of directing came with jobs as an X-Rated Porn director, which surprisingly helped him develop his unique directing abilities. In 1972 Craven directed his first feature film, The Last House on the Left. This film was famed for its exploitive nature and sadistic portrayal of violence and sex, so much so that in 1974 the BBFC refused a certificate for cinema release, in much the same way the infamous Human Centipede film was banned recently. Surprisingly the film garnered positive critical acclaim from reviewers, even so English film critic Mark Kermode has been quoted as saying, despite the film is “horrible, grim and nasty” that it does stand as a "very, very important work in the evolution of American horror cinema". It garnered a cult following shortly after its release and cemented Wes Cravens name in the new wave of daring and exploitive horror films made at that time.

After a few more Horrors, all of which didn’t get the same recognition as Last House on the Left did, Craven created one of the most enduring pieces of horror cinema and one of the most iconic characters of all time; A Nightmare on Elm Street and the dream altering villain Freddy Krueger. This revolutionized the original slashers from the 1970’s, but stooped them in dark humour and science fiction. The film was well received by critics and the public, and is still one of the most enduring Horror films of all time, with Krueger becoming one of the most recognizable villains. This film spawned a string of sequels, only one of which had Cravens involvement; Wes Cravens New Nightmare, which had the actors from the original film being haunted by Freddy. More recently Freddy has been pitched against similar villain from the Friday the 13th series Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason, and the original was remade without Cravens involvement in 2010. Freddy’s image is now highly marketable, with outfits and memorabilia sold, particularly around Halloween.

Definitely one of Cravens biggest films will be his 1997 hit Scream. The self-deprecating humour within the film, which parodies the genre that Craven himself helped to create, was revolutionary. There is a knowing usage of conventional settings and characters and that the murderer kills using horror clichés and bases his murders on whether or not they can answer horror trivia questions. This revolutionized the slasher genre, which had become more and more of a joke from the late 80’s. This also marks one of the last iconic slasher villains with Ghostface.

Some of the stylistic features of Cravens film include a strong female lead (Such as Sidney from The Scream films) and protagonists are often ordinary people who have been dragged into horrific and extraordinary circumstances, occasionally an unglamorous depictions of graphic violence, a deformed villain and usually deal with strong social issues. Cravens lasting legacy on the Horror genre is apparent in most modern Horrors and his films will go down as pinnacle moments in Horror History.