RIP: Wes Craven (1939–2015)

The master of horror succumbed to brain cancer yesterday in Los Angeles.
Film + TV
RIP: Wes Craven (1939–2015)

The master of horror succumbed to brain cancer yesterday in Los Angeles.

Words: FLOOD Staff

photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

August 31, 2015

HOLLYWOOD, CA – APRIL 11: Director Wes Craven arrives at the premiere of the Weinstein Company’s “Scream 4” Presented by AXE Shower at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on April 11, 2011 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Wes Craven, who helped to create the modern horror film with 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and subverted the same genre twelve years later with Scream, has passed away in Los Angeles from brain cancer. He was seventy-six.

Craven got his start directing and writing pornography, but quickly graduated to feature-length horror films with Last House on the Left in 1972. While he made his name as a master of the genre film, Craven would in later years try his hand at broader pictures: he directed a segment of 2006’s Paris, je t’aime and his 1999 film Music of the Heart depicted the creation of the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music.

His legacy, though, remains with horror, and with the characters he created. A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Kreuger, played by Robert Englund, is one of the twentieth century’s most memorable and frightening creations, made more horrifying by his singularity. Ghostface, from the Scream films, is horrifying by virtue of his easy replicability—the cheap mask, which was already on the market before the films existed, meant that anyone had the potential to be a killer.

“All of us have the potential of being evil,” Craven once told CNN. “And the thought that you can construct a society that is free of evil is dangerous because you start to act very self-righteously.”

In recent years, Craven took a step away from the director’s chair—2011’s Scream 4 was his last feature—though he remained active as an executive producer on MTV’s television adaptation of the horror franchise. The tenth episode will be dedicated in his honor.

(via the New York Times)