Summer 1997. Horrific cinema no longer invites itself at the box office, and the slasher has become a dying sub-genre, not to say almost unknown to the general public. It is then that disembarks Scream, born from the meeting of newcomer Kevin Williamson and master of horror Wes Craven. A neo-slasher, meta and repository, which becomes an immediate critical and public success, and a cult film for an entire generation. Two sequels soon followed, then 10 years later a fourth film, the last of Wes Craven who died in 2015.
Almost 25 years later, a new Scream comes out Wednesday in dark rooms and in the greatest of mysteries, the opportunity for journalists to 20 minutes to tell how they discovered the first film and what it meant to them at the time. And like the opening with Drew Barrymore, it starts off strong.
– ATTENTION OLD SPOILERS – ATTENTION OLD SPOILERS –
“I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow” for Anne
I saw Scream the day of its release in France on July 16, 1997 at the 8pm session with friends from the cinema school in which I was studying at the time. No way to miss the new Wes Craven, who has our deep respect thanks to The hills Have Eyes and The Claws of the Night. In addition, Drew Barrymore ofAND, who we also adore because Spielberg is the absolute master, is announced in the title role, her face big on the posters. We are also looking forward to discovering Courteney Cox at the cinema, which we have just discovered in a series that we love, Friends.
In theaters, the shock. The character of Drew Barrymore is killed after about twenty minutes in an anthology sequence. We cling to our seats. At the end of the session, we debrief: “Wes Craven is too smart, it’s great, he kills his star like Hitchcock did with Janet Leigh in Psychosis “,” I love how he masters all the slasher codes while hijacking them, it’s almost a horror movie satire! “.
I go home, alone, to my mom’s big house, gone on vacation. The phone (landline, I didn’t have a cell phone yet) rings. I pick up, I hear a breath, a sneer. The merry-go-round starts again several times. I call all my friends: “Well, that was funny, the good joke, but, stop, I’m starting to freak out”. Can you imagine that twenty-six years later, I still don’t know who the little joker who got me was. Because the night of July 16-17, 1997, I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow!
“In fact, horror films are scary” for Benjamin
Everyone was only talking about that. You absolutely had to go see this film. Other teens, cooler than me, had found it hilarious and glossed over the many references to horror films from the 1970s. Some even spoke of sexy actresses… In short, I went there too, so I could laughing and glossing over genre films and appealing to the girls in my class, maybe. But I didn’t laugh, I didn’t get the references. I just got scared. But kind very scared. Since then, my opinion of horror films has not changed: they are scary.
“For the love of” whodunit “and” teen “” for Vincent
It was during a scuba diving course in the South that I discovered Scream at 16 in a small cinema in Cannes. So much for the totally free context, and yet precise enough to reflect the importance of this discovery. And it is just as much the shock of the opening, the meta approach, the staging with a line (knife?) That marked me, as the whodunit – literally “who did it”. Who is under the mask of Ghostface? Who is the killer? In fact the killers! The film’s tour de force is that, in its home stretch, there are no longer any possible suspects, only two remain. Yes: 1 + 1 = 2 killers. However, I did not think about it, I was too thoroughly, and keeps the memory of a real revelation, even of an explosion.
Scream is also inseparable for me, less of its director Wes Craven than of its screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who a year later created the teen show Dawson. Scream and Dawson, the two sides of the same coin and the same passion for adolescence (in series) and cinema (genre).
“” Scream “fed my taste for genre cinema” for Fabien
I remember that one day in 1998, my older brother, eleven years my senior, came home with the K7 from Scream. I was then 14 years old and I was aware that the film, which I had heard a lot about – I believe in particular in the late magazine XL which was a pop culture benchmark for teens at a time when Internet modems hadn’t taken hold in every home – was off-limits to those under 16.
The prospect of discovering Scream two years ahead of the supposedly authorized age then enveloped itself in a scent of subversion (yes, it didn’t take much to make myself feel like a rebel). I had the opportunity to see quite impressive scenes from Claws of the night at a young age and imagined that Scream would go even further. In the end, I have few memories of this first viewing with my brother apart from the tension of the opening scene – I admit finding the rest of the film much less intense and thrilling.
I discovered Scream 2 and 3 long after their release, on DVD. And I paid a ticket to see 4 indoors. With the prospect of the fifth episode, I remade these films over the Christmas holidays, three on the same day. And I loved to dive back into these cinematographic memories of my youth, in the atmosphere nineties which is so close (whatever Gen Z may say) but seems so far away. Scream is one of those films that fed my taste for genre cinema, quite simply.
“A concentrate of the 1990s” for Laure
In 1997, at the time of the French release of Scream, I have already seen all the Friday 13, the saga Halloween, Simetierre, and so on. I am 13 years old (normal) and as a big fan of teen dramas atmosphere Dawson, Hartley heart to heart and Angela, 15, I am THE ideal target for this Wes Craven slasher. Recall that the film takes place in the peaceful and fictional town of Woodsboro where high school students are murdered one after the other by a psychopath disguised as a ghost. The assassin is also called Ghostface (ghost head), there is no coincidence.
If, today, the memories of the film have faded a little in my memory, it has left indelible traces in my mind as a young adult. A terrifying mask with the false airs of Shout of Edvard Munch, the chilling breath of the murderer through the telephone handset and especially Neve Campbell, who at the time played Julia Salinger of the cult series The life of five…
Scream was able to impose his style and launch a trend with a whole generation of “horror teens” in the second half of the 1990s: Remember last summer (hey, hey, Kevin Williamson again) and the very hot Sex crimes. The nineties that smell good Moby and Red right hand by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
“A road trip with Wes Craven” for Caroline
I remember a road trip with Wes Craven. It was in Catalonia, on the occasion of the Sitges Festival. He had just realized Scream 2 and sounded a bit bitter. “I am confined to the horror genre, he confided to me and I would like to try to do something else. He succeeded shortly afterwards to The Music of heart, with Meryl Streep. Not really his most successful film. He then signed Scream 3. For me, the saga remains associated with this anecdote and its creator so talented to scare, less to cry.
“Wazaaaaaa! »For Clément
“Wazaaaaaa! This is my most vivid memory of Scream. Or maybe it’s more of the opening scene of the first installment, when Carmen Electra is stabbed by the terrible killer, who ends up with her breast implant at the end of his blade. Does it ring a bell ? This is probably because this scenario is not that of Scream but of Scary Movie. When I am told about the horror saga of Wes Craven, it is obviously the Ghostface mask that I think of right away, but not the one that is stained with blood after the murder of Casey, rather the one that sticks its tongue out when he’s talking to Shorty on the other end of the phone. I imagine we have the credentials we deserve.