Rewatching People Under the Stairs RN.
For Craven, the three I've seen were A Nightmare On Elm Street, Shocker, and Scream.
What Jive said. Cursed is interesting, though it's been awhile since I've seen it, so I can't say if I'd still like it or not. Last House on the Left is a rough watch, but fits in with what was going on in the exploitation/grindhouse sphere in the 70s.
Anyways, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream made film companies. Dimension went from being Miramax's side venture that seemed to be for more "risky" (ie, we don't know if this shit is going to do well at the box office) films. I'm sure Disney was more than happy about that. Hellraiser III, The Crow, Halloween H20, etc. did alright for the company, but compared to Scream, they weren't shit. Yes, even The Crow. Scream cost about $9mil less, and made almost twice as much money. In addition, both good and bad, Scream set the pace for 90s and 2000s horror.
As for A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Line Cinema has since been rolled up into several mergers, so its history is lost and doesn't seem to matter much anymore. They used to call it "The House That Freddy Built."
Enough said!
Meanwhile, John Carpenter can be characterized as a bitter, overhyped director whose films tended to bomb at the box office, who may've done decent at the video stores, and gets too much credit/praise. Frankly, if Friday the 13th wouldn't have assembled the frame/chassis of what made Halloween what it is from a pacing, storytelling, and "horror trope" perspective, it would've been just another horror film. In my opinion, Tobe Hooper deserves more credit.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Carpenter's films. That said, you can sense the contempt in some of his films. Why do you think Halloween III ends the way it does? My favorites are Escape from New York/LA, The Thing, They Live, and The Fog. Big Trouble in Little China is pretty close as well. Stuff like Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Starman, and Vampires are utterly bad. I don't remember caring much for Village of the Damned (though I think I only saw it once) nor Ghosts of Escape from Mars. Oh, silly me. It's just called Ghosts of Mars, though it was supposed to be a third Escape from... film. Unfortunately, LA tanked
hard and producers wanted nothing to do with a third Snake Plissken film.
