Thanks, Wes Craven: A Memoriam.
So, for those of you who don't know, the greatest horror film director of my generation passed away recently. I'm sorry I don't update this blog as often as I should, but sometimes the Fates Conspire...as they have today.
So: Wes Craven. If you don't know the name, you definitely know his work: Last House on the Left, Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under The Stairs, New Nightmare, Swamp Thing, Serpent and the Rainbow, Scream........the man had not only a great take on the Horror Genre but a great take on Film-Making in general. Before linking you to some other remembrances, I'd like to go over what I think are his best works, and pay tribute to one of the biggest influences on me and my writing.
Before we begin, let's address one of the best things about a lot of Craven Movies, and one of the themes he worked with that imprinted itself onto my mind forever:
His Urban Fantasy.
Urban Fantasy, as some of you may know (and some of you may not - I have no idea who the Hell reads my blog and why) is a genre of fiction in which Fantastic or Surreal elements are inserted into an Urban or Civilian Settings. My writing, and a lot of modern Horror Fiction and Creepypasta Horror Stories are all usually Urban Fantasy-based - just normal guys, living their normal lives, in their normal apartments and cities and such, when all of a sudden a seemingly unreal element enters that they're forced to accept and confront.
This is a great set-up, one I visited heavily in my first novel (still under submission) and one that continues to fascinate me to this day. Mr. Craven, of course, was the beginning of my exposure to it - even if I didn't know it at the time.
I bought the original Hills Have Eyes on DVD waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2008. Seems like a long time ago...I can't believe it was, actually. Goddamn, I'm already in my twenties, but I feel so much older. Soon enough I'll be complaining about kids these days and scared by light-bulbs and shit.
Anyways, unlike the remake (which I didn't care for), the original Hills features a family of normal suburbanites who take a short-cut through the desert and wind up stuck there. As it is both the 1970s and a Horror Film, soon enough something's coming for them (as the delightfully trashy trailer's gravel-voiced narrator informs us: "They wanted to see something different, but SOMETHING DIFFERENT SAW THEM FIRST!"). In this case, it's a family of cannibals.
Now, here's where the UF comes in: These Cannibals aren't just serial killer standards, like the family of the earlier (and also brilliant) Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They seem to exist in a cultural vacuum, people living like Neanderthals in the modern, technological world. They wear animal skins and have named themselves after planets and gems, things that people with only the simplest connection to the modern world could understand. In addition, Wes gives the Cannibals personalities and physiques to match the Roman Deities that those planets were named after (Bloodthirsty Mars, Beaten-Down Pluto, Hyperactive Surveyor and Reporter Mercury), showing off some Class in a genre where Class is too often unknown.
This took me by storm and I re-watched the movie with Craven's Commentary, picking up on how he crafted his work with such attention to detail that it not only put me in awe........it made me want to craft worlds of my own.
And so I did.
Soon enough I found my way to his other works, and they utilized a lot of the same strengths that I, in my fanboy daze, so desired to emulate. The People Under The Stairs gave us the story of a mom and dad who wanted a perfect family.....and wound up mutilating their children for minor misgivings and trapping them in the basements, walls and, you guessed it, under the stairs. Now mutated and disfigured creatures, they form a great cast of characters in Craven's most whimsical work. Though brutally violent, it's actually a better children's film than.......shit, pretty much all children's films today. It has a great Roald Dahl-esque vibe and really needs more love, as far as I'm concerned. Again, when I write for kids: I don't talk down to them, and I give them something challenging and engaging. Or, at least, I try to.........and, again, I (and probably a lot of other people) have Craven to thank for that.
And it goes further. Remember Nightmare on Elm Street? Of course you do. Hell, do I even need to go over it? The usage of dreams to insert Dark Fantasy into our everyday relatable world is a stroke of genius, and the way Craven implements his nightmarish imagery is so beautifully terrifying that words fail. If you have NetFlix, go watch it. NOW. If you don't, well, here it is on Amazon.
And of course, I'm not the only one to be influenced by Mr. Craven's Voice. I could point out that so many Horror Cliches originated in his work, but he already did that, better: He directed Scream, a Horror Film about Horror Films. This was his way to give a gut-punch to the genre that had now become irreversibly influenced by him and, today, remains one of my favorite satires.
Here was a man who not only knew how to play his audience like the piano, he knew how to keep it up across DECADES. How many awe-inspiring and genre-shifting Horror Works can you name that were followed up by more and more, better and better works that continued to shape the genre as skillfully as the first? The Exorcist? Neither the book nor the film were followed up by the same sort of hard hits as the first one. Rosemary's Baby? Nope, didn't cut it. While Ira Levin had plenty of other interesting books, none were so powerful.
Even George Romero, director of some of the other greatest horror cinema, never managed to change the genre so powerfully and then continue to top himself so ingeniously.
So, with the loss of Craven's Voice, we can only wait until the next director who takes the genre and makes it his/her own, raising it like a kid and forcing the mainstream critics and movie-goers to acknowledge that just because it carries the label "genre" doesn't make it simplistic, juvenile or sub-par.
I don't know if that day will ever come. But as more and more people continue to fall in love with Craven's works, we just might get the next one someday. And if you haven't checked out his stuff, well......you're doing yourself a disservice.
So thanks, Wes Craven. You're still here, every sleepless night and every jump at a sound in the shadows. And if I can give that same thrill to another impressionable, creative kid, then, well.......you still have the power. And the cycle of awesome, thought-provoking and challenging entertainment will continue. And your voice will still be heard, in your own works and in the voices of those who were inspired by you.
And that, after all, is the greatest gift that art can give.
Rest in Peace, Wes Craven. 1939-2015.
Other fun links with other people's remembrances of Wes and his Films:
http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/wes-craven-1939-2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/30/entertainment/wes-craven-horror-movie-director-death/
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/36759/in-memoriam-wes-craven-1939-2015
http://www.themarysue.com/a-salute-to-horror-master-wes-cravens-lesser-known-films/
http://www.heraldextra.com/ap/entertainment/wes-craven-s-horror-legacy-the-intelligent-slasher/article_2ba33c42-0586-548c-8dc6-ac657457c7f5.html
http://www.thesfnews.com/wes-craven-a-true-inspiration/22418
So: Wes Craven. If you don't know the name, you definitely know his work: Last House on the Left, Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under The Stairs, New Nightmare, Swamp Thing, Serpent and the Rainbow, Scream........the man had not only a great take on the Horror Genre but a great take on Film-Making in general. Before linking you to some other remembrances, I'd like to go over what I think are his best works, and pay tribute to one of the biggest influences on me and my writing.
Before we begin, let's address one of the best things about a lot of Craven Movies, and one of the themes he worked with that imprinted itself onto my mind forever:
His Urban Fantasy.
Urban Fantasy, as some of you may know (and some of you may not - I have no idea who the Hell reads my blog and why) is a genre of fiction in which Fantastic or Surreal elements are inserted into an Urban or Civilian Settings. My writing, and a lot of modern Horror Fiction and Creepypasta Horror Stories are all usually Urban Fantasy-based - just normal guys, living their normal lives, in their normal apartments and cities and such, when all of a sudden a seemingly unreal element enters that they're forced to accept and confront.
This is a great set-up, one I visited heavily in my first novel (still under submission) and one that continues to fascinate me to this day. Mr. Craven, of course, was the beginning of my exposure to it - even if I didn't know it at the time.
I bought the original Hills Have Eyes on DVD waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2008. Seems like a long time ago...I can't believe it was, actually. Goddamn, I'm already in my twenties, but I feel so much older. Soon enough I'll be complaining about kids these days and scared by light-bulbs and shit.
Anyways, unlike the remake (which I didn't care for), the original Hills features a family of normal suburbanites who take a short-cut through the desert and wind up stuck there. As it is both the 1970s and a Horror Film, soon enough something's coming for them (as the delightfully trashy trailer's gravel-voiced narrator informs us: "They wanted to see something different, but SOMETHING DIFFERENT SAW THEM FIRST!"). In this case, it's a family of cannibals.
Now, here's where the UF comes in: These Cannibals aren't just serial killer standards, like the family of the earlier (and also brilliant) Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They seem to exist in a cultural vacuum, people living like Neanderthals in the modern, technological world. They wear animal skins and have named themselves after planets and gems, things that people with only the simplest connection to the modern world could understand. In addition, Wes gives the Cannibals personalities and physiques to match the Roman Deities that those planets were named after (Bloodthirsty Mars, Beaten-Down Pluto, Hyperactive Surveyor and Reporter Mercury), showing off some Class in a genre where Class is too often unknown.
This took me by storm and I re-watched the movie with Craven's Commentary, picking up on how he crafted his work with such attention to detail that it not only put me in awe........it made me want to craft worlds of my own.
And so I did.
Soon enough I found my way to his other works, and they utilized a lot of the same strengths that I, in my fanboy daze, so desired to emulate. The People Under The Stairs gave us the story of a mom and dad who wanted a perfect family.....and wound up mutilating their children for minor misgivings and trapping them in the basements, walls and, you guessed it, under the stairs. Now mutated and disfigured creatures, they form a great cast of characters in Craven's most whimsical work. Though brutally violent, it's actually a better children's film than.......shit, pretty much all children's films today. It has a great Roald Dahl-esque vibe and really needs more love, as far as I'm concerned. Again, when I write for kids: I don't talk down to them, and I give them something challenging and engaging. Or, at least, I try to.........and, again, I (and probably a lot of other people) have Craven to thank for that.
 |
| Nothing's ever good enough for some Parents, amiright? |
 |
| Roach, one of the titular (and more benevolent) People Under the Stairs. |
And it goes further. Remember Nightmare on Elm Street? Of course you do. Hell, do I even need to go over it? The usage of dreams to insert Dark Fantasy into our everyday relatable world is a stroke of genius, and the way Craven implements his nightmarish imagery is so beautifully terrifying that words fail. If you have NetFlix, go watch it. NOW. If you don't, well, here it is on Amazon.
And of course, I'm not the only one to be influenced by Mr. Craven's Voice. I could point out that so many Horror Cliches originated in his work, but he already did that, better: He directed Scream, a Horror Film about Horror Films. This was his way to give a gut-punch to the genre that had now become irreversibly influenced by him and, today, remains one of my favorite satires.
Here was a man who not only knew how to play his audience like the piano, he knew how to keep it up across DECADES. How many awe-inspiring and genre-shifting Horror Works can you name that were followed up by more and more, better and better works that continued to shape the genre as skillfully as the first? The Exorcist? Neither the book nor the film were followed up by the same sort of hard hits as the first one. Rosemary's Baby? Nope, didn't cut it. While Ira Levin had plenty of other interesting books, none were so powerful.
Even George Romero, director of some of the other greatest horror cinema, never managed to change the genre so powerfully and then continue to top himself so ingeniously.
So, with the loss of Craven's Voice, we can only wait until the next director who takes the genre and makes it his/her own, raising it like a kid and forcing the mainstream critics and movie-goers to acknowledge that just because it carries the label "genre" doesn't make it simplistic, juvenile or sub-par.
I don't know if that day will ever come. But as more and more people continue to fall in love with Craven's works, we just might get the next one someday. And if you haven't checked out his stuff, well......you're doing yourself a disservice.
So thanks, Wes Craven. You're still here, every sleepless night and every jump at a sound in the shadows. And if I can give that same thrill to another impressionable, creative kid, then, well.......you still have the power. And the cycle of awesome, thought-provoking and challenging entertainment will continue. And your voice will still be heard, in your own works and in the voices of those who were inspired by you.
And that, after all, is the greatest gift that art can give.
Rest in Peace, Wes Craven. 1939-2015.
Other fun links with other people's remembrances of Wes and his Films:
http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/wes-craven-1939-2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/30/entertainment/wes-craven-horror-movie-director-death/
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/36759/in-memoriam-wes-craven-1939-2015
http://www.themarysue.com/a-salute-to-horror-master-wes-cravens-lesser-known-films/
http://www.heraldextra.com/ap/entertainment/wes-craven-s-horror-legacy-the-intelligent-slasher/article_2ba33c42-0586-548c-8dc6-ac657457c7f5.html
http://www.thesfnews.com/wes-craven-a-true-inspiration/22418
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