By NewsGram Staff Writer

The famed horror virtuoso Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven,76, died on Sunday after battling with brain cancer.

Famously known for the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises, Craven once said of his work: "Horror films don't create fear. They release it." The writer-director didn't solely deal in terroe. He also directed the 1999 dram Music of the Heart,which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination.

He wrote, directed and edited his first feature film, The Last House on the Left, in 1972. A horror about the abduction of teenage girls, it was censored in many countries.

His name has come to be synonymous with innovative horror and bold terror. However, Craven again pushed the genre boundaries with the 2005 psychological thriller Red Eye. And in 2006, he wrote and directed a romantic comedy homage to Oscar Wilde as a segment in the French ensemble production Paris Je T'aime.

Craven is survived by his by his third wife, Iya Labunka, and his two children, Jonathan and Jessica, from a previous marriage.