In honor of the release of Scream 4 this week, I’m declaring it Scream Week here at YNTE. Today I’ll be doing a YNTE Horror Night for Scream. Tomorrow I’ll do Scream 2. Wednesday is the 13th, and will be your regularly scheduled, unrelated, YNTE Horror Night. Thursday will be Scream 3. Friday, I’m going to gather up as many YNTE writers as I can to go see Scream 4 in theaters, and hopefully by Saturday we’ll have a big metareview of the film from the lot of us.
But today is all about the original film, Scream, which really revitalized the slasher genre.
As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!
What we have here is a film created by people who have studied the genre EXTENSIVELY. Horror films in general (and slasher flicks specifically) are incredibly trope heavy. Scream is a film that knows when to break them and when to follow them.
It starts out with Drew Barrymore getting ready to watch a scary movie when she receives a phone call. At first she thinks it’s just someone dialing a wrong number, but strikes up a conversation with the stranger about scary movies. When talking about the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, she says “The first one was (scary), but the rest SUCKED”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Scream director Wes Craven’s involvement in only the first film.
She becomes aware that the person she is talking to on the phone is outside looking at her, and she starts to get scared. She screams “Who’s there?”, but the voice on the phone chastises her: “You should never say ‘Who’s there’! Don’t you watch scary movies? It’s a death wish! Might as well just come out here to investigate a strange noise or something.”
So to try and get this creep off her case, Drew Barrymore threatens that her boyfriend will be over any minute. “He’s big and he plays football and he’ll KICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU”, she threatens. Unfortunately, he’s tied up on the porch. Oops!
The killer on the phone says “I want to play a game”. Wait, are we watching Scream or Saw?
He asks her some horror trivia questions. She gets the first one, “Who was the killer in Halloween” right, but biffs the second question “Who was the killer in Friday the 13th”. Mind you, that’s a bit of a trick question, but her answer was still wrong, and as a result, her boyfriend Steve gets killed.
This leads to a very stereotypical “Last Girl” sequence, where the scared girl runs around the house while the killer (wearing a black cloak and a Ghostface mask) chases her. This one’s a bit different though, in that it’s at the front of the movie, not the end. Also, she dies at the end of the sequence, so that’s a bit different.
Anyway, despite the entire intro (and a lot of the press leading up to the film) being about Drew Barrymore, she is dead just 10 minutes in. Surprise! This movie’s not about her at all.
We then meet the girl the movie is ACTUALLY about, Sydney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell). She’s sad because a year ago her mom was murdered and also her creepy boyfriend keeps trying to sneak into her bedroom and have sex with her.
The next day, everyone at the school is troubled by the murder of Drew Barrymore’s character’s death, and intrepid reporter Gail Weathers is on the case. Gail is played by Courteney Cox, who I think must have gone in for the same old lady Dorian Grey surgery Jennifer Aniston did. Maybe they got a two for one special?
We also meet Syd’s friends: Randy (Jamie Kennedy), a film buff; Stu (Mathew Lillard), a joker; and Tatum (Rose McGowan), a talking pair of tits.
The next night, Sydney gets attacked by the Ghostface Killer, and immediately after, her creepy boyfriend is there. She assumes that her boyfriend is the killer, and so do the cops. His spooky ass gets hauled off to jail.
Sydney spends the night at Titsum’s (I mean Tatum!) house, along with Dewey, Titsum’s (I mean Tatum, I swear!) brother Dewey (David Arquette). While there, she receives a call from Ghostface, and since her creepy boyfriend is in Jail, it couldn’t possibly have been him. Ghostface implies that he killed Syd’s mom as well, and Cotton Weary, who was arrested for it, is innocent.
Wes Craven had a cameo as “Fred the Janitor” in an outfit that looks very much like Freddy Krueger. Henry Winkler is also in this movie, for just long enough to get killed.
School is cancelled due to rampant pranking (and the death of Principal Fonz), so Stu throws a party. Titsum(Tatum, I don’t know why that keeps happening!) goes downstairs to get some beer out of the garage, where Ghostface kills her with a garage door.
The party guests are watching Slasher films downstairs, and Randy lists off the “rules” of slasher films:
- You can’t have sex, since only virgins can outsmart the killer in the end.
- You can’t drink or do drugs, since like rule #1, they are sins.
- Don’t ever say “I’ll be right back.
Sydney apparently missed the rules, because she’s upstairs and has decided to finally give up her virginity to her creepyy boyfriend, even though she still sort of thinks he might be the killer. Her suspicions are put to rest though, when Ghostface busts in and kills Boyfriend McCreepster.
Dewey and Gail make out in the woods for no explainable reason. Then Courteney Cox and David Arquette get married in real life, also for no explainable reason.
Sydney runs around the house scared for a while. She runs into Stu and Randy, both claiming the other is crazy and is the killer. Syd slams the door on both of them, unwilling to take the risk. Then her creepy boyfriend (whose name is Billy. Probably should have mentioned that earlier) shambles down the stairs. He’s alive! The stabbing just wounded him. He takes the gun Sydney found somehow and opens the door. Randy runs in, saying Stu’s gone crazy.
Billy points the gun at Randy, says “We all go a little mad sometimes”(a line from Psycho) and shoots him.
Apparently Billy and Stu are BOTH the killer. They’ve been working together all along. Apparently Syd’s mom was sort of a slut and had sex with Billy’s dad, which caused his parents to get a divorce, which is a better motive than Stu’s, who claims “peer pressure”.
Stu and Billy wound each other so they look like victims, but they stab each other a bit too much and get weak and start making mistakes. Syd escapes and kills them.
Despite being badly wounded, Gail, Dewey, Randy, and of course Syd all live. I bet they’ll be back for the sequel! Come back tomorrow to find out!
Catch up on past installments:
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan
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