MY LIFE IN HORROR: FAIRNESS WOULD BE TO RIP YOUR INSIDES OUT AND HANG YOU FROM A TREE

And from the moment he is revealed, he just opens up the crazy can and spills it all over everywhere; a scenery-chewing for the ages that manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely unnerving all at once.

​My Life In Horror


Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 40 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.


This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.


This is my life in horror.


Fairness Would Be To Rip Your Insides Out And Hang You From A Tree

So. It’s Haloween, 1997. The town in which I am living in benefit poverty while slowly but surely failing college has a cinema, praise Milenko; one screen, old school seating; the place vibed theatre, though I have no idea if it ever was. It was a genuinely beautiful building and space. There was even an old-school Ice Cream lady who appeared at the front of the stage in between the trailers and the main event, just in case you had a sudden craving for a comically overpriced choice or Calippo to go with your movie of choice.


Being poor, I didn’t go very often; I did catch the Star Wars special editions there (and loved them, especially the first two, which I’d only ever seen on TV in pan and scan before; I know the CG in the new scenes has not aged well, but it blew my tiny mind at the time). And I discovered later that Spawn was maybe the worst first date movie ever (we bailed after 30 minutes and went for burgers).


But it was Halloween. And it was Wes Craven. And, do you know, despite being a childhood fan of the Elm Streets, Hellraisers, and related concerns, I’d never actually seen an 18-certificate horror movie at the cinema?


Plus, I mean, just look at that poster (the version, to be clear, preserved in my head, though I can't find an exact version of it on a Google image search, so, you know, whatever) The white space, the blood red writing at the bottom, spelling out the single word title below the face of the transcendently beautiful Drew Barrymore, eyes wide with fright, hand mostly covering her mouth (and also blood red lipstick), features fading into the white background.


I-fucking-conic.


And so I settled into my seat, probably not with popcorn, given the tight budget, and as the lights dimmed and the movie certificate and title appeared on screen, I felt an honest-to-God gut thrill; after endless years of VCR, here was, finally, horror as intended twenty feet high and ninety wide.


It was time for Scream.


And, you know, I am aware that The Blair Witch Project was about to set new levels in terms of marketing hype and misdirection - hell, by 97, they may have already started with the websites that would cause such a sensation in the run-up to release. But I gotta say, whichever genius asshole put Drew on the posters did an absolute number on me.


She was a star, is the thing. Probably about as big as she ever got, in 97. So of course it made perfect sense that she’d be the star of Wes Craven’s massive slasher movie. And when the film opens with her and her creepy phone call, I am absolutely delighted and thrilled, but not remotely scared. I appreciate it, of course - no fucking about, we’re in, archetypical, young woman, home alone, creepy man on the phone, a sense of building dread… better yet, both the creep and the woman seem to know it; the conversation revolves around scary movies, and my memory is that I guffawed when Drew’s character talks about how much she liked the first Elm Street, but not so much the sequels. I know I was hip to the joke, and, at age 19, almost insufferable in my smug pride at getting it. I mean, what a delight, they’re banging on about Friday the 13th, there’s a superb gut-drop as Drew realises she’s being watched, and then the reveal of the bloody boyfriend on the patio, bravo, good people, bravo. Most excellent entertainment.


And I think I picked up on the role reversal - the boyfriend in peril rather than the girlfriend, and if so, no doubt nodded in similarly smug approval. And when the chap does get eviscerated, it felt suitably bloody and shocking (though interestingly far less so on a rewatch). And when Ghostface finally made his entrance, I was suitably thrilled, envisaging a frantic tussle, then escape for our heroine. I even remember wondering if the whole movie was going to be some real-time stasher/stalker a la Halloween, with Drew legging it across town, pursued by a relentless knife-wielding maniac (who would, naturally, dispatch several innocent bystanders along the way).


And do you know what? That would probably have been a fun movie.


But Wes Craven, the magnificent bastard, had quite other plans.


I can still remember the visceral shock when Drew Barrymore was stabbed. I remember, just like a living cliche, sitting bolt upright in my seat, eyes wide. No fucking way. No fucking way is this happening.


And her crawl! The movie teases us one final time, oh, sure, look, there’s rescue, just out of reach, but she’ll get there, okay, this is like the Halloween opening, we’ve got a 5 years later caption coming any second, Drew looking all haunted and hardened by her near brush with death. And she can’t scream. That’s the final brilliant touch. Her lung appears to have collapsed, she can only whisper, and it’s not enough, and then, just like that, she’s murdered, and we are off to the fucking races.


And I know I’ve just spent a thousand words on the opening five minutes, but in my defence, it’s pretty clear I’ve never gotten over it. And it’s a good microcosm for the film as a whole - a horror movie that’s about horror movies; or, to be more specific, a slasher movie that’s also about slasher movies. Like my beloved RoboCop, Scream manages to be both of genre and commenting on genre; and, sure, these days pretty much every single show and movie has some moment of wry self-reflection. But in ‘97 it was a lot less common, and I would argue it’s very rare indeed that a horror movie does it this blatantly and this well.


The kids know they’re in a slasher movie. They talk about it constantly, the way kids would; sure, in the famous ‘rules of a horror movie’ scene, with a teenage Jamie Lee Curtis having a spectacularly bad pumpkin day in the background, but elsewhere, too. In the video store, they’re picking each other apart, looking for suspects, and there’s a level of casual cruelty that felt painfully real to me, watching it as the last of my own teenage months bled away.


The adults, interestingly, don’t, for the most part. Courtney Cox’s reporter is obsessed with the murders, but she thinks she’s the star of a movie about a plucky reporter who lands The Big Scoop (hilariously, she doesn't seem to much care what the scoop is, as long as she lands it). As for the cops, they fall into a proud tradition of Wes Craven police going all the way back to Last House On The Left; they’re hilariously inept, totally fucking useless. Which, given recent events in the US, I’d say is hard to argue with as the best-case scenario, honestly.


And as for Henry Winkler…


It’s a Goddamn genius piece of casting. I recently found out it happened at the last minute; that the part was written after filming started when the film-makers realised that after the opening, they didn’t have another murder happen until they hit hour two of the script, and they, I think correctly, assumed this might raise some eyebrows with the audience. So Winkler's part was written, cast and shot pretty damn fast. And it’s a great example to me of the magical power of cinema as a storytelling medium, because I genuinely can’t conceive of Scream without his presence. Taking the ultimate icon of teen cool and turning him into a stick-up-his-ass high school principal - the ultimate teen cop, if you can dig it - should have earned everyone involved in the decision-making process awards and bonuses. It works brilliantly. Winkler chews the scenery, a take-no-prisoners hard ass for the ages, coming over so ludicrously angry at one point he becomes a semi-plausible red herring himself… right up to the point where he’s murdered in one of the finest it’s-behind-you jump scares in slasher history, complete with an Elm Street reference that almost certainly made me punch the air in the cinema (it sure did on the rewatch).


There are few, if any weak links in the cast, to be fair; sure, David Arquette’s character is a goofoff, but again, this is Wes Craven and cops; he’s supposed to be. Neve Campbell grabs the lead with both hands, managing to make naturalistic-yet-self-aware look easy. Rose McGowan is superb as her best friend (and scores my favourite death of the film, a spectacularly over-the-top encounter with the dog flap on the garage door).


And then there are the killers.


Skeet Ulrich is great as Billy Loomis. He has a tricky part to play, as the red-herring-that-isn’t boyfriend, and he does a good job throughout the movie hitting the pivot points. In particular, his seduction of Campbell’s Sidney towards the end is perfectly pitched, making his ‘murder’ and final reveal a superb twist moment, at a point where such twists are landing thick and fast.


But, hoo, boy, Matthew Lillard.


Lillard’s Stew is brilliant because he’s demented from the off, gurning and cracking gross in every single scene, right out there hiding in plain sight… and yet he does hide, and I remember the visceral shock I got when he’s revealed as one of the killers. And from the moment he is revealed, he just opens up the crazy can and spills it all over everywhere; a scenery-chewing for the ages that manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely unnerving all at once.


It’s another microcosm of what the film does so well, actually - he and Billy trade psedojustifications (Billy blames Sidney’s mother sleeping with his father for causing their marriage to fail and is therefore enacting revenge; Stew, hilariously, claims to just be easily led) and it’s both a commentary on the arbitrary nature of slasher villain motivation and an expression of it, at the same time. And, again, it absolutely is funny, but Stew in particular is also absolutely creepy as fuck, especially when the scheme takes a turn for the seriously deranged and he allows Billy to stab him as part of the plan to ultimately frame Sid.- The blood helps; we’ve been treated to ‘corn syrup’ effect blood when Billy was fake-stabbed, and the filmmakers ensure the rest of the blood spilt in the scene is of a different shade and consistency, and it’s absolute genius because, even in a scene that is highlighting and pointing out artificiality, it manages to play that against the viewer, subconsciously selling you on the ‘real’ blood by showing it differently, and I’m sorry, but that’s genuinely clever filmmaking.


It’s interesting to look back at Craven’s grimy, deeply disturbing debut, Last House On The Left. The hype text for the poster there reminded you, if you were feeling faint, to repeat to yourself ‘It’s only a movie’.  Scream spends its entire runtime yelling at you that it’s a movie too; using the conventions, naming them, playing with them, having characters call out the cliches, and then finding ways to subvert them, play with them, spin-off them. And yet - at least for 19-year-old me - in doing so it didn’t in any way sell the horror short; rather, it uses that awareness to play with the audience, confound expectations, and deliver something brilliant and funny and scary all at once.


Wes Craven was a massive part of my childhood horror experience. And as much as my revisit to Elm Street for this project wasn’t the unqualified delight I’d hoped for, I was forcibly reminded of how strong the core concept of those movies was, and how mind-melting some of the effects work was.


When Wes Craven passed away, there was a lot of commentary among horror fans on social media about the man and his legacy. It’s absolutely true that many of his movies didn’t live up to the high tide marks of his best work, but I have to say I felt some people overcompensated for that a bit, in some of the critiques they offered. Like, Last House On The Lest may not be to your taste - it sure wasn’t to mine - but it’s kind of hard to deny the baseline awful power parts of that movie have to shock you in ways cinema rarely does (and you could make a case that The Hills Have Eyes delivers similar levels of shock with less issues relating to storytelling, and I’d certainly entertain such an argument). And caveats duly noted for A Nightmare On Elm Street, it defined an entire decade of horror cinema, and remains one of the best ideas for a horror movie anybody has ever had.


So it seems fitting that I’m wrapping up my coverage of Craven’s work, as this project as a whole nears conclusion, with Scream. Because, like LHotL and Elm Street before it, Scream set the standard and conversation in horror cinema for the next decade, for better and worse.


And with all due respect to the critics, that means Wes Craven was responsible for making one of the most important horror movies of the decade for three decades in a row.


We should all fail so well.


KP
22/07/22

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