SCREAM? BARF!

Rating: 4/10 (7 June 2001)

WARNING: The following is slippery with dripping sarcasm and MAY contain spoilers:
Thriller Movies 101:
Rule 1. If a major movie actor is listed following `and ' you can be
pretty confident she WON'T be in the sequels. Rule 2. If someone in the top three billings is the second person to be attacked, you can be pretty certain that person will get away and WILL be in the sequels. Rule 3. If the person getting top billing plays a peripheral character, you can be pretty confident he will figure prominently in the climax. Rule 4. If you are going to kill someone in an especially gruesome way, make sure it looks real. The disembowelment of Drew Barrymore's boyfriend looks especially phony (guts are blue and don't appear attached to the OUTSIDE skin); and, although Drew's corpse looks real, she does NOT appear to have been eviscerated, though the dialogue tells us she was. Drew's sweater would have been shredded and soaked with blood and body fluid..
NOTE TO WES CRAVEN: Play your movie side by side with any of
the especially `juicy' `X Files' episodes, preferably one involving autopsies or chest popping aliens. THAT'S how to do it RIGHT, Mr. Craven.
A few points to ponder:
1. People who live in isolated areas generally have guns and know how to use them, unlike spoiled, snotty, Hollywood actors who can afford bodyguards and abusive boyfriends.
2. Would ANYONE, even one with the IQ of a Hollywood actor, race out on a front porch to challenge a threatening stranger without some kind of weapon, ESPECIALLY after two acquaintances have been killed horribly?

3. These days people generally have screened-in windows, even on the second floor, ESPECIALLY fathers with nubile teenage daughters.
4. A smart person who manages to get an armed assailant to the ground will kick him in the HEAD (preferably the BACK of the head) as well as in the groin. Just about anybody kicked ANYWHERE in the head more than once is not likely to get up. Of course, had our intrepid actors done that, we wouldn't have a movie; and in SCREAM, everyone behaves just as stupidly as he or she would in any other dumb "splatter" movie.

NOTE TO DREW BARRYMORE: In "Scream," for once, your hair looks great; you should return to that color, style AND hairdresser. Just as important, you were BORN to wear tight sweaters. Please do it more often.