R.I.P. Wes Craven

I remember a time when I was a kid when literally nothing was cooler than watching something on H.B.O. The fanfare would play, the HBO logo would drift through space, and by the time the HBO intro was over -- they played it before starting every single program, but you never got tired of it -- you'd be properly psyched to watch whatever movie or TV show was about to start.

I was still in elementary school, and staying up late with my friend David to watch a double-feature: A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy's Revenge. Then we tried to sleep -- but after watching supernatural serial killer Freddy Krueger kill teenagers left and right for nearly four hours, sleep just wasn't going to happen. After all, according to the Freddy mythos, it's when you're asleep that is when you're at your most vulnerable.

Wesley Earl Craven may have directed and written many movies during the course of his career, but he'll forever be known as the creator of Freddy Krueger. The director's commentary for the Nightmare on Elm Street DVD -- Wes Craven is, by the way, one of the few directors who's actually both entertaining and informative when he provides director's commentaries -- provides a fascinating story of the multiple sources that combined to inspire him to come up with the Freddy storyline. But at its core, the concept is brilliant in its simplicity: What if the bad guy in your nightmares didn't disappear when you woke up?

Craven wasn't involved with most of the Freddy sequels, but he did direct and write the best one: Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which topped his original high concept with one even better suited for motion pictures: What if the bad guy in the scary movie didn't disappear when the movie ends? This time, Freddy isn't stalking the stereotypical teenage slasher victims, he's stalking the cast and crew of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven himself has the best scene, a cameo in which he provides the narrative context, explaining to the heroine how the very act of storytelling creates a powerful energy that can be corrupted into something dark and twisted. Leave it to Craven -- a director, a writer, and, a doctorate in philosophy -- to posit storytelling itself as both a curse and a potential salvation.

I saw New Nightmare in the theater, alone. I don't mean I didn't bring any friends with me, I mean I was the only one in the whole theater -- a common occurrence at this particular theater, an old-fashioned 2-screen movie palace in Worcester that couldn't compete with the multiplex just outside of town, and which, sadly but unsurprisingly, closed for good in 1998.  Let me give you a hint of what made Craven such an ingenious horror director: Up until way past the halfway point, New Nightmare is presented in bi-directional stereo, which was still the standard at the time; filmmakers and theaters alike were only just starting to experiment with the concept of surround sound.

So anyway, throughout nearly the whole movie, all of the dialogue, music, and noise is coming from the direction of the screen in front of me. Eventually, there is a scene where the heroine is looking for Freddy; she knows the homicidal madman is out there somewhere, but where? Suddenly, the sinister laughing voice of Freddy rang out directly behind me, and I leapt out of my seat. Craven knew about the new trend of surround sound, of course he did, but he didn't just use it -- he used it to maximum effect, waiting for just . . . the right . . . moment!

I firmly believe that New Nightmare should be taught in classrooms, and eventually will be, as a prime example of an artwork's ability to examine itself better than any outside source ever could. The film simply represents postmodernism at its best.

It's therefore easy to see why Craven, as a director, would later be attracted to the similarly themed Scream horror series written by Kevin Williamson. Unlike the characters in New Nightmare, who eventually become aware that they are characters in a horror movie, the characters in the Scream series think they're living real life -- but are still highly aware of how much the events in their lives echo cinematic convention. Craven directs these films with his usual mastery of suspense, but it's almost a shame he's so closely associated with the series, as writer Williamson really deserves the lion's share of the credit.

Still, Craven has much in his career to be lauded for. In addition to the two best of the Freddy movies, he also gave us the classroom drama Music of the Heart, the nail-biting suspense film Red Eye, and also some of the best episodes of the 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone. But for all of the fun he provided, for all of the brilliance he put into even his seemingly most simple horror movies, I'll always remember him for that one ecstatically terrifying moment, when I sat alone in that movie theater and suddenly heard Freddy Krueger laughing in my ear. Well done, Wes. Well done.