Scary Movie

Scary Movie Information

Scary Movie is a 2000 horror comedy spoof film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. It is an American dark comedy which heavily parodies the horror, slasher, and mystery genres. Several mid- and late-90s films and TV shows are spoofed, most predominantly Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, and Dawson's Creek.

The tagline reads "No mercy. No shame. No sequel.", the last reference being an ironic nod towards the tendency of popular horror movies becoming cash cow franchises. 2001 saw the release of Scary Movie 2, with the appropriate tagline "We lied". Later video covers of the first film frequently drop the tagline's third statement. The film was originally titled "Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th". Scary Movie was followed by three more sequels Scary Movie 2 (2001), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Scary Movie 4 (2006) and in early 2013, Scary Movie 5 will be released. Its title serves as a homage to the production title of Scream, which was also released through Dimension Films.

Plot

An 18 year old girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) receives a threatening phone call while home alone one night. Drew is chased outside by Ghostface, who wounds her with a stab to the breast that removes her implant. She is hit by a car driven by her father who was distracted by oral sex from his wife, then killed by Ghostface.

The next day, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) and her friends, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), Greg Phillipe (Lochlyn Munro), and Buffy Gilmore (Shannon Elizabeth). Various news teams, including hack reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), converge on the school in the wake of Drew's death. Gail hooks up with Buffy's mentally disabled brother "Special Officer" Doofy (Dave Sheridan), hoping to milk the facts out of him. One day, while Cindy is in class, she is left a note indicating knowledge about an incident exactly one year prior, in which she and her friends accidentally killed a man during a wild car ride and threw him into the pier. Unwilling to face incarceration, the next day a series of increasingly bizarre events take place. Various members of the group receive threatening notes from Ghostface and are rapidly dispatched, but most remain steadfastly oblivious to the rising body count. At Buffy's beauty pageant, Greg is killed, (to which none of the audience reacts to Buffy's cries for help as they believe she is doing a dramatic reading) which she negates after winning due to her genuine performance. The killer then attacks Cindy in her house. She tries to call the police, but the killer escapes. Bobby arrives at her house but a knife and a pair of gloves leads Cindy to believe that Bobby is the killer. The police arrest Bobby, but Cindy receives a threatening phone call from somebody else claiming to be the killer, so he is released the next day. Buffy is confronted by Ghostface in the locker room, but believing to be a prank, sarcastically plays along with it (following all of the horror clichés) until Ghostface decapitates her (though she continues to mock him afterwards.) Later, at the movies, Ghostface sticks his penis through Ray's head when he puts his ear next to a glory hole, seemingly killing him. Ghostface then attempts to dispose of Brenda during a showing of Shakespeare in Love, but the moviegoers, agitated with Brenda's constant interruptions during the movie, stab her repeatedly, killing her.

Cindy throws a house party, hoping for safety in numbers. During the party, a drunk Cindy and finally lets Bobby have sex with her; They make out (twisting up their tongues), and Bobby takes off her pants (bats fly out, with Cindy stating "I guess it's been a while") no longer making Cindy a virgin. Ghostface unexpectedly appears and stabs Bobby, before disappearing quickly. Cindy gets a gun from a drawer near the entrance, Bobby follows and she tends to his wounds. Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Brenda's stoner brother, comes up from the basement, (where Ghostface had been smoking with him and his friends) and informs them that the killer has murdered everybody in the house. Bobby takes the gun and shoots Shorty, revealing that his wound was an elaborate ruse. Ray arrives on the scene, whereupon Bobby claims his cause for the crimes to be because Cindy refused to him sex, and he was homosexual with Ray, despite Ray's insistence to the contrary. They announce their plan to kill her father and frame her sister. Ray and Bobby also plan to make themselves look like heroes by giving each other stab wounds to indicate they fought back. But, Ray stabs Bobby repeatedly and accidentally kills him, while making a tirade about his favorite show, The Wayans Bros., being cancelled. However, the real Ghostface abruptly arrives and stabs Ray, who collapses on top of Bobby in the Doggy style position. The killer attacks Cindy, but she successfully subdues him by employing moves copied from The Matrix and kicks him through a window. Nonetheless, Ghostface vanishes before the police arrive.

At the police station, Cindy and the local sheriff (Kurt Fuller) realize that Doofy, the only one who knew about the car accident, was actually faking his disability and is the true killer. Unfortunately, Doofy has already escaped with Gail Hailstorm. Upon finding his discarded disguise in the street, Cindy begins screaming, only to be hit by a car.

As the credits roll, Shorty, parodying the rules of a trilogy in Scream 3, explains via videocassette that he may be in prison or deceased, but provides rules for surviving such a situation, which turn out to be instructions for surviving a snatch-and-run.

Cast

Anna Faris as Cindy Campbell
Regina Hall as Brenda Meeks
Shawn Wayans as Ray Wilkins
Marlon Wayans as Shorty Meeks
Shannon Elizabeth as Buffy Gilmore
Jon Abrahams as Bobby Prinze
Lochlyn Munro as Greg Phillipe
Dave Sheridan as Doofy Gilmore / The Killer
Cheri Oteri as Gail Hailstorm
Kurt Fuller as The Sheriff
Carmen Electra as Drew Decker
Rick Ducommun as Mr. Campbell
Jayne Trcka as Miss Mann
Kelly Coffield Park as the History Teacher
David L. Lander as Principal "Squiggy" Squiggman
Marissa Jaret Winokur as Tina,
Keenen Ivory Wayans as Slave
Robert Jacks as Rowdy (uncredited)
James Van Der Beek as Dawson Leery (uncredited)

Parodies

Much of the humor of Scary Movie relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises." The backstory of the film's plot is modeled after I Know What You Did Last Summer including the teens' accidental murder of an innocent man on a car ride and Barry's murder onstage. Several elements are borrowed from the Scream franchise including the character Ghostface, the attack in the movie theatre was modeled after Scream 2, and the "rules of a trilogy" video from Scream 3. While smoking marijuana, Shorty quips "I see dead people," the line famously spoken by Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. In a chase scene, the film shifts its point of view to that of a hand-held camera with the characters speaking directly to the audience as in The Blair Witch Project. The scene in which Ray is about to stab Bobby to make the police believe they were the victims of the killer borrows heavily from a similar scene that takes place during the climax of Scream. The killer says the words "Red Rum," a reference to The Shining. The line "We all go a little crazy sometimes" is also used, which is taken from Psycho.

Many scenes and jokes parody or reference other films outside the horror film genre. The fight between Cindy and the killer heavily mimics The Matrix, particularly its use of bullet time. The final scene, in which Doofy stops feigning his disability and drives away with Gail, is a takeoff of the final scene of The Usual Suspects. When asked about her favorite horror movie, Drew answers "Kazaam" due to Shaquille O'Neal's acting. Cindy becomes aggressive and roars "Say my name!" during sex with Bobby, similar to the sex scene between Michelle and Jim in American Pie. A trailer for a fictitious sequel to Amistad titled Amistad II appears in the movie theater scene.

The film also makes other pop culture references beyond the scope of film, including a brief send-up of Dawson's Creek and a parody of the Whassup? ad campaign by Budweiser.

Rating

In British Columbia, the film Scary Movie was given an 18A rating by the provincial FCO, but was re-rated on appeal by the Motion Picture and Liquor Appeal Board to a 14A. This resulted in a record number of complaints to the British Columbia Film Classification Office from parents who felt the film should have been rated 18A. Many parents wrote letters to their local newspaper warning others that the film may be inappropriate for their fourteen-year-olds. Theatre owners complained about the inappropriate rating as well.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, 53% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 111 reviews.

Joe Leydon of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, remarking that the film was "unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness" and that "the outer limits of R-rated respectability are stretched, if not shredded" by the movie. By contrast, Roger Ebert did not find the film as innovative, saying that the film lacked "the shocking impact of Airplane!, which had the advantage of breaking new ground." However, Ebert did give the film 3 stars out of 4, saying it "delivers the goods", calling the film a "raucous, satirical attack on slasher movies."

Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution felt that the film's crude humor detracted from the film, saying that Scary Movie "dives so deep into tasteless humor that it's a wonder it landed an R rating instead of an NC-17." Other reviewers, such as A.O. Scott of The New York Times, argued that the jokes were "annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness." Scott remarked in his review, "Couch-bound pot smokers, prison sex, mannish female gym teachers, those Whassssup Budweiser commercials -- hasn't it all been done to death?". The film was the first to score zero (out of 100) from the Christian ChildCare Action Project, which rates films based on their perceived suitability for minors.

Soundtrack

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The soundtrack to Scary Movie was released on July 4, 2000 through TVT Records and consists of a blend of hip hop and rock music.

Track listing

"Too Cool for School"- 2:27 (Fountains of Wayne)
"The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope"- 3:53 (Bloodhound Gang)
"Stay"- 3:56 (Radford)
"The Only Way to Be"- 3:20 (Save Ferris)
"My Bad"- 3:22 (Oleander)
"Punk Song #2"- 2:46 (Silverchair)
"Everybody Wants You"- 4:11 (Unband)
"Superfly"- 2:55 (Bender)
"I Wanna Be Sedated"- 2:31 (The Ramones)
"Scary Movies (Sequel)- 3:56 (Bad Meets Evil)
"All bout U"- 4:34 (Tupac Shakur, Top Dogg, Yaki Kadafi, Hussein Fatal, Nate Dogg & Dru Down)
"I Want Cha"- 4:37 (Black Eyed Peas)
"What What"- 5:03 (Public Enemy)
"Feel Me"- 3:49 (Rah Digga, Rampage & Rock)
"I'm the Killer"- 3:57 (Lifelong & Incident)