R.I.P. Wes Craven (1939-2015)

In the 70's, Wes Craven helped give birth to the Horror Genre as we know it with Last House on the Left, and The Hills Have Eyes.

In the 80's, he turned the Slasher Genre on its head, giving us one of the best Horror movies ever made (as well as one of the most popular movie characters in history) with A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In the 90's, Craven single-handedly revitalized a near-dead Horror Genre with Scream.

The man was a true pioneer, in both the Horror Genre and film in general, and in a day and age where the term "Legend" gets thrown around far too often, and far too carelessly, that's exactly what the man was: A LEGEND.

And now, he's gone.

"HORROR FILMS DON'T CREATE FEAR. THEY RELEASE IT."

As kids, there were plenty of movies that terrified us to no end and gave us many sleepless nights, but none of them did so in the same way that A Nightmare on Elm Street did. I can still remember watching the commercial for the movie, late at night, on a local TV Channel, and how that 30 second spot was enough to make me have fits, and stay up until dawn. That's not an exaggeration, that actually happened. *Of course I was 12-years-old, but still, it terrified me.

That didn't stop me from begging my mom to take me to see it... which I did, endlessly, until she finally agreed. ANOES might be the first Rated-R Horror movie that I ever sat through in its entirety, and it was most definitely the first one I ever saw in a theater. And it changed my life.

Over the years, once i grew and realized that there was a man behind Freddy and his nightmares, I sought out Wes Craven's other works. From his raw and brutal beginnings in the 70's (Last House & Hills), to his more fun and quirky offering of the late 80's and 90's (Shocker, People Under the Stairs), I discovered a man with a unique voice who got what Horror was, and used his talent and vision to repeatedly make films that entertained, as well as terrified us.

We didn't even know that Wes Craven had been suffering from brain cancer before we got the news of his passing last night, and so it floored us. Like a right hook to the jaw, it absolutely floored us. The 76 years that he got on this Earth just don't seem like enough.

All of us here at THC love you, Wes Craven, and we sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts for stirring our imaginations, intensifying our nightmares, and entertaining us for over four decades. We will miss you.

Rest in Peace.

THE MAN WAS A GENIUS.

The links below will take you to Amazon in case you want to add some of Uncle Wes’s films to your collection, or you can click HERE to visit his IMDB page, if you just want to read about the man, and look through his filmography.

Either way, let's just remember and celebrate him and his works. Forever.