A Quarter-Century of Krueger: How a Porn Producer Changed the Face of Horror

From the very beginning, the man who would bring Freddy Krueger to Elm Street had a hard time fitting in with the middle-American, conformist dream. Born into a Baptist family in Cleveland, Ohio, Wesley Earl Craven suffered through an unhappy childhood before leaving as soon as he could to pursue a degree at Wheaton College in Illinois.

After studying English literature, writing and psychology, it seemed that Wes Craven was destined to be your garden-variety humanities college teacher--but that was a far cry from where his path was headed. By the end of the 1960s, his first marriage was over, as was his teaching career.

Craven went to New York and tried to earn money any way he could, first as a cab driver, and later finding work as a sound editor for a movie post-production company. This would be Wes' first taste of the motion picture industry. However, because that industry was so very different from what it is today, Craven's path to horror superstardom would take a decidedly unexpected turn first.

Joining forces with fellow future horror groundbreaker Sean Cunningham, Craven threw his hat into the "adult documentary" biz that was beginning to blossom at the time. Specifically, the two men, with the help of "investors", produced the softcore sex film Together, featuring the future star of Behind the Green Door, the late Marilyn Chambers. As with many such flicks of the day, it posed as an informational film, while really showcasing titillating scenes of frank sensuality.

It must be remembered by modern film-goers that this was a very different time, when respectable middle-class couples lined up around the block to see The Devil in Miss Jones, and the likes of Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew sat in the audience for Deep Throat. If you think porn is mainstream today, then you'd really be surprised by the early 1970s, when the genre came as close as it has ever been to the mainstream industry.

And so, a movie like Together seemed like a perfectly natural way for two aspiring filmmakers like Craven and Cunningham to cut their teeth and put together some capital. But next up, the investors behind the operation, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it might be a good idea to shift gears from sex to violence, and asked the boys to put together a horror movie.

That movie would be the still-controversial exploitation film The Last House on the Left, produced by Cunningham, and directed by Craven from a script he based off Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1958). Featuring graphic depictions of rape, disembowelment and sexual mutilation, Craven's directorial debut pushed the envelope like no film ever had before. Some were genuinely repulsed by it, while others recognized it as a daring piece of filmmaking. It also must be understood that in the cultural climate of the day, many probably viewed it in the same light as a film like Together--exploitation, after all, is exploitation. There were also the shady associations attached to the film, the funding for which had come largely from the porn industry.

But as much of a career-maker as Last House was, Wes wasn't done with the world of skin flicks just yet. As a matter of fact, his next project after his horror picture would be a film he edited called It Happened in Hollywood, the one and only hardcore porn flick that Craven would be associated with, written and directed by benefactor Peter Locke.

After that, it was horror all the way for Wes Craven. The genre had become big business in the 1970s, and was a way for Craven to make a name for himself in a fashion that was a bit closer (though not much) to the mainstream. With Locke still providing funding, Craven struck out without Cunningham and wrote/directed his next horror picture, The Hills Have Eyes.

This one was an even bigger hit. Ironically, considering the intense subject matter of the film about genetic mutants terrorizing a family of tourists, the film was a bit more accessible to the masses than the brutal Last House, and helped make Wes Craven a name in the horror business.

With enough success under his belt to completely escape the shadow of the porn biz and Locke's money in particular, Craven came under the auspices of big-time production company PolyGram and distributor United Artists for the admittedly mediocre supernatural thriller Deadly Blessing. Next up was Swamp Thing, a campy, quirky and inventive comic book movie that had the terrible misfortune of coming out in the summer of 1982 (E.T., Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Poltergeist... get the picture?) That would be followed by a TV movie, Invitation to Hell.

It seemed for a fleeting moment like Last House and Hills Have Eyes were aberrations, and that Craven, free of the grindhouse milieu, was destined for horror oblivion. But thanks to a script he had written right around the time he was making Deadly Blessing, that would not be so. It had bounced around from studio to studio, largely getting turned down for being too ambitious from a special effects point of view. Based roughly on some bits of Germanic folklore and crossed with the then-burgeoning slasher subgenre, that script would be A Nightmare on Elm Street.

No one wanted to take a chance on it, largely because films of that nature were usually considered pretty small-time, and couldn't command the necessary budget. But dying distribution house New Line Cinema, which had taken chances in the past with the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead, opted to take it on. This would be the first film actually produced by the company that had previously only been in the distribution biz.

And the rest is horror history. Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street made him literally a household name, along with his greatest creation, Freddy Krueger. It also saved New Line Cinema from bankruptcy and positioned it as such a viable property that it would eventually be bought up by Ted Turner. Despite being shut down recently, it was, till the end, known as "The House that Freddy Built" (but should've been "The House that Wes Built").

Craven had come along way from the New York grindhouse porn scene to the new, mainstream pop culture world of '80s horror. His landmark film would become arguably the most identifiable and popular horror film of the entire decade, and established Craven as a true visionary of the macabre. The films that followed, including the likes of Deadly Friend, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, Red Eye, and of course the Scream series, would only further solidify that well-deserved reputation.