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Scream (1996)
On a seemingly typical evening, teenage
Sydney (Drew Barrymore) receives a series of anonymous phone calls.
Though starting out innocuously enough with a bit of horror movie patter
including the now-famous line ‘What’s your favourite scary
movie?’, things take a sinister turn when Sydney enquires why the
mystery caller wants to know her name. The stranger then utters words
that, presumably, no young woman at home on her own would ever want to
hear spoken on the other end of a telephone line: ‘Because I want to
know who I’m looking at’. Assuming things couldn’t possibly get any
worse, Sydney turns on the porch light to find her boyfriend Steve
battered, gagged and bound to a chair. A brief game of cat and mouse
then ensues between Sydney and her cloaked assailant, with a predictably
deadly and chillingly enacted conclusion.
Thus begins Wes Craven’s classic 1996
crossover hit Scream. The ensuing trail of destruction wrought
by the masked killer throughout is just as gruesome and confronting as
it was all those years ago, and the ‘whodunit’ storyline remains
engrossing. The constant stream of horror movie references will keep
film buffs entertained, and the genuinely funny way in which genre
conventions are mocked provides a nice counter to the bloodshed. Strong
performances from an ensemble cast that includes Neve Campbell, Courtney
Cox, Rose McGowan and David Arquette and the aforementioned Barrymore
also lend an convincing air to the proceedings, and prevent the story
from degenerating into farce.
Though the film treads an uneasy middle
ground between horror and comedy – perhaps a little too much shtick for
fans of straight scares, likewise a little too much violence for those
in search of light-hearted frights – it nonetheless did big business at
the box office, grossing some $180 million worldwide and ushering in an
age of rip-offs, spoof and sequels. Scream also managed to do
what no other horror film before it had quite managed, at least not to
the same extent; it made scary movies respectable. The big studios
realised younger audiences would turn out in droves for the chance to
spend 90 minutes being frightened senseless, and a string of derivative
slashers like I Know What You Did Last Summer were quickly rushed
into production. The late 1990s and early 2000s also saw an explosion
in the amount of shock fodder being released to the masses, culminating
in films like Saw and Hostel recouping many their modest
budgets and a seemingly endless parade of straight-to-video nasties
lining the shelves of suburban rental chains. This influential smash
remains an enjoyable staple of mid-90s cinema, and is definitely one of
the most accomplished and entertaining horror films of the period.
Video & Audio
The three C’s- cleanliness, crispness
(assuming that’s a word) and clarity- are all evinced in this 2.35:1
letterbox rendering. There’s the odd bit of shimmer but no real defects
to speak of. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is fairly meh.
Special Features
I have in my position the bare-bones Icon
edition, without so much as a theatrical trailer in sight. The
Dimension edition amongst others contain incentives including Director’s
commentary and deleted scenes, however to my knowledge all versions
released in Australia run just over 106 minutes, not the 111 touted on
the cover, and are cut from the original more graphic theatrical
version. |
