Friday, October 12, 2012

Hootenanny Halloween Countdown: SCREAM

"What's your name?"
"Why do you want to know my name?"
"Because I wanna know who I'm looking at."


And with that, a 13 year old Nate Frizzell wet his pants in a crowded theater.

If you were born in the 80s, chances are the original Scream scared the bejesus out of you in the theaters.

Still one of the finest opening scenes in any movie ever, the original Scream did for answering phones what Psycho did for taking showers.  Before the series became all about "meta humor" and self-referential quips with predictable slasher-film conventions, the original Scream had one goal:

to scare you.

Watching Drew Barrymore, home alone out in the middle of nowhere, as she is terrorized by some psycho on a telephone was a great way to start off.

SPOILER ALERT (though if you haven't seen the original Scream 16 years later, I have no pity for you):

I mean, who would have thought they would kill off Drew Barrymore???  I certainly didn't... which was why it was genius!  The entire opening sequence had me thinking to myself "It's going to be alright, it's going to be alright, it's going to be..." SLASH.  Nope.

The movie continues on without its biggest star to become a who-dunit meets slasher classic.  Bunch of hip teens not taking a series of grisly murders seriously enough and paying the price, while the sensitive heroine with a past lives the nightmare of being the obviously next target while no one around her either cares or believes her for some inexplicable reason until the very end when it's pretty much already too late.

Scream could have continued on in a very cliche way, except it didn't.  The ending and revelation of who the Bad Guy(s) was/were took everyone by surprise.  Stu and Billy Loomis?  The goofy friend and the boyfriend?  And why?  Because one of them was mad that the lead's mom caused his parents divorce?  Meh.  Yet it was the inspiration for the motive that set Scream's ending apart.  That, of course, being that the boys intended on blaming horror films and action films and thrillers for their mental state.  Too much intake from violent influences. It was laughable in one sense, but then when you really got right down to it: was it?

Take, for example, the recent tragedy involving the theater shootings in Colorado: the shooter was dressed like "The Joker."  Apparently, writer Kevin Williamson had a glimpse into the future and saw that some people can be perhaps a bit too heavily influenced by the movies.

Aside from being a cool scary movie, Scream re-defined a genre.  Its influence can still be seen today in pretty much any horror movie that comes out, especially in any type of slasher film.

So if you're looking for a film to make you feel a little less safe the next time your phone rings while you're home alone, seek no further than Wes Craven's original Scream.




What's your favorite scary movie?
~The Hootenanny

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