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It's Only A Dream... — Description
Wes Craven's passing on August 31 is just another loss for fans of pop culture and horror, as Craven probably loomed larger in the stratosphere of the genre than most of his contemporaries. As far as the creators who came out of that late 60s/early 70s boom, Craven was the one who was able to sustain a multi-decade career, hitting high notes with Scream (1996) and the untypical but still incredibly enjoyable Music From The Heart (1998). And of course the building blocks to that legacy began with The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, and the one that he even predicted will be noted in his obituary when he dies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, from which I've taken a cue as far as what could be construed as a tribute picture.

Freddy Krueger was among the first batch of toy photos I did when I started getting into this niche years ago. It was one of the first times I'd dedicated a series to a single figure through different lighting arrangements and subtle posing (the original NECA Freddy had limited articulation below the waist so there truly wasn't much one could do). Some of the best ones I did were this one: , and this one: , with this one too not that bad: (relying on the frighting profile that Robert Englund perfected so well). So returning to Springwood for another go with an actual scene was something I'd looked forward to and had even planned before Craven's death. Admittedly I wish I had had more time to plot the idea out but what I came up with conveys the terror and creep factor inherent that first Elm Street movie, that is often sorely lacking in most of the sequels (that Craven himself lampooned so hilariously in Scream). I wanted to display iconography with this piece, choosing instead to focus on Freddy's glove as it along with his battered Fedora and red and green striped sweater are the most important elements of Freddy's visual cues. The sweater and glove are clearly seen, and I had been able to figure out how to properly pose Freddy with his hat I'd have done so but the hands just couldn't get a good grip around it.

Its interesting that Craven understood the literacy of horror better than his cohorts could, in my opinion. Romero, coming from his advertising background, seemed unable to escape the shadow of the Vietnam War and commercialization of culture that his more recent attempts with his Dead films are pale shadows of that original trilogy (some of his non-zombie films like The Crazies and Martin are vastly underrated); Carpenter, the most Hitchcockian of the horror maestro's, doesn't do much nowadays and has been in ill health, his remakes of his films in recent years being released to varying degrees of quality and success; Tobe Hooper had two hits with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and maybe Poltergeist, John Milius became blacklisted in the early-80s after Red Dawn was released. Craven, by knowing how to invert and twist the genre, was able to do straight horror and then up-end it by doing the most meta series of all time with Scream, and while his own works declined the spark that made his best movies so enjoyable was still there. For all of the flaws inherent in Scream 4, there are still moments of that old Craven charm.