Wes Craven, the creator of horror classics A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, has been honoured in the Oscars’ traditional In Memoriam section.
In 1984, Craven introduced horror fans to Freddy Krueger, the scar-faced, razor-gloved antagonist of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Krueger would become iconic for a generation of horror fans raised on the genre that Craven became famous for: the teen slasher. A Nightmare on Elm Street was also notable for giving a first film role to another otherworldly creation: Johnny Depp.
Craven’s other notable films included The Last House on the Left, Swamp Thing, the cannibal thriller The Hills Have Eyes and the Scream series, which deconstructed the genre rules that the director himself had helped create. The Scream films, which scared up huge profits at the box office, introduced another iconic character, inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream: the masked murderer known as Ghostface.
Craven died in August after being diagnosed with brain cancer. He was 76.
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