Ten Days of Terror!: Scream 4

Film: Scream 4
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

The Scream franchise has always been about breaking down the genre of slasher films as much as it has been about being a slasher film itself. The original was about deconstructing the slasher genre, the second about the rules of sequels, and the third is about the way that sequels work. Scream 4 (or Scre4m, if you prefer) is about the way that remakes of horror movies work. In that respect, Scream 4 is kind of a remake of the original film as much as it is a sequel and the start of something new following the trilogy.

We’re going to have a lot of familiar characters here. Our original final girl, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), has returned to the town of Woodsboro as the final stop on a press tour for her new book. For a wonder, Sidney has attempted to reinvent herself as something other than the surviving victim of three versions of the Ghostface killer. In Woodsboro, we’re going to also reconnect with Dewey Riley (David Arquette), now the sheriff and his wife Gale Weathers-Riley (Courtney Cox). We’re also going to meet some of Sidney’s extended family, her aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell) and her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts).

Ten Days of Terror!: Scream 3

Film: Scream 3
Format: DVD from Kankakee Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

Put a gun to my head and ask me who is the best horror director, and you’re going to get a question back from me. All time? Still living? Of the people currently directing films, Guillermo del Toro would be my favorite, and honestly, he’d probably be my pick of all directors. But if we want to talk about influence, my pick is going to be Wes Craven. He might not be the most common pick (my guess is most people would pick John Carpenter), but Craven is responsible for so many important films and franchises, and he’s almost purely a horror director (Carpenter is responsible for a lot of science fiction and comedy). The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, The Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under the Stairs, The Serpent and the Rainbow…and, of course, Scream. But, like any franchise, there’s a low point. For the Scream franchise, it’s Scream 3.

This doesn’t mean that Scream 3 is a bad movie by any stretch, but it doesn’t really rise to the level of the other films in the series. I’ve maintained for years that Alien3, for instance, isn’t the terrible movie everyone remembers it to be. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible, but it’s a huge step down from Alien and Aliens, two of the greatest films in their genre. The step down isn’t as big here, but it’s definitely a step down.

Ten Days of Terror!: Shocker

Films: Shocker
Format: DVD from Ida Public Library through interlibrary loan on various players.

I remember a particular event from grade school. We were supposed to write a story, and I wrote something that was really derivative of a story we had read in class, like plagiarism-level derivative. I got in some trouble for it and it was over, but I remember it because it was lazy and stupid and I ended up feeling lazy and stupid. I’m reminded of this with Wes Craven’s film Shocker, since it very much feels like Craven attempting to recreate the success of the Elm Street franchise without a lot of success.

What I mean by that is our psychotic killer ends up with some science fiction-y powers that allow him to cheat death, and he uses these powers to go on indiscriminate killing sprees. There are elements of other movies tucked into Shocker. While the overall feel is very much A Nightmare on Elm Street, there’s a smattering of Child’s Play tucked in here and a substantial amount of The Hidden, one of my favorite bonkers sci-fi/horror films from the ‘80s (and I like that Richard Brooks is the connective tissue between the two films).

Fool's Gold

Film: The People Under the Stairs
Format: DVD from Ida Public Library through interlibrary loan on the new portable.

When the conversation turns to horror directors, everyone is going to have their favorite. George Romero is going to be a popular choice just because of his creation of a massively influential subgenre. David Cronenberg, king of body horror, will have his adherents, who will in part point to his success outside of the genre. John Carpenter, by virtue of Halloween and The Thing probably has the highest highs, but he’s got some real lows as well. My favorite, though, will always be Wes Craven. As much as I love Carpenter and Cronenberg, and as much as there are some real weak points in Craven’s filmography, there’s a lot there to indicate just how good he really was. I’m catching up on a lot of his back catalog, which is why I finally watched The People Under the Stairs.

Aside from a couple of the Nightmare films, this was probably the biggest hole in my Craven viewing history. It’s a little hard to place in the Craven pantheon of films for me. Is it a horror movie? Is it a comedy? Is it an adventure just like The Goonies had? It’s kind of all of the above wrapped into a single package. It’s also fairly unusual in the sense that our protagonist is a 13-year-old African-American kid named Poindexter, who goes by Fool (Brandon Quintin Adams). Fool has some elements of stereotype in his character, which seems to be a product of race, the year of production, and the genre. Regardless of this, He very quickly became one of my favorite horror protagonists.

Why Was the Amish Girl Disfellowshipped?

Film: Deadly Blessing
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on basement television.

There are three great horror directors whose last names starts with “C”: John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Wes Craven. Of the three, Carpenter, thanks to Halloween and The Thing, has the highest points on his filmography. Cronenberg, by virtue of his filmography, is almost certainly the most consistent, and also has the added gravitas of expanding his filmography away from the horror genre. But it’s Craven who will always be my favorite of the three. Perhaps no one has created more iconic horror films and series than Craven, who is responsible for The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and of course both the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises. Fun fact—Craven graduated from the ultra-conservative religious college in the town where I grew up.

Deadly Blessing is one of Craven’s sequel-less films, and, honestly, that’s probably a good thing. There’s some interesting possibilities here, but not really anything that’s worthy of a sequel. This is still pretty early in his career, so the fact that there are things only partially set up and not fully developed is perhaps expected. Deadly Blessing has some really good ideas without really managing to get many of them to pay off.

Wednesday Horror: Scream 2

Film: Scream 2
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

When Wes Craven wrote and directed Scream, he made something that worked on multiple levels. It was a completely self-aware horror movie that openly played with the tropes of the genre. At the same time, it was an effective slasher movie in its own right. Scream wouldn’t have been anything like the success it was if it hadn’t been a good slasher itself, and the fact that it literally told the audience the tropes it already knew and had fun with them made it the genre rewrite it was. So what the hell do you do with Scream 2?

Well, what you do is you continue to play with the tropes of the genre, and you also play with the various ideas of sequels. We’re told at one point that the rules of the sequel include a bigger body count and more violent kills all the way through. One of the things that isn’t mentioned but is specifically played with is the fact that at least one survivor from the first film isn’t going to make it to the end of the second film.

Wednesday Horror: Red Eye

Film: Red Eye
Format: DVD from personal collection on The New Portable.

I’ve been a Wes Craven fan for a long time. I have nothing but respect for the guy who created some of the most legendary horror movies, franchises, and characters in existence. I love that one of the clauses in his contract for directing Scream was that he got to direct Music of the Heart, and that Wes Craven has directed a scene shared between Meryl Streep and Itzhak Perlman. I was curious when it came to Red Eye; it’s clear right away that this is going to be lesser Craven. It could still be a good or even great film, but it’s never going to rise to the Scream or A Nightmare on Elm Street.

We begin our tale in the company of Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams), a manager at a swanky, upscale Miami hotel. Lisa is boarding a plane to return to Miami from Dallas after attending the funeral of her grandmother. The flights are all delayed, though, and Lisa is dealing as well as she can with that and with current issues at her hotel. Her coworker Cynthia (Jayma Mays) is dealing with a number of issues, the main one being the arrival of Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia), the Deputy Chief of Homeland Security. As she is waiting for her flight to finally board, Lisa makes the acquaintance of Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy), who is also on her flight.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Last House on the Left (1972)

Films: The Last House on the Left (1972)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

The horror lists that I decided to pursue had a number of movies that I hadn’t already seen on them and a couple that I was genuinely not looking forward to watching. One of those was The Last House on the Left from 1972. This is one of those movies from this era in horror that I had heard about from the time my brother started getting into horror movies. It was a movie that I knew existed and knew was on the harder edge of horror, much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Faces of Death. I knew enough about it that it wasn’t something I particularly wanted to watch despite it being a massive hole in my viewing.

This is despite being a fan of Wes Craven. Craven, if nothing else, did a hell of a lot for horror as a genre. If he had done only the Nightmare films or just Scream, he would have still carved himself a place in horror history, but he did both, as well as The Hills Have Eyes and The Serpent and the Rainbow, a film I still think is terribly underrated. I still find it amazing that Craven earned a degree from evangelical Wheaton College, an institution residing about a mile from where I grew up.

Off Script: Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Film: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

I love Wes Craven’s work. I think even now, two years after his death, we’re still figuring out just how much of a genius the man was. He created a bunch of really pivotal and important horror movies and franchises, not the least of which is A Nightmare on Elm Street. Let’s not forget, though, that he also made The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and the Scream franchise. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is one that seems to have slipped under the radar of a lot of people. I think it’s one of his best films. What Craven often did was create things that were completely new, things that took the genre in new directions. New Nightmare is a film that is both firmly in the heart of the horror genre and is also a smart commentary on the genre itself.

What I especially like about New Nightmare is that it does something that few films that are a part of a larger series can do: it stays completely within the established mythos of the series and also does something entirely new. This is what was attempted with Halloween III, and it took years for people to figure out that that movie was actually pretty good. Aliens did some of this, making a film that still had horror elements but was much more a science fiction action movie than the almost straight horror of the original. New Nightmare weaves a complicated story that exists both in the film world of Freddy Krueger and also with the film world of the actors who played in the original film.

Off Script: Swamp Thing

Film: Swamp Thing
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on The Nook.

I know about Swamp Thing despite having never seen all of it. In its own way, it’s a legendary film. Its legend comes in no small part from its three main stars, Adrienne Barbeau and her chest. I knew enough to know this was based on a DC Comics character and shouldn’t be confused with the Marvel Comics equivalent Man-Thing, which technically came first by a couple of months. Swamp Thing got the movie, though, and Marvel’s giant plant/swamp critter only got to star in one of the most ridiculously named comics in history, Giant-Size Man-Thing #1.

What I didn’t know going in was that this was directed by Wes Craven, which potentially raises the bar. Potentially. In reality, the main reason to watch this is the Adrienne Barbeau’s co-stars under her shirt and the amazing potential for camp, all of which is exploited to the hilt.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Serpent and the Rainbow

Film: The Serpent and the Rainbow
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

Before I get into The Serpent and the Rainbow, I need to put on my pedantic shoes for a minute and clear up some terminology. Those things that we call zombies—risen from the grave, shambling, craving human flesh—are technically not zombies. I mean, I call them that, too, but if we’re going to be precise, those are ghouls. A zombie, in the strictest term, is a reanimated corpse, or something like it, created through the power of Vodou. When we call The Serpent and the Rainbow a zombie film, we’re talking about the more traditional style here: blowfish powder, chanting, people being ridden by a loa.

Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) is a modern-day Indiana Jones, exploring the forgotten and forsaken parts of the world in search of various plants that may have medical properties that can be used by major pharmaceutical companies in developing new medicines. Early on, he is given a head trip by a shaman that, through the course of events, causes him to wander on his own through the Amazon rain forest back to civilization. After this adventure, he is contacted by a pharmaceutical executive who wants him to go to Haiti. There is some evidence, not incredibly convincing, mind you, that a man named Christophe (Conrad Roberts) died and was buried, but has recently been seen walking about. In short, Christophe is a zombie. The company has hopes that whatever caused him to be in this state may have use as an anesthetic. So off Dennis goes to Haiti.

And a Little Bit of Soul

Film: Music of the Heart
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There were a number of surreal moments when I compiled the various lists I use for this Oscar project. There were moments of “That got a nomination?” all through the lists. None was so surprising or more interesting to me than discovering that horror icon Wes Craven had directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar-nominated performance in a movie about as far away from Craven’s roots as possible. I’ve said in the past that I think Craven is underrated and underappreciated as a director before. If nothing else, the man birthed four horror classics (Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream). That he also directed Music of the Heart, a film about a violin teacher working with inner city kids, only adds to my thesis.

But, we take the good with the bad in this film. Meryl Streep is an obvious positive, as are the presences of Aiden Quinn, Cloris Leachman, and Angela Bassett. The downside is that it also contains Gloria Estefan, which means there will almost certainly be Gloria Estefan (with or without her Miami Sound Machine) providing the title track and more. I should probably try to look positively on this as well. At least it’s not Maria Carey. Evidently, getting Elizabeth Pena was too much to ask for.

Mutants Need Love, Too

Film: The Hills Have Eyes
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

There are times when a horror film director walks the edge between what he can get away with and going just a step too far. It’s a difficult line to walk. A film that takes things too far risks losing the audience completely, but a film that rides that thin edge has the chance of becoming one of the greats of the genre. It’s up to the individual viewer to determine for him- or herself if The Hills Have Eyes steps over that boundary or toes as close to the line as it can. I’m still not 100% sure myself. There are a couple of moments here that put the viewer in the position of watching a film made by someone suddenly capable of doing anything. Wes Craven breaks as many boundaries with this film as he did with The Last House on the Left.

This is also a film that helped create any number of horror film tropes that are still in play today. The Carter family is driving from Ohio to California and stops in the middle of nowhere in the desert at an old gas station. The owner, Fred (John Steadman) warns them that they’re out in the real boonies and that they should stick to the road. Of course, the family does not and eventually their car drives off the road and breaks an axle, leaving them completely stranded and unable to raise help on their radio. That’s bad enough, but it’s certainly not the worst thing that will happen to the Carters.

Freddy's Dead

Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’m constantly amazed at how little respect Wes Craven gets as a director. He’s a favorite among horror fans, of course, but for the rank and file movie person, Craven’s name rarely comes up as a director of note. Yet, Craven has been at least partially responsible for some of the most influential and innovative horror movies in the genre’s history. In addition to today’s classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven also wrote and directed the original versions of Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes and directed Scream, the most important current series in the genre. Why he’s not better respected, I can’t imagine.

While Scream is the current king of the slasher film genre, A Nightmare on Elm Street is arguably his best film. The idea, like many great ideas, is ridiculously simple. In a small town, teens are plagued by a series of nightmares. When the teens start dying in extremely gruesome ways, a mundane reason for the deaths is sought. But, of course, the real reason is hardly mundane. Instead, a killer from the town’s past has returned and is haunting the dreams of the kids. Why? Because the parents of these children killed him years before. There are subtle touches here, primarily the fact that the dream world of the killer and the waking world are tightly intertwined—events in the one significantly affect those in the other. This allows Craven to play with reality in significant ways and keeps us as the audience guessing about the reality of the events that unfold in front of us.

Okay, so that’s the basics. So let’s talk about the specifics of what makes this film so good and what makes Craven such an innovative director. We start in the dream of Tina (Amanda Wyss) and get our first short look at our killer, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). And from this we assume that Tina will be the character we follow through the rest of the film, because this is a pattern that has been established for us by a decade of slashers up to this point. But Tina turns out to be the first victim. The wounds inflicted on her in the dream are made manifest in the real world, and in one of the great horror scenes ever filmed, she is flung about her bedroom, dragged up the wall, and essentially gutted on the ceiling before falling back down to the bed. It’s both unexpected in terms of its visual effects and unexpected in terms of the victim.

It then becomes evident that our real main character is Tina’s friend, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp). Nancy’s father (John Saxon) is the local police chief and her mother (Ronee Blakely) is a bit of a lush. It’s slowly revealed that there’s a real backstory here. Years earlier, a series of child murders led to a man named Fred Krueger, who was arrested, but then released on a technicality. Reacting to this, a gang of parents cornered him and burned him alive. And now, Nancy has realized that he has found a way back, and found a way into the dreams of the children of his killers, and is knocking them off one by one.

As a premise, it’s a pretty simple idea, and it’s a perfect premise for a good spook story. But again, Craven is far too smart to let just a good premise be enough for his film. Rather than rely on that, he plays constantly with the audience’s expectations of what is happening and whether or not any given moment is waking reality or someone’s dream. What this does is create a situation where there is always something at stake. Krueger is essentially all-powerful inside the dream world, making that world terrifying. And because our characters realize this and attempt to stay awake for as long as possible, they frequently drift off into waking dreams—and it’s almost impossible to tell precisely when we shift from one to the other. What this does is give those shock moments a great deal of extra punch.

Craven also doesn’t skimp on the blood. Tina’s death is brutal and terrible, and because it happens early, it sets the tone for the rest of the film. A later death, that of Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp in his first role) comes complete with enough blood to fill a bathtub. The gore, of course, is part and parcel with the genre and expected, and because the violence occurs in dreams, Craven is free to exaggerate it to his heart’s content.

The true genius of this film, though, is the creation of Freddy himself. Freddy Krueger became a household name almost instantly and quickly became far more important than the film and the franchise itself. While he eventually became little more than a carnival barker and a sideshow attraction, in this film, Englund plays him with a sort of maniac glee, a very evil little boy who has finally managed to get away from his parents for a time to cause a little mischief. Eventually, this would give way into mugging for the camera and fan service, but in this original, Krueger is a figure of real menace. Even more, he knows he’s a menace and he’s significantly powerful when his victim is at his or her most vulnerable.

And so there you have it—a film that is visceral and fun, innovative but plays straight with genre conventions. It’s genuinely one of the great films from the 1980s.

Why to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street: One of the most original horror visions every created.
Why not to watch: The series quickly became self-parody.

Behind the Mask

Film: Scream; Halloween
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen (Scream); DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television (Halloween).

It’s Halloween! Last year, that meant my favorite films, because this also happens to be my birthday—the 9th anniversary of my 35th birthday in this case. This year, we’re going traditional, and I’m watching the sorts of films most people watch on this day. Today, it’s two of the best slasher films ever made: Sceam and Halloween.

The first 10 minutes of Scream are arguably the most famous 10 minutes in slasher movie history. It’s pure genius, and it’s proof that Wes Craven is one of the smartest horror film directors in the business. High school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) gets a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls only to discover that the calls are coming from a homicidal maniac. He kills her boyfriend in front of her, then kills her brutally before running off. What makes this so good is that in this scene, Craven is playing with our expectations. When Scream was released, almost none of its stars were known for anything. A few, like Henry Winkler and David Arquette were known, but Barrymore was by far the biggest name in the film. No one expected her to die off at all, let alone right at the start.

Scream is a film plays with the slasher subgenre of horror movies by both following the standard tropes and flouting them in intelligent ways. The biggest and smartest flouting of the slasher convention is the film’s budget. Typically, slashers are low-budget affairs with plenty of nudity and gore to distract from the minimal budget, bad acting, and grainy footage. Not so with Scream, which is slick and glossy and made with obvious money behind it.

Wes Craven is one of the most important directors in the subgenre and for very good reason—a lot of his movies helped create the genre and a lot of his movies similarly played with the ideas of the slasher film and the crazed killer. In fact, at one point in Scream, one of the characters lists off some of the more important ways to avoid dying (like don’t have sex and don’t take drugs or drink), and then going as far as possible to break them. What’s more important, though, is that Craven doesn’t simply break the rules; he breaks them in ways that make sense in the film.

I’m not going to get too involved in the plot here, because for the genre, this one is pretty involved and convoluted, and takes a number of interesting twists before it eventually all makes sense at the end. Suffice to say that at each stage in the film, the current theory makes perfect sense, and ultimately the way the film wraps up fits in with everything we’ve seen as well.

I like that the film is kept in the realm of the possible. Too often, the slasher genre involves a killer who is possessed of supernatural or demonic powers (more on that type of killer in a moment) and can take huge amounts of physical punishment because he is essentially immortal or at least undead. Not so in this film. Repeatedly, when victims (or potential victims) are attacked and fight back, the killer, typically known as “Ghostface,” takes actual punishment. It’s a nice thing to see, when we typically see the killer shrug off blows that would sideline anyone else. In many ways, this makes the action scarier, because it also makes the action more real. I’m not too worried about Jason Voorhees because I don’t believe in the possibility of a thunderingly badass undead machete killer. A guy in a mask? Yeah, that’s possible.

The other reason I’m not going to tap into the plot here is that this is either a movie that you’ve already seen because it’s critical for the subgenre of slasher as well as the main genre of horror or because you’ve never seen it, and I don’t want to be the one who spoils it for you. This is a film to go into cold if you haven’t seen it, because it plays so intelligently with everything that has come before it. Craven, thanks to movies like this one, remains one of the players in horror and one of the most important directors to watch. A good director gives a wink and a nod to a knowing audience. A great director gives a wink, a nod, and then moves in for the kill.

As a final note on this one, Scream matches many other films of the genre in having a score that truly helps it sell the scares.

John Carpenter is the director of a number of shorts in his early student career. His first full-length film is a science fiction comedy and his second is essentially an action film. His third film, though, was Halloween, and it was here that Carpenter made his greatest mark. Carpenter, thanks in no small part to this film, has been pigeonholed as a horror director despite the fact that a number of his movies are not straight horror, or even horror at all. If nothing else, that’s in indicator of how good this film is and how influential it has been for the last 30-plus years.

Many of the standard tropes of slasher movies come from this film—virginity being the way to prevent death (according to Carpenter, this was because the kids having sex were so focused on sex that they couldn’t pay attention to anything else), never saying “I’ll be right back,” the concept of the final girl, the vanishing killer at the end, teens in peril, quick flashes of nudity, fake shocks, a minimalist but effective soundtrack, the killer who walks at a slow pace but still catches up, even the idea of each death being its own unique set piece. It’s also one of the first films with a masked killer, although there were others before it, notably Blood and Black Lace.

The story, as with many slashers, is straightforward. Fifteen years ago, a young boy named Michael Myers (Will Sandin at this point) kills his sister just after she has sex with her boyfriend. Michael is institutionalized, and at the start of the film, has broken out and returned to the scene of his grisly crime. Rather than a clown mask, he steals a completely blank white mask (actually a William Shatner mask painted white) and sets about killing anyone and everyone around the house he once lived in. Pitted against him is Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis in her first role, and one that would define her early film career), and his doctor (Donald Pleasance).

Like many a great scary movie, most of the good shocks in this one are tricks of timing, camera, and pacing. Halloween is thought of as a gory and gruesome film, but there is almost nothing here in terms of blood or gore. The film is virtually bloodless, a fact that indicates precisely how powerful the suggestion in Carpenter’s film really is. Just as important is the idea that aside from the disturbing opening, the really good scares, the ones that people really remember all come in the last half hour of the film, and the best ones come in the last 10 minutes. The bulk of the film, essentially, is set up and getting the mood correct. It’s an old lesson of horror—scare everyone in the first 15 minutes and you don’t need a great scare again until the final reel.

Halloween was made on the cheap, the entire film start to finish cost about $320,000 and the actors had to supply their own wardrobes. That’s a budget that wouldn’t cover a catering bill these days. It goes to prove that low budgets can bring out the best in creative and intelligent filmmakers, and that not having millions of dollars means that smart directors find new ways to do things that both save on money and, in the case of this film, heighten the scare factor.

I don’t want to go too far into the plot of this film. If you haven’t seen it before, you should see it immediately. If you are even mildly a fan of scary film, though, this is one you’ve seen and loved. Halloween is one of those rare litmus test films—horror fans are essentially required to like it. Fortunately for all horror fans, there is very little here not to like. Halloween provides plenty of scares, jumps, and boo moments (my favorite being Michael Myers sitting up after the closet fight) to last anyone through the Halloween season. While a great many films followed in the genre, only a scant few have come anywhere close to this level of all around quality. Horror fans love it because it’s awesome; film students love it because it’s purely great.

Quick piece of fun trivia—Michael Myers is referred to in the script of the film not by his name, but as “The Shape.”

Why to watch Scream: You can test your knowledge of slasher movie tropes.
Why not to watch: The real life relationship between Courtney Cox and David Arquette bleeds into the film to the film’s detriment.

Why to watch Halloween: It is the gold standard by which all other slashers are judged.
Why not to watch: If you’re a gorehound, there’s not that much blood here.