A Book Review by William Blick.
Maddrey illuminates the master from behind the scenes and shines a light on exactly what he means to the language of cinema.”
Joseph Maddrey, author of Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (2004) has a new title The Soul of Wes Craven (Harker Press) that serves as a go-to for all things Craven. The book contains new, unpublished sets of interviews, detailed in-depth stories and anecdotes about friends, family, and early education. Other bonuses are the appendices, which include a list of Craven’s favorites as well as prose and poetry from the writer/director. A portrait of an artist from a uniquely personal perspective, Soul illuminates the master from behind the scenes and shines a light on exactly what he means to the language of cinema. Maddrey is also keen on the societal revelations within the tropes of Craven’s horror films.
When I began watching horror movies in the 1980s, Craven’s name was bandied about quite a bit as “a master of horror,” especially with the breakthrough mega-hit, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). It was not until I became a budding film critic and in my early teens that I stumbled upon one of the most disturbing and notorious horror films of all time, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972). I had seen the “…keep telling yourself…it’s only a movie” trailer and I had passed the VHS cover many times in the now defunct Bellerose Video store. However, I couldn’t work up the nerve to rent it. I had also heard that it was based on the Bergman film, The Virgin Spring. The paradox of a horror film being both notorious and an adaptation of a European art film held great interest to me.
Finally, I did rent Last House and the grimy, guerilla -style, semi-documentary-like film like that of Craven’s contemporary, Tobe Hooper, and his The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, made me feel that I was in some insane director’s labyrinth. I survived the viewing with my hand on the remote control fast -forward function in case things got too intense. However, when all the chainsaw-wielding was done, I was left to ponder just how the film fit into the history of horror.
According to The Soul of Wes Craven, the director seemed to be a maverick madman early on in his career and then became the grandfather of the popular horror genre with the self-referentiality and meta-narratives of the Scream series. There is no question that this genre-defining icon had established the blue-print for how many horror films are constructed today.
Maddrey explains that Craven’s early films were a reaction against the dysfunctional socio-political strife of the times stating that, for example: “Last House on the Left emerged as a darkly revealing snapshot of America in 1971, showing how hippie idealism had given way to violence and darkness.” What is revealed in this biography is a complete portrait of a highly intelligent, literate artist who mined the profane to strive for a paradoxical aestheticism.
The middle part of the book on Craven’s mid-career films is a refreshingly renewed examination of these works, and goes beyond the usual rhetoric about the Nightmare on Elm Street series and other works. Maddrey’s exhaustive research goes into rich details about some forgotten films. He also establishes how Craven is able to tap into the primal fears of his audiences and how he consistently reinvents himself and his work for a purgation of fear both real and imaginary for audiences and perhaps for himself.
Although the entire book is interesting, like Maddrey’s other work Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (2004), Craven’s early work is perhaps his most interesting. Some may define the films filled with disturbing violence as offensive. Maddrey discusses these efforts as reactions against a highly contentious and chaotic era wherein a culture seemed to be devouring itself. Disillusionment and bitterness about the Vietnam war, homeland protests, and the volatile political climate set the stage for the films of dissent that emerged during this period.
Maddrey explains his own attraction to Craven’s work in the foreword by describing a meeting with the director: “I gravitated toward philosophical literature and horror films. I explained to Wes that, in some ways, his films had comforted me because they didn’t pull any punches when it came to acknowledging the reality of violence and death and existential fear.” Wes Craven has been synonymous with horror for four decades, and Maddrey establishes early on in the book his own personal connection to the director’s work, which is relatable to just about anyone who is a fan of the horror genre.
The Soul of Wes Craven provides an impressive view of Wes Craven from the perspective of a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a fan, a critic, and a biographer. Maddrey is especially adept at providing incisive details about Craven’s childhood, adolescence, family, and religious schooling. Of particular interest to this reader is Craven’s strict fundamentalist background and his early writings, first in a high-school newspaper column called Craven’s Ravin, and then at Wheaton College, where he found ways to express himself through writing for the literary journal using a particularly droll, macabre, and acerbic wit in the style of Roald Dahl. Craven found expression despite being somewhat disenchanted with the dogma he had been indoctrinated into in his religious background and education.
As Maddrey progresses in this treasure chest of facts, myths, and details about the one and only Wes Craven, it is revealed that at the heart of such savage cinema, lay the soul of a sensitive and artistic man struggling to find meaning in things both fearsome and commonplace and the intermingling of the two. The description of filming The Hills Have Eyes (1977), is insightful beyond the rudimentary, and peripheral knowledge of the film genre. Maddrey juxtaposes Craven’s films as they coincided with biographical events to give added breadth and depth to the entire book. Later in the book, Maddrey addresses lesser- known films such as Shocker (1989) or The People Under the Stairs (1991).
The Soul of Wes Craven can be used as a precise tool to finely comb over Craven’s work, his personal life, and his contribution to the art of cinema. Love his films, hate his films, or if otherwise indifferent, one cannot deny, as Maddrey asserts, that Craven has left a lasting imprint in American cinema, and a significant mark on modern horror cinema. Maddrey’s coverage of several decades of cinema from Wes Craven reveals not only the artistry of Craven, but how his films are a revelation of the shifting zeitgeist of the latter half of the 20th century and onward to the new millennium.
William Blick is a literary/crime fiction and film critic, a librarian, and an academic scholar. He is contributing editor to Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of Noircon and has published work in Senses of Cinema, Film Threat, Cinema Retro, Cineaction, and Film International Online, where he frequently contributes. He is also an Associate Professor/Librarian for Queensborough Community College of CUNY.