Midnight Viewing - Scream (1996 - 2023)

Hey, I'm just calling to see what your favorite scary movie is. Is it Scream that You're in luck? Then if it is, because hey, there, I'm father alone and this is kind of a weird episode. It's a primer I'll never know. Welcome midnight viewers to a random episode of midnight viewing.

This is the Scream one. I'm gonna jump aboard the funhouse slide. That is the once upon a time scary movie. And they renamed it, you know that story Scream, Scream two, Scream three, Scream four, Scream was it five? Or was it just Scream again?

Scream six? I know that was the title. I just watched that one. How did they never devolve into the non numerical Jim Cameron method of simple pluralization screams, Scream louder, Scream, and Scream again. They could have just taken that title.

I think it's an interesting branch on the Slasher family tree. It's that NOA and all cousin who's just gonna drone on about every fucking detail of everything they're obsessed with. But it's also the cousin who can get you into cool shows. That's Scream. It's ultimately good horror.

But there's so much to wade through to get to it. But we'll get to that. Let's start as far from the screaming teenagers and knife wielding killers as possible. Let me tell you about the best morning routine I ever had. This was in Santa Monica in the mid nineties.

My job didn't start till four in the afternoon, so morning is a relative term. But I'd get up, shower dress, walk about six blocks down to Callahan's Diner, stopping along the way at a newsstand because those still existed, where I picked up a copy of Variety, and then I'd have the best fucking breakfast, and then a cup of coffee, and then thumbed through the trades. You could still smoke inside then, which is fucking crazy, but I loved it, unhurried and sunshiny. It was no doubt one of those mornings I read about a bidding wharf or a hot new script. I'd actually heard about the script itself from some reader friends of mine.

Those are the flunkies they hire at studios at entry level, just reading and synopsizing and ranking every screenplay they could force into your hands. And at the time it was spec script Mania, so I'm sure that more than one mind was lost in those reading rooms. The script in question is scary movie by newcomer Kevin Williamson, and it's being pulled upon by Oliver Stones Company and a Dimension Films run by the non rapist Weinstein brother Bob. And it wouldn't be the first morning I'd read about it or heard about it, actually, because at the time it became the movie to be part of, and there were stories of school boards turning the production away and changes in casting and on and on. And the entire time I kept thinking, they keep calling it a slasher, interesting considering Freddy couldn't get arrested at that point.

Now, the theater I worked the projection booth in was actually across the street from that diner. Because of our proximity to literally thousands of movie industry people's residences, Miramax Films quietly surmised that their films would definitely get eyes on them if they happened to be playing in the neighborhood movie theater for filmmakers, and they were right. We were a two screen theater with one screen since like Water for Chocolate's release, four walled for the entire time I worked there, by Miramax years and years four walling is effectively renting. They were paying us to play their movie, and thus we couldn't dispense with it for a new, potentially more profitable film, and I hated them for that.

I have seen Enchanted April seven fucking million times thanks to this practice. But then it all paid off. See, we were a two screen art house. Enchanted April stuck around too long, but it was typical of the fair we'd show. The closest we ever got to horror was a summer long midnight film series, and the closest to mainstream was the occasional cast and crew screening we'd have from time to time.

About a week before Scream was released, we received our print. We were to be the press screening location for the film. So one afternoon I built that print and I waited till closing time. Around midnight, all the money was counted and all the popcorn was swept away, and all the staff was gone. I had keys to the building, so here I am watching Scream by myself.

Now, with digital projectors, cues are easy to add. You want the lights to go down to half, you'd drag and drop a queue into a timeline. To make the lights go down. With thirty five millimeter you needed foil tape. Projectors would have a censor on the return assembly.

That's the part that feeds the film back to the platter to rewind after it's played through the lens, and it would react to this piece of tiny metal tape that you would fix to the print's edge. One strip brings the lights to half, two brings them down, Three brings them all the way up. I had Forgott in the end, ques for Scream to bring the lights back up to half during the credits, so they remained off right through the end, and then the movie ended and I was stranded in total, incomplete darkness. There were no lights on the walkways of our once vaudeville movie theater. Even our exit light was a bit dodgy in those days.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have given a fuck, but Scream worked on me. Man. I was genuinely disturbed by it. So getting out of that auditorium, making my way back through the empty building to my empty projection booth was no fun. Hell, the walk home wasn't exactly a dream.

You don't get to seven films unless that first one was special, and it is. I think it is a superior example of the slasher genre. A term paper that reads like a pot boiler. Now, look, are there rules in horror movies? Of course, you set them up in the opening of each film and adhere to them, or else your film is a joke.

Vampires are eternal and strong, and the sun's rays and a stake through their heart will kill them. Got it. Slashers didn't come with a manual because it was basically new genre film and was finding out what it was with each successive release. And as similar in structure as any of these films were, they were each predicated on that particular villain's motivations and sets of circumstances. So let's take a look at the Scream franchise's rules for slasher films, shall we?

I needn bother really, because an entire generation has taken them as gospel. Sex equals death, no drinking or drugging, and never say I'll be right back, which is shorthand for it. Don't split up. There were others as the films progressed, dealing with sequels and trilogies and blah blah blah, everything past the first film feels like they're flailing in an attempt to remain relevant, and yet the series never worked for me because of the mettexturalism anyway, Characters recognizing their construct is fine if they're building upon it, But in these films, does it make our characters any more aware other than acknowledging what they're doing is stupid as they're doing it. To me, the actual innovation, well, there are two one and I don't know if this gets mentioned much, but most films, even though they're by hairstyles and costumes and even film stock, the thought has always been evergreen.

Yeah, it was filmed in eighty two, but you don't need to have lived through that time to appreciate anything going on. Williamson is mister, we're right fucking here, right fucking now, and to drink it in each of these movies exists in the year of release, and all the conversations and references and fashions will fucking reflect that, which is refreshing. The rules themselves are irrelevant. It was the fact that the rules were even quantifiable that struck a chord. Scream was a culmination of nearly twenty years of a genre and thus uniquely positioned to comment on not only its history, but it's then present.

The other innovation way more impactful to me was a line of dialogue that was apparently a huge contention with the MPAA. Imagine them dinging you for a line of dialogue here. It is, don't you blame the movies. Movies don't create psychos, Movies make psychos poor created. It's an important line because, as horror fiends and Gorehounds all new, that was the stupidest fucking art that kept clanging and rebounding and re echoing throughout the nineteen eighties.

These films are desensitizing a generation and turning them into killers. It's the gateway drug argument they used on us for decades. Legalized pot and the next step is shooting up junk and murdering grannies. As if the guy who ends up on heroin wasn't aiming in that direction from the get go. Any fucking moron that takes inspiration from a film to do harm was looking to do harm.

There's no backwards masking or subliminal messaging, and there's no dropping of human decency. Because you saw leatherface saw a guy's head going nine miles per hour. Scream stood as a middle finger to all those shriveled up conservatives clucking their tongues about how we as adult filmgoers needed coddling. Let me pause here to mention that, in comparison to what was happening in England, the MPAA was a dream machine. In the UK, they just banned slashers, any gorr films.

Really, it's an entire era called the video Nasties. And if you want to hear more about it, my frequent co host Paul Wallers show A Year in Horror has made an entire series about the video nasty phenomenon that you should check out. I'm even on one episode. Is it the best episode? Obviously?

But you know what really sent Scream apart Wes Craven, All day, all night, all Wes Craven, a man who knew a thing or two about making rules. Fall asleep, he can kill you. That's the best horror movie rule of all time. It's one you can't even stop yourself from breaking. Craven turned Scream down initially, as this was the period he was trying desperately to pull himself into any other genre that would have him turns out he just needed to focus the fuck up, because scream is fucking frightening frequently.

Take that opening scene. Kudos to Drew Barrymore, by the way, who was originally cast as Sydney and then recognized that if she were to die in the opening scene, it would throw the audience for a fucking loop as far as the expendability of everyone on screen. But let's say in that scene the caller isn't asking about horror movies. What if he's talking about weather patterns? Would it change the scenario at all?

So then no longer patting the audience on the back for their rudimentary knowledge of some of the most popular horror movies of all time. I don't think so that scene works because it's predator and prey and there's no help coming. Quite frankly, the thing that made me stand up and walk out into the lobby for a moment before settling back down was the idea that help was actually present in sight, but your lung is collapsed from a knife wound, so you can see, but you can't call to them. Actually it was the mom being able to listen over the phone as her daughter is stabbed to death. Fock Man.

What a great fucking scene, the scenario, the direction, the acting. Who gives a fuck about missus Vorhees being the killer? In Friday the thirteenth, there was actual fucking drama going on here. This would be a problem throughout the series, trying to anticipate what the audience wants and giving it to them. I e.

Let's shoehorn in some new rules that none of our characters will remotely pay attention to anyway. Also, that first film's plot is as tight as a fucking drama. Ultimately, the characters are stereotypes, but in a way that they feel related and not just another cipher waiting to be disemboweled, and they cast the perfect people in literally every role. Matthew Lillard scared the fuck out of me at the end of that movie. Watching him gleefully cheer for his partner to stab him, hands clasped behind his head is as memorable as a cinematic moment as Private Pile grinning at Joker in full metal jacket.

It is lunacy personified, and fuck you, Quentin Tarantino. Lillard is a treasure and I'm looking forward to his return in part seven. Here's the thing. If Scream has a spiritual guide through the slasher universe, its biggest inspiration is and has always been, Halloween, way beyond homage. Right from the beginning, they talk about Halloween, they watch Halloween.

They make Halloween a character by putting it on a television that's constantly playing commenting on the action on screen, and that TV ends up being wildly important. Do you know where Halloween fell apart as a franchise? Immediately, I'm probably at odds with most horror fans here, but and I RECOGNI that there are great moments and sequences to behold in parts two and four, and five and six, and the legacy sequels and the remakes and the legacy remake sequels. By the end of Halloween, Halloween won nineteen seventy eight John Carpenter's Halloween, Michael Myers has become the Boogeyman unless he was rasputant. Michael Myers is shot dead at the end of that movie.

When he gets up and disappears, he's no less than supernatural, And then the sequel just goes, Nope, he's a dude. You can shoot him in the eyeballs and he'll keep coming. But he's just a man. And after that, the fucking series becomes the dumbest soap opera that none of you would watch if there weren't frequent stabbings. It's his sister, what why?

Because lazy writers thinking they're adding depth when they're adding roots. Okay, Laurie's his sister, and now she has a sister, and everything becomes the fucking Skywalker saga. Why does the Boogeyman need a personal connection to these people? Do you feel any more or less about them knowing they're related when they're being stalked down a leafy street. It's so labyrinthine now that future sequels would retcon shit and fans would get all bent out of shape?

Is this canon? Isn't that Carpenter had the right idea. It should have been a series of films that are only connected by the holiday. So scream worshiping at the altar of Haddenfield, Illinois. Loved the palm trees in Illinois in that first film.

I know as soon as I landed at O'Hare and I was in the cab, they said where do you want to go? And I said, I want to go see that Picasso and then take me to the palm trees. So Scream decides after the lightning in a bottle moment. A perfectly contained little story, yes, with some intriguing directions where characters might find themselves later. I e.

Cotton weary that the public is now demanding more, and they did. Obviously. Scream was a fucking monster success and a genuine phenomenon, and it had to give it to them immediately without any genuine rewriting and not actually knowing who the killer is. What's the best part of Scream two. It's the opening at the rialto right Omar Epps and that woman.

Once again. I think I'm at odds with most people here. I had detest Jada Pinkett. She was cute and could do sass early on, and she stood out and somehow convinced everyone that she was more than that when she's not not once a believable character, certainly not here, which should have been effortless. I thought the idea of having the whole stab film within a film is really cool, and I happen to think that as far as plots go, they should have reversed films two and three.

During part two the movies being made and part three it has come out. Plus, it would have been a natural progression for Sydney as a character. Am I being too literal and linear for y'all? Anyway, great idea for a horror sequence, horror in plane Sight at the premiere of the film, based on your film, and I get that they were keen on showing just how bananas the fandom was that had embraced the film. I e.

Everyone on Earth, but I actually showed screen I saw the crowds, I saw him for Part two, I saw him for special screenings. The level of bro behavior idiocy would have lasted about ten minutes before the film started, and a studio flak would have calmed them the fuck down. I'm sorry for being so real world, but beyond the veracity, it was also just ridiculous. Everyone on their feet, everyone's wearing the masks, They're all stabbing each other. To me, the mest scene in the movie has nothing to do with the script or the theme.

It's a simple tension sequence that reminds me once again that if they work at all, it's because of Wes Craven. It's Sydney and Haley squeezing past the unconscious killer in that crashed squad car chills at how good that moment is pure fucking cinema, and there's other stuff to recommend it. Jerry O'Connell is great. I believed him as a suspect, and a good dude should have been him. But therein lies the ultimate problem with the Scream series, and where it, to me, gets worse than even those misbegotten Halloween failures.

It's a fuckin' who'd done it every fucking time? Is it the roommate? Is it the studio exact? Is it that pesky reporter played by a then massive fucking television star. I can't believe we're six fucking films into this series and no one has made ghostface the killer.

Notice that there is an actual slasher rule that they have never brought up in Scream because it's inconvenient. What's more relevant a rule for slasher films than the killer becomes immortal? The Big Three, Freddy, Jason, and even Little Mikey, they are at least undead, at worst demons. Are the filmmakers afraid that we won't accept that it's now a supernatural film because having yet another illegitimate relative is so fucking believable, right, you'd think at some point one of the known relatives of the central characters of this series Sidney Dewey, Billy Stewart Gale would have all of their genealogies researched and a private eye hunt down any possible fucking relatives, because in the Scream universe, to be ghost Face, you gotta be a relative, or you gotta be a relative.

Slunky, I thought Halloween had sunk to soap opera? What is any of this? Look? I love the characters, I love the performers in each of the films has its distinct charms. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hate watching any of these.

I always have a good time, except for Part six, which is unbearable, particularly in the villain area. Why does every fucking villain devolve into a bad impression of Matthew Lillard. It's like every villain in Batman just wants to be the Joker until recently. Sincerely, though, what is Timothy Oliphant doing? Man?

Was that guy in any way? The mannic freak he ends up at at the end, you know when it was Billy's mom as the killer who we never knew and don't give a shit about her connection for extra credit. See also Scream two Elum Rubika Gayheart at the end of Urban Legend, full Lillard intensity, none of the chops to back it up Part three again? What is this guy doing all of a sudden shouting and babbling? You know, Sidney's half brother.

I guess Emma Roberts is the only one who doesn't start drooling and shrieking. But then she's got Rory Culkin for that. You know, Emma Roberts, the cousin of Sidney Prescott. Are you guys tired yet? So with Scream it is part five, but they decided it's a legacy seat and so it's not numerically bound.

Not Scream again. No, nobody, all right, they decided the Killers would finally have no literal skin in the game. No, they're just crazy fans. That's right. We're the problem.

Now, that's the twenty first century solution, and they're not wrong. Fandom is fucking the loco these days, so kudos to that, except, of course, the people they're stalking are the fucking illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis, and we've got Randy's if you and Nie twin combo, Jesus christ I understand this series is based on looking inward. I know that's the appeal, but then fucking do it actually pull the seams here? Man, all these movies know how to do is double down on the shit they've already done. Let me give you a fucking wildly obvious direction they could go in.

When New Line brought Elm Street back to Wes Craven, he made effectively Nightmare on Elm Street eight and a half. He became a character in it. Heather Langenkamp became a character in it. If your series is so interested in its own X ray, then the next step is the oer. I'm not suggesting I know where to go or how to do that specifically, but then I'm not being paid millions of dollars to think of solutions.

Until that happens, I'll just keep pointing out the glearing errors in the vain hope that someone will actually want to give us something close to the original film. This episode was never intended as a play by play film to film the dissection. If you guys want that, let me know. Contacts are in the show notes. I'll rope in some horror psychopath and we'll do all seven movies and the television series.

I'm saying this to let you know that I know there are plenty of laudable moments throughout the series that I'm giving short shrift to, and trust me, there's a thousand other problems to harp on. You all know the films, and you all have your own opinions, but I want to touch on the latest film as that's going to be the entree into the next installment, part seven being the third of a trilogy, mind you. I like the Carpenter sisters as protagonists. The new trilogy centers on illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis, Sam and her half sister Tara. I like that Sam has hallucinations of young Billy Loomis even though she never met him and would have no access to his inner thoughts.

Because the series won't entertain the notion of supernatural. Come on, scream, just make him a ghost. What's wrong with you? I also like a Jasmine Savoy Brown, who is so fucking excellent on Yellowjackets, and Mason Gooding as her twin brother in their roles of know it all Randy types who happened to be Randy's niece and nephew. She babbles about elevated horror here and is non stop with the trope nunciations, but once again to no fucking purpose at all.

This isn't an elevated take on scream. It's just another scream. So maybe back off with the rules. I thought this casting characters are worthy inheritors of the whole shebang side note, how they got to part five before losing another major character is insane. I get the joke that Dewey was unkillable when he would have been the first to go during the golden age of slasher films that's nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty four, by the way, and it was appropriate that he was the one to get the knife.

But what has Gail brought to the series past? Maybe part two other than the sight of Courtney Cox slowly becoming the ghost face mask herself. Oh, that sounds like a natural. Could Gail just be the killer in the next one? Why hasn't that happened yet?

By the way, none of them has snapped and just done it. So Part six takes us to New York. This is the first film without Sydney, which is an excellent development. Not because I don't like Sydney or Nev Campbell. I love them both, but it's nice to drop out in return, you know, like Nancy on Elm Street had way more impact that way.

Unfortunately here it's because the studio is a bunch of fucking greedy pricks who won't pay Nev Campbell what she's richly deserved. Make no mistake, she is the fucking anchor to the series, and she's awesome. But anyway, this is fully these kids' story now with brief and unwonted appearances Mike Gaale. So it's a whole new world, a new setting, new characters. They can do anything they want.

The killers are the family of previous killer and stab film fan Jack Quaid. I forget his character's name. I would look it up, but I hate his family so much that I retroactively now hate him. A family, a family of serial killers who only took it up after their relative died. That's where the series needed to go, doubling down on bullshit and hey, let's everybody do the Lillard looking at usually fucking solid you Dermot mulroney.

I would kill myself if these were my murderers. Right out the window of that impossibly huge and moneyed loth that the police captain and three college attending children were somehow affording. Look, part six is bad except for those characters, the Carpenter girls and the Meeks twins. I genuinely like them and I want to see more of them. I was hoping that they get some sort of redemption in part seven, but that's not in the cards for completely bullshit reasons, which I will cover more in depth when I get out the episode, specifically about Part seven.

As disappointing as Part six is overall, I will say it was a delight to have Hayden Pantieri back. I thought she was the best thing about Part four, and I hope they give her more to do. Before I go, let's all pay tribute to the true unsung hero of all of these movies, mister Roger Jackson. Y'all, he is the voice of ghost Face throughout the entire franchise, and what a set of pipes. How disappointing that some thirty years later, we still don't have a handheld voice changer that makes you sound like that golden throated motherfucker.

I'm sure you all know he's a prolific voice actor, with his most famous role being that of Mojo Jojo on The Powerpuff Girls. If you've played any Star Wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings games in the past twenty five years, he's been all over those. But the one credit that always tickles me that no one ever seems to bring up is this one. I am the Martian Ambassador, wakem and pase wakem and Paseake. That was him lying to us about the Martians all those years ago.

Okay, Gang, I can't say for certain when the Scream seven episode will be out. It's still a day or so before they release the film, and I'm still seeking employment and my financials have not shall we say, improved, so I'm going to do my best to get it to you early next week. Thank you so much for tuning into this special one off midnight viewing tune in Friday. The roundup is all about the recent work of mister Michael Keaton and a bit about the latest House Party film. Thank you again, midnight viewers.

Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight and don't answer the phone or what's your favorite scare? Who knows? I don't know. Take me out of here. Roger Jackson Frock Good Boy and