Scary Movie is a 2000 film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, as part of Wayans Bros. Entertainment. It is an American dark comedy which parodies the horror, slasher, and mystery genres. Several mid-and late-1990s films are spoofed, including The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, and The Blair Witch Project, with a significant portion of the film's plot being dedicated to the more subtle horror film parody series Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. In addition, the film parodies classic horror films, most notably Halloween.
The tagline is "No mercy. No shame. No sequel.", with the last reference being to the tendency of popular horror movies to become long-running franchises. However, in 2001, Scary Movie 2 was released (with the tagline "We lied"). The film was followed by a series of sequels Scary Movie 3 (2003), and Scary Movie 4 (2006). The original title for the film Scream was "Scary Movie" which ironically was later used to parody it. Both films were released through Dimension Films. It also Gives a short reference to Charmed 3x6 Primrose Em-path in the fight between Cindy and Ghost face.
Plot
At Halloween night, a young teenage girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) is alone in her mansion when she receives a telephone call. Scared by its insidious tone, she grabs a baseball bat and answers the front door (thinking it is the prank caller) by attacking the trick-or-treaters. As soon as Drew returns inside the house, the caller appears, revealing himself as the murderer Ghostface. Ghostface chases Drew out of the house and onto the road, where Drew sights her father approaching in his car and calls for help, only to be run over by him while he receives oral sex. Stunned from the impact, Drew ends up being murdered.
Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) is using her computer when her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) appears in the window. Bobby is sad because his relationship with Cindy is not sexual. Even though he expresses this to her, she refuses his intentions and he leaves Cindy's house.
The next day in school, Cindy meets with Bobby and the rest of her friends, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), Greg Phillipe (Lochlyn Munro), Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), and Buffy Gilmore (Shannon Elizabeth). At the school, news teams are trying to interview the police and students who knew Drew; the most prominent among the reporters is Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri). Cindy points out to the others that Drew's murder happened exactly one year after they accidentally killed a man during a wild car ride and dumped his body off a pier. Greg swore the group to a pact that they would never reveal what happened that night, and he becomes physically abusive to Cindy when she exhibits reluctance to keep the affair quiet any longer.
In class, Cindy receives a note from someone telling her that he knew about the incident with the man they killed; the first appearance of Ghostface to Cindy. After football practice, Ray and Greg are in the locker room with some other guys, and after Ray and everyone else have left Greg for the showers, Greg finds a note tucked in the door of his locker showing a picture of his small penis. Enraged, he goes to Cindy and the others and tells them about the note, and is ridiculed for it.
Buffy, competing in a beauty pageant, does a dramatic acting piece during the talent portion. During her reading, Greg is murdered by the killer in the balcony. Seeing this, Buffy attempts to warn everyone, but her desperate pleas are considered by the audience and judges as an exceptional acting performance and Buffy stops caring about Greg when she wins. That night, Cindy is attacked by the killer as well, but she calls the police and the killer escapes. Bobby arrives with the same gloves and knife as the killer, and is arrested. Cindy goes to stay with Buffy that night but receives a call from the real killer, which results in Bobby's release. Bobby and Cindy later bump into each other at school, but their reconciliation is awkward.
The killer confronts Buffy in the girls' locker rooms. Making a sarcastic, metafictional observation about horror movies clichés, Buffy mocks the killer, even as he stabs her, and continues to do so even after he decapitates her. In order to get her to be quiet, he throws her head in the lost and found bucket. Ray and Brenda go to a movie to watch Shakespeare in Love. Ray, while in a bathroom stall, peeps in on another occupant, and is impaled through the head by a penis. The killer then attempts to kill Brenda in the auditorium, but because of her discourteous behavior, the other patrons kill her before he gets the chance.
During a party at her house, a series of events start happening: Tina, an overweight girl, dies in the garage as she tries to escape Ghostface and turns out to be too big to fit through the pet-flap, causing the garage door to break down. After that, Cindy has sex with Bobby, which is rather vehement because of her long denial. Meanwhile, the killer arrives at the basement to kill Shorty and his friends, but becomes intoxicated by marijuana with them instead. When they are rapping with each other, the killer raps and simultaneously kills everyone except for Shorty.
Subsequently, the killer arrives upstairs and apparently stabs Bobby. As Cindy attempts to tend to Bobby's wound, Bobby shoots Shorty, then he reveals that he was never actually stabbed. Ray appears, very much alive, and reveals that he and Bobby are copying the serial killer. When Cindy asks for a motive, Bobby says that they don't need one, because horror movies do not have logically coherent elements like plot or motive. Bobby also suggests sarcastically that it was lack of sex that drove him to do this, and reveals that he and Ray are homosexual lovers (something that Ray hotly denies, despite several clear indications to the contrary) who will start a new life once they kill Cindy, a crime they will get away with because they are merely copycatting a real serial killer. To conceal their guilt, they decide to stab one another in order so that the authorities will believe them to be victims of the real killer. However, right after Ray has (by accident) fatally stabbed Bobby, Ghostface appears and stabs Ray to death, who collapses on top of Bobby in an incidental sexual position.
The killer then attacks Cindy, but she finds the courage to resist and evict him. The police arrive and take Cindy to the police station, where they find out that Buffy's brother Doofy (Dave Sheridan) was actually faking his mental retardation and is the real killer, and is in cahoots with Gail Hailstorm. After Doofy and Gail escape, the sheriff and Cindy find Doofy's disguise in the street and Cindy cries out in the street over this discovery, until she is run over by a passing car. Also, after some of the credits, Shorty - as a parody of Randy from Scream 3 - makes a video explaining how he didn't make it and the rules to survive a grab-and-run.
Characters
- Cindy Campbell - She is the parody character of both Sidney Prescott from the Scream trilogy and Julie James from the I Know What You Did Last Summer trilogy. Her name is a spoof of Sidney, and her surname is taken from Neve Campbell, the actress who played Sidney from Scream. Cindy is portrayed as naive and innocent compared to her friends. Her father is a drug dealer who works with the Escobar crime family ("Uncle Escobar," as Cindy knows him), dealing freebase and sometimes using it himself. To date, she is one of only two characters to appear in all of the Scary Movie films.
- Brenda Meeks - Brenda is Cindy's streetwise friend. She is the parody character of both Maureen Evans from Scream 2 and Karla Wilson from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Brenda reappears in Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, and Scary Movie 4. She and Cindy are the only characters to appear in all of the Scary Movie films.
- Bobby Prinze - He is the parody character of Billy Loomis from Scream and Ray Bronson from I Know What You Did Last Summer and shares many of the same interests and personality traits with Billy, such as pressuring Cindy to lose her virginity to him. He later admits that he and Ray are homosexual, and that they love each other. His name is taken from Freddie Prinze, Jr., who starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
- Shorty Meeks - Often sporting his catch phrase "Oh Shit Son", Shorty is the parody character of Randy Meeks from the Scream trilogy and Max from I Know What You Did Last Summer. He is Brenda's brother, and is depicted as a habitual marijuana user. He later reappears in Scary Movie 2.
- Ray Wilkins - Played by Shawn Wayans, Ray is the parody character of Phil Stevens from Scream 2. He also parodies Stu Macher from Scream towards the end of the movie. Although he is Brenda's boyfriend, numerous allusions appear in the film that he is homosexual, though he denies it. At the end of the film, he is revealed to be Bobby's accomplice. He is killed when the real killer (Doofy) stabs him in the back, though he is revived for the sequel. His name was taken from Ray Bronson, a character from the I Know What You Did Last Summer trilogy.
- Buffy Gilmore - Played by Shannon Elizabeth, Buffy is the parody character of both Tatum Riley from Scream and Helen Shivers from I Know What You Did Last Summer. She appeared to of had an affair with Cindy's boyfriend Bobby. Her name is a homage to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as she parodies Shivers, who is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who starred as Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
- Greg Phillipe - Played by Lochlyn Munro, Greg is the parody character of Barry Cox from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Greg has the same basic personality as Barry. His name is taken from Ryan Phillippe (who played Barry). Greg has a very small sex organ, and tends to be bellicose at times, and abusive towards Cindy for her desire to reveal their crime to the police. He is killed by Doofy at the pageant, parodying Ryan Phillipe's death in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
- Drew Decker - Played by Carmen Electra, Drew is the parody character of Casey Becker from Scream. Her name is taken from the actress who played Casey, Drew Barrymore. Her favorite horror movie is Kazaam. When the killer claims that isn't a horror movie, Drew simply tells him, "Well, you haven't seen Shaq act."
- Special Officer Doofy Gilmore - Played by Dave Sheridan, Doofy is the parody character of Dwight "Dewey" Riley from the Scream trilogy. Doofy is short for Doofus, as he suffers from mental retardation. He still attends special education at B.A. Corpse High School. Doofy is a "Special Police Officer" whom nobody takes seriously. He enjoys masturbating with his mom's vacuum cleaner. At the end of the film, he is revealed to be one of the killers, and in a reference to the film The Usual Suspects, he is seen changing his look and mannerisms (his retardation having been faked), and getting away in a car with his accomplice, Gail Hailstorm.
- Gail Hailstorm - Played by Cheri Oteri, Gail is the parody character of Gale Weathers from the Scream trilogy. Ultimately, Gail and her long-suffering cameraman, Kenny, are stalked by the killer in a sequence parodying The Blair Witch Project. She is revealed to be Doofy's accomplice at the end of the film.
Parodies
In addition to parodying the Scream series and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" , a number of other popular cultural references are made:
- The Usual Suspects - Doofy's character and situation remotely resembles that of Verbal Kint's. The scene towards the ending is an almost exact replica of the final scene from the film, complete with Cindy dropping the coffee mug with "Doofus Porcelain" written on the bottom (a direct parody of the scene where Detective Kujan discovers his own mug was made by a company called "Kobayashi Porcelain"), Doofy's limp gradually disappearing, him shedding clothing to reveal his real appearance, lighting a cigarette, etc.
- Titanic and Amistad - When Brenda and Ray are at the movies, a film trailer is shown showing a man on a ship at sea resembling Captain Edward John Smith of the Titanic, and features a character (Keenen Ivory Wayans) saying the infamous "I'm king of the world!" line, leading the viewer to assume that the film is related to Titanic. Instead, a slave master whips the man, who is revealed to be a slave, as the trailer is revealed to be for a sequel to the 1997 film Amistad. When Bobby gets arrested he screams "You know me, Cindy, you know me!" as a parody of what Jack said to Rose in Titanic.
- The Matrix - The fight scene between Cindy and the killer utilizes "Bullet Time" special effects.
- The Blair Witch Project- Gail's apology after being chased by the killer.
- Sixth Sense- When Shorty said "Can I tell you a secret? I see dead people."
- "Beetlejuice"- At the end when Cindy floats into the air doing the Irish dance. This is parodying the floating calypso dance.
- Halloween - During the classroom scene, a bored Cindy looks out the window to see the killer standing beside a tree. He runs behind the tree and "disappears" when she looks away. This parodies the Halloween scene wherein Laurie does the exact same thing; however, in the original, Michael Myers only disappears, and no explanation as to how is given.
- Thinner - Drew is overrun by her father's car because the latter was distracted by having oral sex performed on him. This part was also reprised at the end of the sequel.
- Dawson's Creek while Cindy and Bobby are making out, Dawson from Dawson's Creek climbs in the window, and exclaims "oops, wrong set"]]
Soundtrack
A soundtrack containing hip hop and alternative rock songs from the movie was released on July 4, 2000 by TVT Records.
See also
External links
