H'ween Horrorthon: Scream

"You push the laws, and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife".

- Jamie Kennedy as Randy.

I'm baaaaaack! Okay, as I previously mentioned in my post blog for Happy Birthday to Me, I am utterly convinced that both the late Wes Craven and first-time writer Kevin Williamson took apart that bizarre 1981 slasher pic and remade it as Scream; but that's only the icing on the... ahem — cake!

Williamson, a self-admitted slasher movie junkie concocted Scream as a blatant homage to his all-time favorite slasher/horror film, Halloween from 1978. It was clearly a labor of love for he and Craven as Craven, a maverick of the genre as well as one of its main innovators; classics such as The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Deadly Blessing (1981), A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), Deadly Friend (1986), The Serpent & the Rainbow (1988), and The People Under The Stairs (1991) were but a few of his cult hits. Although many were distributed by film studios, he still had trouble getting them to take him seriously. After the Eddie Murphy comedy/horror debacle Vampire In Brooklyn (1995), it might've been Craven's swan song as a director. Then, Williamson's script, then ironically entitled Scary Movie made its way to him and through a deal with the Miramax studio subsidiary, Dimension Films, and a proper budget; Craven and Williamson were loaded for bare.

Released in December, 1996 — an odd release date for a horror/slasher film considering the Christmas season is more susceptible to family fare. However, William Friedkin DID released his seminal horror classic, The Exorcist, one day after Christmas in 1973. Also, the film had the promise of Drew Barrymore, the sweetheart kid from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, being the star, as well as Courtney Cox in the cast, who was a big star on TV, with the sitcom, Friends, and also Neve Campbell, who herself made a name as a teen star on the FOX drama series: Party of Five. New names such as Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, David Arquette, and Jaime Kennedy were added to the cast. Cameo appearances and even brief roles were given to TV sitcom star, Henry Winkler of Happy Days fame (Fonzie, anyone?) and 70's horror movie star, Linda Blair, from The Exorcist. Would this be Craven's comeback? My two cents is as follows.

The plot starts out simple enough. Drew Barrymore is a pretty, impressionable teenage girl, Casey Becker, who gets a phone call from a seemingly friendly man. She's awaiting her boyfriend, so they can watch a horror movie on their VHS player and possibly get some pre-parental nookie going. The 'caller' makes small talk, chatting about horror movies, and Casey instantly seems to be hooked. At this point, it's a meet — cute with some possibilities, until the 'voice' reveals his sinister side by acknowledging that he can actually 'see' who he's watching. She hangs up. He calls back. She hangs up. He calls back. Back and forth. Back and forth. It begins to take a toll on Casey. She's forceful enough in demanding that he leave her alone. But, she's now at full attention when he threatens to 'gut' her like a fish.

CJG Artwork: A Repro Poster This Writer Made Back in 2012!

The opening has the obvious shades of When a Stranger Calls without the "check the children" angle. Needless to say, the caller is revealed — as Ghostface, a Halloween-costumed, ghost-masked killer who first forcefully quizzes her on horror movie trivia until she wets her pants. A fight for survival ensues, but, not surprisingly, conveniently dispatches Casey AND her boyfriend just as the parents arrive to soak in the horror of what just happened. Inside joke: the fact that Drew Barrymore was initially pegged as the 'star', but killed off before the next reel brought us memories of Janet Leigh's performance in Alfred Hitchcock's seminal slasher masterpiece, Psycho (1960).

Cut to our protagonist. A pretty, brunette, studious girl named Sidney Prescott (Campbell) has a slight quibble with her boyfriend over just not putting out fast enough (damn it!). The news of Casey Becker's death and her boyfriend is immediately front-page news and now putting the town on the map — for all the wrong reasons. The high school clique is comprised of Prescott's glib girlfriend, Tatum (McGowen), her sex-starved boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Ulrich), his Jim Carrey-esque BFF, Stu Parker. (Lillard), and rounding it out, video-working-Tarantino-film-buff-walking-movie-encyclopedia, Randy, played mercilessly by comedian Jamie Kennedy. All sit around discussing possible motives, all based on recent movies they've seen: Basic Instinct, Prom Night, and even the grand-cousin, Halloween, as well.

Another key player in the mystery is pretty (yeah, it's a chronic-tic word to describe all of the female cast members), over-ambitious and unscrupulous tabloid reporter, Gale Weathers (Cox). She's a little too close for comfort to Sidney as she was the one who reported her mother's death/murder that was easily solved by Sidney's testimony against a man her mother was having a torrid extramarital affair with (here's one of the Happy Birthday to Me connections), except Weathers was convinced she testified against the wrong guy.

The killer, over the phone, has a penchant for taunting his future victims with horror movie trivia and to guess where he may be lurking on the property. The victims, who are all horror movie buffs and are supposedly well-versed in horror movie scenarios, still all seem to meet their demise by NOT following tenets and devices of other horror films. There are also speculations as to how one becomes a horror movie murder victim if rules are violated: (Gremlins, Friday the 13th, and Halloween, even Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, are all referenced)

Never have sex.

Never get drunk or high.

Never (under any circumstances) say, "I'll be right back." The result is generally... you NEVER do!

So, in wrapping. The finale leads to a party (Happy Birthday to Me once again.) and it IS revealed that the killer is indeed someone the kids all knew. Do I reveal who it was? Nah. The film is over 20 years old and is still one of those movies that NOT everyone has seen. It has since had a cult following and three other sequels and an MTV TV series; SCREAM 4 would be Craven's very last film, ever. The film, much like Craven's earlier work was also controversial in that it allegedly caused (as well as discussed) the potential for film violence to translate into real-life violence. Personally, I do believe in the one line a character states very brazenly:

"Movies don't create psychos. Movies make [already-made] psychos more creative."

Personally, anyone who takes a film's content too seriously and enacts it in real-life, is already brain-rotted to begin with. On that happy note, I'm getting a Coke from my fridge. I'll be right back.

Next up: A Stephen King tale about death — re-imagined!