Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- Scream

     In August of 1990, a Shreveport, Louisiana man named Danny Rollings murdered 5 college students in Gainesville, Florida. The sheer grisly nature of the murders and the meticulousness by which they were committed caught national headlines. When the show Turning Point did an episode on the incident in 1994, it caught the attention of a struggling actor and screenwriter named Kevin Williamson. Williamson, then shopping around his script Killing Ms. Tingle (later Teaching Ms. Tingle, which was released in 1999 with Williamson himself as director), got inspired to write about a killer who stalks and taunts a young women in her home. Eventually, taking influence from his childhood love of slashers (especially the first Halloween), Williamson proceeded to add meta-elements alluding to the cliches of horror movies. Williamson's agent put the script, then titled Scary Movie, on sale in 1995, where it became the subject of a massive bidding war. Emerging victorious was Dimension Studios, a division of Miramax, owned by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. The Weinsteins, as per usual, made some changes to the script to increase the killings and give at least some of the killers motivations, but also remove some of the gorier moments. Wes Craven (already beginning to tire of the horror genre he had helped define for 20 years) read the script and had some interest, but was pre-occupied with a remake of The Haunting he was involved with. When that project fell apart (and star Drew Barrymore signed on), he subsequently accepted an offer by Bob Weinstein to helm the director's chair. At this time, the title was changed to Scream, an allusion to a song by Michael Jackson. Craven and Williamson resisted the change, marking one of several conflict they'd have with the Weinsteins during production (including whether to shoot in the US or Canada, a conflict that almost got Craven removed from the film). Ultimately, the film was shot in some California suburbs. For effects, the killer's mask was a 1991 design by Fun World, which was dubbed "Ghostface" before the debut of the film. The film used 50 gallons of fake blood. After further cuts to get an R rating, the film was finally released on December 20th, 1996 (meant to be for horror fans during the drought of the holiday season), and while the initial weekend earnings were disappointing, word of mouth made it a massive box office success. It was a critical success, but it was also embroiled in controversy due to some copycat murders and especially in the controversy over media violence after the Columbine Massacre.

    Teenager Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is idly making popcorn and preparing to watch a horror movie, when a mysterious caller (Roger L. Jackson) begins to pester her, asking her about various horror movies. The caller soon escalates the stakes, saying he's just outside, and showing Casey's boyfriend Steve Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls) tied up in his backyard. Eventually, the killer breaks in, and after a struggle, kills Becker and hangs her as a warning to others. The killings make local news, and in particular impacts Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) whose own mother was killed in a similar fashion only a year earlier, despite the killer, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), on death row. While her father Neil (Lawrence Hecht) is out for work, Sidney is left home alone, her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich, and given the debt this has to Halloween, the name was likely intentional) sneaking in every now and again. The two pal around with friends Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), Tatum's policeman brother Dewey (David Arquette),Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard, sadly not playing it in his Shaggy voice), and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy, being obnoxious as per usual). One night, the killer targets Sidney in her home, but manages to evade him. As she is besieged by the media, including Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who wrote a sensationalist book about the murder of Sidney's mother, she must figure out who is trying to kill her, especially when the principal of the high school (Henry Winkler. Yes, the Fonz is in this) is killed.

     First and foremost, Wes Craven remains a very effective director of horror. He uses tracking shots, subtle blocking, and lighting to make the kills and attacks even scarier and more effective. It helps to make it effective as a slasher, and keep the viewer interested. The mystery of Ghostface does provide a compelling impetus for the plot, and it does pay off with a good twist that is well explained (and does tie into slasher tropes of all types.) Some of the kills are pretty creative, and some of the jokes funny.

     Perhaps the metaness of the film was fresh in 1996, because the slasher boom of the 80's was starting to subside by then, but a lot of the tropes satirized is so spelled out that it comes off as tedious. Characters will literally stop and explain horror movies and their tropes and how it relates to the plot. It ruins any of the meta subtext working or even the scariness itself working in its own right. Sometimes, they'll explain movies, despite them being well-known or at least somewhat known. At one point, they describe the film The Howling. There's the famous scene of Jamie Kennedy describing horror tropes, which completely stops the movie cold. This is a big enough problem, given the whole film is centered on this aspect, but it also doesn't help that Ghostface is just not very intimidating as a villain. His phone voice sounds like I do at 6 AM, when I've got 2 hours of sleep, and he runs around like he forgot his keys. Sometimes, his deaths are entirely accidental, and he just runs with it. I thought he was going to be like a Wile E. Coyote type using gadgets, and he kind of is, only Wile E. Coyote mostly used inventions, and didn't alternate techniques.

    This is a very 90's movie, with a very 90's sense of postmodernism and irony lathered all over it like barbeque sauce on a pair of ribs. In this case, it's a good period piece for that particular point in time, and how a horror movie used it to comment on its predecessors. So, even if I didn't necessarily care for the film, it works to give what was the new horror of the 90's. So, if you're interested in 90's films, it might be some good viewing. Otherwise, I can't say this was a particular good slasher or a good deconstruction. A lot of it was just too blunt or tedious to really work.

  Tomorrow, we look at Brian de Palma's reinterpretation of the Phantom of the Opera with Phantom of the Paradise.  

Summer of Terror- Wes Craven's New Nightmare

    As I discussed a few entries back, Wes Craven wrote the concept of Freddy haunting the real life cast and crew of a new Nightmare on Elm Street film for the third film, which was rejected, but reused for this. Craven wanted a return to the darker, more surreal tone of the first one, as opposed to the increasingly absurd sequels (given the last two, this was probably the best move.) Heather Langenkamp returns, this time as herself, since the film was set in the real world, and part of the plot was based on a stalker she had dealt with following the cancellation of her sitcom Just the Ten of Us (a spin-off of Growing Pains). Craven himself, Robert Englund (both in and out of make-up), John Saxon, producers Robert Shaye and Sara Riser, and several of the actors also make appearances as themselves. Craven used many of the props from the original, including Freddy's original wardrobe. Given that the 1994 Earthquake had happened during production, that was incorporated into the script with shots of damage still being repaired in the film itself. Released on October 14th, 1994 (ten years after the first one), it would gross $19 million on an $8 million budget, and received mostly positive reviews from critics. This would be the penultimate performance of Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger (with Freddy vs. Jason being the last, but I already reviewed that, so it's the last film we're covering with him as Freddy.), and Wes Craven's last point of involvement for the franchise before his death in 2015.

     Heather Langenkamp is an actress who garnered attention as Nancy Thompson in the original Nightmare on Elm Street, and lives in Hollywood with her husband Chase Porter (David Newsom. Langenkamp's real husband apparently declined to appear) and son Dylan (Miko Hughes). She starts the film with a nightmare, where Freddy's (Robert Englund) glove attacks a couple of effect guys ( Matt Winston and Rob LaBelle), and has been dealing with a mysterious stalker who keeps quoting Freddy. Not helping matters is her child exhibiting strange behaviors, and dealing with a mysterious figure seemingly like Freddy, despite him never seeing any of the films. She is approached by producer Robert Shaye to star as Nancy in the new Nightmare film that Wes Craven is making (despite Freddy dying in the last one), which her husband (a special effects artist, much like Langenkamp's real husband David Leroy Anderson) has been working on. Sure enough, her husband is attacked by Freddy's glove and dies in a car crash. Afterwards, Dylan begins to becomes more and more unhinged, seemingly influenced by Krueger. Now, Heather must solve that, and why she seems to be having nightmares much reminsicent of the series that made her famous. And her co-star Robert Englund and director Wes Craven might hold the key to the whole mystery.

     Some see the metanarrative of this as a precursor to Craven's later franchise Scream. I've never seen any of those films, but I thought it worked well in this film. It forgoes in-jokes and subtle references in favor of exploring what happens when reality and fiction begin to overlap, and the power of symbols and representation (in this case, a single fictional character). There's a fantastic scene where Wes Craven shows an unfinished script, and the dialogue is what the previous scene had stated. It really has starts to get that way as the walls of reality begin to crumble, and what is a dream or fiction and what is real feels tenuous.  It helps that Freddy returns to being more of an ever-present menace that he was in the first scene, which makes some of these scenes truly terrifying, especially towards the end with him chasing people. Heather Langenkamp gives a great performance, probably my favorite of hers in the series in fact, where she seems naturalistic, but manages to retain a sense of terror, especially as her son is put into danger.  While it may lack the elaborate dream sequences of the previous films, the more grounded, very gory dreams in this more than make up for it, especially when it get towards the end. The effects are some of the finest in this series.

     I complained about the short length of the some of the earlier films, but this actually has the opposite problem. At 112 minutes, it is a bit too long. A lot of the first half of this film could be shortened or removed entirely, and the general jist of it would be the same. It does drag in some scenes because of this length issue. Also, I feel that Robert Englund as himself should've been in it more, or done a bit more in the scenes he was in. Also, a description of the Nightmare film that they were developing in film would've been interesting.

      I think this is probably the best one of these after the first (with the third a close second), and whether you are a horror fan or not, it is an interesting exercise in metanarrative, having a fictional character slowly invade the real world and the people making the films. It is really fascinating the way it integrates both elements.  It seems like a practice run for when Craven did his next big franchise Scream, which would come to define slashers for the next decade. I highly recommend it, (though watch the first for some context)

    Like I said, I already did Freddy vs. Jason, and even watching this, I really have nothing to say about it. This will be the last of the original continuity we'll cover, and tomorrow, we'll skip ahead to the 2010 reboot.