Wes Craven had a *lot* of horror movies that are basically forgotten now; Deadly Blessing, Deadly Friend, Serpent and the Rainbow, Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn (starring Eddie Murphy as the titular undead!), the Production Hell entry Cursed, My Soul to take. On the other hand, he made The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and more famously created Freddie Kruger and Scream, setting off two very successful franchises.
So I may be bucking a trend by picking for my subject Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.Sure, it hasn’t been forgotten by our own, uh, elite demographic. But I’m sticking with it because it’s a masterpiece, dammit. And a delight as well. However, the general public appeared pretty baffled by it and it sank like a stone in the public consciousness. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if more people remember Freddy’s Dead, and that sucked.
Still, Craven had enough smarts to know it was on to something. He toned down that film’s meta commentary by a very good amount and applied it to slasher films and hence was Scream born, making more possibly with that film (and certainly after making two and three) than all his other pictures put together.
