Wes Craven’s TV Horror Movies, Ranked

A Nightmare On Elm Street creator Wes Craven shot television movies throughout his illustrious career, but are any of them actually worth watching?

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Horror legend Wes Craven made a handful of TV movies during his career, but how do these four films rank in comparison to each other? The release of Last House on the Left in 1972 marked the arrival of a major talent in the world of cinematic horror. The flawed film brought notoriety to director Wes Craven, who followed the rape/revenge thriller with a more polished “mountain men versus city slickers” tale in 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes.

The Hills Have Eyes was another hit, but 1984’s supernatural slasher A Nightmare On Elm Street saw Craven transcend the genre circuit and become a household name. Like Halloween helmer John Carpenter, Craven spent the ‘80s and ‘90s as one of the first names in horror cinema thanks to dream demon Freddy Krueger. However, Robert Englund’s infamous villain was not Craven’s last genre-defining foray into slasher cinema. 1996’s Scream, a massively successful meta-slasher that introduced the world to Ghostface, is another of the director’s defining works. The Scream quadrilogy was (largely) a critical and commercial success from the first film through to Craven’s last, 2011’s belated Scream 4.

However, in between his cinematic horror efforts, Craven directed a handful of TV movies of mixed reputation through the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. TV movies came with lower budgets and more strict limitations on their content, meaning that most of them were less gory and ambitious than Wes Craven’s multiplex outings. So, how do the four rank in comparison to each other?

Chiller (1985)

The weakest of Wes Craven’s TV movies, 1985’s Chiller wastes both a killer premise and an appearance from future Goodfellas star Paul Sorvino. The story of this middling effort follows a businessman who is cryogenically frozen only for the procedure to go wrong (as David Cronenberg fans can attest, any experimental sci-fi medical procedure that can go wrong, will). As a result of this mishap, corporate headhunter Miles Creighton awakens from his nap without a soul, a predicament that becomes clear as he gradually grows more unhinged and lethal with each passing scene. At its best, Chiller could ideally have been an American Psycho-style satire that looked into the soulless world of big business and the desire the uber-rich have to live forever. However, the film mostly squanders the promising concept with scare-free scenes, a slow pace, and some truly ham-fisted dialogue. The conceit is still solid, and as ripe for remaking as the similarly-themed Michael Crichton adaptation The Terminal Man. Chiller is not the movie it could have been, and unlike most of Craven’s efforts, there are few solid scares to make up for how flat the story is.

Stranger in Our House (1978)

Based on the novel Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan, perhaps best known for penning the book that I Know What You Did Last Summer is based on, Stranger in Our House is unfortunately not a slasher movie like that later ‘90s hit. It is, however, a solid piece of slow-burn, suspenseful horror from Wes Craven that proves the helmer never needed gore to creep out an audience. The tale of a teenage girl trying to work out whether her recently orphaned cousin is an actual bonafide witch or just a little weird, Stranger in Our House is aiming for a Conjuring-style mixture of dysfunctional family drama meets religious folk horror. It doesn’t quite pull off that combination, but a spirited central turn from The Exorcist’s Linda Blair elevates this above Chiller and makes Stranger in Our House feel like a legitimate Craven effort – albeit one that has been softened and sanitized for television viewing.

Invitation to Hell (1984)

Not to be confused with the British horror of the same name from two years earlier, 1984’s TV movie Invitation to Hell sees a family man relocate to a tight-knit suburban community with his young, picture-perfect brood. As tends to occur in horror movies, this small neighborhood is home to a dark secret, which in this movie’s case turns out to be a creepy country club that holds sway over its members in classic Stepford Wives/Get Out fashion. Our hero won’t let the fiendish community leader Jessica Jones take control of his clan, prompting all manner of cliched made-for-TV horror antics as he attempts to keep them from falling under the villainess’ sway. Invitation to Hell is undeniably a worse horror movie than, for example, Stranger in Our House, which at least avoids being unintentionally funny even if it may never become terrifying. However, as a goofy slice of genre kitsch, Invitation to Hell is a delight, filled with all manner of corny moments that vintage TV movie viewers will love. It’s the type of silly watch that would be at home on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, but as a result, Invitation to Hell is an enjoyable enough effort – once viewers aren’t anticipating anything in the way of real scares, that is.

Night Visions (1990)

Critics have not been kind to 1990’s Night Visions, a psychological thriller that, from its poster art to its plot, is designed to cash in on the then-massive “sexy serial killer” fad popularised by Basic Instinct or Body of Evidence. However, Craven completists who seek out this underrated outing may be surprised. Night Visions is a police procedural that sees the director combine his love for paranormal horror with the Hollywood satire further explored in New Nightmare. The movie sees a by-the-book cop paired with a kooky psychologist who can channel the emotions of the dead, a conceit so effective it was essentially reused in gorier form by the later TV series iZombie. It’s a silly premise for sure, but one that makes for an enjoyable thriller with solid twists that work best when not taken too seriously. Nowhere near as scary as Wes Craven’s best, Night Visions is at least as witty and watchable as the rest of the genre legend’s oeuvre, which is more than can be said for some of his television outings.

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