wes craven

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas is something of a Mecca for movie geeks. In addition to first-run theatrical fare, the Drafthouse regularly showcases cult, foreign, and classic films. Not only that, but they bring you food and beer during the film; satiating each one of your senses. Every Tuesday for the last four years, Alamo programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday. If you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, Terror Tuesday was invented just for you. So I decided, since I am already a fixture at the Drafthouse, despite their best efforts to get rid of me, why not provide coverage for this weekly treat? The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience reaction to the film; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: The Hills Have Eyes.

According to an LA Times feature from last week chronicling the career of director Wes Craven, the auteur was all squared away to direct Scream 4 beginning this May. I even wrote about it here, and we called the story "confirmed". Turns out it's not entirely accurate--and we can't trust the LA Times.

Craven took to Twitter to set the record straight--sharing the following: "SCREAM 4 - LA Times has it wrong. I'm still in talks but nothing has been finalized."

This doesn't mean Craven won't wind up directing the fourth installment in the franchise--I'd be amazed if he didn't--but it's not a done deal yet. We have no idea what the hold up is, but the cynics amongst us are speculating that this might be another sign that The Weinstein Company is in dire financial straits. If they can't lock up Craven, things could be very bad indeed.

Keep it here for the latest on the Craven-Scream 4 saga.

I remain unconvinced that the world really needs a fourth installment in the Scream franchise, but if it's going to happen (and it is...) then I'm at least pleased by the news that Wes Craven will be returning to the director's chair.

The LA Times broke the story of Craven's return yesterday--it's buried at the bottom of an interview/retrospective of the filmmaker's career. Here's the blurb:

"Craven recently finished My Soul to Take which is scheduled for release sometime this year. And in May, he starts on Scream 4."

With Craven back behind the camera, all the major pieces are in place for Ghostface's return to the silver screen. Scream scribe Kevin Williamson is penning the script, Courtney Cox-Arquette and David Arquette are reprising their roles as Gale Weathers and Deputy Dewey, and final girl Neve Campbell is once again back as Sidney Prescott. I much prefer this set-up to a reboot/remake or an attempt by the studio to make an updated version of the original that skews toward a younger demographic. If anyone can make Scream relevant in a world filled with Saw sequels, it figures to be Wes Craven. I'm not sure he can recapture the lightning in a bottle of the first film, but I'm glad he's getting the opportunity to try.

Welcome to installment numero tres in my recurring series here at Horror Squad: Death Scenes We Love. In previous entries I've highlighted some classic sequences from Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead and Ryuhei Kitamura's Japanese action/zombie flick Versus. For this entry, I figured it was time to go domestic with a death scene featured in a flick made right here in the good ol' US of A. My options were numerous, but after a lot of thought I decided to go with this amazing clip from Wes Craven's otherwise forgettable 1986 film, Deadly Friend.

Deadly Friend is a schizophrenic movie, thanks primarily to studio interefrence in post-production. The executives at Warner Bros. weren't entirely thrilled with Craven's understated and slightly macabre teenage take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, so they forced the director and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin to create new sequences with the mandate that they each be more bloody than the last. On the one hand, this demand on the studio's part guaranteed Deadly Friend's inclusion in my series. Unfortunately, it almost assuredly ruined the film in the process. Craven has spoken about these issues at length (in John Kenneth Muir's Wes Craven: The Art of Horror and Brian Robb's Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven--I recommend both books heartily for fans of Craven's unique brand of horror cinema), so I'll not dwell on them here.

Click the "read more" button to learn more about Deadly Friend and get a full look at one of its most infamous death scenes.

If you love Fred then you will want to visit The Elm Street Legacy official website to browse a dreamscape of behind-the-scene Nightmare on Elm Street goodies. Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, directed by Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch, will be delving deep into the world Wes Craven created in 1984. The film spawned an entire franchise about everyone's favorite bastard son of a hundred maniacs, who we'll be able to see again on April 30 in the Platiun Dunes remake.

From the website:

In this thrilling retrospective, fans will enter the world of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare On Elm Street like never before: exploring what spurred mastermind Wes Craven to craft the first groundbreaking film; delving deep behind the scenes of the original and all of its sequels; learning how the cast and crew brought their worst nightmares to life; and finally, understanding the impact the series and its mythos have had on modern pop culture and the horror genre.

Narrated by and starring Heather Langenkamp, featuring interviews with the cast and crew spanning every film, and loaded with clips, photographs, storyboards, conceptual art, publicity materials, archival documents and behind-the-scenes footage, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy is the definitive account of what many have called the best, most frightening and imaginative horror franchise in motion picture history.

You'll probably notice some familiar names behind this project including some of the gang at Dread Central. Heather Langenkamp is also serving as executive-producer for the doc which is expected to be released the same month as the remake. You can visit the Legacy website or follow them on Twitter to keep up with everything. While you're there, follow the Horror Squad as well. We're easy and can be lured into the house at 1428 Elm Street with candy.

With Halloween only a few days away, every non-horror site in the universe is scrambling to come up with their very own list of scary Halloween movies. Entertainment Weekly is no exception, but when they want a horror movie guide, they don't hand it over to some staff writer--instead they call up Wes Craven and convince him to pen the piece for them. Craven's list is up at EW.com as we speak and it's a fascinating read.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Craven's list is that the newest film featured on it is 1973's Don't Look Now--a creepy film from director Nicolas Roeg that starred Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. The rest of the piece is comprised of films from the 1960s and earlier.

The choices aren't particularly controversial (although seeing Antonioni's Blow-Up given a spot was a bit of a surprise, as was the exclusion of Friedkin's The Exorcist--a film I'd have thought might have resonated more with Craven given his strict religious upbringing), but what sets this article apart from the 8 million other Halloween horror movie lists you'll read this week is the amount of depth and critical insight Craven pours into each description.

For example, here's a line from his comments on Murnau's Nosferatu:

"Thin, malformed, huge-eyed; it is like some grotesquely elongated and aged fetus from the womb of Hell, helpless in its need to devour."

Hard to imagine today's younger crop of gore-meisters ever describing something quite that eloquently, isn't it?

By Jessica Barnes

If you were one of the people who thought that another Scream movie was a bad idea (and who could blame you after the train wreck that was Scream 3), there might be a ray of hope...but I have to stress might. Over at Cinema Blend, their 'reliable source' is telling them that the man himself, Wes Craven, will return to direct the latest installment in the horror franchise.

It had been reported that Craven would be involved in some capacity with the film back when the project was first green lit, but you have to wonder what might have convinced him to get behind the camera. Maybe it was all down to nostalgia and he wanted to get together with the old gang, or maybe it was Kevin Williamson's spec script. One thing is for sure, the big empty spot in his schedule since finishing 25/8 probably wouldn't hurt either. (By the way, 25/8 was just re-named My Soul to Take.)

More at Cinematical!

I've gotten behind on my usually-faithful upkeep of a monthly DVD guide, so when Weinberg sent a long a list of all the titles hitting shelves today, I was a little overwhelmed. My wallet has been taking a pounding lately, and this new crop of catalog films newly minted for Blu-ray is certainly not going to let up on the beat down.

Best of the New Releases: Grace, "Fear Itself"
Paul Solet's pregnancy horror film Grace has already been covered here and there on HorrorSquad, but I'll re-cap: I don't like it, Weinberg loves it, and Goss likes it, but doesn't love it. The Blu-ray has been available for the past few weeks exclusively at Best Buy, but today marks the expansion of the both the Grace Blu and DVD flavors to all fine retailers.

The other noteworthy title of the week is the release of NBC's "Masters of Horror" spin-off, "Fear Itself". I haven't seen all of the episodes in the set, mainly because NBC didn't air them all, but it's like all other horror anthology shows. Some episodes work, most don't. I've got a soft-spot for anthologies, though, so this is a rental queue jumper for me.

For your consideration, the following horror titles are out on DVD today:

Last House on the Left
Surprise! Wes Craven's original 1972 shocker doesn't hold up. The most notorious scenes -- a rape in the woods and an attack in a house -- are more disgusting than horrifying nowadays, perhaps a reflection of society's increasing depravity. (Though I don't think anyone would argue that the hick sheriff and his idiot sidekick are anything more than major, embarrassing missteps, complete with jangly banjo accompaniment.) That makes the idea of a remake a bit more appealing, and director Dennis Iliadis fills the bill quite nicely.

The tone is consistently downbeat, with Garret Dillahunt as a restrained, though still nasty-hearted, leader of a small wild bunch of criminals and deviants. The rape is more horrific, perhaps because Sara Paxton is a stronger-willed victim, which makes the crime more unsettling. Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter are well-cast as the victim's loving, determined parents.

While there are definite missteps -- I'm thinking of the outcome of the rape scene and the scenes toward the end, which veer away from the ultra-serious demeanor of the film, this is the rare remake that, dare I say it, actually improves upon the original. Both the DVD and Blu-ray releases include the theatrical and unrated versions -- the latter adds four minutes of footage. Also included are deleted scenes, and a "making of" feature.

Oh, good, as long as they have the most important cast members on board, I'm sure a new Scream sequel will become essential viewing. (Not!) Yup, Dewey and Gale, the cop and the reporter. David Arquette claims that he and Courtney Cox are definitely on board for Scream 4, according to Marc Malkin of E! Online.

Arquette is excited for personal reasons: "I fell in love with my wife on Scream, so the opportunity to bring [Dewey] back to life and for my wife to play that really bitchy character again, it's just going to be really fun," he said. Kevin Williamson is writing the script with all his characters, even though Neve Campbell has so far refused the idea of playing Sidney Prescott. Of course, everyone wants Wes Craven to return to the director's chair.

Presumably, it's in Williamson's best interests to have Scream 4 boiling away on a back burner while he toils on The Vampire Diaries for television. But he seems to have burned out after the initial flurry of projects he did after the original Scream: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, The Faculty, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and Dawson's Creek. (I like to say that Diablo Cody is the Kevin Williamson of her generation: snappy one-liners that sound "hip" and "young" but quickly grow tiresome because all the characters sound alike). And the last time Williamson teamed with Craven, we got stuck with the fairly horrid and tedious Cursed. So, no rush on Scream 4, buddy.