M NMOES

F'~ST Craven reworked the original story in the comic book, changing the person in charge of tecting Dr. Holland from Matt Cable to Alice Cable (played by Adrienne Barbeau) so that ven could give the story a love interest and add a "Beauty and the Beast" type overtone to the story.

"It was very much a 'Beauty and the Beast' tale," he said. "It was clearly an attempt to do a variation on the 'Beauty and the Beast' theme. You have a beast that you know inside is a handsome prince, but you see him as a toad. You've seen him before, and you know he was amorous and humorous and very, very scientifically brilliant, yet outwardly now he's a monster.

"On the other hand, you have Louis Jordan's character Arcane, who is someone who looks very nice on the outside, but when you see his true self, it's monstrous and ugly. Then there is the character of Bruno, who turns into a giant mouse. I like exploring the idea that there are antipathies to everything. Beneath the surface, there is another side. That theme has run through all of my films."

In addition, Craven added the character of Jude (Reggie Batts), a young black kid who seems intended to act as a spokesman for the kids in the audience. "Jude was somebody that the kids could identify with," Craven admitted. "We wanted somebody that could ask the questions that only an uninformed person would ask, and who would add humor. That's basically it. He just came out of me, and we all liked him. Originally, he was an old man, but in the second or third draft (of the screenplay), he switched to being a kid. Overall, I kept the basic character names and sort of combined them, and then I created the kid and created the story. I would say up to the formula exploding in Holland's face, it was pretty much along the lines of the comic, and everything after that was just made up. It was a fun picture. I met my wife on it, so it was successful," Craven said with a smile.

Swamp Thing does have a very dream-like feel to it, but if fails to evoke the same beauty and unease that Walter Hill was able to achieve with a similar location in the film Southern Comfort. Rather than a classic monster tale or an inspired adaptation of a very fine comic book, Swamp Thing is a kiddie matinee film that is unlikely to attract audiences other than the younger audience for which it appears to have been intended.

Because of the success of The Hills Have Eyes on videotape, particularly in Europe, the European video distributors offered to finance a sequel to the original film, and so The Hills Have Eyes 2 was born. However, since the video rights had already been sold, it became difficult for a distribution deal to be struck in the United States. Increasingly, today's films have become more and more dependent upon so-called ancillary rights (such as cable and videocassette sales) to break even overall. Films were no longer breaking even at the box office domestically, partially because of declining attendance and partially because it was simply costing more for films to be made. But while Craven had mostly finished The Hills Have Eyes 2, the film was not released until after his next two projects.

The first was a telefeature called Invitation to Hell. Craven was called in after the script had been completed, but he ended up doing an uncredited polish job on it. The basic premise of Invitation (originally titled The Club) was that a family moves in to a new location that is situated near the gates of hell. The family is lured into hell by a mysterious club comprised of members of the local commuRity. As luck and the screenwriter would have it, the father (Robert Urich) has been working on a special fire-proof suit that allows him to enter hell to rescue his family. Any relationship to Greek mythology is purely coincidental.

Overall, the film is very tame. Said Craven: "When television is dealing with me, they say, 'We can't do violence, so we must be able to do witchcraft because that's something else, that's a little off-the-wall.' Whenever I get approached by television, it is usually for something supernatural. I think Invitation turned out well for what it was. It was a very fast job. They were having to rush it to make it because it was designed to fill a hole that suddenly opened up.

I think there were about two weeks pre-production and something like three-and-a-half weeks post-production. We got the second-highest ratings for the week, and swept the ratings for the night. I beat Simon and Simon and Magnum, so for the time we had, we did very, very well."

However, Craven really hit his stride with A Nightmare on Elm Street. In its original opening, the film did very well, climbing to a profit position even before it reached wider release. More important, it was an unexpectedly stylish and energetic film while Craven's latest