Scary Movie

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Scary Movie

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans
Produced by Eric L. Gold
Lee R. Mayes
Shawn Wayans
Marlon Wayans
Phil Beauman
Written by Shawn Wayans
Marlon Wayans
Buddy Johnson
Phil Beauman
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer
Starring Jon Abrahams
Rick Ducommun
Carmen Electra
Shannon Elizabeth
Anna Faris
Kurt Fuller
Regina Hall
Lochlyn Munro
Cheri Oteri
Dave Sheridan
Marlon Wayans
Shawn Wayans
Kelly Coffield Park
David Lander
Marissa Jaret Winokur
Music by David Kitay
Cinematography Francis Kenny
Editing by Mark Helfrich
Distributed by Dimension Films
Release date(s) United States
July 7, 2000
Australia
August 31, 2000
New Zealand
September 7, 2000
United Kingdom
September 8, 2000
Running time 88 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $19 million (est.)
Gross revenue $278,019,771 (est.)
Followed by Scary Movie 2 (2001)

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 movies are spoofed, including the more subtle horror film parody series Scream trilogy, The Sixth Sense, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, and The Blair Witch Project, while it also parodies many of the 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.

Contents

[edit] Plot

A young teenage girl named Drew Decker (Carmen Electra) is alone in her mansion when she receives a phone call. The caller wants to know her better, but she doesn't give in. The caller reveals he is looking at her. Scared, she grabs a baseball bat and answers the front door (thinking it is the prank caller) and attacks the trick-or-treaters. As soon as Drew went inside the house, the caller appears, revealing himself as the murderer Ghostface. Ghostface chases her onto the patio of the house, where he rips her clothes off, which leaves her only clothed with white bra and thong. When she runs into the sprinklers in her bikini, the killer catches up with her and stabs her in the breast and pulls out an implant. She went alongside the road and sights her father, only to be run over by him. She is then murdered.

Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) is on her computer when her boyfriend Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams) appears in the window. Bobby is upset because his relationship with Cindy "isn't going anywhere" (i.e., they have not slept together). 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 the girl who was murdered the night before (her name is identified as Drew Decker). The most prominent among the reporters is Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), author of the recently released book You're Dead, I'm Rich. Cindy points out to the others that Drew's murder happened exactly one year after they accidentally killed a man, and dumped his body off a pier. Greg swears the group to a pact that they will never reveal what happened that night, and becomes physically abusive to Cindy when she exhibits reluctance.

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 a bunch of other guys, and when Ray and everyone else leaves Greg for the showers ("Don't let Uncle Ray catch you!"), the latter goes off to the punchbag. After he finishes and take a shower, he 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 taken 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, but she calls the cops and the killer escapes. Bobby shows up 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, stemming in part from Cindy not getting over Ginger Spice leaving the Spice Girls.

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 really shut up, he throws her head in the lost and found bucket.

Ray and Brenda go to the movies to watch Shakespeare in Love. Ray, while in a bathroom stall, peeps in on another occupant, and is impaled through the head with 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 has a chance.

During a party at her house, Cindy has sex with Bobby. At the same time, the killer shows up at Shorty's house to kill him and his friends, but gets high on marijuana with them instead. When they are rapping with each other, the killer raps and kills everyone at the same time except for Shorty, who was beside him all the time. Shorty congratulates the killer for the rap.

At Cindy's house, the killer shows up and apparently stabs Bobby. As Cindy attempts to attend to Bobby's wound, Bobby shoots Shorty in the left lung, causing marijuana smoke to exude. He reveals that the blood from his "wound" is ketchup, as he was never stabbed at all. Ray appears, very much alive, and reveals that he and Bobby are copying the serial killer. When Cindy asks for a motive, Bobby points out that they don't need one, because horror movies like Scream do not boast logically coherent elements like plot or motive. Bobby also sarcastically suggests that it was lack of sex that drove him to do this, and reveals that he and Ray are gay lovers 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 who actually exists. 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. As Ray stabs Bobby, Cindy yells "You guys are psychos! You've seen one too many TV shows!", only to have Ray respond angrily "Watching television shows doesn't create psycho killers - canceling TV shows does! The Wayans Brothers was a good show - and we didn't even get a final episode!" (thus breaking character, since the actor playing Ray is Shawn Wayans). However, the real killer appears shortly afterwards, stabbing Ray to death.

The killer then attacks Cindy, but after she repels him, he escapes. The police show up 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 as Cindy cries out in the street over this discovery, she is run over by a passing car.

During the end credits, two scenes are shown:

~Shorty talking to the audience about his plans to rob a supermarket.

~Doofy breaking up with his vacuum but then masturbating with it.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Parodies

In addition to parodying the Scream series , a number of other pop 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.
  • "I Know What You Did Last Summer"
  • 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.
  • The Matrix - The fight scene between Cindy and the killer utilizes "Bullet Time" special effects.
  • Drop Dead Gorgeous - The beauty pageant scene with Buffy.
  • The Blair Witch Project- Gail's apology after being chased by the killer.

[edit] Reception

The film was released on July 7, 2000 and grossed $42,346,669 (USD) in the opening weekend in the box-office. It went on to gross a total of $157,019,771 at the domestic box-office and a worldwide total of $278,019,771. Critics gave the film mixed reviews. The film currently has a "Rotten" rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a rating of 48 out of 100 from Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)
Preceded by
The Perfect Storm
Box office number-one films of 2000 (USA)
July 9
Succeeded by
X-Men
Preceded by
Road Trip
Box office number-one films of 2000 (AUS)
September 3 - September 17
Succeeded by
Big Momma's House
Preceded by
Snatch
Box office number-one films of 2000 (UK)
September 10 - September 17
Succeeded by
Me, Myself & Irene
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