Wes Craven will probably be best known to even the least dedicated follower of horror cinema for his work on the blockbuster Scream series (beginning in 1996), or as the father of Freddy Krueger, who first appeared in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), spawning a series of sequels and a remake. His demonic creation, played by Robert Englund, was one of the most recognisable figures of the 1980s—so much so that the fan club devoted to the notorious dream-stalker had at its peak “more members than U2’s.” As this edited collection will ascertain, however, there is so much more than “just” these accepted canonical horror classics to this fascinating filmmaker's oeuvre. In fact, for four decades Craven retained his position as someone who made a number of prolific, wide-release, theatrical attractions—no small feat, and almost unique amongst his contemporaries who also became associated with (to borrow from the late Robin Wood) the “American Nightmare” of the 1970s (i.e., Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli, Tobe Hooper, George Romero).

The director, born August 2, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio and passing away on August 30, 2015, was, at the beginning of his filmmaking career, very much a marginalized option, even for hardened horror film fans. Writing about his work in Danse Macabre, no less than Stephen King would comment: “if you have seen one film by Wes Craven, for instance, it is safe enough, I think, to skip the others. The genre labors under enough critical disapproval and outright dislike; one need not make a bad situation worse by underwriting films of porno violence.” King was referring to Craven's first two feature films, The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), both of which were commercially successful but aesthetically and thematically transgressive: depicting grueling sexual violence but humanized, even horribly relatable, “monsters.” Lest we dismiss King's concerns outright, as late as 1992 the oft-revered fan writer Chas Balun was chastising the former shocker as “sordid … one of the most repugnant ‘horror’ films ever made,” an almost unthinkable critique when related to a debut of such humanity, intelligence, and provocation. Unsurprisingly, many of the writers who contributed to this volume choose to reference the words of the late Robin Wood—who gave Craven a leading role in his theory of the “American Nightmare.”