“I don’t know what I expected? I guess to see Charlie Mason sitting behind a desk carving human hearts or something, yet here was this erudite, attractive gentleman, and when he told me his dream of how this movie should be, the mix of fantasy, horror and surrealism that he wanted to imbue into the film, I was just really taken with the man as a sort of dark artist. “
Robert Englund, the man that brought Freddy Kruger to life, first met Wes Craven at the audition for the role in 1983. He described Wes as a Dark Artists, an attractive, preppy and erudite man. Wes was indeed an artists, directing 29 films in his lifetime and contributing to horror in a way no other had. He plucked characters and scenarios from the very deepest depths of our nightmares and brought them to life on screen.
A statement released by his family said Craven died at his Los Angeles home on Sunday from brain cancer. Craven reinventing the teen horror genre with the release of A Nightmare On Elmstreet in 1984 and parodied the slasher genre with his self aware horror franchise Scream. Other films included , Latst House on the Left, The Hills have Eyes and The People Under the Stairs. He most recently had been contributing towards the TV serialisation of both Scream and The People Under the Stairs.
The very sad news that this great man passed away this week, is only overshadowed by the vast weight of his work, and the mark that he placed on the world. Whilst we have lost a icon of horror, we are left with the gift of his nightmares, gloriously preserved on film, forever.
