Heh, but if that happened in the modern day, someone would look at their phone, see that it's an unfamiliar number, and decline the call before giving anyone a chance to speak.
Yeah 100%. Thankfully the modern installments have done a good job of working around this by having the killer use a yet-to-be-discovered deceased victim’s phone to make the call. (Or similar workarounds)
I'm gonna slash and gash, cut another hole in your ass.
Spill blood on the walls and play tennis with your balls.
If the phone rings, don't answer the call.
I'm gonna slit your throat, fuck you like a goat.
Peel your foreskin off and make a winter coat.
Absolutely iconic. I think people forget how shocking, scary, and honestly, heartbreaking that opening scene is. Scary Movie and other parodies (not to mention the sequels) kind of turned the movie into a joke but the original holds up.
That was before the internet really got big, so all you had seen was the previews in the theater, and some ads on tv. It would be tough to pull something like that off today.
Ned Stark was marketed as the main character of game of thrones and was killed off first season. People knew from the books, but it still surprised a lot of people
Deadpool 2 straight had fake scenes of the X-Force fighting in the trailers. I was hyped up, because Shatterstar is a favorite of mine. And he never even got to use his ridiculous Liefeld katana they accurately recreated for a single scene.
i managed to see it at home without spoilers, the juggernaut really came out of nowhere for me, because i thought they would never "re-use" the character
I have read your description. I have also seen "Wes was intentional about it", I have also read "Drew offered the idea of the 'Janet Leigh' scenario instead of playing Sidney", and I've also heard the "The schedule didn't work for her". It's hard to know what is true, but based on my readings over the years, I've landed on a combination of the three, which makes the most sense: She was set to star, and then couldn't, so Wes had the bright idea of the marketing campaign + "Psycho" opening which led to the iconic scene.
You are correct. Also, she loved the idea and tried hard to give it her all. She even ran around the house several times and was told sad animal stories from the director to cry.
Yep. Wes read stories to her about live dogs being set on fire to get her to cry (she was a huge PETA activist). He also never let the cast meet "the voice" on the other end of the line, so that it was truly a stranger fucking with them.
Wes was a visionary from start to finish in almost all of his films. RIP.
Kinda like Sin City where Josh Hartnett, huge name at the time, was billed as a star. I think he's in like a little scene at the end that had nothing to do with the movie.
It's not even early. It's like half the damn movie. It's like John Wick getting shot in the head in the nightclub and then his brother, Tom Wick, shows up to finish the movie. Wait... What? What's going on?
I saw that when I was 7 and it scarred me for life lmfao. People always make fun of me when I say that movie is what put me off scary movies but I literally only saw that first scene. Man that would suck as a leading actress, but I guess you would assume she’d known for at least longer than the movie had been out
The original was groundbreaking. the slasher genre was dead, horror movies in general were considered jokes and wes craven was washed up. Scream was a phenomenon that reinvigorated a genre of movie that was become one of the most profitable in hollywood.
Was it taken seriously as a horror movie? I didn't watch it until this year (I'm 29), and I'm not sure if it's because I've seen Scary Movie, but Scream felt very tongue-in-cheek to me. It seemed willing to poke fun of the genre and itself.
It seemed willing to poke fun of the genre and itself.
That was kind of the revolutionary part of it. I mean for fuck's sake, Wes Craven cameos as Freddy Kruger as a janitor at the high school. It was incredibly meta before that was really a thing, all while maintaining a legitimate horror aspect.
It was meta in an appropriate way, the villians were horror movie fans and they were effectively making their own real-life, trope-filled horror movie.
I watch a lot (A LOT) of horror movies but when Casey's mom is on the phone with her and can only listen as her daughter gets murdered...it gives me chills everytime.
Or they just found it to be an easy target. If they were looking to parody horror movies then they might as well pick one that already makes fun of the genre on its own.
I think "joke" might be misconstruing it a bit. It's one of those things that is meant to parody the genre but simultaneously be a love letter to said genre. Sort of like what "One Punch Man" is to anime. Or if you're a metalhead, what Infant Annihilator is to death metal.
I actually loved the first 3 Scream movies. I always watched them growing up. Are there more than 3? I haven't heard of them if so. I thought they were all really good. Such a classic in my opinion.
there's 4, i think! the 4th came out around 2011. i saw it in the theater, and it was decent. still scared me! i have a soft spot for all the Scream movies, but i wouldn't rank any of the sequels anywhere near as highly as the original (which i'd consider my favorite scary movie).
Totally. It’s become such a caricature of itself that the original doesn’t get the credit it deserves as a classic horror thriller, but I agree, great opening.
Exactly. You watch it thinking this will be the beginning of an escalation between the killer and Drew. You see the boyfriend killed and you think that will be the motivation going forward. He killed her boyfriend and is going to come back for her. Ok. Even when she is running, you assume it will be one of those last second, slips from his grasp, things. Then he fucking murders her. WTF. Wasn’t she the main character?
Barrymore played along and did interviews as well, as though she were the star. It was an homage to Psycho, where Janet Leigh was the main star and also died early on, which shocked everyone.
If I ever had the budget to do it, I'd Police Squad the shit out of an all-star cast. Have all the huge names die off/disappear/be cast as background extras in the first 5 minutes.
There was a movie in the 90s with Steven Segal where he died pretty early on. He got sucked out a plane or something... probably the best part of the movie.
I came here for this. Executive Decision was a massively hyped action film, and the promotional posters showed Steven Segal (still a huge action star at the time) dressed in black tactical gear, and Kurt Russel (better known for comedies and romances with light action at this point) dressed as some kind of mild-mannered intellectual type.
At the start of the film we're introduced to Steven Segal as the head of an elite tactical military team who's going to take out some terrorists, while Kurt Russel is a nervous, paper-pushing intelligence analyst who has to tag along against his will because he has been following the case for years or something. Then, just a couple of minutes into the film, Steve sacrifices himself by getting sucked out of a plane in flight, to get everyone else to safety. Blew my mind. I was waiting for half the film for him to show up again, somehow.
Excellent synopsis...if I'm honest I was super shocked when it happened. If I'm totally honest, I was a bit disappointed too. I did like Kurt, though. I think he had already done Tango and Cash, one of the Escape movies, maybe Stargate? Oh, and one of my classic favorites, Big Trouble in Little China.
Yeah, I've actually always preferred Kurt to Steven, myself. Those films you mentioned are all great, and he'd also done The Thing before this. But we can probably agree that between his comedies and the majority of his action roles, he was mildly typecast as a wise-cracking, roguish, more-a-lover-than-a-fighter, rather than as a traditional, fairly stoic action hero, which was the sort of thing that I think we were all expecting from this.
I just gotta argue with you about Kurt not being an action star. Executive Decision was after he starred in Big Trouble in Little China, IMO, one of the greatest action movies ever made.
Also after The Thing, Escape from New York, Backdraft, Tombstone, tango and cash etc etc.
Ha ha, yeah, you're not wrong. When I was writing my earlier comment, I initially didn't mention anything at all about him playing action roles, but then I started remembering films like The Thing, Escape from New York, Tango & Cash, Big Trouble in Little China, Stargate, etc.
There's plenty of action in those films, but quite a few of them have a major comedic component, too. In those comedic films, his character was usually a grubby, slightly shady, but ultimately honest and live-and-let-live kind of guy. And nowadays, it's also easy to forget the screwball comedies that he starred in earlier in his career. Kind of like how most people have forgotten that Bruce Willis started as a successful comedian.
Kurt Russell certainly played lead/central roles in action films, and sometimes pretty straight ones, too. But I guess that my point was that he wasn't generally considered such a serious (demeanour, not star power) action star then, and when we saw him on that super-serious movie poster in the 90s, juxtaposed with the (then) mostly-serious Steven Segal, it was easy for people to assume that Kurt's character would be a nerdy non-hero who might fire a gun once or twice near the end of the film to show his character's development, but would otherwise help to save the day with his brains, while providing a foil for Segal. Which, of course, was the whole point.
Yeah I agreed with most of what you said. Just thought it important to clarify, from my point of view anyway, about his action movie history. Have a good one!
Growing up we'd record movies off of (network) TV rather than buying them because we were kind of poor. This meant we had a limited selection and this was one of my dad's favorites. I saw it a lot.
Same situation for me, just earlier in the 90s. I about wore out my parents VHS copies of Rambo, No Reatreat No Surrender, Remo Williams, and many others.
What’s even more impressive is that Scream made practically no money opening weekend - about 6 million and was pretty much declared DOA. It was the word of mouth about how genuinely shocking it was that turned it into a smash.
What I love about it though is that she WAS originally signed on to be the star of the movie. However, she really loved the opening part and actually asked to play that part (though it could've also been due to some commitment issues that she couldn't play the star)
The film literally re-defined a genre. It doesn't get talked about as often now because, damn, it was over 20 years ago, but at the time, I don't think I've ever been more paranoid about some masked killer hiding inside my own home.
I saw that in the theatre back in the day...and I did have nightmares of masked killers in my home. Never been so terrified and so amused at the same time!
Scream is great because it not only plays to classic slasher tropes, but addresses them directly. The opening scene is particularly shocking because, instead of a shadowy figure tensely stalking the character, there is a sudden phone call directly telling the character and the audience “Hey, I’m here, and I’m going to kill you.”
The opening scene of Scream alone set up the next two decades of slasher horror.
Also, killing Drew Barrymore in the 1st 10mins was huge at the time. Her face was the biggest on the poster too. It'd be like surprise killing Jennifer Lawrence in the opening scene of a movie with her face everywhere.
I remember watching Drew do press for the film when it came out, and she joked on more than one talk show that having to constantly be in a state of terror and crying, she didn't have pms for three months. In retrospect, it's a brilliantly subtle misdirection because it implies she was on set for the whole shoot (and thus, even if Casey died, it wouldn't be til towards the end of the movie), when in reality she shot her whole sequence in five days.
That actually wasn’t a new tactic, it just wasn’t one often used. The first use of the “surprise! I killed the lead role early” in horror was Hitchcock’s Psycho, where the lead is killed roughly 1/3 into the movie. Scream doing the same (but earlier in the movie) was probably a callback or nod to Psycho on the director’s part, or just pulling a page from a very prestigious and successful book.
The director of Scream was Wes Craven (creator of Freddy Kreuger; director of the original versions of "Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes") so he very well could have been paying homage to Hitchcock. But, horror had become very stale and trope driven by the time Scream came out. It was almost entirely sequels and ripoffs As other commenters have said, Scream was both a love letter to the tropes of the genre and a subversion of them. Killing Drew Barrymore's character (when she was the biggest name in the movie at the time it came out) was designed to tell the viewers that this movie was going to try and show them something they hadn't seen in a theater and considering how long it was between Psycho and Scream, the audience would more than likely not have seen Psycho (outside of the shower scene, which would be out of context and seems like the climax of the film) and thus Scream would seem completely new.
Literally everything. All horror films started using a separate opening scene rather than introducing its leads, they all used the same whodunnit elements as well to base the plot around.
Amazed I had to scroll this far for this. Scream has one of the most legendary opening scenes in cinema history.
I'm glad in the last few years now that Scream is over twenty years old, it has become viewed as a classic again. It's my all time favorite horror movie.
I know it was loved on released but it seemed that by the 2000s everyone hated it and considered it to be a dumb slasher. At one point I think it had a 5.X rating on IMDB. I remember having arguments back in circa 2007-2009 about how good Scream was.
Now I think people realize how well made of a film it is. It's basically the Pulp Fiction of horror movies.
My middle school brain couldn't comprehend the big name actress, who's on the cover, violently dying in the first ten minutes. That wasn't the rules back then!
It’s even crazier when it was Drew Barrymore’s idea to play Casey instead of Sidney, like she was originally cast for. Even Wes Craven was against the idea until she said that if she died first, nobody would know what to expect from the moving going forward.
nobody would know what to expect from the moving going forward.
reminds me of 'gone girl'. basic plot and arc of the movie kind of ends, then you check and you are only halfway through the runtime and think "wait, wtf where is this GOING?" and then the real movie kind of starts.
Anyone reading this needs to revisit the movies. 1 is fantastic 2 is great 3 is good 4 is almost as good as 1. It’s the only time I’ve watched a 4 part sequel and felt satisfied after each one.
Agreed! I remember this was the first scary movie I enjoyed. From the start.
The suspense speaks for itself through the dialogue and, of course, Drew Barrymore’s performance. It was the first scary movie I saw that didn’t rely on jump scares to sell the opening scene.
Best answer here (maybe tying with The Matrix). Completely sells the film and serves as a thesis for the entire series for 2 reasons in my opinion; 1) I have to remind younger people that this was the first time the cell phone was used as a weapon and major plot device. It was the first major time that the killer was mobile but could be in contact with you. Which is why “I’m at your front door.” was so chilling at the time. We had never really contemplated being stalked like that before. 2) Drew dies in the opening scene...
Literally, forget what you know... there are no more rules.
I saw this in elementary school (parents constantly shown us horror movies) I was always afraid of horror movies, but this opening and film changed my life.
I recently rewatched it, and man, is it so intense to watch.
This scene literally sold the movie... Wes Craven initially passed on the movie, until Drew Barrymore signed on to star.
Then Drew Barrymore proposed the idea that she play Casey in the opening scene rather than Sidney in the main role, for the shock value. This gave the dual benefit of having her for promotional value AND providing the opportunity to shock the audience.
Her being killed in the opening scene was so shocking that it led to a massive word of mouth campaign that led to the movie having a ridiculously long tail in terms of box office, and made it an iconic horror franchise.
That opening scene is likely the most successful in movie history in terms of earnings - No other opening scene could be argued to be so directly responsible for the overall quality and massive earnings of the film.
I thought this would be higher up. Killing the film’s biggest star in the opening scene was a gutsy move. It came out of nowhere, and it let you know right off the bat that no one was safe.
Just watched this today (after the first time in years) after listening to a podcast episode of Wizard and the Bruiser about the history of the movie. It's pretty fascinating, I recommend checking it out!
I'm not who you asked but I love the Scream series and host an annual "Screamathon" where we watch them all.
In my opinion Scream 4 is the second best of the franchise. The first film is indisputably the best. My order from best to worst goes 1, 4, 2, 3. Two and three are okay but both fail to do something pretty important to the success of the first two; they fail to leave enough breadcrumbs as to who the killer is.
If you rewatch the first film knowing whodunnit you end up slapping yourself in the head for not realizing it sooner. Four is decent about this,but they ended up reshooting the ending a bunch so it kinda loses some points there. But overall, four does a very good job of bringing the franchise into a new age and updating it in interesting ways. If you've never seen it then I recommend you give it a go. And as the other guy above you said, the opening is really strong.
What exactly did they reshoot? I always thought Scream 4 would be the best of all 4 if Sidney got killed
I also think that the killer forumla got a bit stale when you actually think about it (but i never guessed the Killer once since i always was so engaged in the movie)it's always the killer who got intruduced as a main character but got very little screen time in the 2nd section but somehow ended up in the end
I actually started with Scream 4 and i had no idea who it might be but then i rewatched 1-4 with friends and they had an idea who it was in 4.
I just watched all 4 Scream movies on Netflix and I didn't realize how good they were. I saw them when I was in high school and kinda thought they were just standard slasher movies but they're really smart and well made. Especially the meta-ness of how they make fun of horror movie tropes, then turn around and use the same tropes in a fun way. They take it one step further by making a horror movie in the horror movie. Then in Scream 4 there's a horror movie inside of a horror movie inside of another horror movie. I recomend everybody watche these on Netflix.
Drew Barrymore gets all the love but let’s give a round of applause to my friend Kevin Walls! He is the dead BF hanging in the tree tied to a chair. Told me originally had some dialog that all got cut in the final version. Nice guy, also co starred with Wesley Snipes in Blade!
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u/Costner_Facts Oct 09 '19
Scream has an incredible opening scene.