SCREAM: 4K Blu-ray (Dimension Films, 1996) Paramount Home Video
Horror movies remain popular with
audiences because – subconsciously – we all enjoy a good scare. Precisely why
we do, has been the subject of considerable debate. Anthropologists suggest the
genre appeals to our inherent and rather primitive 'fight' or 'flight'
impulse, quashed over centuries of human refinement. Psychologists argue,
horror films allow us to exorcise our suppressed voyeur. We can experience
heinous and terrifying acts that our 'better' selves - conscience -
subconscious... whatever – inform, we must not partake of in reality, but can
indulge vicariously within the relative safety of a darkened theater. The performing arts are oft’ dismissed as merely
an innocent way to fill up our leisure. After all...it's only a movie. But
movies can - and do – hold up a mirror to our truer selves, ever more
increasingly – the ugly side of humanity’s mad, inhuman noise – remade through
the lens as acceptable/relatable content to stir our dishonorable intentions
and, if done cleverly, to make us reconsider the follies of our bizarre and primal
urges when reacting to negative stimuli. So, perhaps Alfred Hitchcock was quite
right when he suggested that, simply by walking down any street in the world,
one could come within inches of a sadist or a murderer. Now, that is scary!
Wes Craven’s Scream (1996)
plums some fairly familiar territory. The slasher flick has been around for an
awfully long time. But herein, we get a slasher with guts (pun intended), and
razor-sharp wit, with a few truly unanticipated bone-chilling murders. Kevin
Williamson's screenplay works in just about every cliche and angle we have come
to know, love, expect and - occasionally abhor - about this genre. And yet, almost
as miraculously, he manages not so much a re-invention, rather, a resurrection
and renaissance of the slasher flick, long-since devolved into rank and bloody
camp. Williamson wrote Scream (originally entitled 'Scary Movie')
as a sort of cathartic release, to calm his nerves after an unsettling news
story about a series of gruesome murders in his own neighborhood. Shopping the
screenplay around, the writer was repeatedly told the horror genre was pretty
much dead (pun again), and, the grislier elements in his first draft –
including a graphic decapitation and disembowelment - would have to be greatly
toned down if ever the project was to be even remotely considered. Williamson
obliged and re-submitted his draft to Miramax and Dimension Films. But more
delays 'haunted' the project, including a lawsuit filed by Sony over the film's
new name 'Scream' as it presumably infringed on the copyright of their
own 'Screamers' released the previous year.
Director, Wes Craven was approached
and willingly accepted the assignment only after Santa Rosa, CA was agreed upon
as the principal location. The studio had pressed for Vancouver, Canada in an
attempt to shave nearly a million dollars off the budget. At the outset, Scream
attracted the attention of A-list celeb’, Drew Barrymore - elevating its
stature above just another B-slasher.
Barrymore's involvement encouraged other A-listers to partake, chiefly, Neve
Campbell, then riding high on the acclaim of TV's Party of Five (1994-2000).
Scream opens on a truly inspired Hitchockian note - killing off 'the
presumed star' (Barrymore) just as Hitchcock had done with Janet Leigh in Psycho
(1960) some 45 years earlier. Barrymore's Casey Becker is a carefree teen
getting ready to settle in for the night with a scary movie and a bowl of
popcorn when a 'wrong number' strikes up a conversation. At first, Casey is
intrigued by the caller who seems to appreciate her taste in horror movies. But
very quickly Casey realizes the person on the other end of the line is not nearly
as far away as she thinks. In fact, he is just outside her front door and
holding Casey's boyfriend (Kevin Patrick Walls) hostage while she and the
caller play a paralyzing game of cat and mouse, presumably, to spare his life. Disemboweling
the boyfriend, the killer then smashes through the patio doors into Casey's
home and slaughters her just as her parents are about to return home - their
grisly discovery of Casey's body strung up from a tree in the front yard, a
truly blood-curdling experience.
From here, the focus shifts to Neve
Campbell as careworn teenager in love, Sidney Prescott. Seems Sidney has been
receiving disturbing phone calls from ‘an admirer’ who threatens to gut her
like a fish. Terrified and terrorized, Sidney confides her fears to best
friend, Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) whose brother, Dewey is the town’s deputy
sheriff. Meanwhile, ravenous tabloid reporter, Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox in a
role originally intended for either Brooke Shields or Janeane Garofalo) is on Sidney’s
trail for the scoop that will make her career. Gale was responsible for
exposing the brutal slaying of Sidney’s mother – a bone of contention that has
Sidney fuming and ready to fight back with a solid left hook. Sidney's
boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) offers his support and comfort. But is
it all just a ploy to get in Sidney's pants? After a few false starts, Loomis
gets his way. Sidney and Billy consummate their relationship, setting Sidney up
for another convention of the horror genre: all non-virginal females must die.
Video store geek, Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) is instrumental in explaining
these ground rules to his fellow victims, Tatum and Billy's best friend, Stu
Macher (Matthew Lillard). But who, exactly, is the killer? And why? For much of
its runtime, Scream keeps the audience guessing as the infamous ‘Ghostface’
picks off his intended one at a time.
After a failed attack on Sidney in
the high school’s public washroom, principal, Arthur Himbry (Henry Winkler) is
the first to die, having censured several students for possibly terrorizing one
of their own with a cruel prank. Given the dangers afoot in this small town,
the remaining cast elect to throw a wild house party. Tragically, Sidney’s best
friend, Tatum, meets her brutal end, getting stuck between the garage door and
its jam, snapping her neck. Gail is knocked unconscious while her cameraman,
Kenny (W Earl Brown) is gutted in the back of their news van. Randy narrowly
escapes, but Sidney’s father, Neil (Lawrence Hecht) is not so fortunate, bound
and gagged and taken hostage in a locked closet. Eventually, the truth is
revealed. Having faked his own death earlier, using corn syrup for blood, Billy
appears and confesses to the crimes, along with his cohort, Stu. Billy held
Sidney’s late mother, Maureen (Lynn McRee) responsible for the break-up of his
mum and dad and has since committed himself to destroying the future happiness
of her daughter. Initially, it was assumed Maureen’s lover, the newly
exonerated, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) had murdered her in a fitful passion.
Now, Billy convinces Stu they must each superficially wound the other to make it
appear as though they are the sole survivors of this bloody carnage, pinning
Sidney’s death and that of her father on an act of self-defense after she is
fingered as the killer. Rather unpredictably, this scenario turns rancid when
Stu and Billy begin to sincerely hurt one another, allowing Sidney just enough
time to get away and seek her revenge on them. Saving Gail, Dewey, Randy and
her father, Sidney shoots Billy in the foyer. Randy advises this is precisely
the moment when the seemingly dead killer leaps into action for one final
thrill kill. And, true to the conventions of most horror movies, Billy does
just that, only to be fatally shot in the head by Sidney who confidently
declares, “Not in my movie!”
In hindsight, Scream is a
masterful resurrection of the slasher sub-genre. The opener is positively brilliant;
the ending, mildly clever. Between these bookends, we get a pedestrian retread
of all slasher film conventions geared toward generating repulsive chills;
silly teenagers, doing stupid things, like getting drunk and misbehaving during
a house party where – no kidding – the killer(s) is waiting to exact bloody carnage.
But even these largely predictable sequences have their pleasurable sparks of
originality, as when McGowan’s Tatum, having gone for more beer in the garage, rightly
presuming the silent and stealthily approaching Ghostface is either Stu or
Billy, is as yet incapable of recognizing they mean her real harm and instead
pokes fun at the conventions of the horror genre, inquiring, “So, what movie
is this scene from? I Spit on Your Garage?” The combination of black comedy, a stylishly
photographed whodunit and uber-violent slasher proves infectious. Screenwriter,
Kevin Williamson based his tale on the real-life Gainesville Ripper, selling
the idea to the Weinstein brother’s fledgling, Dimension Films. Thereafter, the
production was chronically plagued by censorship from the MPAA as well as
several obstacles while filming on location. In the end, it was all worth it. Scream
raked in a worldwide gross of $173 million, the most successful horror movie
since John Carpenter’s Halloween (1977). Scream’s runaway success
ensured sequels and pretenders to the throne would soon follow it.
But Scream’s bloodletting
was greatly tempered from Williamson’s original vision, mostly to escape the
MPAA’s NC-17 rating, considered ‘box office suicide’ for a picture whose target
audience is teenagers. Lost in translation, gory depictions of exposed internal
organs and a planned decapitation. The rather grisly carnage on tap was the
work of KNB effects masters, Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman, and Gregory
Nicotero, and included 50 gallons of fake blood (corn syrup and food dye), and
collapsible blades and an umbrella with a retractable tip. Unfortunately, the
stuntwoman assigned to attacked him with it missed her mark, impacting a
genuine wound from an open-heart surgery operation. But Williamson also felt it was essential for
the audience to unearth the motive of his antagonists – an unusual wrinkle for
the time. The Weinsteins were the big
winners here, having paid $400,000 for the rights, outbidding Paramount,
Universal, and even Oliver Stone – working at Cinergi then, to produce Scream
with much of Williamson’s original concept intact. Scream was the 15th
highest-grossing movie of the year – a sizable hit, considering its blockbuster
competition – Mission Impossible and Independence Day. The
original title, ‘Scary Movie’ would eventually come to typify spin-offs,
spoofing not only the Scream franchise, but also, virtually every other
horror movie worth its weight in chills. The name change, suggested by the
Weinsteins, was inspired by Michael Jackson’s smash hit pop tune of the same
name playing all over America then. Both Williamson and the picture’s director,
Wes Craven disliked it, only later to acknowledge Scream as inspired –
especially after each was offered a 2-picture deal with Dimension to create 2
more sequels.
Viewed today, Scream remains
a subversive and wickedly funny slasher flick. It takes its characters, though
never itself, seriously. Williamson’s bravura is well-designed to illicit cheeky
chills and farcical laughter in tandem, the grotesqueness of the exercise
offset by a clever bent exposing horror’s hallowed conventions while falling
prey to them. Morbidity turns to elation and shock to chuckles while hardly to
diffuse the storytelling impact. The self-awareness of the characters is also
refreshing. Most characters in a horror movie merely go through the machinations
of stumbling into their fates with a methodical naivety, eventually to be their
undoing. By contrast, Scream’s victims come by their untimely ends in
spite of intelligently doing everything in their power to escape it. Following
in the footsteps of Jamie Lee Curtis, Neve Campbell became the new scream queen
of her generation, managing a highly successful career on both the big and
small screen to outlast both her Party of Five and Scream franchise
fame. The irony, of course, is that today, with much blood and water under its
bridge, Scream also appears to be a gargantuan cliché. We’ve seen it all
before and will very likely see it all again. Rarely, however, will we ever
seen it done half as good.
Scream’s arrival in 4K
is a bit late for Halloween, but mostly welcomed nevertheless. Oddly, the color
spectrum is subdued. The Blu-ray remaster from a few years back had far bolder colors. That said, comparatively, it appears
as if the Blu-ray’s color spectrum was severely boosted. Ditto for the Blu’s
contrast when compared to what’s here. Once you adjust your eyes to these
discrepancies, the 4K, at first to appear duller and dimmer than the Blu-ray,
gradually begins to achieve a more naturalistic film-based appearance. Of course,
primary ‘reds’ are still as lurid as ever. Flesh tones take on a more honest
appearance. On the Blu-ray they leaned towards artificial pink. Fine detail is
where the 4K easily bests the Blu-ray. There are subtle nuances to be had, even
during scenes shot at night. No crushed blacks, and no anemic spectral
highlights either. The 5.1 DTS is a bit of a letdown. In fact, it’s the same
audio mix ported over from the aforementioned Blu. So, no going back to basics,
even original audio stems for a more immersive 7.1 Atmos. Special features
include the same audio commentary from Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, plus ‘A
Bloody Legacy: Scream 25 Years Later’ – a retrospective, neatly
covering the movie’s creation and reputation since, also to find a way to inveigle
the cast of the 2022 reboot, soon to arrive in theaters, into the discussion.
There are also several vintage production featurettes. These, frankly, are a
waste of your time. Bottom line: Scream is considered something of a ‘classic’
and certainly is worthy of its cult following. I do not hold out much hope for
the 2022 reboot. Everything that could – and should – have been said about
Ghostface is right here for the asking. Good video remaster. Lackluster audio
port over, and extras that are deadly dull. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
2
Comments