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ReFocus: The American Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Wes Craven

Edited by Calum Waddell

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£105.00

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About this book

The first academic study on the work of Wes Craven

  • 16 chapters offering a wide discussion of the director’s career
  • Essential addition to horror film studies curriculum
  • Includes all facets of the filmmaker’s work, including his TV contributions and his melodrama Music of the Heart

This edited collection provides an insightful look at the career and output of American horror director Wes Craven, whose most famous films – such as The Last House on the Left (1972), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996) – came to define the form in the later decades of the 20th century. Also paying attention to Craven’s more underrated work, from Deadly Friend (1986) through to his melodrama Music of the Heart (1999), this academic study argues that the filmmaker’s influence can still be felt on cinema today, many years after his passing. Featuring 17 chapters and an extensive introduction, this addition to the ReFocus line will prove to be essential reading for scary movie connoisseurs and brings a valuable contribution to the growing field of horror film studies.

Reviews

ReFocus: The Films ofWes Craven has an excellent editor in Waddell, an authority on horror and grindhouse cinema, whose stated goal is to prompt readers and viewers to look beyond the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream series, and recognize Wes as a “nearly unrivaled influence within the genre” as well as an “essential American filmmaker.” Through close readings of Wes’s minor works—as well as two new essays about the original Nightmare on Elm Street—ReFocus makes a strong case for Wes as an auteur.
This is (rather unbelievably) the first academic study on the work of Wes Craven and it is both comprehensive and thorough, providing readers with new ways to think about his contribution to the genre and how his legacy continues to live on after his sad passing in 2015. A deep dive like no other into one of horror’s most extraordinary directors, this entry in the ReFocus series proves itself to be both essential and exceptional.
This is (rather unbelievably) the first academic study on the work of Wes Craven and it is both comprehensive and thorough, providing readers with new ways to think about his contribution to the genre and how his legacy continues to live on after his sad passing in 2015. A deep dive like no other into one of horror’s most extraordinary directors, this entry in the ReFocus series proves itself to be both essential and exceptional.
This edited collection on Wes Craven is long overdue. The book surveys Craven’s entire career, exploring his more popular films from interesting new angles, while also bringing attention to more overlooked work. It stands as a testament to a great auteur, who consistently broke new ground in the horror genre.
Calum Waddell’s new collection is an invaluable intervention, being the first extended attempt to make sense of the remarkably elusive Wes Craven. It proves a fitting tribute to a career that lasted over forty years and to the 50th anniversary of his first cinematic release.
Table of contents

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Introduction - Calum Waddell

Part I: The Early Wes Craven

1. In Search of Pandora Experimentia - Brian R. Hauser

2. Censorship in Liberal Times? The Legacy of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left in Germany - Holger Briel

3. The Hills Have Eyes as Folk Horror: a Discursive Approach - Mikel J. Koven

4. “Why Are You Doing This!?” Flashbacks in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes Part II - Will Dodson

Part II: Freddy Krueger and Beyond

5. The American Nightmare Continued: Individualism, Feminism, and Freddy Krueger - Sinead Edmonds

6. The “Nightmare” on Elm Street: The Failure and Responsibility of Those in Authority - Penny Crofts and Honni van Rijswijk

7. Controlling the Souls in the Machine: Wes Craven Directs for the 1985 Twilight Zone Revival - Matthew Sorrento

8. From Friends to Monsters: The Horrors of Technology, Friendship, and the Monsters Next Door in Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend - Norberto Gomez, Jr.

Part III: “Craven” in the Mainstream – The “Hollywood” Nightmares of Wes Craven

9. Self-fulfilling Prophecies and Metaphysical Chastisement in The Serpent and The Rainbow - James Kloda

10. Death is Not the End: Electric Dreams and Mass Media Manipulation in Wes Craven’s Shocker - Melody Blackmore

11. The People Under the Stairs at the Intersection of Black Horror and Children’s Horror - Catherine Lester

12. “I’m a whole other thing”: The People Under the Stairs and Systemic Racism in the Reagan/Bush Era - Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

13. A Nightmare on Video: The Terrors of Home Viewership in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare - Max Bledstein

14. Not Quite Blacula: Locating Vampire in Brooklyn - Richard Sheppard

Part IV Lineage and Legacies

15. The Unlikely Urban Undertaking: Music of the Heart and its Curious Craven Consistencies - Calum Waddell

16. “Blessed Be America for Letting us Dominate and Pray the Lord Our Soul to Keep.” Wes Craven’s Legacy in The Purge and The Purge: Anarchy - Erika Tiburcio Moreno

17. “How Meta Can You Get?” Scream 4 and Wes Craven’s Final Nightmares - Calum Waddell

Filmography

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Calum Waddell

Calum Waddell is a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he also received his PhD. His previous work includes The Style of Sleaze, The American Exploitation Film (2018), Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa (2021), South African Horror Cinema (2025), and the edited collection The Films of Wes Craven (2023). He has occasionally worked on producing bonus content and documentary work for Blu-ray labels and documented the “gory glory” days of grindhouse cinema with his feature-length nostalgia-trip 42nd Street Memories (2015).

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