RIP Wes Craven, 1939-2015
Like a lot of people my age (I was born in 1979), I grew up alternately seeking out and then trying to look away from snippets of Wes Craven films—posters, previews, surreptitious late-night cable screenings—hell, even Mad Magazine parodies. Nightmare fuel, sometimes glimpsed through webbed fingers. Was it A Nightmare on Elm Street or Swamp Thing I saw first, at 9 or 10, probably on the USA network? I know I didn’t see his cult classics until later, until I was in college—The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. By then I’d seen the Nightmare on Elm Street films a few times in their raw VHS glory. My favorite is still Dream Warriors. And of course I saw Scream and its sequels in the theater—we loved it, thought it so clever, so meta! But my favorite Craven film by far is The People Under the Stairs, a 1991 dark fable that summarized Reagan’s eighties. Predatory capitalism as horror. Anyway, dude was a legend and his films will live on, both in and of themselves, but also as the generative material for films yet to come.
Biblioklept 
Very sad news. He was one of the greats. I’m glad to see someone mention The People Under The Stairs. A Nightmare On Elm Street will always be the most special to me, though. R.I.P. Wes Craven
LikeLike
It’s a sad day, he was a legend.
LikeLike