Scary Movie (1991)

 

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

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The existence of the parody horror franchise, started by the Wayan Brothers, makes covering this independent Texas film more difficult than it should be, as that title fits Daniel Erickson’s movie perfectly but is also very generic to sell, especially when a big franchise ran with it. It belies what a fascinating little piece this is, beyond the fact our fresh face lead would become Oscar nominated John Hawkes and that Erickson himself was only nineteen when he made Scary Movie. The latter is incredible in context, as in the midst of all the horror films churned out at this point in history, someone that young made an accomplished production like this.

It is Halloween night, and  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 is a potential romance - with a near sighted girl with raven black hair, bold eyeliner, in a white virgin maiden costume and with a kleptomaniac habit - but he is still jittery. It does not help either a man has escaped from the nearby mental asylum that same night.

Do not expect a slasher film however, which is where things get interesting here. It is a make-or-break detail for this as this instead plays to its immediate plot detail, that Warren is already on edge and everything is subjective. A very late era regional horror production, it has a playfulness where pulling the rug is what reoccurs over and over, breaking expectations by mixing between what is happening as a staged moment in the haunted house, and what may be a threat that Warren is stuck into. It is also a compelling time capsule as a result of this, to community haunted houses which stands out. Halloween is an important holiday in British, but especially for the Americans, the traditional has 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 is 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. That this is a stage for what is a psychodrama, where a man already on edge becomes more scared just getting near the entrance, makes it a perfect context for such a story.

It is an interesting mood to latch onto, and what is here is 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 kleptomaniac who takes salt shakers from restaurants to the reoccurring large man, the same one wearing a red top, who is always there to laugh at the appropriate moment, the film is openly peculiar, and contrasts this with the scenes following non-central figures around this haunted house just getting on with the night's work. It also helps the film wrong foots the viewer deliberately to an advantage, in general the local flavor even in terms of side characters onscreen adding 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 aided by John Hawkes in the lead. The film is built more on tension, as rather than a lot of deaths or a jump once in a while, Scary Movie takes 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 is 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, and a sense of paranoia which becomes the central concern of the film with its dénouement.

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 with a nuance, the idea of a killer being involved entirely subjective until the end, where it is a psychological breakdown and tragedy which is of concern, a horror pulp story twist to be proud of. It befits as Scary Movie has toyed with the viewer like a haunted house would, and considering how Hawkes' performance is great, the building anxiety from the start to the end is masterfully done. 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, even if things thankfully changed over time. The composer of the original score Hank Hehmsoth, who should be praised for his startling electronic score, put the film up online, and in 2019, the American Genre Film Archive released the film for cinema screenings with plans to be released properly in genera which thankfully came to be. 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 is an inspired creative idea worth investigating for myself...