After directing several independent horror features, Wes Craven found success with the low budget sleeper hit, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but his career arguably took an equally important turn when he began directing for television with the 1978 film, Summer of Fear/A Stranger in Our House (after relocating to Los Angeles from New York). With this production, Craven gained access to a larger budget and more resources, albeit with material he didn't originate (concerning a variation on the “evil child” motif, most likely inspired by Rosemary's Baby, [Roman Polanski, 1968]). His experience working in television perhaps informed the director's decision to direct segments of The Twilight Zone revival (CBS, 1985–7; hereafter TZ). Craven knew that the program would offer him the opportunity to work outside the slasher film trend to which he may have felt restricted at the time (indeed, his post-Nightmare efforts take him in different directions until Shocker in 1989). The various scripts by top writers in the field of speculative fiction would offer Craven the chance to explore “a broad range of subject matter.” The TZ production took an interest in Craven with its goal of attracting name talent, which included writers Harlan Ellison and George R. R. Martin, directors William Friedkin and Joe Dante, and even The Grateful Dead, with Merl Saunders, providing a new rendition of the famous theme song. While Craven had become a “name” director, he had used the horror film genre not necessarily for its conventions but as a platform to express some personal socio-political ideas. In TZ Craven explored themes of speculative fiction relevant to the yuppie in the Reagan era, specifically that (very eighties) figure's nightmare in Ellison's “Shatterday” (1.1a, September 27, 1985, the first segment of the debut episode) and “Her Pilgrim Soul” (1.12a, December 13, 1985), a fantasy for the 1980s professional in light of technological advancement.

This chapter analyzes Craven's two standout contributions to the series showing his use of 1) minimalism; 2) hybridizing speculative fiction with the art film (as discussed by David Bordwell); and 3) tragic treatments beyond the “permanent nightmare” that closes A Nightmare on Elm Street. In his direction of “Shatterday” and “Her Pilgrim Soul,” Craven offers contrarian interpretations to material regarded by its writers as personal improvement tales.