We've covered Se7en, now Scream (don't actually scream)

I was watching tv, and an old documentary came on about "I know what you did last summer" and one of the actors said, "If Scream hadn't come out, this movie wouldn'tve taken off." What do you guys think of this? How influential was this film to slasher films?

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I don't know if it was influential to slasher films as a whole, but it certainly inspired a string of crappy slasher movies targeting teens.

As for Scream, I just watched this yesterday actually and couldn't help but laugh. Part of the blame falls on me for picturing scenes of Scary Movie while watching Scream, but really, can anyone take Courtney Cox and David Arquette seriously? Who are all these 25 - 35 year olds? Are we really supposed to think they are 17?

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courtney and david dont play high school students they are supposed to be older. but i think the movie was funny even befor scary movie came out

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neve campbell is HOT

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The original Scream made just over a hundred million dollars at the boxoffice in the United States, with a relatively small budget and free from large star salaries as most of the main cast were young and more or less unknowns in Hollywood terms. THAT is it's influence on and legacy to the industry, and that's why a new wave of horror movies flooded the market in subsequent years. It had nothing to do with it's quality or knowing winking at the genre, it's because it made Mirimax a buttload of money they weren't really expecting. Other studios and producers then decided they was gonna get them some of that money too.

Dig?

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Bingo. Look at The Grudge for a prime example of this formula in action - $10 million budget, $110 million domestic gross. These movies make sense from a financial standpoint because they're small bets; they can be produced cheaply (even with high production values) and every now and then one of them hits big. Boogeyman, for example, is by no means a blockbuster ($44 million domestically and counting), but it only cost about $20 million to produce.

Besides, Scream is largely a parody, which means it's fundamentally a reaction, not an inspiration.

Holden hit it, so me posting is just a reiteration...Scream was influential on film industry, not on film or film culture.

It has had no influence on quality, only an influence on opportunity.

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I was commenting on the acting ability of those two in particular, not their age... as for the film's other stars.

Neve Campbell - 23
Skeet Ulrich - 26
Rose McGowan - 23
Matthew Lillard - 26
Jamie Kennedy - 26
Drew Barrymore - 21 (I actually would have guessed she was the oldest)

We'll chock the 35 years old up to hyperbole... My point was none of these people look 17.

As for Holden's point... right on per usual. The studio made a boatload of cash so everyone chimed in. Heck, I wouldn't limit this just to movies. Look at television. It seems as if one network comes out with a moderately successful show the other three are copycating the show within a week.

Really? I thought they looked quite young for their age at the time.

As opposed to the casts of Grease (Olivia Newton-John was thirty), Footloose (Bacon was twenty-six), Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Jenniefer Jason Leigh was twenty, Penn was twenty-two and Judge was twenty-five), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Broderick was twenty-four, Alan Ruck was frippin' thirty), The Breakfast Club (Judd was twenty-six, Emilio twenty-three), Say Anything... (Cusack was twenty-three), American Pie and going all the way back to Blackboard Jungle (Poitier was twenty-eight, Morrow twenty-six)? You think this is something terribly new or rare that Scream should be singled out for? The number of High School aged actors who have played High Schoolers in movies and televsion shows is very small compared to the number of actors in their early to mid-twenties who have.

John Hughes did a pretty good job hiring teens...at least I think he did.

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Depends on the role.

Molly Ringwald was seventeen The Breakfast Club and Anthony Michael Hall was too (but weren't they supposed to be a year or two younger, sophomores I think), but the other three were already in their twenties. Molly was a year older for Pretty in Pink and Jon "Duckie" Cryer was twenty-one, Andy McCarthy was twenty-four and Spader was twenty-six. Molly was actually sixteen for Sixteen Candles and Anthony Michael Hall was too, but that guy who played Jake the stud she was lusting over was twenty-four. He should have been playing one of her teachers. As I pointed out for Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Broderick was twenty-four, Alan "Cameron Frye" Ruck was thirty, and Jennifer Gray was twenty-six. Mia Sara was the youngest at a still too old for not even supposed to be a senior yet nineteen-years-old. By Some Kind of Wonderful Hughes had given up completely on finding teenagers, as Stolz and Lea Thompson were both twenty-six, Mary Stuart Masterson was twenty-one and Craig Sheffer was twenty-seven.

Let's not forget Weird Science either...but thanks for doing the research I was too busy/lazy to do.

I could've swore I put this in the General Movie Discussion. Was it moved or did I just foget?

Yes, it was moved.

I never said Scream was an isolated incident Holds... but thanks anyway for the list

Hmmm... Sure, the big profit that Scream made was what made other comapnies follow the concept. But just as with Se7en there must be a reason to why the film became such an unexpected success. I don't believe, the reason to why companies and producers wanted to follow the example of Se7en was that the film inspired them enormously on an artistic level, but just as with Scream they saw something, for the business relatively different, that made a **** load of money. What I think Scream brought to the genre was the irony and the mix between slasher and comedy. I also think it appealed to a wide range of people because of its references to 70s and 80s horror/slasher films as well as being something seemingly fresh for the younger generation. Again, as with Se7en, I think this kind of movie is typical for the age we live in where presentation is more important than content. But where Se7en commented on that (this) age, Scream is a product of it. It's not a film about reality and it's not depicting our world. It's more like a film about film with characters representing or symbolizing other characters from the world of film.

With The Grudge the companies take it to another level. Now they don't even need to search for a suitable script or story, they just take a successful film from the booming asian horror scene and make an american remake. My guess is that they don't pay much for the rights but instead give the japanese or korean guys percentage on possible future profit. A pretty decent deal for all parties involved really, commercially speaking.

But what happens when you take an asian horror film that is the way it is because it is specifically japanese or korean and try to make it american? What does that film represent? Can it be something more than just entertainment? (Does it have to be? )

Take the film Honogurai mizu no soko kara a.k.a. Dark Water by director Hideo Nakata (Ringu). The film about a single mom moving in with her daughter in a creepy, ghostly apartment is good partly because it's so freaking scary. But it's also good because it says something about the norms of japanese society regarding single moms which, I guess, is a little more of a hot potato than in USA. But that aspect of it all is running the risk of vanishing in an american remake.

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

This movie is sort of special to me, only because it was the first rated R movie I have ever seen. When I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch anything rated above PG-13 because my mother was really strict. Scream came out when I was 13. And I snuck off to see it. This is why I have to play catch-up on so many movies I should have already seen.

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for me it was the opposite i saw my first R rated movies when i was 3 years old. terminator 2 and alien