Scary Movie (1991) — Triskaidekafiles

SCARY MOVIE

WRITERS: Screenplay by Daniel Erickson, David Lane Smith, and Mark Voges
Story by Daniel Erickson

DIRECTOR: Daniel Erickson

STARRING: John Hawkes as Warren
Suzanne Aldrich as Barbara
Ev Lunning as Sheriff Pat Briggs
Lee Gettys as John Louis Barker

QUICK CUT: Warren and friends have a grand old time celebrating Halloween at the local haunted house.

THE MORGUE

Warren - The local nerdy kid, a lot twitchy, shy, and quiet, but he’s trying. He just needs to get out of his head, and out of his own way.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Happy Halloween! This year, we wrap up October with this potential hidden gem, called Scary Movie. It was slated to come out in '91, but never made any sort of wide release until AGFA put out their DVD/Blu Ray recently. I grabbed it on a whim, and it is definitely worth talking about. So let's do this!

The movie opens up as a grim reaper figure chases a baby faced John Hawkes around, and it's quickly revealed to just be a nightmare. But from there, we jump to brighter things, as the local haunted house is adding the finishing touches before the grand opening on Halloween night.

OH and also a serial killer's case has ended in a mistrial, and he's about to be transported to a psychiatric institute. A spoiler: He's gonna escape real soon.

The sheriff is stopping by to campaign and hand out fliers, and they use it to show off some of the geography of the haunted house.

But with our main location established, it's time to jump ahead to showtime, and Warren and his friends are waiting for the ladies to show up, and try and get Warren to loosen up.

When Barbara shows up, the girl I guess they're trying to set him up with, everything snaps into slow motion. It's not edited to "Dream Weaver" but it should be.

John Hawkes was the Elijah Wood of his day.

Meanwhile, John Louis Barker is being transported as I said, but there is suddenly a cow in the road. This is a far to common occurrence in rural Texas, and the van goes off the road.

We spend a LOT of time with Warren and his friends just kinda milling around outside the haunted house, and the only reason I stand by it is, we get to live with Warren's awkwardness, his uncomfortableness, and his shyness. We're uncomfortable, so is he, and it actually works. Even so, I would like to nudge things along a bit faster.

After the farmer finds his missing cow, and the crashed van, including a dead driver, we jump back to the haunt, some guy tries to offer Barbara to cut ahead and go with them. They are very VERY insistent.

Warren tries to avoid the knife and run, but gets it right in the chest...and finds out it's just a fake knife, and the guy was just giving him a hard time.

Poor Warren. He's not having a good day. It started with nightmares, now everyone is fake stabbing and laughing at him. He shuffles off to the porta-potty to recollect himself, and I definitely relate to the guy.

While Warren takes a whiz, the police show up at the van, and begin their search for the missing convict. Hmm! I wonder wherever he could be!

As the sheriff heads over to the haunt, since that is indeed a likely place to look, a little kid is sneaking in the back to bug his dad. He gets a bit of a scare shortly, before shuffling back out the door.

Warren runs into the sheriff, and overhears the news, which he shares when he rushes back to his friends. When he tells them about Barker's escape, they all just brush off the absurdity of a psycho killer escaping in Halloween...I mean, sure.

The gang finally reaches the front of the line to get tickets...TICKETS? That's as far as we've made it? Oh geeze. And Warren's is #666...because of course it is.

After 35 minutes, the gang finally gets to go into the haunted house, and Warren is very reluctant. He's worked himself up into such a state, and is just not in the mood for this. Well he damned well better GET in the mood. I've waited this long!

Meanwhile, Jerry is done scaring off the latest batch of kids, and heads off to the backstage area or however you wanna call it, to get some beers. I dunno, beers plus scares plus ACTUAL KNIVES seems like a bad combo

He gets distracted by the door his kid left open, and some noises, and doesn't make it back in time for the next crew coming in.

Someone finally comes in, grabs the meat cleaver out of the woodwork, and the tension and music builds, when the employed victim realises it's not Jerry under the mask.

The blade comes down, and everyone seems unimpressed, which is a humourous way to sell the murder...until they leave and we find out it's one of the other employees, because Jer got called away.

I absolutely love this misdirection, because it played so perfectly with expectations of the killer taking Jerry’s mask.

During all this, Warren takes a wrong turn, and gets lost in the backstage areas of the haunted house, and eventually runs into someone in a grim reaper type costume straight out of his nightmares. Possibly because it was made up of this footage.

He runs off, finds a place to hide, and tries to wait out the person he believes is the escaped Barker.

Warren finds a gashed up body that looks like it was punctured with the end of a scythe, and it makes him more squirrely.

Welcome back to the WNUF Halloween Special!

He makes a bit too much noise, draws the attention of the reaper, and he gets chased around the house. By sheer dumb luck, the reaper slips and falls, giving Warren the chance to grab the scythe, and slice off the man's hand.

Warren freaks out and runs off while the reaper just stands their staring at his stump. He screams out that Barker is there, coming for them all, and tries to get everyone to safety.

Not surprising that not many listen, since it's Halloween, but points for trying.

Aww yeah, time for some old fashioned small town mob justice.

It's not until Jerry gets over the loudpseaker and announces that Barker has escaped, and they are evacuating the haunted house for everyone's safety.

During the rush to get out, Warren passes through a room with a rope bridge over a pit, and wouldn't you know it, he gets shoved off and dangles for his life off the bridge.

It's not a long drop, it's more an inconvenience than anything…oh, and the pit is full of snakes.

Or at least, that is how things appear, since a) safety concerns and 2) they are just rubber snakes, once again playing with expectations.

The thing I love about this movie is exactly that. It messes with your head, while it messes with Warren's. You are never quite certain what you're seeing is real. Something that a LOT of haunted house attraction movies take to heart, and this is almost the template for them.

Another thing is, that’s being aided by how dreamlike and hallucinatory this whole movie seems. You are on a journey, led through it, and never sure what is going on.

The kid that's been wandering around throughout the movie shows up, and hands a chair over the bridge down to Warren, helping him out.

So we get to spend some quiet time with Warren and the kid just casually roaming the haunted house, while they creep towards the exit. It's nice to have some time to check out more of the place, but at the same time, is a bit too slow for this stage of the movie.

He gets spooked in one room though, losing track of where he is, and Warren ends up running back through the spookhouse.

Someone is still chasing Warren though, and that makes things more frenetic, until Warren bangs his leg and crumples to the ground.

But Warren spies a chainsaw, and he tries to go full Ash...except he can't get it started. He clobbers the guy on the other side of the curtain with it though, aaaand...it's one of the townsfolk hunting for Barker.

He spies the shadow of his nightmares coming towards him, grabs the townie's shotgun, and books it into another room.

Warren makes it to the roof, but as he crawls towards his much sought after safety...he falls through the roof and lands on a pile of pumpkins.

He gets spooked AGAIN and shoots a hole in the wall. He tries to call for help through the bullet hole but...everyone is too busy trying to duck and cover after a shot went off.

The police bring out the bullhorn and call out to Barker, believing him to be inside, and Warren curls up into a ball.

We catch the sight of a shadowy figure behind Warren, and eventually, Warren sees it too. He dives down the pit where he dropped the shotgun, and gets ready to defend himself.

The shadowy figure comes over the fake grave, and poor Warren, whose anxiety and paranoia and everything has just been ramped up throughout the entire night, lets off a shot.

He finally escapes the building, and the police outside question him. He admits to being the one firing shots.

They hear he shot Barker, and go rushing in...but what they find is NOT Barker's dead body, but instead, they find that Warren shot the sheriff, he did not shot the escapee.

Oh, and the guy whose hand he sliced off was one of the haunt's employees. So yeah, Warren has been oopsing all over the place.

I’m glad Larry got some work after the Stooges broke up.

It's finally revealed that Barker just wandered off, and has been picking flowers in a field somewhere. He is in no condition to be killing anyone. Everything in this movie was just inside Warren's head as he worked himself up into a fever pitch.

That's...kinda awesome.

It definitely could have been done better, but this is such a unique movie and experience. But poor Warren has snapped, and is gonna spend a lot of time dealing with this trauma.

This movie has you spend a lot of time wondering what's going on, and the pay off is actually worth it when you see where they're going with it.

And…and then I met my daughter, who was working as a stripper, but she didn’t KNOW she was my daughter…

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s on the grainy side, and it looks older than you might expect, even for early 90s, but everything is clear and crisp.

Audio: Solid enough, and again, it’s about what you’d expect.

Body Count: Almost not even worth mentioning, but let’s do this.

1 - Almost 17 minutes in, and we discover one of the dead transport drivers.
2 - Warren killed the sheriff, accidentally.

Blood Type - D+: Almost zero blood, but there is a few splats, and some of the haunted house effects aren’t bad, and points for the stump after the hand removal.

Drink Up! Every time Warren scurries off somewhere scared.

Movie Review: It’s no surprise by now that I enjoyed this movie. But it’s also no surprise that there are problems here. The movie is a bit too bloated, or doesn’t have enough going on. You can only drag out misdirection so much though, so I get that. Maybe trim the movie down a bit at the start, or give us some more insights into the other characters, and do more in the haunted house. It’s not bad at all, but it still wanders a bit too much. Still, that dreamlike quality, and wondering where all this is going, is worth checking out, it just doesn’t quite stick the landing. Three out of five severed hands.

Entertainment Value: I wish there was a little more camp, that would have helped. The most entertainment here comes from John Hawkes. He is perfectly cast, and he gives just the right amount of nervous awkwardness. Warren’s performance absolutely works, and is the largest part of why this movie succeeds. Still, there’s not much truly baffling to watch, but it’s still an interesting movie, two out of five skull masks…but don’t take that as a bad thing here.