Scream | Scream Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Scream 2
Scream (Originally titled "Scary Movie") is a 1996 horror film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson . The film revitalized the slasher film genre in the mid 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on the late 1970s film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue, that satirized slasher film conventions. The film features many teen idols of the time, including Neve Campbell , Rose McGowan , Skeet Ulrich , Matthew Lillard , Drew Barrymore , David Arquette ,  Jamie Kennedy and  Courteney Cox .
The poster depicts Casey Becker played by Drew Barrymore .
Contents
Gale , Randy , & Sidney stand over Billy 's body.
Stu and Billy then stab each other in non-vital places to make it seem like they were victims of Mr. Prescott's emotional and murderous breakdown while getting away with committing the murders. Things begin to fall apart though, as Billy stabs Stu too deeply and he begins to bleed profusely. Then Gale appears and distracts both of them.
Sidney then manages to escape, while they're dealing with Gale. After Stu and Billy deal with Gale, Sidney stabs Billy with an umbrella, who then falls on the floor, seemingly dead. Stu then reappears, trying to fight Sidney before she pushes a television set over onto his head. As Sidney is checking to see that Billy is dead, Randy reveals he is injured but still alive, crediting it to the fact that he is a virgin. Also injured but still alive, Billy gets up and punches Randy to the floor. He begins to choke Sidney to death, trying to stab her as well, before being shot down by Gale.
The house the next morning.
Randy, now back on his feet, warns Sidney and Gale that -according to horror movie law- he'll "come back to life" for one last scare. To their surprise, Billy opens his eyes and makes a grunt, only to be shot in the head by Sidney right after, finally killing him. Sidney's father comes out of the closet due to the comotion. Sidney unties him, and Randy assists her.
Dewey, who also appears to have survived, is then shown being carried away on a gurney. Gale then makes an impromptu report on the events of the previous night as the authorities finally arrive on the crime scene and the movie comes to a close...
Cast 
Mondo releases the graphic posters for Wes Craven's Scream and a Nightmare On Elm Street to co-incide with the release of Scream 4
Main characters
Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott : Sidney is going through a rough time throughout the film, dealing with problems such as the anniversary of her mother Maureen's murder, as well as her boyfriend wanting to lose their virginity to each other. She has a rivalry with the obnoxious news-reporter Gale Weathers due to her writing a book filled with lies and rumors about her mother's murder trial. Along with Gale, Sidney manages to defeat the killer at the end of the film.
Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers : An obnoxious news-reporter that will do almost anything to get a story. She has a rivalry with Sidney Prescott due to Gale writing a book about Sidney's mother's murder trial that is presumably filled with lies and rumors. Gale also has a love interest with Dwight "Dewey" Riley. At the film's ending she proves not to be too heartless helping Sidney defeat the killer.
David Arquette as Deputy Dwight 'Dewey' Riley : A kind, yet dopey police officer who is the older brother of Sidney's best friend, Tatum Riley. He helps Sidney sort her life out and has a love interest with the news-reporter, Gale Weathers.
Rose McGowan as Tatum Riley : Sidney's best friend, Stu Macher's girlfriend and younger sister of Officer Dewey Riley. She is later killed off during Stu's party, having her head crushed with an automatic garage door after attempting to escape from the killer when getting beer from the garage.
Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis : Sidney's boyfriend and one of the two actual killers in the film. He can easily project fear into people, such as Sidney, Stu and Randy, the latter of whom he threatens for implying that he's the killer. Billy was driven insane because of a lack of affection from his girlfriend Sidney, and the affair between her mother and his father. He is later killed by Sidney when she shot him in the head.
Matthew Lillard as Stuart "Stu" Macher : Tatum's boyfriend and Billy's best friend. Stu is one of the two killers in the film. He is weak-willed, pathetic, and stupid, the combination of these three leading him to be easily persuaded to help Billy murder people. He is later killed by Sidney after she pushes a television screen on top of him causing electrocution in a form of self-defense. When asked for a motive, Stu claims he committed the murders because of peer pressure, claiming he is "too sensitive".
Jamie Kennedy as Randy Meeks : Randy is a friend of Sidney, Tatum, and Stu, but not Billy. He is a big horror movie buff and even works in a video store. He is the only one out of Sidney's "gang" not to be dating anyone which he appears to be happy with. Randy was the one who explained the rules of a horror movie at Stu's house. It is shown that Randy wants to date Sidney and is notable that he survives the film.
Minor characters
Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker : Casey appears in the opening scene of the film being alone in her house. While making Jiffy Pop popcorn and getting ready for her boyfriend Steven Orth to arrive to watch a horror film, Casey gets phone calls from a mysterious stranger who first starts off nice conversation then ends with a taunting and threatening one. Casey is forced to play a trivia game in which she must answer questions correctly to keep her boyfriend, who is strapped to one of her outside patio chairs, alive. Casey witnesses her boyfriend being disemboweled, and is then pursued by the killer herself. She is stabbed numerous times, before her horrified parents come home to see her bloody, gutted corpse hanging from a big oak tree across the road.
Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary , the accused killer of Sidney Prescott's mother and with whom she has a secret affair.
Henry Winkler as Principal Arthur Himbry : The school principal. He is fooling around in his office when someone knocks on the door. He opens the door and finds no one there, he goes out and checks for whoever knocked on his door but only finds the janitor. He goes back to his office, but when he closes the door and the killer appears, and stabs him in the stomach until he dies.
Lawrence Hecht as Neil Prescott : Sidney's father. He is away on business and the suspicion of the killings are being heavily suspected upon him. The real killers, Billy and Stu abduct him and show him to Sidney during the film's near ending.
W. Earl Brown as Kenneth "Kenny" Jones : Gale Weather's cameraman. He has his throat slashed by the killer. However, he saves Sidneys life by informing her of the door at the back of the news van. His last word was door as he points to the back of the van
Joseph Whipp as Sheriff Burke : The police sheriff who is continuously trying to track down the killer. He is shown to have a friendship with Dewey Riley.
Kevin Patrick Walls as Steven Orth : Casey Becker's boyfriend who gets killed in the beginning of the movie.
Lisa Canning as Jenna Welles : a reporter who reports the Woodsboro murders.
Carla Hatley as Mrs. Becker : the mother of Casey Becker.
David Booth as Mr. Becker : the father of Casey Becker.
C.W. Morgan as Hank Loomis : the father of Billy Loomis.
Roger L. Jackson as the voice of Ghostface .
Linda Blair as reporter: A cameo by Linda Blair (famous for the horror classic The Exorcist) who tells Sidney they have a right to know about her attack. (She wasn't listed in the credits)
Wes Craven as Fred the Janitor : Credited cameo by the director of the Scream franchise as well as other horror classics. His attire is a homage to Freddy Kruger in the movie he directed and horror classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The rules
A signature device, started in Scream and continued in Scream 2 and Scream 3 , was the typical "rules" for the slasher subgenre of horror movies being stated by the characters. In Scream, those rules (as described by Randy ) are:
You may not survive the movie if you have sex.
You may not survive the movie if you drink or do drugs.
You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back", "Hello?" or "Who's there?"
A similar set of "rules" was used for the movie's trailer:
Don't answer the phone
But most of all don't scream
References to other horror films
The film features numerous in-jokes and references to other horror projects. The victims in Scream are quite self-aware: they each make clear their familiarity with, and poke fun at, teen slasher and horror flicks, which sets up their fairly ironic responses to the film's situations.
Two of the most common references are to A Nightmare on Elm Street and its director Wes Craven . In the audio commentary for the DVD, Craven says that he almost took out the line where Casey Becker says the first A Nightmare on Elm Street was good but the rest sucked, because he thought it would make him seem egotistical. However, it was pointed out to him that he had co-written the third film and also wrote and directed the seventh. A Nightmare on Elm Street is also referenced in the high school janitor. Fred, played by Craven, wears an outfit resembling Freddy Krueger's. Later in the film, Tatum tells Sidney that she is "sounding like a Wes Carpenter flick", a fictional name created from compounding the names Wes Craven and John Carpenter (co-producer of the first three installments in the Halloween film series, co-writer of the first two, and director of the first).
At one point Billy sneaks into Sidney's room through her window, startling her, in a way that quotes Glen sneaking into Nancy's room in A Nightmare on Elm Street. The similarity between the scenes in emphasized by the physical resemblance Skeet Ulrich , who plays Billy's character, bears to the young Johnny Depp, who played Glen's character.
In addition to its director, Halloween is referenced many times throughout the film. When Ghostface asked Casey what's her favourite scary movie and she told Halloween, when Casey's parents come home and see that something is wrong, her father says to her mother, "Drive down to the Mackenzies'", which is a quote from Halloween. During the party scene, Randy Meeks , Stu Macher and the other party goers are watching the horror film. They watch many famous scenes such as Michael Myers murdering Bob, as well as Laurie Strode discovering her friend's dead bodies scattered in the bedroom. The song that Billy puts on when he and Sidney are making out in her room is a cover version of "Don't Fear the Reaper" which was featured in Halloween in the scene where Laurie and Annie are driving to their babysitting jobs.
Billy's surname, Loomis, is the same as that of Donald Pleasence's character in Halloween, which in turn was the name of Marion Crane's lover in Psycho. In a similar fashion to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), Scream's highly-billed star Drew Barrymore dies early in the film. Referring to Crane's similar premature murder, Robin Wood writes of the "alienation effect" of killing of the "apparent center of the film." In the later stages of the film, Billy Loomis quotes Norman Bates, saying "We all go a little mad sometimes." Licking his fake blood, Loomis says that it is actually corn syrup and food coloring, "the same stuff they used as pig's blood in Carrie".
As Stu and Billy reveal themselves to Sidney as the killers, they stand head to head, echoing a famous still photo from the film The Thing With Two Heads (1972).
When Casey (Drew Barrymore) is dragged across the lawn by her murderer it strongly resembles a scene from Dementia 13.
The blood pooling at Gale Weather 's ( Courteney Cox Arquette ) feet by the news van is reminiscent of a scene in Night of the Living Dead where blood pools on the floor by Barbra's feet (played by Judith O'Dea).
Many films are briefly mentioned during a scene in which Billy and Stu visit Randy at work at a video store. Films Randy mentions include Candyman, The Howling, Prom Night, Everybody's All-American. Frankenstein is showing on the monitors.
Sidney mentions The Town That Dreaded Sundown while she, Dewey and Tatum are buying food for the party.
During the party scene, the partygoers are struggling with which movie to watch. The possibilities include The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, The Fog and Terror Train. Clerks is seen as a videotape on top of a television. During the party scene, when Billy arrives, Randy exclaims "What's Leatherface doing here?". Leatherface is the antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
In addition to mentioning several horror films throughout the film, many minor characters were portrayed by actors that have worked with Wes Craven before and have also appeared in prominent horror films. For example, Linda Blair, who played Regan in The Exorcist, also plays the obnoxious reporter who approaches Sidney when she first returns to school. Joseph Whipp, who plays Sheriff Burke in Scream, also plays the sheriff in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Frances Lee McCain, playing Mrs. Riley, also played the part of Billy's mother, Lynn Peltzer, in 1984's Gremlins.
Other films that are seen or mentioned throughout the film include:
Friday the 13th - When the killer calls Casey Becker, he asks her "Who was the killer in Friday the 13th?". She exclaims Jason Voorhees as the answer, but the killer meant the original killer from the first movie, Jason's mother.
The Exorcist - When Billy sneaks into Sidney's bedroom, he says he came by due to being bored, sitting at home watching a TV-cut version of The Exorcist.
Basic Instinct - Stu and Tatum had an argument about Casey and Steve's killer. Stu told that it was a male, but Tatum sayed it was a girl, giving Basic Instinct as an example.
All the Right Moves - Tatum mentions wanting to see All the Right Moves so she can see Tom Cruise's penis.
Clueless (Alicia Silverstone's character was quoted)
The Silence of the Lambs - Billy mentions Jodie Foster (who played Clarice Starling in the movie) in one scene with Sidney. He also mentions Hannibal Lecter and that they never decided why he liked to eat people.
Halloween - a clip of Halloween is shown at the party Stu ask when they can see Jamie Lee's breast
Trading Places
I Spit on Your Grave - When Tatum encounters the killer in the garage, she mistakes him for Randy, exclaiming "So what movie is this from? I spit on your garage?"
The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
The Bad Seed.
Smoke and Clerks are both seen on the top of Stu's video player, a poster for Clerks is also seen in the background of the movie store.
Psycho - When Billy shoot's Randy he says "Anthony Perkins, Psycho"
Satirical/self-referential style
Scream is very much aware that it is a movie, and has fun with this. During the opening scene, Casey discusses movies, sequels, and trivia with the killer on the phone. Randy seems almost unable to tell the difference between a movie world and his own world. He constantly compares what is going on to situations in horror films, and at one point even says: "If this was a scary movie, I would be the main suspect." Randy also seems to believe very devoutly in his "Rules For Surviving a Horror Movie;" he eventually believes that the only reason he himself survives is because he's a virgin. Billy also comments that life is just "one big movie. Only you can't pick your genre."
Most notable of all, the climactic scene of the film revolves around the characters watching the movie Halloween, unaware that they themselves are being watched on a hidden camera with a time delay. At one point Randy (played by Jamie Kennedy ) yells at the movie: "Look behind you, Jamie", unaware that there is also a killer behind him. Kenny watches this from inside the news van, and also yells: "Behind you, kid." despite the time delay meaning the warning is just as pointless as Randy's. The result is a movie character (Kenny) watching what the hidden camera in the room shows, giving advice to another movie character (Randy), also watching a movie, also giving advice to a movie character (in the movie he's watching).
In addition to this, the movie features cameos, such as Linda Blair and Henry Winkler and general references to Hollywood figures, such as Sharon Stone and Richard Gere. The Richard Gere scene mentions the well-known gerbil urban legend. Craven stated that he received calls from agents telling him that if he leaves that scene in, he would never work again.
Reaction
Box office performance
The film opened in 1,413 theaters, taking $6,354,586 in its opening weekend. The film made almost 87 million dollars in its initial release, and was then re-released to theatres on April 11, 1997 and went on to make another 16 million, making total a domestic gross of $103,046,663, with, as of 2007, a worldwide lifetime gross of $173,046,663. It peaked at number 3 in the U.S. domestic box office. The film's success made it the highest grossing slasher movie as of 2009.
Critical reception
The reaction to Scream was generally very positive amongst film reviewers, who appreciated the shift from the teen slasher films of the 1980s and their "endless series of laborious, half-baked sequels." Williamson 's script was praised as containing a "fiendishly clever, complicated plot" which "deftly mixes irony, self-reference and wry social commentary with chills and blood spills."
Roger Ebert appreciated "the in-jokes and the self-aware characters", but was confused over whether the level of violence was "defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it?" The New York Times says "not much of Scream is that gruesome", but observes that Craven "wants things both ways, capitalizing on lurid material while undermining it with mocking humor. Not even horror fans who can answer all this film's knowing trivia questions may be fully comfortable with such an exploitative mix."
Scream ranked number 32 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies and number 13 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly dubbed the film a "New Classic" by ranking it number 60 in their list of the 100 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. The film received an 84% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com. The film ranks 482nd on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
Fan Reviews
Horror was dead in the 1990s. Scream changed that by not only providing a fresh new concept but also an all star cast with accomplished adult actors in addition to the teenage stars. Scream did something that had rarely been done before, with an ending that made you want to shake Mr. Williamson's hand, because he had done something that hadn't been done before. 9/10! -Votesmall
Awards
The film won several awards, including Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards 1997, and Saturn Awards for Best Actress ( Neve Campbell ), Best Writer and Best Horror Film. Craven was awarded the Grand Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival.
Cultural impact
The film inspired a revival of interest in the genre including Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Three sequels were produced ( Scream 2 , Scream 3 and Scream 4 ), with Williamson's I Know What You Did Last Summer following in 1997. It was also the inspiration for several parody films such as the Scary Movie series. "Scary Movie" had been Scream's working title.
Ghostface 's mask has become an icon in horror films, and has now become a staple mask during the Halloween season.
The film has been parodied many times on television. During the 1997 MTV Movie Awards, the opening scene was parodied, with Mike Myers calling and terrorizing Casey Becker instead of the film's killer, Ghostface.
One of the unique aspects of the film involved the mystery surrounding the identity of the killer (a plot device that had not been used for some time) and the twist ending in which it is revealed there are in fact two killers, which also became a popular trend amongst the horror revival that followed.
VHS and DVD releases
The original, gorier version of the film was released on VHS in 1997. The box covers classified the film as rated "R" even though it was actually the unrated version. The unrated cut was only available on video when the film was released for sale to the general public while the rental version, released earlier that year, still contained the theatrical cut. The unrated version was officially released as "The Director's Cut" on laser disc but has yet to be released on DVD in America. The unrated version has been released on DVD in other regions such as Europe and Japan with quality varying. Differences in the film include: A shot of Steve's entrails falling out of his stomach; a longer, slower version of the shot where Casey's body is shown hanging from a tree; Tatum's head getting crushed by the garage door; More blood can be seen pouring down Kenny's chest after getting his throat slashed; A more graphic version of the scene where Stu and Billy stab each other.
When the film was released for sale on VHS in 1997 it was available in several different forms including three collectible covers with one featuring Drew Barrymore's face, one had Neve Campbell's face and the other had Courteney Cox's face. There was also a collector's set which came with the wide screen version of the film on one tape and another tape featuring the movie with audio commentary by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson. The set also featured a special Scream phone card with 10 minutes of talk time and three large collector's cards with the faces of Drew, Neve and Courteney (the same images used on the special VHS covers).
Mistakes
Like in all movies, there have been some mistakes or "goofs" in the Scream saga. Here are some of them:
When Billy is being put in the cop car, some equipment is visible (mic, camera)
When Ghostface is pulling Casey, you can see some protection around her neck, so she dosn´t get hurt while being pulled.
At the same scene as above, when Ghostface is pulling Casey, you can see some of Drew Barrymores real hair.
Drew Barrymores real hair.
When Ghostface is with Tatum, she throws bottles of beer to him and we can see that the costume is wet, but when he push the button in order to pull Tatum with the Garage door we can see that his costume is dry.
At the end of the movie, When Billy says, "...and if you get it right, you die," Stu bumps into the camera making it shake.
At the end of Stu´s Party, Ghostface sneaks up on Randy, in that moment, Sidney ( Neve Campbell ) accidentally breaks character and calls him "Jamie!". 
In the scene where Billy throws the phone at Stu, the fake blood on Skeet's hands were so slippy that the phone slipped out of his hands and accidently hit Matthew in the head.
Billy asking, "I mean, did Norman Bates have a motive?" and Stu responding with "No." The end of Psycho had a ten minute sequence dedicated to explaining Bates's motives and psychological condition
Gallery
Scream has a Photo Gallery .
Trivia
To keep Drew Barrymore looking scared and crying, director Wes Craven kept telling her real life stories about animal cruelty. She is a keen animal lover in real life.
William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying (1930) features a character named Skeet McGowan (Scream features actors Skeet Ulrich and Rose McGowan) and a character named Dewey just as Scream does.
Wes Craven discovered the Ghostface mask while scouting for filming locations in California. Craven was walking throughout a possible filming-house, and inside one of the rooms he saw the mask hung on a wall. He send a photo to Dimension Films and they told him to have the prop department make a mask similiar to the mask in the bedroom, as they did not own the rights to the mask.
When the killer smashes his head through a window and Casey hits him in the face with the phone, Wes Craven is actually wearing the costume and was really hit in the face.
When Bob Weinstein watched parts of the first scenes filmed, he said that the mask used was idiotic. He asked the producers to film one scene with seven different masks and let him choose the one he liked the most. Producers didn't agree and threatened to shut down production. They told him to wait until the first sequence (Drew Barrymore's) was completed and then he could decide. After watching it, he happily agreed to the mask used and didn't make another complaint for the rest of the filming.
Rose McGowan discovered that she could actually fit through a pet flap.
Drew Barrymore was originally cast as Sidney Prescott. But Barrymore insisted that if she played Casey then it would make the audience think anything could happen.
Melissa Joan Hart, Brittany Murphy, Alicia Witt, Melanie Lynskey and Melinda Clarke all auditioned for the role of Sidney Prescott.
The special effects artists used about 50 gallons of blood.
Tatum's house is right across the street from the house in Santa Rosa, California used in Pollyanna. It is also across the street from the house used in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. The house in the openning scene was next door to the house used in Cujo.
On The Directors in 2007, David Arquette revealed that he presumtuosly turned down the role of Billy in favor for playing Dewey, which was originally written as a hunky, leading man part.
As revealed on The Directors in 2007, Wes Craven originally turned down Scream because it was too violent, but reconsidered making one more gory movie for the hungry fans who continually told him that his best movie was The Hills Have Eyes.
Being a favourite of the writer Kevin Williamson, Molly Ringwald was offered the role of Sidney Prescott, but turned it down, saying she'd rather not be playing a high school student at the age of 27.
Casey claims, that all of the sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street sucked. Wes Craven sold the rights to sequels before the film was released and became a success and disliked many of the sequels.
The mask is based on the paiting Scream by Edvard Munch.
The cheerleader in the washroom scene was played by one of Skeet Ulrich's girlfriends.
Matthew Lillard ad-libbed the line Ah...Houston, we have a problem when he discovered that the gun was gone.
David Arquette's sister Patricia Arquette starred in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors written and produced by director Wes Craven.
The Jiffy Pop popcorn in the first scene acts as a clock. It goes from normal to out of the control as does the scene.
During the scene where Sidney drops a TV on Stu's head, Neve Campell (Sidney) and Matthew Lillard (Stu) ad-libbed the lines, "I always had a thing for ya, Sid!" (Matthew) and "In your dreams" (Neve).
At the end of the first movie, Billy hitting Stu with with the phone in anger was unintentional, as the phone accidentally slipped out of Skeet Ulrich's hands due to the flake blood. Stu screaming "You hit me with the phone, dick!" was actually Matthew Lillard's reaction.
In the scene, where Sidney attacks Billy with an umbrella, Billy's actor, Skeet Ulrich got legitimately injured. When he was hit by the umbrella, the stuntwoman playing Sidney couldn't see where she was aiming and wounded up hitting a wire in his chest he had gotten during surgery at a young age. Touching it ends up causing him some pain.