Scream

Alternate titles : None.

Tagline : "Don't answer the phone. Don't open the door. Don't try to escape.

The film that made horror movies "cool" again during the 1990s. Set in the small town of Woodsboro, it seems someone has turned psycho after watching one horror film too many and turned into a masked killer, who's busy carving his way through the local teen population.

The killer seems to have taken a particular interest in young Sidney Prescott (played by the ever lovely Neve Campbell in an early role). Who they spend most of the film bombarding with menacing phone calls and chasing round with a knife.

The police investigate, but are completely baffled. None more so than bungling cop Deputy "Dewey" Riley (David Arquette) who contributes very little to the film, apart from providing comic relief.

However, one of Sidney's friends, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), thinks he knows what's going on. The killer is using classic horror movie cliche's to carry out his murders and so to illustrate his theory, holds a horror movie party showing selected clips from his favourite scary films. Of course, their party is subsequently gate crashed by the killer, who proceeds to wipe out Sidney's friends in a number of extremely inventive, not to mention gory, ways.

Directed by Wes Craven, who struck gold when he partnered up with writer Kevin Williamson for this feature, this film was terrific fun. Which plays both as a serious horror film, and as a parody, that simultaneously mocks the very cliches it uses.

There's some great gags and an excellent supporting cast, including Courtney Cox, who plays an obnoxious news reporter, Matthew Lilliard and young Rose McGowan as a couple of Sidney's friends and even Drew Barrymore, who makes a brief but significant appearance during the intro.

If you haven't seen this, you really should. It's a Scream!!!!

Overall Marks : 9/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate Tag Lines, "Someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far". "Solving this mystery is going to be murder". "Don't answer the phone. Don't open the door. Don't try to hide. And whatever you do, don't Scream". "Make Your Last Breath Count".
• The film's budget was $15,000,000.
• The film was originally to be shot at a high school in Santa Rosa, California. But after the school board read the script, they objected to the films violent nature and refused. Production was subsequently moved to another high school, located at Healdsburg, California.
• Director Wes Craven makes an unbilled cameo appearance as the school caretaker "Fred", who's dressed in the same clothing as Freddy Kruger from "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Linda Blair from "The Exorcist" also makes a brief appearance as a news reporter and 'The Fonze' from "Happy Days", Henry Wrinkler himself, also has an uncredited role, as the school headmaster, Principal Himbry.
• The line "Go to the Mackenzie's house and call for help" was a quote from "Halloween". Billy's surname, Loomis, is the same as that of Donald Pleasance's character in "Halloween", which in turn was the name of Marion Crane's lover in "Psycho".
• Matthew Lilliard got the role of Stuart quite by accident, he was accompanying his girlfriend to an audition for another film that was being held in the same building when one of the casting agents spotted him in the corrisor and asked him if he wanted to audition, which he subsequently won.
• The party scene at the end of the film took 21 days to film, shooting each night from sunset to sunrise and was jokingly reffered to by the crew as "The Longest Night in Horror History".
• Courtney Cox lobbied the studio to let her play Gale Weathers, as she wanted to play a bitch type character, to shake off her nice image from TV's "Friends".
• 50 gallons of fake blood was used by the special effects crew during shooting.
• The US ratings board insisted on 20 seconds of cuts, before they would give it an R-rating for a theatrical release. This consisted of, a shot showing Casey's boyfriend's guts spilling out, an extended shot of Casey hanging from the tree, an extra shot of Tatum's head getting crushed by the garage door and additional scenes of Billy and Stuart stabbing each other. This same cut version was the one released overseas. To date, the Unrated Director's Cut has only been releases on US Laserdisc, and on Japanese and Scandinavian DVD.

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