Scream (1996)

Episode 200, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Well, Craig, we have made it. Not only have we made it to the end of the year and a brand new year 2020, but it just so happens that we’ve made it to our 200th episode.

Craig:  It’s insane. I can’t believe we’ve done 200. I didn’t know if we would get past 20.

Todd:  I know. Right? I can’t remember. Man, we’ve I this really puts into perspective just how many movies you see over the course of your life, doesn’t it?

Craig:  Like Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  If you and I have seen 200 movies once pretty much once a week for the last few years over our lifetimes, how many thousands of movies have we seen?

Craig:  I know. I and I like, I told my parents that we were coming up on the 200th episode. My mom’s like, I didn’t even know there were 200 horror movies. Oh, that’s

Todd:  so cute. Wow. Well, we probably got at least 200 more horror movies we could review and keep this thing going for I don’t know. Yeah. We’ll see. Don’t ask your mom. She won’t have any good ideas for us. Yeah.  When we started out when we started out this podcast, the very first episode we did, was The People Under the Stairs, Wes Craven film. I think we chose it because we were such fans of Wes Craven, but we didn’t wanna do something so obvious and easy right off the bat like Nightmare on Elm Street. Right?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Yeah. So we chose The People Under the Stairs. We had a really good time doing it. We thought, oh, we’ll just kinda keep doing this while it stays fun. That was our pact that we had with each other. Mhmm. And so here we are. We’re still having fun, and it seems like at every little milestone, I think our 100th episode anyway, we’ve kept up this kind of Wes Craven thing for each of our milestones.  And so it’s getting harder and harder to do a real quality Wes Craven movie for each of these milestones. Right? Or at least 1 that we really wanna do.

Craig:  Right. So this week, we picked music of the heart.

Todd:  Yes. The heartwarming tale. We’re going in a different direction. With our 200th episode, we thought, aren’t you guys sick and tired of horror?

Craig:  Right. We need, like, an inspirational music kind of thing.

Todd:  No. We’re going to romantic comedies. This will become 2 guys and a bouquet of roses. That’s the big announcement we have for you folks. No. What we are gonna say is we’re not gonna promise that for our next milestone, we’re gonna do another Wes Craven movie. So we we decided, at least, at this point, for 200, we would we would just pick 1 of the most iconic ones that we could and the answer is Scream from 1996. You know, we don’t typically do these really popular movies because there’s so much has been said about them already.  Everybody kind of already knows so much about them that we we don’t feel like what we can say about the movie really makes much of a dent in the general conversation. Right?

Craig:  Yeah. But at the same time, this is 1 of the very few horror franchises that we haven’t touched yet.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So we’re gonna have to get around to it eventually, so we may as well start at the beginning.

Todd:  Well and you wanted to do, like, scream 3 or scream 2.

Craig:  The reason I wanted to do scream 3 is because people usually point to that as being the weakest entry in the franchise, and it’s actually 1 of my favorites. I mean, they lean really heavy into the comedy in scream 3, but I I absolutely love it. So maybe someday we’ll get around to it. But I think that you were right in saying that we should probably, you know, just just go for the original and see where we go from there.

Todd:  Well, I also kinda have this thing where, like, I don’t feel right reviewing a sequel until we’ve done the original. Right? So that’s kinda 1 of my weird hang ups about what we choose to do.

Craig:  I know. Well, you you always say that even though we’ve done it several times. It’s true. But, anyway

Todd:  I’m nothing if not consistent. So I guess I’m nothing. Anyway, enough about our thought processes. This is the 200th episode, and we’re reviewing Scream from 1996. This movie came out when I was a, senior in high school. It was so hot at the time because we really hadn’t seen anything like it. At this time, horror movies were pretty much being written off as direct to video fair. All the Friday 13th movies had kinda been beaten into oblivion.  We had some pretty horrible Nightmare on Elm Street movies even there at the tail end. All these franchises just seem to run out of steam and run out of dollars, and, I think pretty much all of Hollywood was ready to move on. But there’s this guy, who’s a struggling trying to be an actor and or screenwriter, guy named Kevin Williamson, who basically grew up on these slasher movies, really enjoyed them, and, moved to LA a few years before this. Really wanted to make a name for himself, couldn’t really do much acting wise, wrote a script called, at the time, Killing Missus Tingle, which was later turned into teaching missus Tingle, but couldn’t sell it. And so he had this idea, for a movie that would be an homage to all of these slasher movies. He really wanted to see another 1AA good 1. And so his idea was to sort of take these tropes and make a very self aware movie and kinda turn it on its head.

Craig:  I think if I remember correctly, he was asked to do a treatment about a girl who was alone in the house and who was taunted by some menacing killer over the telephone. It was actually inspired. I don’t remember who, saw this story, but there were some actual murders, that this was inspired by.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  And so I think that he was asked to do that kind of treatment, which really sounds very much like a stranger calls, which in many ways this movie borrows from heavily. It was titled scary movie, at the time, which the spoofs of this movie would later go on to adopt. But he put it together and, eventually, this is what came of it.

Todd:  I guess he didn’t have a terrible time selling it. At least his agent thought he would have a terrible time selling it. He said it was way too violent, and it would be it would be a tough sell. It went up, like, on a Friday for bids and didn’t get anything. But by Monday, it was a subject of a huge bidding war. And it ended up through all of this, in the hands of the Weinsteins. Bob we Weinstein, I think, is is particularly, was behind this movie. They had the Dimension Films at that time, and it just sort of seemed like that might be the studio, while they paid for it.  And then that might also be the studio that would do it without demanding too many cuts in it. It did take some risks. Right. But then once Wes Craven read it, and he read it several times, was offered it several times, and, turned it down a few times, and finally decided to pick it up when Drew Barrymore signed on. Right. Drew Barrymore read it, and, Todd pick it up when Drew Barrymore signed on. Right. Drew Barrymore read it.  And, she liked it so much, she asked to be in the movie. And so she was cast, and that sort of snowballed into getting Wes Craven involved. And then once Wes Craven was involved, soon everybody was involved, and it became a a big deal.

Craig:  Yeah. And you had talked about how, you know, these, franchises had kind of petered out and people were kind of over it. Wes Craven was over it. He wanted to move away from horror, but I guess he was approached by a young kid, like a tween, at a convention or something who just outright told him that he thought that he was going soft and that he was much cooler when he was making movies like Last House on the Left. And I guess that got to him because then he agreed to do this movie. And this movie is, you know, fairly brutal, but it’s also a comedy. You know, it’s it’s almost weird to be talking about this movie so much later. You know, you said you were a senior in high school, so that must have made me like a junior in high school, I guess.  It seems so long ago, and it’s it’s easy to forget. And probably some of our younger listeners don’t realize what a game changer this movie was. First of all, Wes Craven had kind of shook things up earlier. There were a lot of slasher movies, like, in the seventies, but the antagonists were usually just crazy people, you know, evil people. And then Wes Craven came along with Nightmare in Elm Street and added that supernatural element. And then all of a sudden you had all these supernatural killers like, Pinhead and Candyman. And this kinda shifted it back, to just, you know, bad guys, you know, human bad guys. And this really was the first super meta horror movie where

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  The characters in the movie were very much aware of the horror genre and the expectations and, quote, unquote, rules of the horror genre. And that’s so typical these days, and especially in the decade that followed this movie. So many movies just took that and ran with it. That it just seems like it was always a part of the horror canon, but it wasn’t. I mean, this arguably, A New Nightmare, which came out, I think, 2 years before this, that arguably kind of started the whole meta trend, but this 1 really took off in the mainstream and set that ball rolling. And and I don’t think that the horror industry has really ever been the same since this movie.

Todd:  No. You’re right. And it’s interesting because Kevin Williamson really insisted. And this is actually was a big concern of his when this was going into preproduction and different directors were interested. He said, so many directors read for this, like Robert Rodriguez. Like, all the big guys at the time, the edgy indie people, and everybody saw it as a comedy, as a spoof. And it is on a certain level, but it’s also a scary movie. And he insisted, even to Wes Craig, even Wes Craven himself started out saying, well, it’s a comedy.  It’s a spoof. But Kevin Williamson who was allowed on set, who was allowed to have a lot of influence, during the production actual production shooting of the film said, no no no, man. You’ve gotta make it scary. You’ve gotta play it straight. That’s the way it’s going to work. And I think that is actually what makes us work and what makes it unique because we’ve we’ve actually had rights. We’ve we’ve reviewed as horror spoofs before this. We did student bodies.  That was, like, late seventies film.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  There were a few movies that kind of took horror movies and spoofed them. But this is an actual horror movie, like you say, that takes place in a world of teenagers who like to watch horror movies and are very well aware of the tropes. And so as you’re watching the movie, you’re getting to see some of this play out and you’re also getting to see some of it subverted, which is just a real mind bender for us as an audience member, especially at the time, like you said. Yeah. Now it seems like nothing. But at the time, it was big. So big that, you know, it’s funny going back and watching this because I haven’t watched this a 1000 times. I watched it a lot when I was younger, like, in college, but I haven’t really seen this movie for at least 15 years.  And I remembered there being more discussion in the film about scary movies and what’s a scary movie than there actually is. That’s funny. There’s, like, 1 character in this movie who works at a video store, which would be, like, my dream job at that time.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  He’s sort of the guy who lets everybody know what the rules are of the movie, and he has a very small part to play in this. Mhmm. And the moments where he actually jumps out and gives a little speech about, oh, you never do this and you never say this, and, you know, people are always running upstairs when they should be running downstairs are few and far between. So it’s just really interesting to go back and watch it over 20 years later. Gosh. 25 years later. Right? Yeah. 24 years later.  Yeah. And see it Yeah.

Craig:  That’s crazy.

Todd:  With these fresh eyes.

Craig:  We’re so old.

Todd:  I’m just thinking when you were talking about when you were talking about that guy meeting Wes Craven, I was, like, yeah. Nothing like telling a middle aged guy that he’s not cool anymore to really, like, kick him in his the seat of his pants and make him do something. Right. I can relate to that.

Craig:  I remember being really excited for this when it came out. I mean, I was a big fan of, The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. That was kind of basically what I knew Wes Craven from at the time. You know, obviously, since then, I’ve gone back and watched. I think maybe I had seen The Hills Have Eyes at that point too, but I don’t even know if I even associated it with him. Wes Craven was Nightmare on Elm Street to me, and I had loved new nightmare. Absolutely loved it, especially after the disappointment of the last couple of movies in that franchise. And I I just thought new nightmare was so smart and scary and cool.  And so I was really excited about this movie, and I was excited because Drew Barrymore was in it. And we grew up with Drew Barrymore.

Todd:  Yeah. I had a crush on her.

Craig:  Oh my god. We all did. Everybody did. She’s and still do. Like, no. She’s amazing. We knew her from when we were little, and she was little and e t. And then we watched her go through all these struggles as a child.  You know, she went through a lot of bad stuff as a kid. But then as a young adult, in her twenties, she really saw this reemergence. And all of a sudden, she was just this really cool chick Craig, and she was super hot, and she was flashing David Letterman on his show.

Todd:  That was awesome.

Craig:  You know, like, she just didn’t play by the rules. She was this really cool chick.

Todd:  She’s the Miley Cyrus of our age.

Craig:  She she kinda was really.

Todd:  A little bit.

Craig:  Well, she she was cooler, but kind of.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  You know, she pushed boundaries. I and I think that this was completely the filmmakers intention, and I know that I wasn’t the only 1. We thought that this was a Drew Barrymore vehicle. Mhmm. Drew Barrymore was the star of this movie. You know, she was

Todd:  Todd billing

Craig:  heavily featured in all of the advertising front and center on the poster. And we were all super stoked. In fact, Drew Barrymore was offered the lead role. She was offered the role of Sydney. And it was actually her idea. She said, no wait. And, Todd, there’s no sense in trying to avoid spoilers. Everybody’s seen this movie at this point.

Todd:  Yeah. You

Craig:  know, she said, if you kill me off in the very beginning, that is gonna throw everybody off, and nobody is gonna have any idea what to expect from the rest of the movie. And she was absolutely right. And she wasn’t you know, this isn’t the first time this has ever been done. Alfred Hitchcock did it in Psycho, but we, I didn’t see it coming at all. And that first scene, that opening scene, which is about 12 minutes of the movie, just kind of blew me away. And and and from that moment, I was absolutely hooked, and I couldn’t wait to see what they were gonna do next.

Todd:  And it is a brilliant opening scene. And going back and watching it, especially a movie you haven’t seen this long that you know is gonna be dated or that you feel is gonna be dated anyway. And and, you know, we have done some pretty dated nineties horror movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was also written by Kevin Williamson, which we didn’t look on as fondly as we did at that time. I was really worried this movie was gonna be the same for me. And this opening scene is still an amazing piece of writing.

Craig:  It’s fantastic.

Todd:  It is incredible. I mean, you the minute you finish watch it’s like it’s like watching the opening 10 minutes of Pulp Fiction. You know? When you’re done with it, you’re like, this movie is going to be brilliant, and, I have no idea what to expect from here on out. Yep. Drew Barrymore is alone. She’s, well, her name is Casey. Right? Mhmm. She’s at home.  She’s not a babysitting or anything. She’s just about to pop on a scary movie and popping some popcorn with some Jiffy Pop on the stove even though she has a perfectly good working microwave on the back. We won’t go. Whoever uses Jiffy Pop except for camping? Come on. Did you ever use Jiffy Pop at home? Anyway.

Craig:  Yeah. Oh, okay.

Todd:  You’re weird, Craig. I guess you like to eat your popcorn out of, like, hot metal.

Clip:  I guess. I don’t know.

Todd:  Yeah. So she’s popping the popcorn on the stove and a guy calls her and goes through a very well structured and believable series of phone calls to her that is increasingly more intense. And the basic gist is he’s he’s terrorizing her, just like you said. Just like, Kevin Williamson was a the movie he was originally supposed to write is this this first 10 minutes.

Clip:  Mhmm.  Who is this?  You tell me your name, I’ll tell you mine.  I don’t think

Todd:  so. What’s

Clip:  that noise? Popcorn. You making popcorn?  Uh-huh.  I only eat popcorn at

Todd:  the movies.

Clip:  Well, I’m getting ready to watch a video.  Really? What?  I’ll do some scary movie.  You like scary movies? Uh-huh. What’s your favorite scary movie?  I don’t know.  You have to have a favorite. What comes to mind?

Todd:  First, she’s a little cautious, but then she lets her guard down. She reveals a little bit more, And then he starts to get threatening. He wants her to play a game. She gets scared. He says he’s gonna if you hang up 1 more time, I’m gonna gut you like a fish or something like that. And, she threatens and says, oh, my boyfriend will be over here if and, and he’s really big and he’s really strong and he plays football, and he’ll beat you up. He says, oh, yeah? Turn on the back porch light. When she turns on the back porch light, there’s her boyfriend bound and gagged with duct tape to a chair, which I guess is, how the Gainesville murderer did it in real life, bound as people in duct tape.  Fun fact. That’s maybe why you see so many people in duct tape in this movie. So, anyway, the game that he wants to play is a little trivia game of scary movies. And he asks her, easy question, and then he asks her what she thinks is going to be an easy question, which is, who is the killer in Friday 13th? And, she gets it wrong. It’s not Jason. It’s Jason’s mother. Sorry. Another spoiler for you.

Craig:  Yeah. You haven’t seen that movie from 1980.

Todd:  For spoiler on the 96th movie, I think we can spoil the original of Friday 13th. Right? Yeah. And so, boyfriend gets slashed, lights go out, and, she gets chased around the house and ends up outside the house. And in this even in this last bit, right, it’s just so heartbreaking that the car Todd her parents’ car is driving up the the road. She can see it. She’s coming out and around the house. You can see the car coming up in the background. It’s just just with an eye shot.  Like, if her parents just happened to be looking over at her Mhmm. They would have seen her. But she’s been cut, and so she can’t talk, and she can’t scream. And she’s this guy is just, yeah, in this costume, this iconic costume, which we’ll probably talk about in a second, chasing after her with a knife and, goes down on her and stabs her pretty brutally in the lawn. And it’s so bold too. Again, because, once again, like, these parents could, at any minute, just turn their head the right way and see this, but instead they walk into the house and they see that the Jiffy Pop is burning on the stove and filling it up with smoke, and they’re calling for her and they can’t find her. And finally, when they go outside, by that point, it’s too late. She’s hanging up by the tree, gutted.

Craig:  The work the worst part to me in that scene well, you know, first of all, we’re we’re rooting for her. We never expected that she would get killed off in first 10 minutes of this movie. She’s the star of the movie. Right? Mhmm. So, you know, she gets stabbed in the chest and, you know, that’s bad, but she’s okay. I I you know, as okay as you can be, and she’s, running. And like you said, she turns, and it’s not even you know, she sees the car coming, but at this point, her parents are walking up to you know, they’re 15 feet away from each other. Like you said, if they had just turned around, and I guess that was kind of a throwback to last house on the left where something very similar happened.  And then Ghostface does get her down on the ground. He stabs she pulls his mask off, of course, we don’t see who it is, and stabs her several more times. But the worst part to me was the mom goes to call the police, But Drew Barrymore, Casey, is still on the line, and she can hear her

Todd:  Oh god.

Craig:  Gasping and crying and saying, mom, that it’s just a nightmare. There was some other movie, I don’t remember what it was called, Sally Field and Kiefer Sutherland were in it. And a similar thing happened where Kiefer Sutherland broke into Sally Field’s house and raped her daughter, and Sally Field heard the whole thing over the phone. And it was just the most horrifying thing, and and this is, so similar. And and then, yeah, when they come out, you know, the dad tells the mom, drive down to the Mackenzie’s, which is a throwback to Halloween. But they they both run outside, and they see her hanging in the tree, and it is so brutal. I mean, she is just bloodied and disemboweled and hanging from the tree. It’s horrible.  And the mom screams, and then it just cuts to black, and we move into the main part of the movie. But, man, I didn’t see this in the theater, but I wish that I would have because I wish that I would have been able to hear the audience’s reaction to that because it was just a gut punch. And Drew Barrymore nailed this scene. I mean, she’s so flirty and cute. And like you said, initially, she’s a little bit irritated with him when he’s on the phone because he keeps calling, and he’s like, I just wanna talk. And she’s like, well, there’s 900 numbers for that, so call somebody else. But, eventually, like you said, she kind of rolls into it. Like, well, fine.  If this guy’s gonna keep calling me, and and she gets kind of flirty and fun. But then when she gets scared, she’s so believably scared, and she’s crying and just terrified. And I read that, in order to get her into that heightened emotional state, Wes Craven would tell her off camera these horrible stories about animal abuse because she’s a big time animal lover and animal activist. And so he would really just mess with her mind to get her, but the performance is just brilliant, and the the scene is, I think, 1 of the best opening scenes ever, period. It’s just virtually perfect.

Todd:  And then

Craig:  we get and then we get into the main movie, and the main movie, I think, is really good. You texted me and said, oh, it still totally stands up, and I agree. It totally stands up. There are some moments of bad writing when it comes to the dialogue, but I almost feel like moving forward into the sequels, they even recognize that and spoofed

Todd:  it

Craig:  to some extent. So, you know, even moving forward with the sequels, they were self aware about their own movie and some of the, maybe, weaknesses. But overall, it’s good. It’s a good suspenseful deal. The first scene is, Sydney Prescott played by Nev Campbell, who was relatively well known at that time. She had done party of 5, which was pretty successful, and she had been in the craft, which wasn’t super mainstream successful, but but did well with teens and kind of in the horror community. So she wasn’t entirely unknown, but not a huge name yet as she would go on to be after this movie. But it opens up on her in her bedroom, and she’s wearing this very chaste nightgown that I can’t imagine any teenage girl ever wearing.  And she’s got her hair up in a ponytail, and she’s very fresh faced. And you know, from the second you see her that this is your sweet, virginal final girl. There’s just no question about it from the beginning. And then her skeezy boyfriend who looks shockingly like Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street 1 comes crawling in her bedroom window just as Johnny Depp does into Heather Langenkamp’s window in Nightmare on Elm Street 1. And it sets up this relationship where she’s sweet and virginal, and he’s horny and gross and And gross.

Todd:  I mean, he’s really gross, like, through the whole

Craig:  movie. Yeah.

Todd:  I I was watching this with my wife, because she hadn’t seen it in a long time either. And she also was, like, this guy’s just a slimeball. Like, how can you think he’s attractive or interesting or anything but suspicious through this whole movie? And, of course, you know, it’s done that way on purpose, I think. Well, I think at this point, we’re we’re thinking that this guy can’t be the killer because it’s way too obvious. Right? Right. He he’s he’s so close to the family. He’s really shifty and shady. He’s got this greasy hair and these scary, almost evil look to him at times.  Todd doesn’t look like the kind of person you’d want your daughter dating.

Craig:  But all I was gonna say is I think that this is all hindsight. You know, in 1996, I think that this bad boy image was almost romanticized, especially with teen girls.

Todd:  I think you’re right.

Craig:  Looking back on it, yeah, it seems totally gross. Ironically, you know, in the age of me too, we look back at this guy and we’re like, this guy is super gross and, you know, he claims that he’s not pressuring her to have sex, but he totally is just in very passive aggressive ways. And it is all very ironic because 1 could say that this was the birthplace of the me too movement. I mean, this is where Rose McGowan met Harvey Weinstein, whom she well, first of all, to be fair, she has said publicly that the filming of this movie was her most positive filming experience ever. So nothing bad must have happened at the time, but she continued a professional relationship with Harvey Weinstein and eventually claimed that he not only harassed, but raped her. And she was 1 of the and remains 1 of the most outspoken voices of the me Todd movement. And a movie like this where this boyfriend is portrayed in this way just probably would not fly as well today as it did in 1996. Yeah.  And hopefully, that’s a good thing. But looking back on it, yeah, from the beginning. And, again, hindsight is always 2020, but it just seems so obvious who the killers are. Like, they are so shady throughout the whole thing. And not only are they shady through the whole thing, but they keep getting called out. Like, Randy blatantly says it was probably you guys at some point or at several points throughout the movie, and they keep just kind of deflecting.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  But at the same time, they’re giving each other very knowing looks. Like

Todd:  Yes.

Craig:  I I’m telling myself through the whole thing, like, how did you not see this plain as day when you saw this in 1990 6? Because it is so obvious. But maybe that’s what they were going for too. Maybe they were trying to play it obvious so that you would think, oh, it must be a red herring because there’s no way they would make it that obvious.

Todd:  Yeah. And I think also I mean, again, we assume you guys know this. They’re both killers, and I think that we were also expecting there to be 1. Right? Yes. We weren’t looking for 2. That that’s kind of the big twist at the end, not just who the killer is, but there there are 2 of them, and that explains so much. You know? It explains why Yeah. A lot of stuff happens in the movie.  So, yeah, I I mean, I don’t think that was in our minds either probably when we were watching this movie, these 2 throwing each other knowing looks. Oh, then they’re both must be involved. Maybe we were just thinking it was a red herring being thrown at us. Or maybe we just weren’t that perceptive or, you know, maybe maybe up until this point, movies horror movies really weren’t making us think this hard. Yeah. That could be a little bit of it too. Because it’s it’s as much a mystery as it is a horror movie as it is, comedy, a spoof, satire.

Craig:  Right. And a lot of the horror movies at this time, mystery wasn’t really so much a part of it. Like, you knew Jason was the killer. You knew Yeah. Freddy was the killer or, you know, whomever it was. I mean, yes, Friday 13th, the original. There was the twist at the end, and and you never knew who the killer was. So it’s not like it was an entirely new concept, and I’m sure that there had been other movies.  In fact, I feel like we did 1 somewhat recently where there, oh, yeah. We just did 1 of the Christmas movies where it turned out that there were 2 killers. So it’s not like this is entirely innovating in that way, but it was still pretty unexpected. And I was surprised. Again, I can’t imagine how now, but

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  I I certainly was at the time.

Todd:  The other thing that is really clever about the script that, again, I had forgotten about it or something is how early on there are all these very casual hints being dropped. It’s never told you outright in the beginning, which, again, is really clever writing, that there’s something kind of odd in Sydney’s past. Right?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  That she has this odd, like, where’s her mom? And that her friend, Tatum, meets up with her at school, and they’re talking about the murders and and everything went that, that went on the night before because the school’s being cordoned off and and kids are are being eventually, kids are given a curfew.

Clip:  Casey Becca and Steve Orest were killed last night. What? Go away. And we’re not just talking killed. We’re talking a slider movie killed. Ripped open from end to end. Casey Becker, she just texted me in English. Not anymore. So sad.  Her mom and dad found her hanging from a tree, her insides on the outside. Oh, my Todd. Do they know who did it? Fucking clueless. I mean, they’re interrogating the entire school, teachers, students, gym Do you think the school did? They don’t know. I mean, Dylan was saying this is the worst crime they’ve seen in years, even worse than Well, it’s bad.

Todd:  And to divert just a little

Craig:  bit Schools canceled.

Todd:  Schools canceled. Like, again, this movie is a little bit ahead of its time. So much so, in fact, that some people have accused it of inspiring school violence. Mhmm. Because this is was this just before Columbine? Right? This oh, yeah. This was well before Columbine. And, there were people saying that this movie could inspire teenagers to murder people at school. I you know, I guess, again, in hindsight, it’s hard to know why because, I guess, there weren’t a lot of movies made about teenage murderers at that point.  I guess everybody was either supernatural or a crazy man. So this idea that teens were killing each other, at school is probably fairly new. Right?

Craig:  Yeah. But they even addressed this issue in the movie because this issue, you know, has been talked about forever. It’s not like this movie is the first

Todd:  Todd be accused of a yeah.

Craig:  1 character in the movie, it’s towards the end, even says, don’t blame the movies. It’s the movies don’t make people violent. I believe that as well. I don’t think that movies or video games or whatever make people violent or even necessarily inspire violence. I think that people who are capable of perpetrating these kinds of horrific acts, you know, there’s there’s something wrong with them. And I don’t think that it’s the fault of movies or video games or or whatever. No. But it’s interesting to watch this high school dynamic because I teach high school, and high school kids, while they can be very mature and incredibly intelligent, often just lack some of the social tact that adults should have.  And so even even Sydney’s friends are joking around well. And, of course, you find out that it’s the killer, Stu, played by Matthew Lillard, who, some people say that he stole this movie. I think that he is so goofy and over the top. It’s ridiculous, but it works for his character. He and Randy played by Jamie Kennedy, they’re joking around. You know, 2 of their peers who they saw every day were murdered brutally the previous night, and they’re making jokes about it. Mhmm. And that that bothers Sydney because her own mother, we find out, was a victim of violence and murder exactly a year prior.  But they don’t even when they’re called out on it, even when Tatum kind of playfully calls her boyfriend, Stu, out on it, they just don’t get it. They’re like, what? It’s funny. It’s a joke. And and high school kids can be like that. And that’s not a criticism. It’s it’s just a phase that we all go through. I’m sure I was the same way. But, also, you know, that once they find out that there’s this killer and that he dresses in this costume, then high school kids are running around the halls in the costume, like, screaming and stuff, and it’s totally inappropriate, but completely believable.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And so I just thought that they did a good job of capturing that dynamic too. It it was very real to me. I I could imagine standing in the hallways of my high school witnessing these events go down. Because when you’re that age, all of us, not anybody in particular, all of us, when you’re that age, you just don’t quite get it yet.

Todd:  I think you’re right about that. And and, again, I think this is another reason why a movie like this really wouldn’t quite be made today. It wouldn’t be made in the same way. We take this sort of thing a lot more seriously now than we used to. This was kind of a novel thing that was only in the movies, and now we’re sort of faced with these almost monthly incidents where there’s always now there’s always this impending threat of violence at school. It’s just not fun to watch on the screen anymore. So that’s another odd thing, you know, about watching this movie now Yeah. That I don’t think it would be produced.  In fact, by the time Scream 3 came along, they changed the script entirely because of the Columbine murders and things and a lot of this criticism. I think the original treatment for Scream 3 was that 1 of the killers, from 1 of the previous movies was in prison and was was influencing other teens to copycat Todd kind of do his bidding from prison, and that got changed. Mhmm. Yeah. So, it has definitely, arguably influenced culture, and culture has influenced the direction of this franchise over the over the years for sure and the way it was supposed to go. Actually, when Kevin Williamson wrote this, he wrote it, like, in 3 days, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. And then on top of that, he had 2 5 page treatments for numbers 23 because, you know, he was gonna sell a franchise.  Right? And he did. So he did preplan out the sequels to this movie, which is pretty cool as well. And then probably why you like Scream 2 so much. I think it it it did fold in quite well to this movie. But, anyway, so, yeah, to get back into the plot, so there’s all this happening. At the same time, the news media’s jumping in, and we get Courtney Cox, who everybody knew at this time from Friends. Uh-huh. She just played this happy, bubbly character, and she really wanted to play a bitchy bitchy role.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Todd:  And that was a a reason why people were initially reluctant to cast her. But, eventually, she did get cast in this movie, and she’s the annoying reporter who is always on the scene, is always putting her mic in people’s faces. And she gets deflected at the school by Dewey, who is a brother. And I love this dynamic too. It’s so cute. Tatum’s brother, Dewey, is a police officer and he’s not much older than she is. He’s only 25 in the movie Yeah. Played by David Arquette.  And David Arquette plays this character so young and naive. Mhmm. Kind of full of himself, but not quite ready to take on the full responsibility of pushing his authority around.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  It’s just a really interesting character he’s got here.

Clip:  You’re not supposed to be here.

Todd:  I know.

Clip:  I should be in New York covering the Sharon Stone stalker, but who knew? You look awfully young to be a police officer.  I’m 25 years old.  You know, in a demographic study, I proved to be most popular amongst males 11 to 24. I guess I just missed you. Of course, you don’t look a day over 12, except in that upper torso area. Does the force require you to work out? No, ma’am.  Because my boyish good looks, muscle mass has increased my acceptance as a Sears police officer.

Craig:  He’s super cute.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And it’s funny that, David Arquette, who would go on to marry Courtney Cox in real life, they since divorced, but they have a child together and they’re still close. He was offered the role

Todd:  of

Craig:  Billy, and he turned it down and and said that he wanted to play Dewey, who was written as, like, this hunky character. Oh. He wanted to do it, and so they did a little bit of rewriting to make him a little bit more goofy and comedic. And it just seems like a perfect fit. And, you know, for whatever reason, he and Courtney Cox just have really good chemistry together. You know, it just there’s an ease to the way that they interact with 1 another, and I’m sure that that had to do with the fact that they had chemistry off camera too, obviously. And and Courtney Cox is fantastic in this role. Yeah.  I can’t imagine anybody else in this role, and she she had the lobby for it hard. They had offered it to Janine Garofalo who had turned it down. Brooke Shields was in consideration. Elizabeth Berkley auditioned. Courtney Cox really lobbied hard for it, and she got it. And she plays it. She’s such a climber, and she’s such a bitch, and she doesn’t care. The only thing that she’s concerned about is, her own success.  She has found success because she was the reporter who covered the murder trial that resulted from Sydney’s mother’s murder, And that that mythology carries throughout the rest of the whole series. It’s it’s expanded upon, but she covered it. And and what her angle was was that the wrong man had been convicted and that it was Sydney’s fault because Sydney was the main person who had testified against this guy named Cotton, who’s played by Lee Shriver, who you see for about 2 seconds in this movie, but he’s in the sequels too. So right away, that plants some doubt in Sydney, like, well, now here’s this murderer again. Maybe did I and and he’s, you know, he’s already called Sydney at this point and threatened her and, like, attacked her. So she thinks she starts to question herself. You know? Did I finger the wrong guy? And so there’s this inner conflict with her too. There’s just so many a surprising number of levels in this movie.  It’s just smartly written, and the characters have depth and are interesting. And you do want to learn more about them, and you want to spend more time about them, and you care about what happens to them. Even the minor characters like Tatum, who’s just the best friend. She’s just any best friend from any slasher movie ever. But Rose McGowan is cute and charming and sassy and tough, and she’s there for her best friend. But she’s also willing to call her best friend out and say, you know, maybe you were wrong. Sydney doesn’t want to admit even though the whole town believes that her mom was this promiscuous, desperate woman. Sydney doesn’t wanna believe that, but Tatum is kinda like, you know, it kinda seems like it’s true.  You know, like, it they just seem far more like real people than is typical for this kind of movie.

Todd:  It’s very true. There are really no car even though we have some super goofy over the top characters in here, they still feel real. They’ve got depth, and it’s all in the way that they interact with each other, I think, and the backstory that just comes through. And I think that was what was so appealing to us at the time as well is that I, as as a high school slash, you know, 1st year college student, could totally relate to these people and put myself in their place. I think even now, it still holds up for that reason.

Craig:  For the most part. I mean, I would argue that Billy

Todd:  I mean, there are a few.

Craig:  Billy is kind of stereotypical, but it makes sense in the role that he needs to play. He he’s the horny boyfriend or whatever. And the first time that Sydney gets called and attacked, there’s she has a great line where everybody always thinks it’s Randy at first. Because Randy’s the horror movie guy, and they think and he’s also goofy, so they think that he’s messing around. So the first time Ghostface calls her

Clip:  Do you like scary movies, Sydney?  I like that thing you’re doing with your voice, Randy. It’s sexy.

Todd:  What’s your favorite scary movie?

Clip:  Oh, come on. You know I don’t watch that shit. Why not? Too scared? No. No. It’s just, what’s the point? They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big breasted girl who can’t act, who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door. It’s insulting.

Craig:  And then, of course, it’s so clever because he attacks, and she goes to try to run out the front door, but it’s locked, so she can’t, so she runs upstairs. It acknowledges and sometimes subverts, but then sometimes also plays right into these common tropes. And it’s so funny. Then Billy shows up after Ghostface disappears, like, immediately after, which is suspicious in and of itself, but he drops a phone. And, of course, this was 1996 when not all of us had cell phones, so, apparently, this was shady enough for, him to get arrested. You know, I have I took so many notes on this, and we’re already, you know, 45 minutes in. There’s no way we can go through everything that happens, but it moves. When I looked at it online, when I when I pulled up the IMDB page, 1 of the first things I usually look at is how long it is.  And it was it’s like an hour and 54. No. An hour and 51 minutes. I’m like, too long. It doesn’t feel that long at all. Something is always happening. It moves really fast. There’s tons of entry.  There’s so much fun stuff going on. Like little cameos, like Linda Blair makes a cameo right after Billy has said, oh, I watched The Exorcist last night. Then in the very next scene, here’s Linda Blair cameoing as a reporter. The Fonz is the principal. Henry Winkler.

Todd:  It’s so crazy.

Craig:  And he’s hilarious. And he you know, he’s almost like you wonder if it could be him for a little while because at the same time, he’s kind of goofy and that over the Todd. Remember, your principal loves you. Then there’s another time when the kids who were playing pranks, ghost face pranks, he has them in his office, and he’s, like, menacing them with these huge scissors.

Todd:  Yeah. He’s really dressing them down.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, you’d think he’s gonna cut their nuts off or something.

Clip:  You make me so sick. Your entire, cat inducing, thieving, whoring generation disgusts me. So 2 of your fellow students just savagely murdered. And this is the way that you show your compassion and sensitivity, Let me show you something. You’re both expelled yet.

Todd:  He’s like the Fonz, you know, now grown up bitching about the younger generation this entire time. He definitely has this duality about him that does make you suspect him for sure.

Craig:  He ends up getting killed, but not before he has an interaction with a janitor in the hallway who is Wes Craven dressed up as Freddy Krueger, and he even calls him Fred. Hilarious.

Todd:  Well, his death was inserted into the script later because Bob wean Weinstein had looked through the script and realized that they were, like, 30 pages, like, half an hour of the movie that had gone by without any deaths. And so, he asked Kevin Williamson to write in another death, and that’s what he put in the death of the principal. Kevin Williamson later said that that actually solved a problem that he had had with the original script, which was, how to get those kids at the party at the end of the movie, how to get most of them out of the house so that the killers could stalk the a few remaining kids in the house. And that gave them a reason to leave was they hear about the principal’s death at this party, and they they leave, like, oh my gosh, we gotta go see, like, they say his his body strung up on the football yard. And so a bunch of kids leave, leaving just a few in the house, and that’s when sort of the final act takes place.

Craig:  Right. And 1 of my 1 of my favorite scenes also happens in the school. It’s it’s just the next day after Sydney’s been attacked, Billy’s been arrested, but Billy has been cleared because they checked his phone records, and he didn’t make any of those calls. And they’re at school. At some point, Tatum had said to Nev Campbell, you should be excited because you’re right in the middle of this. If someday if they make the movie, who do you think will play you? And Dewey says, I see you as a young

Todd:  Meg Ryan.

Craig:  And Nev Campbell says, my luck. They cast Todd Spelling.

Todd:  And

Craig:  then there’s this scene in the hallway where she runs into Billy for the first time, and they’re standing at the stop the top of the stairwell. And the writing is so bad.

Clip:  I know what? I think it’s time you got over that. I mean, when my mom left my dad, I accepted it. It’s the way it is. She’s not coming back.  Your parents split up. This is not the same thing. Your mom left town. She’s not lying in a coffin somewhere.

Craig:  Okay. Okay.

Clip:  Okay. I’m sorry. It’s it’s a bad analogy. It’s just that I want my girlfriend back.  Sid. I am sorry if my traumatized life is an inconvenience to you and your perfect existence. What? What? Nobody said that. Sid.

Craig:  Stupid. But it is hilarious because in Scream 2, they are making the movie of the first movie’s events, and Tori Spelling is playing Sydney, and they show us this scene word for Todd, shot for shot with Todd Spelling and 1 of the Wilson brothers, Luke Wilson, I think. And it’s it’s the exact same scene, the exact same dialogue, and it’s just as stupid as it was the first time, which makes it look even funnier and even more stupid. It’s just a really clever movie, and the the franchise remained clever, self referential. So impressive. But we better get to the party because the party is, like, the last 45 minutes of the movie.

Todd:  That’s right. It’s basically half of it. Well, basically, everybody’s under a big curfew, and so they just and I think schools close the next day. So they all decide to celebrate, by having a party and, over at Stu’s house. So his parents are gone, I guess, for a while. Everybody’s over there. And what are they doing? They’re watching a scary movie. I think they’re watching Halloween.  Oh, interestingly too, the score for this movie was praised at the time for being pretty unique and original and good for a horror film. And you’ll hear a number of sound effects and sounds from this from the Halloween soundtrack, in this part of the movie at the end. So it’s cool that as the movie is playing on the TV screen, we’re also hearing incorporated into the score little bits and pieces of the Halloween soundtrack that are really iconic. But, yeah, there’s a lot going on at this party. There are a bunch of people sitting around watching the scary movie. At some point in here, not at the beginning, but in the middle, Tatum gets up to go get get some beer into the garage. And she goes to the fridge in the garage, grabs a whole bunch, and the lights go out. When the lights come on, the ghost face killer is standing right there, at the bottom of the steps.  And first, she thinks it’s 1 of I think she thinks it’s Randy, right, playing with her.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Uh-huh. And so she doesn’t take him seriously and walks right up to him until, he pulls out the knife. And then she does a bang up job of defending herself against this guy. She does. Like, you really think she’s actually gonna get away. She is really holding her own. She’s, like, flipping him over her back. She’s throwing bottles at him and broken bottles at him and and goes to run away.  And what does her in is is as he is incapacitated by the door that leads into the garage, she makes a break for the garage door through a, cat, you know, 1 of those pet doors in it. Mhmm. But she can’t quite squeeze through. And, the killer, in the meantime, raises the garage door. And we’ve been all of this has kind of been foreshadowed because we’ve seen that this garage door has some problems, and it raises and raises and raises until it snaps her neck. And I read in the trivia that, actually, Rose McGowan herself was so small that she kept slipping out of this door, and they had to pin her shirt to the inside of it just to keep her in there for this scene.

Craig:  Yeah. And I also read that, she had to be suspended in that thing for so long that when it was all over, she was just covered in bruises. I’m sure it was terribly uncomfortable. I love this scene, and it’s iconic, but at the same time, it’s totally impossible. First of all, 1 of the things that I love about the movie is that the the girls, period, in this movie are not typical slasher girls. They don’t just stand there and scream while somebody kills them. They they they try to get away. They fight.  You know, Rose McGowan fights. Nev Campbell has already been attacked at least once, if not a couple of times, and she always fights and fights hard and gets away. But Tatum fights here. But when you throw beer bottles at somebody, they don’t explode on impact. Like, you don’t throw a beer bottle at somebody’s groin and it explodes upon impact. Yeah. In in in my experience,

Todd:  Well, how many beer bottles have you had thrown at your groin, Craig?

Craig:  Well, I Todd yeah. I don’t know.

Todd:  You were a clown in the circus? Yeah.

Craig:  I’m kind of a chubby guy, so they would just bounce off me. And and the whole garage door thing, it looks great. It’s totally implausible, but it looks great. And I I would go so far as to say that it’s really kind of an iconic scene.

Todd:  It is.

Craig:  It’s a cool death scene.

Todd:  Honestly, I feel like it’s the 1 everybody remembers. It’s the 1 I remember.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  But you’re right. It it’s never gonna happen. These garage doors can’t lift a person like that, and they have safety mechanisms in place that stop them from, you know it’s it’s never gonna happen. But it looks horrible. Yeah. Like, there is a lingering shot of her as it snaps her neck, and it’s it’s really pretty pretty horrible to watch as are all of the murders in this movie.

Craig:  They’re brutal.

Todd:  1 thing that I like about this film is they’re brutal to the point where they don’t make it entertaining. You know? Mhmm. Even from the beginning, what you were saying about Drew Barrymore, it’s almost heart wrenching. And then to see the stabbing, like, unlike a lot of slasher movies up to this point where the kills are sort of made honestly entertaining or over the top and funny and fun to watch, these are not fun to watch, I think, which is an odd juxtaposition against the comedy of the movie, which is, again, I think why it works so well. At the same time, we forgot to mention that the reporter comes, to the house because she thinks something’s gonna happen, which is also kind of implausible, but whatever. And she’s there with her cameraman, and Dewey is also there because he’s keeping an eye on the house. So those 2, Dewey and the reporter, have this kind of love thing.

Craig:  And yet he’s a cop, but this is a teenage party where they’re all drinking, and he’s like, no. It’s cool. It’s fine. Yeah. And, like, the cop is just hanging out at the teenage party where they’re all drinking. Okay. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s all rather silly. Isn’t it? But she sneaks a a hidden camera into the living room so that it films the towards the sofa as the people are watching the TV. And then after she goes back out to the van with her cameraman, they watch the camera and realize that they got it, but there’s a, like, a 30 second delay Uh-huh. Which is also kind of implausible. But it’s helpful for the plot Right. So that they can see what’s going on in their house, but they’re gonna see it 30 seconds afterwards, which comes into play later. And then it’s cute because she and Dewey are gonna go explore the grounds because 1 of the other red herrings in here is that maybe Sydney’s father, is the murderer.

Craig:  Because they can’t find him. Mhmm.

Todd:  So, they’re gonna go around and look for clues or something, look for his car, and they do find his car, at some point.

Craig:  All these things are going on at the same time. But 1 important thing that happens is Billy shows up at the party. And this is after some people have already left. I I guess he wasn’t supposed to be there because it would upset Sydney or whatever, but he shows up and Stu sends them upstairs to his parents’ bedroom to talk or whatever.

Todd:  Which, by the way, their parents have the smallest bed I’ve ever seen, especially for a couple with a house this huge.

Craig:  Right. Yeah. They sleep on a full size bed in their huge mansion. Okay.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So they go up there, and they have this ridiculous conversation where basically she’s like, no. You’re right. I need to get over it.

Clip:  But this is life. This isn’t a movie.  Sure it is, Ed. It’s all it’s all a movie. It’s all 1 great big movie. I know you can’t  Why can’t I be a big Ryan movie? Oh, are you gonna get porno?

Craig:  Then they have sex, which, of course, is the big no no. As this is happening, Randy is downstairs with the small group of people who are remaining. They’re still watching horror movies, and this is where he gives his infamous the rules speech.

Clip:  Gotcha.  There are certain rules that 1 must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number 1, you can never have sex. Big Momo. Big Momo. Big

Todd:  Momo. Big Momo.

Clip:  Big Momo. Big Momo. Big Momo.  Big Momo. Even impossible. Sex equals death. Okay? Number 2, you can never drink or do drugs. No. This sin backwards. It’s a sin. It’s an extension of number 1.  And number 3, never ever ever under any circumstances say, I’ll be right back, because you won’t be back. I’m getting another beer. You want 1? Yeah. Sure. I’ll be right back. I’ll see you push the laws, and you end up dead. Okay. I’ll see you in the kitchen with a knife.

Craig:  All of which, you know, these things, these rules are being broken all over the place, and people are dying. We know that Sydney’s upstairs losing her virginity at the moment. And, also, you know, as soon as he says you can’t say I’ll be right back, Stu goes to get another beer and says I’ll be right back. But then he comes back, and he’s okay, which foreshadows the fact that he’s okay because he’s the killer. Mhmm. So just clever, clever stuff going on all around. But after right after they have sex, which Sydney doesn’t seem to have been very impressed by.

Todd:  Yeah. Little disappointing for a first time. Yeah.

Craig:  I I guess that there was an alternate scene that you can find online. I didn’t have time to look it up because I was doing my research right before we started this. But apparently, there was an alternate scene at the end when you find out that Billy’s the killer. Sydney shoots him, at the end. And apparently, there’s another scene where at right before she shoots him, she says something like, and this is for having a teeny weeny weeny or something like that. Something ridiculous. But anyway, right after they have sex, she apparently just thought of this. She said, who did you call when you were arrested? He says, I called my dad.  She said, no. You didn’t because the cop called your dad. I saw him. And he said, well, when I tried to call, I didn’t get an answer. And then he says, what am I gonna have to do to prove to you that I’m not a killer? And the killer shows up right behind him, which is an excellent diversion and apparently stabs him and then chases Sydney all around. And it’s this great chase scene through the house. She ends up on the roof. She falls off the roof onto a boat, which apparently makes it okay.  Like, oh, thank Todd that boat was there. She’ll be crying. And she’s running around, and she runs into Gail and makes Gail crash the news van, and Dewey is in the house, and Ghostface is there. There’s all kinds of things. When, Sydney ends up trying to run back into the house, Dewey comes out, and he turns around to reveal that he is stabbed in the back. And he was supposed to be dead. In fact, in any scenes that you see him after the stabbing, he’s visibly not breathing because he was written to be dead. Wes Craven just decided to show him getting loaded into a ambulance conscious at the end so that if they wanted to bring him back for the sequel, they could.  Eventually, she is back in the house. She has just been attacked by Ghostface again in a car. She’s at the door, and Randy and Stu both run up to her, pointing the finger at the other 1, saying he did it. He did it. He’s crazy. He’s lost his mind. And they’re just going on and on, and she’s, like, looking back and forth like she doesn’t know who to believe. And then I just love she’s so smart.  She just says, fuck you both, and closes the door, locks it. Like, that was such the right thing to do. Screw you guys. Yeah. I don’t care.

Todd:  It’s true. It’s true. At this point, her boyfriend comes stumbling down the stairs, apparently not dead after all. Says, oh, they’re outside. And, you know, he’s, like, huffing and puffing against the door and says, please hand me your gun. And she gives him the gun, at which point he opens the door and he lets Stu in. And this is where suddenly we realize that it’s these 2 guys, and they turn on Sydney, and they have this incredible scene in the kitchen. And this is an interesting point in the movie because we’re all waiting for a motive.  Right? Mhmm. Okay. Now we know these 2 guys are in on it. They’re together. And what is the motive? And Kevin Williamson originally didn’t really want a motive here. He thought it would be scarier that they’re just 2 crazy people. Mhmm. They just like killing.  And that’s how the scene starts to play out. In fact, at 1 point, they say this very thing.

Clip:  Yeah. That’s Todd. I think she wants a motive. I don’t really believe in motive, Sid. I mean, did Norman Bates have a motive? No. Did they ever really decide why Hannibal Lecter liked Todd eat people? Don’t think so. See, it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive, Sid.

Todd:  Then Billy looks at Nav for a minute, kinda scratches his head and says, well, you really need a motive, Which is he’s saying it to us, the audience.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And he just sorta says, well, how about your slut mother who basically screwed my dad and broke our family apart. And so, you know, this is me getting back at you. And then she looks over at Stu and says, what’s your motive? And he’s just like, I don’t know. Peer pressure is is how he explains it. Maybe a little later he says that. But

Craig:  And something that I had never noticed before is that, you know, Billy starts that thing with the whole there is no motive, and then he confesses that there really is. Mhmm. And you can see Stu standing behind him. And I think that this comes as much as a surprise to Stu as it does to Sydney. I don’t think that Stu knew that this was Billy’s real motivation. I don’t think he had any idea.

Todd:  That could be. I I didn’t think of it before. But but, yeah, it’s interesting that there are these 2 sides to it. Right? There’s the guy who clearly doesn’t have a motive. Stu is just kinda whack job.

Craig:  Well, he had a motive to kill Casey.

Todd:  Why?

Craig:  Because she had dumped him for Steve, the boyfriend.

Todd:  Oh, okay.

Craig:  Tatum brings that up very early on. But that’s the only motivated kill, for him. Everything else was just part of their plan. Ultimately, their plan is they have had the dad captive this whole time, and they’re gonna set him up. Now this is also something that I never really thought about, but I had read about it recently before we even decided to do this. While they are explaining what’s going on and what’s going to happen, there’s some really interesting vibes between Billy and Stu. Stu comes up behind Billy and, like, drapes his arms around him and, like, puts his chin on his shoulder and is looking at him almost longingly. And now, you know, all these years later, people are throwing out these theories.  Was there some kind of gay thing going on with these guys? Whether it be overt or whether it be latent or just suggested or whatever. Now Kevin Williamson is gay, not that that means anything, but if you watch that scene and just take it into consideration, and I’m not suggesting that was the intention, I have no idea. It really doesn’t fit with the rest of the narrative, except for that it might explain why Stu was so willing to go along with Billy’s plan. And he’s even referred to as Billy’s lap dog at some time.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Neve Campbell refers to Billy as a pansy little mama’s boy at some point. I think that you would have to be reading a lot into it, but it’s interesting to at least consider.

Todd:  I guess it’s a level that could be there.

Craig:  Rewatch that scene.

Todd:  Yeah. I think I will. The only other thing I would say is though Stu’s kinda hanging on everybody in this movie. It just seems to be part of his physicality, you know, that he’s just Fair enough.

Craig:  Fair enough.

Todd:  So it that didn’t strike me as odd that he came up behind him and, you know, it just seemed more dramatic, like, he was trying to get in Casey’s face from behind him than it seemed to me like they were embracing in any way. But yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s an interesting take. I didn’t even actually, I didn’t even think about that.

Craig:  They think they’ve got everything planned out, but things start to

Todd:  Fall apart. It’s so nuts because and and I again, this is probably the second thing I remember about the movie the most. Maybe everybody would say this, you know, not this number 1, that garage door killing scene. And number 2, when these guys, in order to cover their tracks, need to start injuring each other. Once again, watching it this time, III guess I remembered it differently. I remembered it more as the give and take that first Billy stabs Stu and it really hurts him and it’s kind of funny actually. It’s played a little bit for laughs because Stu’s a funny guy and he’s like Mhmm. Oh, my Todd, man.  It really hurt. Whatever. Now it’s my turn and he takes the knife and Billy’s like now, you know, you’re gonna do it to the side. He’s like, oh, yeah. I remember, you know, like, I’m gonna get you back, and he stabs him in the side. Then Billy gets it again, and he’s gotta go with Stu a couple more times. It seems a little excessive. He was doing a little bit much.  And for a fleeting moment, you kinda wonder, is he trying to do Stu in?

Craig:  I think he was. Watching it this time, I think he was. Yeah. I think that he planned for Stu to die.

Todd:  I think so too because Stu is, like, in real pain. He’s doubling over and he’s like, he says some lines that, you know, we used to repeat for years after this, like,

Clip:  I’m feeling a little woozy

Craig:  here. Yeah.

Todd:  Stuff like that. So it gets kind of funny, but it’s still really brutal and and violent. And then Stu turns around, to get the gun and apparently this was an ad lib line, Houston, we have a problem here. And he Billy’s like, what? And he turns around. There’s the gun is missing And, their back is to the kitchen now as they’re trying to figure out what happened to the gun when Courtney Cox’s character comes in. Right?

Clip:  Mhmm.

Todd:  And aims it at them and shoots is it Billy in the shoulder?

Craig:  She doesn’t shoot anybody. She tries Todd.

Todd:  Oh, but the safety’s on.

Craig:  The safety’s on. And so Billy kicks her in the gut, which sends her flying back on to the porch. She hits her head on, like, a porch beam or something, and she falls unconscious on top of Dewey’s body.

Todd:  That’s right.

Craig:  And he’s going he’s going to shoot her. You know, these are these moments where the villains are always so stupid.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  He’s going to shoot her, but Stu realizes that Nev Campbell has disappeared. So Billy turns around and and redirects his attention. Now if he were smart at all, he would have just taken a second and went ahead and shot Gale. Yeah. Well Just to be safe, he’s gonna have to eventually anyway. You may as well just do it while you’re standing right there, but he doesn’t because she’s in the sequels.

Todd:  That’s right.

Craig:  But I love this part because Sydney has gotten away, and the phone rings, and it’s Sydney using the voice modifier. By the way, we never mentioned the guy that does go space voice is Roger Jackson, and he he’s got a really successful career as a voice actor. He’s done tons of animation and all kinds of things. He he’s been the voice for every iteration of, Scream.

Todd:  He’s fantastic. The voice is so iconic. It became so iconic as well. And, you know, I was going back and looking at his profile. I did not realize this. This guy has to be 1 of the original video game voice actors. He voiced some of my favorite computer games from the nineties, The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, King’s Quest 6, Space Quest 6. I sound like a huge dork reading these things off, but, like, at in 1990 was just the start of video games, computer games, in this case, getting voices at all.  And to think that this guy was at the beginning of that was also the dude who did the voice for Scream blew me away this afternoon when I found that out.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. He’s done tons of stuff too. I mean, children’s Mostly been in the basement. Yeah. But, anyway, so Sydney gets away, and she calls, and she has the voice recorder. And she says, let’s play a game. Guess who just called the police and turned in you stupid assholes or something. And so Billy runs off to look for her and Stu picks up the photos like, hello? And she’s talking to him.

Todd:  Did you really call the police?

Clip:  You miss your sorry ass.  My mom and dad are miserable.

Craig:  Which apparently was another adlib, but hilarious. And Craig loved it and kept it in. Oh. As much as Matthew Lillard kinda gets on my nerves, he must be a pretty funny guy because his adlibs are are pretty good. I’ll

Todd:  forever remember him from this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. True. Drew Barrymore jumps out of a closet in the Ghostface costume and stabs, Billy with an umbrella. And, apparently, I read a couple of different things about this. I I don’t know if it was the stunt guy. I think that it was actually the guy who played Billy, Skeet Ulrich, had recently had open heart surgery and still had sutures from that. And apparently, she pushed a little bit too hard and, actually tore some of his sutures. So his reaction, his pain reaction is pretty genuine.  But but she attacks him, but then Stu attacks her, and they fight, and then she ends up killing him by dropping the TV on his face, and he gets electrocuted. And then Billy comes back, but, gosh, this all happens so fast. Billy attacks, but then Gail shoots him. And we find out that Randy is alive. And Randy says to, Sydney, careful. This is the part where the presumably dead killer pops up for 1 last scare, which happens, but Nev Campbell gives him the double tap. She, you know, shoots him right in the head and says not my movie. And then and then the dad falls out of the closet, so we know he’s still okay.  Yep. And the last scene is, Gale reporting on the events of the party as the camera pans out away from the house. Just, you know, so much happens in this movie. There are so many things that we didn’t get an opportunity to talk about. You know? The fact that the people who were considered for Sydney, the per the first person who was offered the role was Molly Ringwald. Can you imagine? Oh, man. Molly Ringwald? She turned it down because she was 27 and thought she was too old to play high school. Well

Todd:  Oh.

Craig:  Everybody in this movie was around 25.

Todd:  Yeah. Clearly.

Craig:  Melissa Joan Hart auditioned for it. Brittany Murphy auditioned for it. Melanie Linsky auditioned for it. Joaquin Phoenix auditioned for Billy. Watching it again, things that had never bothered me before bothered me this time. Like, throughout the course of the movie, the killer in full costume is just following Sydney around in town when everybody knows

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  That there is a killer and that he dresses in that costume. That’s

Todd:  so weird. It doesn’t

Craig:  make any sense.

Todd:  It doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s, like, shows up in the reflection, like, standing in the street behind her. It’s like he’s in the woods, like, right there and and bops around.

Craig:  But overall and and like I said, there are some goofy dialogue moments, and I pointed out that 1 in the hallway, but there are some other ones too. But I am so willing to forgive those because I think beyond that, the storytelling is so well crafted and so clever and so smart. It’s it’s genuinely scary. It’s brutal. There’s violence galore as was the case with Wes Craven all the time. The MPAA kept sending it back, insisting that they keep cutting it down, cutting out more and more gore. Eventually, Bob Weinstein had to step in and go speak with, the MPAA. And when he came back, Wes Craven, who had battled the MPAA a throughout his, career, said, what did you say to them? Because they backed off.  They they’re like, okay. Fine. It’s fine. And Weinstein just said, I told them it was a comedy. I said, stop thinking about it as a horror movie. Think about it as a comedy. And they said, oh, okay. And then they were just okay with it or at least whatever version they had at that point.  It is genuinely funny Todd, and just some great characters, so well written, well performed, interesting. You know, Nev Campbell carries so much of it, but it’s really largely an ensemble piece, and everybody carries their weight. And, you know, like you said, Kevin Williamson already had plans for sequels, and I would have to say that it shows in the sequels because the sequels expand upon the back stories. They expand upon the characters and their motivations. There are always connections back to the central story lines. They’re all clever. I loved Todd the opening scene in 2 takes place in a theater. I did see part 2 in the theater in a packed theater of people who were just absolutely thrilled to see this movie.  And watching this murder scene in the theater play out in a theater that was very much like what was being portrayed on screen. I mean, it was almost euphoric. And then I loved 3 even though the critics didn’t, and it didn’t do as well as the others. Then that was supposed to be it. But then they convinced everybody, including Craven, to come back for part 4. This is 1 of the only franchises, and I think the only slasher franchise that the same director has directed every installment of, so far, but they convinced everybody to come back for 4. 4 wasn’t my favorite. I thought that it was clever.  They really went back to hardcore brutality and violence, and they pulled a little bit away from the comedy, not entirely, but pulled back from the comedy as much as it had been present in part 3. And people really like scream for it. Wasn’t my favorite, but it did really well. And then there was a TV series, which got very mixed reviews, and eventually ended up not doing very well. I’m pretty sure it’s canceled at this point. Like, they canceled the original series, then they rebooted it, and then it got canceled. There are always talks of Scream 5. People want it.  The central cast, surprisingly, their characters are all still alive. If they could get them to come back, I’m sure they would do a Scream 5. I would be really surprised if we don’t see it at some point. Sadly, it will not be helmed by Wes Craven because Yeah. He’s gone.

Todd:  Well, according to IMDB, Scream 5 has been announced.

Craig:  Really?

Todd:  As written by written by him and supposed to come out in 2021. But once again, you never know how these things are gonna go. And I know that Kevin Williamson himself had said that he didn’t really wanna do another Scream without Wes Craven. And and the Scream series is the only time in horror history where the entire franchise was helmed by the same team. You had Kevin Williamson Mhmm. And Wes Craven in all, you know, doing all of them. So that’s pretty remarkable in and of itself. I don’t think that’s happened again, to date for horror for horror franchise.

Craig:  No. I don’t think so either.

Todd:  Yeah. I mean, Child’s Play has the same writer, I think, through it, but different directors. Right? So yeah. Yeah. I was shocked at how well this held up, you know, especially some of the movies from the nineties that we’ve done and some of the movies that Kevin Williamson went on to do from the nineties. This obviously really his career took off. He did I know what you did last summer. After this, he was really the hot ticket.  1 listed at the time in the late nineties as 1 of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Todd:  And he’s, like you said, since gone on to do TV, a lot of TV work. But some of his other stuff just it’s even he himself said that he goes back and he cringes at some of this movie, but, ultimately, he can’t believe that he wrote that at the time that he wrote it as a young writer.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  It’s a pretty remarkable piece of writing, and a great movie that still holds up. III seriously, I’m kinda beside myself at how much I enjoyed this movie even all these years later knowing it pretty much inside and out. Mhmm. It still had something new, you know, to to deliver to me. And, gosh, that just speaks volumes. It really does. It’s a it’s a perfect movie to do for our 200th episode. Yeah.  Thank you, Craig, for the idea.

Craig:  And we well, yeah. I mean, it was just it was really fun to revisit. I can’t imagine that any of our listeners haven’t seen it at this point. But even if you have, III told Todd, we were talking back and forth. I said, I feel like I don’t need to watch it. I’ve seen it dozens of times. And he was like, no. Go back and watch it because you’ll see new things or you’ll remember things that you didn’t.  And I and I’m glad that I did go back and rewatch it because I remembered most of it beat by beat, but there were just some little things that I either hadn’t noticed before or hadn’t thought about before. And, yeah, like you said, it’s kind of amazing that all these years later and even after repeated viewings, I was still engaged, and interested. And you’re right. It I think that it was fitting for our 200th episode. I can’t believe, we’ve come this far. I wanna give a special shout out to those of you who have been there with us at any point, but especially those of you who have been with us since very early on. And there are a handful of you out there, and we really appreciate your support. We appreciate, hearing from you, good or bad, though you’re usually very kind to us.  And if it weren’t for the interactions that we have with you and the feedback that we get with you, I very seriously doubt we would be here doing this now.

Todd:  So true.

Craig:  So thank you, everybody for listening, and I hope that, we can continue to keep bringing you new content for the foreseeable future.

Todd:  Yes. Please help us grow. We’re trying some new things, as we go into our 200 and first episode, the 3rd century of our of our podcast. We have a YouTube channel. If you would, please go to our YouTube channel. Just search for 2 guys in a chainsaw or you can find a link to it from our website and just subscribe to us. Just that simple act will add to our subscribing list. And if we get at least a 100 subscribers there, we can do a few more things with our channel.  We’re really trying to, expand our base a little bit of listeners, and, that is 1 way to do it. A lot of people apparently do listen to podcasts on YouTube now. So, please, have a look at that. Go to our website. Write a comment. Write a review for us in 1 of these places where reviews are made. Thank you for your support, and there are just a few things like that you can do that will help, maybe allow us to continue to do this into the future. But we have no plans right now, Todd it.  Until next time. I’m Todd

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.