Wes Craven created the homes of our nightmares

By Elisa Krovblit Keay
August 31, 2015

When you think about real estate, you may think about your city's big developers, but not necessarily Hollywood's big directors actors and producers. If you hold off on thinking about the home of your dreams, and start thinking about the home of your nightmares, suddenly Hollywood comes to mind. The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, The Evil Dead - the horrible, haunted, hellish home seems to be a constant theme in the horror genre, and nobody brought us more gruesome and nightmarish homes than Wes Anderson. With his recent passing on August 30, 2015, paying homage to the man that made us afraid to sleep in our own homes seems only fitting.

The awful razor-sharp knife-fingers Freddy Krueger raked across the big screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street forever changed pop culture, and may have possibly stigmatized living on Elm Street for an entire generation, though the actual home used to film the series was recently renovated into a dream home and sold for over $2.1Million.

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But it wasn't just Freddy Kreuger, Wes Craven haunted our dreams and waking moments with real estate horrors and thrillers such as The Last House on the Left (the 1972 original), The Hills Have Eyes, The People Under the Stairs – and who can forget Ghostface, the black-hooded creature with a white plastic face frozen in a horrific expression, chasing highschooler Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) through her home in the four-movie Scream franchise. You can take a tour of the California real estate that Wes Craven used as the sets for Scream, here.

A mansion in Santa Rosa was Sydney Prescott's home in the movie. The movie's slasher script was so horrific that the school board for Santa Rosa High School - which was to have been used as the set for the school in the movie – opted out. There is a humourous credit in the end of the movie "No thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa City School District Governing Board" for their last-minute refusal as a filming location - but can you blame them?

And renters, Craven was an equal opportunity terrorizer. He was the executive producer on They - and They had no problem attacking in apartment buildings too. The cannibal children he directed in The People Under the Stairs also enjoyed renters quite thoroughly...

The house of your dreams is out there, but enjoy the thrill of the home of your nightmares – we give a nod to Wes Craven for making you afraid to sleep in your own home.

About Elisa Krovblit Keay

Elisa Krovblit Keay is a NextHome contributor.

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