Current Events > Sam Raimi escaped horror genre typecasting. Wes Craven did not.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's kinda sad, really. He said as far back as the mid-90s that he was done with horror movies. He even created Scream as an attempt to eulogize the slasher genre; something which inadvertently galvanized it. When Sam Raimi was making Spider-Man movies, Wes Craven was working on Cursed; a PG-13 werewolf movie which started strong before giving up and becoming intentionally campy.

It's sad. Both are/were talented directors. But one was able to escape the typecasting while the other was forced to continue making scary movies with diminishing returns. The Breed, an abysmal film about killer dogs, used his name as a stamp of approval even though he didn't write or direct it. Sam Raimi's window out of the horror genre was the somewhat horror-ish superhero movie, Darkman. I can't help but wonder how Wes Craven might have fared if he'd been granted a similar opportunity.

It is funny looking at his Filmography and looking at his one movie that's against type. Music of the Heart. Wes must have really wanted to do something completely different huh?

And yeah other times Wes tried to make something other then horror he was stopped. Like with Deadly Friend which was suppose to be a dark eighties kid's movie but was turned into a horror film and you can clearly tell too.

Music of the Heart

It's not sad at all. They both are very rich and did their own things. Wes went really hard into music because he loves making music. In fact, I believe the only connection he has to the new Halloween movies is that he made the music for them.

indica posted...

It's not sad at all. They both are very rich and did their own things. Wes went really hard into music because he loves making music. In fact, I believe the only connection he has to the new Halloween movies is that he made the music for them.

That's John Carpenter.

FortuneCookie posted...

That's John Carpenter.

Dude's not wrong though, Wes Craven has very little to do with the new Halloween movies.

DrizztLink posted...

Dude's not wrong though, Wes Craven has very little to do with the new Halloween movies.

Touch.

Craven was pretty much unbeatable in the 80s and 90s. He dug his own grave making really fun horror movies over and over again in that period and by then it was too late.

I will say a lot of projects he was attatched to in a non-directorial role were messes though. Dude executive produced both the shitty Carnival of Souls remake AND the shitty Pulse/Kairo remake, and even wrote the second one

Didn't know Darkman was him. Makes sense. It does sort of gives me the same feel as Drag Me to Hell.

I find Sam Raimi movies to be far more compelling. The original NoES still holds up though.

Did he though? Isn't the Spider-Man trilogy like an outlier? Everybody was begging for horror with MoM.