My introduction into the world of the late horror film director Wes
Craven’s films came in October 1977 when I began seeing ads in my local
newspaper for his film The Hills Have Eyes. The image of actor Michael
Berryman as Jupiter, with his bald head and serious grin, I will not lie,
freaked me out. Twenty-one years later I would meet him at a horror film
convention, and he could not have been nicer – but that is beside the point! I did
not know what the movie was about, but it sported an R-rating, and it did not
look like anything that I could ever sit through at the age of nine. I would
later learn that I was correct. I finally caught up with Hills in the
summer of 1984 on a television broadcast, three years into my newfound love of
horror films. I found it to be fairly terrifying, even during an afternoon viewing.
Around the same time, I obtained Mr. Craven’s lesser-known film, Deadly Blessing
(1981), which also featured Mr. Berryman, on CED, which
takes place in the Amish Country. It is more of a supernatural film, but I
enjoyed it just the same.
Everything changed when, in early November 1984, I saw the television
trailer for Mr. Craven’s new film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which
introduced audiences to the world of Fred Krueger. I was curious and
enthralled, and my mind began working on how I could get my parents to agree to
allow me to see it. A local theater was showing it with the PG-rated A
Soldier’s Story on the other screen. I lied and said that I needed to
review A Soldier’s Story for my English class as we were reading the
stage play upon which it was based. My friend and I saw Elm Street on my
sixteenth birthday. When we left the theater after the film was done, I was
over the moon. The original Elm Street was and still is the best horror
film I have ever seen in a theater, though I was clueless that it would begin a
franchise that I would grow to like less and less as time went on. When my
parents asked me what A Soldier’s Story was about, all I could muster
what that it was a story about a soldier. I think they had their suspicions…
When I saw Mr. Craven’s latest film at the time, Scream (originally
titled Scary Movie), on opening night on Friday, December 20, 1996, it
did not feel like anything that he had directed before. The terror and
brutality that permeates much of Hills and even portions of Elm
Street are absent. There is graphic gore in Scream, but the whole
affair looks closer to an episode of The O.C. than a horror film as the
California high school setting looks a little too clean and shiny. Drew Barrymore
plays Casey, a babysitter, at the film’s start in a similar way that opens Fred
Walton’s 1979 thriller When a Stranger Calls. She fields calls from a
psycho who taunts her, asking her what her favorite scary movie is, etc. The
calls become more verbal and horrible. Casey is killed after the first thirteen
minutes in a clear nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, although Janet Leigh’s
scream time (sorry) in that film was much longer.
The real protagonist of Scream is Sidney (Neve Campbell),
the virginal high school girl whose boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) is predictably
pressuring her for sex. We discover that her mother was killed a year ago and
her father travels for business. Sidney is pretty much left to fend for herself.
As though her problems were not bad enough, she is now subjected to the same
calls that plagued Casey. A cloaked figure wearing a contorted ghost mask makes
his way into her home and a fight ensues, with her boyfriend Billy coming to
the rescue. His timing arouses suspicion in both the audience and Sidney, and
his possessing a cell phone at a time when they were not everywhere as they are
today is even more cause for alarm. The police bring him in for questioning but
they have no tangible proof of any guilt. While all of this is going on, a
television newscaster (Courtney Cox) is anxious to get the story of her career
and stops at nothing to glean information from Sidney or even seduce the local
goofball cop (David Arquette) who is never taken seriously. She uses her charms
to infiltrate a party comprised of teenagers who are all suspect; she places a
hidden camera to record their gathering. The camera is nondescript, and it made
me wonder what 1996 technology would be small enough to go unnoticed. How does
it even work? How is it powered? From the looks of it, it is wireless, though
this raises more questions than it answers. Probably best to not make too much
of it in a film that clearly does not take itself seriously.
One of the issues that I have with the film is its failure to make
up its mind as to what kind of a film it is intended to be: a parody or an
actual slasher film? It never really succeeds at either, because it is not
funny enough to be a parody, nor is it even scary enough to be considered a
true slasher film. Henry Winkler plays the high school principal. He is
summarily displaced as a request from producer Bob Shaye, who wanted an
additional kill in the story, but not before encountering a janitor named Fred
in a green and black sweater, played by Mr. Craven, in an eye-rolling cameo,
clearly saluting the “hero†of his better film.
The screenplay also gets into a little too much social commentary wherein
the high schoolers talk about how movies do not make killers, etc. By the time
the true killer’s identity is revealed, I was honestly glad that the film was
over, as I found it more irritating than anything else.
Scream was written by Kevin Williamson who is best known for the teen
drama Dawson's Creek, and it shows – the film has a polished look that,
I feel, works to its detriment – Hills (shot on 16mm and blown up to
35mm) and Elm Street (shot on 35mm) both have their own signature visual
styles that work very well. He also penned a short-lived and (unfairly) panned television
series in 2007 called Hidden Palms, which featured a twenty-year-old Amber
Heard as Gretchen, a troubled teen whose boyfriend reportedly committed suicide,
with rumors about aspects of his death arising afterward. That show only lasted
two months, but an air of mystery permeated each episode. Mr. Williamson has
employed sexual promiscuity in much of his work and the results never seem to
be worth the trouble that the characters endure.
I take no pleasure in saying anything
negative about Scream, as I possess a genuine affinity for Mr. Craven’s
work. Scream feels like a Hollywood mainscream film (I know, sorry!),
however the another issue that I have with it probably is not even
an issue at all. It is just a pet peeve of mine: when it comes to slasher
films, beginning with Halloween (the 1978 John Carpenter film and Mr.
Williamson’s favorite movie, one that figures prominently in Scream),
there has been sort of a misunderstanding, in my humble opinion, among hardcore
fans regarding the notion of the reputed “Last Girl†being a virgin and
therefore making it through to the end while the promiscuous “Bad Girls†are
killed. The unspoken notion is that being a virgin is what manages to keep
these surviving girls safe from being killed. In Halloween, Jamie Lee
Curtis's character, Laurie, makes it not because she is a virgin, but because
she actually pays attention to what is going on around her. Her friends
Linda and Annie are so busy being distracted by their boyfriends and their
sexual shenanigans that they have no idea what is really going on and are
oblivious to the presence of the killer, Michael Myers. The way that this motif
is displayed historically from everything following Sean Cunningham’s Friday
the 13th(1980) up to Scream is quizzical, and I often
wonder if we are meant to identify with the teenage characters because we are
seeing it through their eyes. They seem to be interpreting the “Final Girl†as making
it simply because she is a virgin.
Mr. Craven has made plenty of other
films throughout his career that have nothing to do with Elm Street’s
Fred Krueger, among them his debut film The Last House on the Left (1972)
of which I am not a fan; the Linda Blair TV-movie Stranger in Our
House/Summer of Fear (his first 35mm film); Swamp Thing (1981); the oddball Kristy Swanson vehicle Deadly Friend
(1986); The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988); Shocker (1989); and
the bizarre The People Under the Stairs (1991), all horror films that deal
with different subjects. Despite what most people may feel about Scream,
it was a highly successful and well-received film that also paved the way for not
only sequels, but also a remake scheduled for release in early 2022. Scream
also revived the slasher film, a genre that for years languished in the mediocre
made-for-video sections of video stores all across the country. For that, I am
grateful, as some true classics of the genre have been made in the years since.
Scream is now available on a Paramount 4K Ultra High-Definition Blu-ray and
the results are spectacular. The disc has some interesting extras, which
consist of:
A feature-length audio commentary with
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson that was more than likely recorded for the
original DVD release. It is a fun listen, though most of it entails them
commenting on the onscream action (damn, sorry again! These puns write
themselves!) than delving into the behind-the-scenes facts to any great extent.
A Bloody Legacy: SCREAM 25 Years Later – This is just over seven minutes and is more of a
promotional piece for the 2022 release of the new Scream film directed
by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Production Featurette – This runs just over six minutes and is exactly what it
sounds like.
Behind the Scenes has two small parts: a three-and-a-half-minute piece of BTS
footage, while another runs just under three minutes and focuses on Drew
Barrymore’s work on the film.
Q & A with Cast and Crew – Two short parts, the first being What’s Your Favorite Scary
Movie?, which most people interviewed do not reveal, they sort of just list
movies that scared them. I was grateful that one woman mentioned Burnt
Offerings, which is the first thriller that I saw and made me become
interested in horror films. This part runs just under three minutes. The second
portion, Why Are People So Fascinated by Horror Films?, runs about
two-and-a-half-minutes, and they all echo similar notions about living through
fear vicariously. Neve Campbell reveals the dark side in all of us and letting
it out in a movie. Look fast for Linda Blair early on as a
television reporter.
The release also includes a digital code for streaming the film.
Scream is, of course, not to be confused with the film of the same
name from 1981, written and directed by Byron Quisenberry, which was widely
panned by pretty much everyone who saw it.