Since I have a three-day weekend, I kicked off a Craven-o-Thon yesterday to honor the guy.

I skipped "The Last House on the Left" because it was too fucking grueling and because "The Hills Have Eyes" is a better take on the same concept.

I followed "The Hills have Eyes" with "Swamp Thing", which was the first Wes Craven movie I ever saw. Of course, I wanted to see it because of the comic, not because I knew who Wes Craven was at the time. (I was 12)

Then, of course, I watched "A Nightmare on Elm Street." I skipped all the sequels, including "New Nightmare" which wasn't quite so bad, but was kind of...I don't know. It just didn't work for me. It is the only "Nightmare" sequel I own, though. I may watch it today.

I finished the day with "Deadly Friend" which is still my favorite goofball horror flick.

This morning, I started off with "The Serpent & the Rainbow" even though Craven only directed that one. I followed it with "The People Under the Stairs." I know, I skipped "Shocker" but it was another movie that just didn't work for me.

I might watch "Shocker" and "New Nightmare" later or maybe tomorrow, but the earlier movies put me in a mood to watch some of my other favorite 1980s horror flicks. I want to watch "An American Werewolf in London," the original "Alien" and "Poltergeist."

Fuck no, I'm not watching any of the "Scream" movies.

I loved SCREAM, because it was a movie that was all about loving movies, at a time when there was a glut of movies that seemed to be for people who loved Amusement Park rides. (I'm quoting myself at the time. If you were to ask me now what movies I'm talking about, I can't remember.) It was a plus that it was all about loving the most unloveable movies of all. After that, the returns started diminishing fast.

Freddy Krueger is a classic monster. Classic monsters are hard to come by, which is why I grew up in the sixties and seventies obsessed with monsters from the 30s. Classic monsters come with a mythology that remains powerful, even if you put them in bad movies. The Frankenstein Monster ceased to be a character after Bride of Frankenstein, where the monster's lonliness and angst propelled the story. After that, in terms of the plot, he was more of a MacGuffin than a character. Ygor used him to take his revenge, and as a play for power. Lawrence Talbot wanted to use him to locate Frankenstein's research so that he could use the knowledge to be freed from his curse. A whole bunch of mad scientists wanted to study him and to "see the monster at his full power." Finally, he was the lost exhibit from the MacDougal's House of Horrors. I think that the Abbot and Costello movie was pretty good in its way, but most of these were dumb movies, and the monster was just a prop. And yet, he remained iconic.

So it is with Freddy Krueger. The sequels became silly and fomulaic, the death/dream scenes more and more elaborate and ridiculous, but Freddy himself was always compelling. For the third movie, Craven contributed to the script to flesh out Freddy's myth. That's where the "son of a hundred maniacs" stuff comes from. Freddy Krueger himself, more than any one movie, may be Craven's most enduring creation. I understand that the reboot was a flop, but I suspect that, like the Hulk, they'll keep rebooting until they get it right.

I have mixed feelings about Wes. The original Elm Street was different for the time. Scream came out at the exact right time, alongside Clerks, to offer fresh deconstruction humor before the internet made it commonplace.

But his other stuff....

I put all the blame on him for turning the horror genre into this really unhealthy exercise in sex. The idea that horror movies HAVE to punish promiscuity was an arbitrary cliche invented entirely by him. It's like he came out of the "rape revenge" 70s craze, watched the opening to Halloween, completely failed to understand the point, and decided that sex = death. Then every hack in existence jumped onto the low budget, low barrier of entry of horror films and ran with it. Overnight it turned horror into the most reactionary genre in cinema (at least until Forrest Gump).

Who?