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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Sad news to pass along this evening. Wes Craven, the writer/director responsible for launching three of the biggest franchises in the history of horror movies, died this evening at the age of 76. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he died at his home in Los Angeles after a battle with brain cancer.

Wes Craven’s lengthy career as a director began all the way back in 1972 with The Last House On The Left, a movie so gruesome and shocking that it was rated X during its initial release. (If you think the resulting years of cultural desensitization have made this film any easier to watch, you’re wrong.) His career really took off, though, with the release of The Hills Have Eyes in 1977. This film would spawn a sequel in 1984, and then a series of remakes in the 2000s.

Hills certainly turned Craven into a cult success, but his 1984 film A Nightmare On Elm Street turned him into a cinematic legend. Freddy Krueger, Craven’s creation, is undeniably one of the most well-known figures not just in horror films, but in cinema itself. The franchise spun-off eight sequels—Craven also directed 1994’s supremely meta Wes Craven’s New Nightmare—a television series, a cartoon, and an awesome 1-900 phone line.

As if that weren’t enough, Craven also directed all four of the Scream films (!). The first, 1996’s Scream, took the seeds he had begun sewing in New Nightmare and, in collaboration with writer Kevin Williamson, made the most influential postmodern horror movie of all-time. The film was a HUGE success both commercially (grossing over $100 million domestically back when that figure used to mean something), critically, but most importantly, culturally.

Craven’s impact on American cinematic culture over the last 40-plus years cannot be underestimated, and he will continue to live on through his creations.