There are few things teenagers pride themselves more on than their four years of glory as… nineties kids. Yes, yes, I suppose there are MANY things to love about the golden 1990’s, namely Columbine, the worst American bombing incident of all time, Mother Teresa’s death and Justin Timberlake’s ramen hair. Good times, good times. But there are some really marvelous things about the nineties.
The best of them?
“Scream”
It was 1996. The US had lost touch with the horror genre, left solely with endless lines of crappy sequels including some particularly nightmarish pieces – and not in the good way – like the unnecessary follow ups “Hellaraiser: Bloodlines”, “Poltergeist: The Legacy” and, oh forgive me god, “Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace”. No, unfortunately, I am not making up that title. But, in the darkest hour of my birth year came Wes Craven upon a bloody steed. Now, that’s not to say that Craven hasn’t contributed to the dark ages of horror cinema himself, where titles under his belt include the wretchedly named “Vampires in Brooklyn” and the yawn worthy treatment of “The Hills Have Eyes Part II”, but all alms are paid with Scream.
To give you a brief description, the story follows a well-to-do young teen, Sidney Prescott, reeling in the events of her mother’s murder, one year later. Just as life in Regular Town, USA seem to be winding down, Sidney’s friend is gratuitously slaughtered in one of the most suspenseful scenes of all time, starring a young Drew Barrymore.
In fact, Barrymore’s involvement in Scream is what propelled it to become the horror defining film it is. Mainstream actors and actresses alike used to avoid the horror genre like the plague thanks to its poor reputation among critics, but born out of roles like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Guncrazy, along with a notoriously troubled childhood, the press found a darling in her among the box office.
And with a cash magnetizing figure like Barrymore herself, it wasn’t long before even more notabilities arrived for the show. Fighting to avoid being terminally trapped in the world of her hit sitcom, Friends, Courtney Cox took the role of an invasive, bitchy reporter, while all around heavy hitter David Arquette played a romantic dope of a cop who fails at doing anything productive for a good 100% of the movie.
While the performances are rich, it all amounts down to Scream’s comedic take to the dying genre that sharpens it into something smart, startling and a guilt free thrill ride. And that’s all due to one Mr. Kevin Williamson, a name most won’t recognize, one that even less did so back some seventeen years ago when Williamson was thirty years old.
Williamson graduated high school and departed small town North Carolina to relish in the acting scene of New York City. He was fascinated with the industry, of course, and eventually departed for Los Angeles where he began a very tentative career in screenwriting, divulging into subtle projects such as “Teaching Mrs. Tingle”, which never saw the light of day until 1999.
But what, surprisingly, did take off was a simple, seventeen page draft of what he originally titled, “Scary Movie”. The brief script entailed a young girl on the phone with an initially flirtatious caller who eventually declines into murderous rantings, something identical to the first fifteen minutes of what evolved from his initial draft. He developed characters, added sub plots and, most notably, drew in self referential “rules” to horror movies that characters seemed to be quite conscious of.
The golden cake topper to his whole piece is the departure from horror movie tropes so common in previous films. Williamson’s own passion for scary movies fuels witty scenes in which characters yell at the screen of a horror movie “No, Jamie, turn around! He’s right behind you! Why do they never turn around?” only to have Ghostface, the series’ headliner, lurk behind them with a knife wielded. Or even when on the phone with the murderer, heroine Sidney discusses her hatred of horror films, “All the big breasted girls just run up stairs when they should obviously going out to the front door” where she, of course, then runs up the stairs. Characters draw out do’s and dont’s of the genre, set to cuts back and forth of characters breaking said rules. it blends together to be actually scary while also incredibly humorous.
Williamson’s script, his second piece ever sold for a $400,000 brick, with director Wes Craven treating segments for realism, plot fluidity and additional chills. What audiences get is a rewarding jolt of sublime dialogue and gorgeously plotted laughs, all to an orchestra of what must be horror because trust me, this movie is funny, but it’s very, VERY creepy.
The script is the true hero of the movie for reasons both in our realm and the film’s. Its driven by mystery and intrigue while also the astounding fact that this masterpiece was the brainchild of one man with not a single other movie to his name before Scream. It’s refreshing, in a way, that talent can come from passion for a genre itself where in a world today we see mindless zombies of films like Resident Evil: Retribution, directed by people who care so little about movies that the money is the only thing that drives them. Williamson had nothing to gain at all, and yet he gained everything.
Scream later amounted to three sequels of varying quality, the best being #2 which makes fun of sequels themselves, and has an undeniable reputation among cinema. A large portion of the movie was devoted to poking giggles at cliches, but the revolutionary horror of Barrymore searching her patio and house for the killer nearby helped to define so many aspects of scary film. Scary Movie, in fact, a picture that took the original title of Scream and then proceded to parody it, reveled in everything that made the original so good.
If you can withstand the terror, the lightheartedness and up front rationality of Scream makes it one of the best horror movies of all time.
Lose Your Soul Cinematics 