LOS ANGELES: Legendary horror film director Wes Craven, known for the Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street series, passed away at his home here after suffering from brain cancer.

The versatile film-maker, who passed away on August 30, wrote and produced features, directed for television and wrote novels, reports variety.com.

Craven was a humanities professor before leaving academia to work in post-production and on porn movies, using a pseudonym. His first credited feature was the controversial shocker The Last House on the Left, which he wrote, directed and edited in 1972. He followed it with the ‘blackly comic’ The Hills Have Eyes and Swamp Thing, an early entry in the comic book genre.

He wrote and directed A Nightmare on Elm Street with Robert Englund as Krueger and an early Johnny Depp performance, in 1984.

Bill Pullman starred in 1988’s Serpent and the Rainbow, which was based on a non-fiction book about voodoo. Craven tried his hand at non-horror fare between Scream 2 and Scream 3 with Music of the Heart in 1999, for which Meryl Streep was Oscar-nominated for best actress. He also wrote a novel, The Fountain Society, that year.

Born on August 2, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio, the long time bird lover served as a long time member of the Audubon California Board of Directors.Craven is survived by his wife, producer and former Disney

Studios vice-president Iya Labunka; sister Carol Buhrow; son Jonathan Craven; daughter Jessica Craven; stepdaughter Nina Tarnawksy and three grandchildren.