'Scream'

I saw Scream in the theaters way back in 1996 as a teenager. I thought it was pretty scary. I guess. It was very entertaining and, watching it today, it stands up pretty well. There is the archaic use of the cell phone. But it was 1996. What were they supposed to do?

It was a gigantic success. It garnered more than $173 million in the box office. At the time, I didn't remember many horror-slasher films before. Afterward, these films crawled out of the woodwork and, today, you can't go three weeks without there being a new one released. Again, maybe they were always being released, but at the time, it seemed that Scream re-launched this genre and 14 years later it still thrives.

The most fascinating aspect of the film (in fact, much of the dialogue revolves around this theme) is its reliance on referencing past horror-slasher films.

In the opening scene, Drew Barrymore's character is quizzed on her knowledge of slasher classes like Friday the 13th and Halloween. One of the characters -- the comic relief, Randy -- works at a video store (an essential profession in pre-DVD 1996) and has a encyclopedic knowledge of horror films and the "rules" of surviving a slasher film.

This is the same as an action film using Die Hard as a reference to surviving and beating the bad guy. Or a comedy using the jokes from Airplane! All of this doesn't make sense, but it makes perfect sense for the horror-slasher genre because it's simple and because it's the only film genre in which the viewer thinks they could do a "better job" than the actual characters.

Nobody watches Die Hard and thinks they could beat the bad guy better. They watch it to live an unreal scenario with a fake person. Nobody thinks they could figure out Diane Keaton in Annie Hall better than Woody Allen. Nor does anyone think they're actually funnier than Judd Apatow or Don Rickles.

It's relatively minor, but important part of Scream and something nobody else could pull off.

Interesting production note: Apparently one of the executive producers did not like the mask. So he was going to have the crew try out other masks. Frankly, that's a creepy ass mask and I couldn't imagine them using any other one.