Scary Movie (1991)

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Director: Daniel Erickson

Screenplay: Daniel Erickson, David Lane Smith and Mark Voges

Cast: John Hawkes as Warren; Suzanne Aldrich as Barbara; Ev Lunning as Sheriff Pat Briggs; Mark Voges as Jerry; Zane Rockenbaugh as Billy; Jason Russel Waller as Brad; Virginia Pratt as Shelley; Ernie Taliaferro as the Laughing Man; Zeke Mills as Basil; Butch Patrick as Eddie; Lee Gettys as John Louis Barker; Lorne Loganbill as Otto

Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

First of all, if you were expecting a review of the parody horror film by the Wayan Brothers, or the sequels, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Can I make it up with a once impossible to see horror film from Texas, not properly released until 2019, instead? Arguably the biggest factor to bear in mind, beyond the fact our fresh face lead is actually a thirty here and would become Oscar nominated John Hawkes, is that director Daniel Erickson was only nineteen when he made Scary Movie. That's pretty incredible especially as, in the midst of all the horror films churned out at this point in history, it's with its flaws still a hell of a lot more accomplished than many.

Halloween night - Warren (Hawkes) comes to a haunted house attraction less than in a great state of mind, nervous already having had a vivid nightmare the night before of a Grim Reaper like figure which is also found at this gruesome local haunted house. There's a potential romance - with a near sighted girl with raven black hair, bold eyeliner, in a white virgin maiden costume and with a collectomaniac habit - but he's still jittery. It doesn't help either a known killer has escaped from the nearby mental asylum that same night.

Don't expect a slasher film however, which was a big surprise and honestly a lot more interesting for myself. It's a make-or-break detail of the film for many, but I'm personally not a fan of slasher films as a concept; I enjoy them, but when they, like most, turn into stalk and chase scenes I turn off, when in reality even the emptiest of characterisation is more appealing. I personally found the result we get with Scary Movie a breath of fresh air instead, getting what is a very late regional horror production more interested in mood. Incredibly late, into the nineties, but very much of the type as this production also feels like a time capsule to community haunted houses which stands out; Halloween is an important holiday in British, but especially for the Americans, the traditional having greater weight even in terms of this type of yearly spectacle, where even the Evangelical Christians built their own "Hell Houses" to scare people to Jesus. This one in the film feels a lot closer to reality, to the point of potential verisimilitude, in how it's an immense creation but clearly the product of locals in a small town with enough elbow grease and cooperation between them, right down to the ghouls inside committing horrors being buddies likely to be drinking in the bar the day after.

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It's an interesting mood to latch onto, and it's strange in slight doses in the best of ways. Even without Roky Erickson and the Butthole Surfers on the soundtrack, large portions of Scary Movie are incredibly eccentric. The collectomaniac to the reoccurring large man, the same one wearing a red top, who is always there to laugh at the appropriate moment, the film's openly peculiar. It also means the film wrong foots the viewer deliberately - the aforementioned ghouls from the last paragraph get a clever take on expectations I won't spoil. In general the local flavour right in terms of side characters onscreen add an incredible charm and personality to the material.

A lot of the film is also at a great advantage of both the director and production creating a very atmospheric film, one also aiding by John Hawkes in the lead. The film is built more on tension, as rather than a lot of deaths or jumps, Scary Movie taking its time housed in Warren's mind and his fears by the moment he is literally shoved into the haunted house. In dark, claustrophobic corridors and rooms, the homemade world of the set is idiosyncratic, and thankfully, Hawkes plays the neurotic main character exceptionally well, even with the fact he's clearly been based on Bruce Campbell's character Ash in the Evil Dead series in look. It follows a similar logic if not as cruel as what happens to Ash, but including climbing over pumpkins, the same tension is to be found with a killer in the same environment.

[Major Spoiler Warning]

Expect that isn't the case, and for any criticism that Scary Movie is a slow eighty minutes, Daniel Erickson especially as a nineteen year old filmmaker managed to pull out a morbid plot twist, where Warren has had a psychotic breakdown and maimed, even killed, patrons thinking they were a killer. It's a horror pulp story conclusion to be proud of, befitting as Scary Movie has tricked the viewer into thinking a figure has been killing haunted house staff only to continually undermine it continually throughout the film beforehand. And it makes sense considering how Hawkes' performance is great, built upon an anxiety built up from the start.

[Major Spoilers End]

Laced with an incredible cynical and black sense of humour at the end, Scary Movie does so much to admire, sad in knowledge that it took so much longer for the film to be properly seen. The film only had a semblance of release originally by a few VHS distributed locally in Erickson's home in Austin, Texas. This was the reason the film was unavailable, but also why versions were available as its composer Hank Hehmsoth, who only worked on this film but should be praised for his startling electronic score, put the film up online. As of 2019, the American Genre Film Archive released the film for cinema screenings with plans to be released properly in general, a wonderful conclusion for the film as it's worthy of an actual release finally. Erickson himself never made a lot of work sadly, though intriguingly he did return, with John Hawkes also returning to voice a character, with the utterly compelling premise of Eve's Necklace (2010), a neo-noir entirely acted out with mannequins.

Yes, mannequins...which has to be an inspired creative idea worth investigating for myself...

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