Scary Movie 4
| Scary Movie 4 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | David Zucker |
| Written by | Jim Abrahams Pat Proft Craig Mazin |
| Produced by | Robert K. Weiss |
| Starring | Anna Faris Regina Hall Craig Bierko |
| Distributed by | - USA - Dimension Films The Weinstein Company - non-USA - Miramax Films Buena Vista Distribution |
Release date | 14 April 2006 |
Running time | 83 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $45 million (est.) |
| Box office | $90,710,620 |
Scary Movie 4 is a fourth film of the Scary Movie franchise and is directed by David Zucker, written by Jim Abrahams, Craig Mazin and Pat Proft, and produced by Craig Mazin and Robert K. Weiss. It is distributed by The Weinstein Company via its Dimension Films unit in the US, and internationally by Buena Vista Distribution (Miramax). It was released on April 14, 2006.
Short synopsis
Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back as the lovable, dim-witted Cindy Campbell and her self-serving, sex-crazed pal Brenda Meeks respectively. They are joined this time around by Craig Bierko as the cute, but utterly clueless, Tom Ryan. Together, they battle to save the world from a ruthless alien invasion. Cindy moves in next to Tom because she's taking care of an old lady. She later finds out the house is haunted by a little boy and goes on a quest to find out who killed him and why. Also, Alien "triPods" are invading the world and Cindy has to uncover the identity of the young boy's murderer in order to stop them.
Parodies
The movies officially spoofed:
- Saw - The opening scene with Dr. Phil and Shaquille O'Neal and the villain Jigsaw.
- Saw II - The Venus Headtraps worn by Cindy and Brenda, and the "Key behind your eye" part of the trap.
- The Village - The old-world country scene.
- The Grudge - During Cindy's caretaking of Ms. Norris.
- War of the Worlds - The main parody with the alien Tri-Pods.
- Million Dollar Baby - Cindy's boxing match with a female Mike Tyson.
- Brokeback Mountain - The scene with Mahalik and CJ.
- Hustle & Flow - Cindy's first marriage
- Fahrenheit 9/11 - When President is told, "the nation is under attack", while reading a book to young students in a classroom
Video-game spoofs:
- Fatal Frame - (When Cindy screams "My eyes!!" like the notorious Blinded ghost)
Other:
- iPod- The alien Tri-Pods
- The Oprah Winfrey Show
- Tom Cruise - On the Oprah Winfrey Show parody.
- Russell Crowe - Referenced in when Brenda awakes from a dream.
- My Humps (song by the Black Eyed Peas) - Referenced in Brenda's sleep-talking.
- Badd (song by Ying Yang Twins) - In Tom Ryan's lullaby
- R. Kelly - While Brenda is sleeping
Taglines
- The Fourth And Final Chapter Of The Trilogy.
- Win The War, Bury The Grudge, Burn The Village And See The Saw.
- They're coming. We need your support.
Detailed story
Shaq and Dr. Phil wake up chained in a bathroom (spoofing Saw). Shaq has to make a free throw with a huge rock in order to get the saw down to cut off their legs (spoofing Shaq's famous difficulties at the free-throw line). Shaq and Dr. Phil have only two minutes to free themselves of their leg braces before dying from the room's airborne nerve gas. Finally, Shaq makes the basket and lowers the saws down. Dr. Phil ends up sawing off the wrong foot, thereby remaining chained and the two are presumed to be dead.
Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen), spoofing Bill Pullman's character from The Grudge, wakes up. There are three girls (from The Girls Next Door on E!) in his bed who later have a pillow fight. He tries to kill himself by taking too many sleeping pills but the pills turn out to be Viagra, resulting in a monstrous penis. Unaccustomed with the different mass distribution he tumbles over a balustrade, lands on his erect penis, skewers a cat which previously flew over the edge, and dies. Cindy Campbell goes to get a new job (parodying Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in The Grudge). She's been asked to be a caretaker for the creepy "Grudge House." She receives a tour inside, Cindy expects nothing and she gets a 'feeling of evil' as the guide tries to hide the overflowing hair on the ceiling, in drawers and baskets and on his head; and The Grudge Boy in the bathtub by pushing him down with a plunger, and then walks out naked and Cindy smiles and says "I'll take it".
Meanwhile, Cindy's neighbour Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko), spoofing Tom Cruise's character in War of the Worlds, gets fired from his job as a crane operator at the docks. At a bar afterwards he runs into Mahalik (Anthony Anderson) and CJ (Kevin Hart) where it is revealed, in a parody of Brokeback Mountain, that the two have started a homosexual relationship. Tom gets home, where his ex-wife (Molly Shannon) has just arrived with his children, Robbie and Rachel, who both resent him. Cindy's job is to look after the incapacitated Mrs. Norris (Cloris Leachman), however she is incompetent at it, to the point of accidentally sponge bathing Mrs. Norris with her own urine. Throughout the night Cindy notices strange events going on in the house, culminating in her finding a ghostly boy in the attic.
The next morning she confides in Tom about the events of the previous night, which leads to a conversation about their past relationships. Cindy has a flashback to the death of her husband George (Simon Rex) where, in a parody of Million Dollar Baby, George trips and breaks his neck during a boxing match between Cindy and Tiffany Stone, a female version of Mike Tyson also showing a pile of bitten-off ears. As they share a kiss, the sky suddenly goes stormy and everything electrical stops working (In the real movie cars stopped working, but in this movie cars, bicycles, and even skateboards stopped working). Tom goes to investigate, and discovers the world has come under attack by gigantic triPods (giant iPods) that play some cool 80s music... and then switches to the "Destroy Humanity" playlist, transforming the iPods into actual Tripods, which vaporize the humans they zap (it was also showed three people which seemed to be rappers, gets vaporized and dropping a huge pile of bling-blings).
Cindy runs back into her house and finds the ghost boy again. They began talking in "Japanese" (actually Japanese brand names and "buzz words" such as Sony, Mitsubishi, and Fujitsu), in what may be a parody of the scene between Beatrix Kiddo and Pai Mei in Kill Bill in which Pai Mei says "Your Mandarin is lousy. It causes my ears discomfort.", which the ghost boy says to Cindy. She is told by the ghost boy that she can find the answer to the alien attack when she finds his father. He gives her directions to his location. Tom splits up with Cindy and flees with his kids. Cindy runs into Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), who apparently faked her death in Scary Movie 3, and together they manage to find the last working car and follow the directions of the ghost boy.
The scene then changes to the President of the United States being informed that aliens are attacking. President Baxter Harris (Leslie Nielsen) is sitting in Edna R. Penhall Elementary School, listening to a book being read; when his aide Jamison (Alonzo Bodden) comes, he sits motionless, wanting to hear the rest of the story. This mirrors George W. Bush's being read a children's story for seven minutes, after being told about the September 11 attacks. At an emergency session of the UN, and a round of horriably inappropriate jokes, President Harris reveals a weapon made to combat the ailens. Scientists have taken the lasers used by the TriPods, which kill the people but leave their clothes behind, and modified it to do the opposite to the ailens. The members of the UN get an unexpected, and quite unwelcome, demonstration when President Harris accidentally hits the switch and is soon standing in front of all the delegates, completely unaware that he is totally naked. It’s not long before the entire UN is stark naked. Baxter's aide Harper (Bryan Callen) tells Baxter that he's naked too where Baxter thinks that he was wearing a wrinkly leather coat. Harper escorts the President out of the UN.
Cindy and Brenda come across a village that is a hundred years behind modern times. After unsuccessfully trying to steal clothes off some villagers, they take some from a laundry basket and attempt to fit in. Unfortunately, they are captured and are taken into a court to decide their fate. Henry Hale (Bill Pullman), the head of the village, rules that Cindy and Brenda may stay in the village, but they may never leave.
Tom and his children run into a battle between the Army and triPods. Robbie decides to join the fight, excited by the graphic violence. While Tom tries to dissuade him, Michael Jackson (who has gathered a bunch of children) tries to persuade Rachel to come with him, but Tom manages to stop her in time. Unfortunately, Robbie gets away. Jackson is zapped by the triPod's heat ray; the first blast causes him to revert to his Bad appearance, the second into his Thriller incarnation, and the third reveals his true form - a balding middle-aged black man - before a fourth blast destroys him totally, leaving only his nose. Tom and his daughter flee into house protected by Oliver (Michael Madsen), parodying Tim Robbins' character from War of the Worlds, who is telling them that they should make their own tripods(with four legs).
That night, the village is attacked by Those We Do Not Speak Of, however it is discovered that they are simply villagers in costumes. Next door, Henry is stabbed by the mentally challenged Ezekiel (Chris Elliott). Henry reveals to Cindy and Brenda he is the father of the ghost boy, who was killed at Cindy's boxing match because everyone snapped their necks and Don King crushed him. He tells Cindy that only she has the power to defeat the triPods. At that point, Cindy and Brenda get captured by a triPod, as do Tom and Rachel.
The characters wake up in the bathroom from Saw. Cindy and Brenda are wearing the "Venus Fly Trap" from Saw II and Tom is wearing a device that would shoot a large dildo into his anus. Jigsaw appears on a monitor on the wall, and tells them they have 60 seconds to get the Venus Fly Traps off before they close. Eventually, Cindy figures out (after much prompting) that she has to get the key from behind her eye, which she does with ease, because the key was behind a glass eye she got due to a "bad bar fight in '96". Cindy frees them from their traps, and Tom's kids come down from the ceiling, about to be sliced into bits unless he holds onto a rope which happens to be between an iron maiden. He grabs onto the rope which leaves him open to another torture device called the Nut Cracker, which gives him various punishments such as kicking his crotch, and giving him a purple nurple and a wet willy. Moments before their deaths, Cindy finds photos in the toilet of Jigsaw, a woman, and the ghost boy, and realizes that Jigsaw was the ghost boy's real father, and the entire invasion was revenge for his son's death. He then says "Anyone can hold a grudge, but it takes real courage to forgive," and it is at this time that Jigsaw comes into the spotlight. He then tells them that the invasion is over and allows them to leave.
He apologizes for the invasion, and then Brenda and Jigsaw's brother, Zoltar, emerge from the other room, where they have just had sex. Jigsaw asks Zoltar if he caught anything, Zoltar replies that Brenda (untruthfully) told him she was a virgin and Jigsaw finish saying "We are so fucked." Nine months later, Brenda gives birth to a baby that looks just like Jigsaw and Zoltar.
After that, James Earl Jones gets hit by a bus while delivering Morgan Freeman's closing lines from War of the Worlds.
A five minute epilogue spoofs the Tom Cruise couch incident by showing an Oprah Winfrey Show episode with Tom Ryan jumping on a couch with Oprah (played by Debra Wilson). Tom runs around the studio, does backflips (performed by David Leighton), swings across the studio, and chews/rips apart one of the couch cushions. Cindy Campbell walks in and gets thrown by Tom off the stage. Tom then breaks Oprah's hands and wrists, smashes a chair over her head, runs towards the camera lens, and the screen goes black.
Box office
In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $40.2 million [1], the third best opening weekend of the Scary Movie franchise. It has the best Easter weekend opening weekend ever, beating Panic Room which made $30.1 million in its opening weekend and also the second best April opening, only $2 million behind Anger Management's record.
As of October 18, 2006, the film has grossed a total of $90,710,620 at the United States box office and $178,049,620 worldwide.
Earning over $40 million above the 'breaking even' point of its $45 million budget, and having a record-breaking opening, Scary Movie 4 is a bonafide success. Nonetheless, the film holds the dubious honor of the highest grossing opening weekend ever for a movie that did not break the $100 million dollar barrier.
Ratings
- In the USA, the official MPAA rating is PG-13 for crude and sexual humor throughout, some comic violence, and language.
- In the UK, the official BBFC rating is 15 for strong language and moderate sex references.
Cast
| Anna Faris | Cindy Campbell |
| Regina Hall | Brenda Meeks |
| Craig Bierko | Tom Ryan |
| Conchita Campbell | Rachel Ryan |
| Beau Mirchoff | Robbie Ryan |
| Anthony Anderson | Mahalik |
| Kevin Hart | C.J. |
| De Ray Davis | Marvin |
| Bill Pullman | Henry Hale |
| Carmen Electra | Holly |
| Chris Elliott | Ezekiel |
| Leslie Nielsen | President Baxter Harris |
| Henry Mah | Mr. Koji |
| Michael Madsen | Oliver |
| Charlie Sheen | Tom Logan |
| Patrice O'Neal | Rasheed |
| Garrett Masuda | Toshio Saeki |
| Cloris Leachman | Ms. Narris |
| Kathryn Dobbs | School Teacher |
| Link Baker | Zoltar (voice) |
| Angelique Naude | Waitress |
| Edward Moss | Michael Jackson |
| Rorelee Tio | Yoko |
| Allison Warren | Polish Delegate |
| Shaquille O'Neal | Himself |
| Dr. Phil | Himself |
| Lil' Jon | Himself |
| Fabolous | Himself/Gunman |
| Chingy | Himself |
| Bubba Sparxxx | Hoodlum |
| Bone Crusher | Hoodlum |
| Sean Paul (of Youngbloodz) | Himself |
| J-Bo (of Youngbloodz) | Himself |
| Don King | Himself |
| James Earl Jones | Himself |
| Dave Attell | Knifeman |
| John Reardon | Jeremiah |
| Simon Rex | George Logan |
| Kimani Ray Smith | Cutman |
| Debra Wilson | Oprah |
| Dale Wolfe | Hang Gliding Man |
| Holly Madison | Herself |
| Bridget Marquardt | Herself |
| Kendra Wilkinson | Herself |
Shooting locations
This is the third Scary Movie filmed in Vancouver. The others were 1 and 3.
Miscellanea
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (June 2007) |
 | This article needs attention from an expert on the subject. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. |
- In the poster, Tom's Shirt says "Cruzin' For A Bruzin'" or "I Did The Research".
- The rules Brenda is holding up, in the poster, says the following:
- I: Let the scary movies be seen, we will mock them.
- II: Let the weepy dramas be seen, we will give them something to cry about.
- III: Let the romantic comedies beware, for we are coming.
The third rule is a probable reference to the parody of romantic comedies Date Movie.
- Despite King Kong being in the poster, the film is not parodied in Scary Movie 4. Craig Mazin stated: "I don't know why King Kong is on the poster. We do not spoof King Kong in the movie." However, it was later spoofed in Date Movie.
- Someone is crushed by a car at the end of the movie, like the previous movies. This is the narrator James Earl Jones.
- The "nuts" joke was originally supposed to involve Mahalik putting his hand over CJ and saying "I wanna eat some peanuts!" It was changed because Hart couldn't stop laughing after saying the line because he kept saying "penis" instead of "peanuts".
- Most of the special effects in the film were in the parody of War of the Worlds, which were relatively well done and similar to those in War of the Worlds.
- This is the first in the Scary Movie franchise to be shot in high-definition video, specifically with the Panavision Genesis camera.
- Anna Faris denied the rumors about Tyson playing Cindy's opponent in the boxing scene. She said it was a boxing trainer who quite resembles Tyson a lot.
- This is the first film in the Scary Movie franchise to feature Regina Hall on the film's poster.
- Bill Pullman and Anna Faris both appeared in films parodied by Scary Movie 4: Faris can be seen in Brokeback Mountain and Pullman appeared in The Grudge, partly spoofing the same character he played in that movie.
- Carmen Electra and Chris Elliott are the only supporting cast members to appear in one Scary Movie film by Keenan Ivory Wayans and one by David Zucker. Electra played Drew in Scary Movie and Elliott played Hanson in Scary Movie 2. They are also the only actors to appear in the series more than once playing different characters.
- This film was supposed to spoof The Ring Two, but since it didn't do well at the box office, David Zucker decided to wait for War of the Worlds.
- Anna Faris and Regina Hall are the only two people that have appeared in all of the Scary Movie films.
- The producers of Saw III used Scary Movie 4's parody bathroom sets in their own production, although the bathroom in Scary Movie 4 looks like the Saw bathroom they aren't exact copies, on the audio commentary for Saw 3 the director stated something along the lines of "Scary Movie 4 had it close, but we still had to work on it." Meaning that the bathroom was not an exact replica of the ones used in Saw but it was cheaper than building them again.
- In the scene where Cindy Campbell and Brenda Meeks are driving to the village, Brenda is talking in her sleep. At one point, she says, "Look out, Russell Crowe's got a phone!" The line refers to an incident in a hotel when Crowe threw a phone at the hotel manager. Incidentally, Craig Bierko, who plays Tom Ryan, was accidentally punched by Crowe while filming Cinderella Man.
- Also in the scene where Cindy and Brenda are in the car, Brenda is talking in her sleep. When she wakes up she shouts "My lovely lady lumps!" This is a parody of The Black Eyed Peas's song "My Humps", which had a lot of controversy.
- The scene where Cindy finds Brenda collecting food on the crashed 747 plane, parodying a scene from War of the Worlds, was actually shot on the same set as the same scene it was parodying, on the Universal Studios backlot. The 747 Crash set is still kept intact after principal photography was completed and is apart of the studio tour till this day (2007).
- The lullaby that Tom Ryan sings to his daughter goes: "I'm in the club, lookin' for a..."it is by Ying Yang Twins & Mike Jones called Badd.
- The Scary Movie franchise has so far spoofed three films that star Sarah Michelle Gellar. They are Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Grudge.
- Brenda and Cindy parodied old comedy movies when they tried to steal clothes from the villagers(hiding behind something and beating up someone and wearing their clothes). But they failed (instead of stealing the clothes, they were the ones beaten up and leaving them with a headache).
DVD
Release date
According to DavisDVD.com, the DVD was released on August 15, 2006. This is available in a 91-minute "Unrated and Uncensored" version (available in both widescreen and fullscreen) and in an 83-minute PG-13 rated version (available in only fullscreen). The comedy spoof arrives with an anamorphic transfer, Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, an audio commentary with David Zucker, Bob Weiss and Craig Mazin, 15 deleted & extended scenes (including "Tom Ryan on Oprah - The Long Take"), "The Man Behind the Laugh" David Zucker, "Zany Spoof Humor-Zucker Style", "Interviewers Worst Nightmare", "The Visual Effects of Scary Movie 4", "The Youngbloodz", "Rappers and Actors" featurettes and an NBA Scary Movie 4 spot all retailing at $29.99. The bonus features are over 2 hours long.
Deleted scenes
David Zucker has revealed some deleted scenes that might be on the DVD:
- “We had a thing where Michael Madsen is about to chop the probe with an axe, and the probe switches the mirror so that Madsen’s looking at himself in the mirror and then he’s trying to duke himself out in the mirror,” Zucker said. “We never tried it in front of an audience.”
- The film’s ending is the second one Zucker shot, and the original ending appears on DVD: “In the original ending, when Craig Bierko and Anna Faris bring the kids back to Molly Shannon, they kiss and look over and Brenda was so happy that she lived through the thing. Then we had the crate drop on her,” he said. “But it didn’t get a laugh.” The ending also included the appearance of bluish ghosts of Bill Pullman's character, the ghost boy, and his mother, a parody of the ending of Return of the Jedi, where Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker are seen together.
Things happened with Cindy
- leaning on the knife
- washing with urine instead of water
- tripod invasion
- Bathroom trap
- being hit by a football
External links
