One of
the best things about movies is that they can bring back
memories. Most of the time, watching movies that we
loved as kids can be a major let down when we realize
that these movies suck and we had really bad taste as
kids, but sometimes, we return to old favorites and
watching these movies again reminds us of why we loved
them in the first place. I bought the Scream trilogy on
DVD awhile ago, and I watched all three movies tonight.
It's late, but I'm going to record my thoughts for you
before I get some sleep, because watching these movies
again brought back the past in a good way.
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Scream
I love this movie. I've loved it since I first
saw it. I didn't have many friends when I was an
adolescent. Actually, come to think of it, I
only had one of which my mom approved, one who
was allowed to come to my house and such. This
friend spent the night one night and my mom let
us rent a movie (something we never did at my
house because my mom thought it was a waste of
money to pay to watch a movie only once). I
really wanted to see the movie Scream, because
I'd been watching commercials for it all over
TV. At that time, I wasn't a horror fan, but
horror movies were my only real way to connect
positively to my brother since he watched them,
subscribed to Fangoria (a horror magazine), had
all the horror movie posters in his room, etc.
So I watched horror movies with him and borrowed
his copies of Fangoria, and we discussed horror
movies every time we hung out together. We'd
both been anticipating Scream, so like I said,
when it came out on video, I really wanted to
see it. At first, my mom didn't want to let me
see it since it was rated R, but on this night,
my friend had already seen it and told my mom it
was a good movie and wasn't that gory and didn't
have any sex scenes (*snicker*), so my mom
finally relented and watched it with us. My
friend had a crush on Skeet Ulrich, and I
thought he was pretty cute, too, so we talked
about that during our running commentary of the
movie (my mom's reply to that was, "He's a
boy. Paul Newman is CUTE.") We watched the
movie, and my mom said it was "grody" (her word
for anything that featured gore and blood), but
she was glad there was no nudity, and she got so
involved in watching the movie that when my
friend started to make a comment near the end,
my mom told her to shut up. Fun times.
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Now
of course, I get a LOT more out of the movie now than I
did when I first saw it. I think Skeet Ulrich is kinda
greasy looking now, and I CANNOT believe I didn't guess
who the killer was, because they play the frickin' "bad
guy music" every time the killer is onscreen, and the
killer acts so guilty and creepy that I should have seen
it coming. But I didn't. Back then, I laughed when the
movie made a reference to "Wes Carpenter," and it was
like, "ha ha, they said Wes Carpenter, like Wes Craven
and John Carpenter..." but I only laughed because
Fangoria told me it was funny. Now, I actually get it,
and the line still makes me laugh. And I see so many
things and appreciate so many things as a horror fan
that the in-jokes resonate in a way they didn't back
then. But the core of why I love this movie stays the
same, and I don't really think I fully got it until now.
It's got a High School vibe, and as much of that as I
missed, not going to high school, I still went through
the same hormones, the same changes, the same thinking
Billy in the movie was sweet when he gave his speech to
Sydney about wanting to have sex with her ('aww, how
sweet, he wants to get laid, cue the vomit-inducing
romantic music"). At the time, I read a lot of teen
thriller novels, and they had some of the same themes.
The importance of family, friendship, the female lead
starting out weak then getting stronger toward the end
of the movie as she realizes that she needs to fight for
her life, the cast of supporting characters that makes
the movie worthwhile because they're always at least
slightly more interesting than the main character, the
handling everything with sarcasm because GOD FORBID we
could ever show too much emotion or take anything too
seriously--how uncool would THAT be. Very high school
indeed.
I still love this movie. Yeah, at times the acting sucks
and it WAY over-the-top, some of the humor is corny,
some of the music is annoying and intrusive, but the
feeling of small-town community shattered by tragedy is
one that resonates, the high school angst works, and the
in-joke references and gore and creepily memorable lines
make the movie great all over again.
Scream 2
By the time this movie came out, I had left home and was
shuttling around from foster home to foster home, plus I
remembered from my Fangoria articles that this was going
to be the second part in a trilogy, I decided to wait
and see it when the third came out on video. When that
finally happened, I was settled in my second semester of
college, and I found a group of friends who had already
seen all three Screams but were willing to rent and
watch parts two and three together in one night. We
tried to find the third, but it hadn't come out yet, so
we decided to watch this and I Still Know What You Did
Last Summer on Friday the Thirteenth of July while
Screaming in the Shower...ok, I made that title up. It
probably would have been better than the actual movie we
ended up watching though (I Still Know What You Did Last
Summer...nifty title). Anyway, so I watched Scream 2
with some friends, and hated every minute of it. I
thought it was stupid (which it often is), annoying
(ditto), and nowhere near as good as the first.
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