Last Updated on August 5, 2021
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
1. Drew Barrymore – SCREAM (1996)
The first time’s always the best! Or is it, the first cut is always the deepest? Whatever maxim you ascribe, I think we can all agree the very first on-screen kill from the SCREAM franchise remains the most harrowing. First off, it’s the setup. After an ingenious stint of terrifying trivia, then showcasing her boyfriend disemboweled on the back lawn, Drew Barrymore’s character Casey Becker is frightened to near death before even coming face-to-mask with her maker. And when she does finally meet the blade, Craven starts the sequence with a stylized slow-motion shot, then counteracts with a very realistic follow up. As Casey lays bloodily on the lawn, Ghost Face grips her throat for grim death, but she somehow fights him off. Then she rolls over to find her parents arriving home, completely oblivious to the fact their little girl is oozing her life away mere feet from where they stand. Casey, on her feet now, tries to cry out for help from her mother, but as she nears the stairs she’s dropped and slashed twice more before being dragged by her feet away from the house. The true terror comes from the parents knowing their daughter is in trouble (the phone) and yet being so utterly helpless to save her. Then of course there’s the sight of Casey dangling via noose from the front yard sycamore. A masterful opening sequence from all involved!
2. Rose McGowan – SCREAM (1996)
All in all, this is probably the most inventive of Ghost Face’s slayings. Equal parts funny and off-putting, there’s nothing forgettable about the way Rose McGowan loses her life at the hands of the masked maniac. Or should I say, at the motor of an electric garage door opener? Y’all know the steez, when McGowan’s Tatum hits the garage for some more brewskies, she puts up a decent fight before doing what any young hottie would do to escape: wriggle your way through a doggy-door. As you can almost see Ghost Face smiling under that facade of his, his work is made pretty damn simple when Tatum gets stuck. He merely presses the garage door opener and watches Tatum get awkwardly lifted to the ceiling, shrieking for her life until, once reaching the metal skirting, her head pops like a grape, her limbs swaying lifelessly. Perhaps even more amusing is the ineptitude of Ghostie’s fighting style. Tatum knocks dude down to the ground by opening a freezer door, explodes beer bottles on his body and flips him over like Daniel San does Johnny. My guess is that was Stu in costume and didn’t much wanna dispatch of those tickle bitties!
3. Jada Pinkett Smith – SCREAM 2 (1997)
As I alluded to on Wednesday’s podcast, the opening of SCREAM 2, as deftly as it’s handled, is almost entirely cribbed from the beginning of the 1980 flick HE KNOWS YOU’RE ALONE. Still, Craven comports the scene with far more style and suspense, and while he doesn’t do anything to dispel the stereotype of black folks hardly ever making it out of a horror flick alive, what happens to Jada Pinkett Smith’s character is downright unsettling. There she is, sitting in a raucous, pandemonium theater for the opening of the fictionalized STAB movie, hyper theatergoers all decked in Ghost Faces costumes, equipped with fake knives and whatnot. Suddenly, Jada’s pierced once deeply in the stomach, and she tries to get up and seek help, she’s pin-cushioned once more in the back. It’s one thing to be stalked-and-slashed by your lonesome, in the confines of your own house, but when you get that kind of treatment in public, with hundreds of people around you completely oblivious, that’s gotta be even more unnerving. The fact that no one helps adds insult to injury, and for that we forgive the operatic histrionics Jada closes the scene with.
4. Mathew Lillard – SCREAM (1996)
Poor Stu, this guy gets f*ckin’ WORKED in the lead up to his cartoonish demise. When he and Billy want to make themselves appear as innocent survivors, albeit badly wounded, the former is stuck in the gut a little too deep for comfort. Wan and sickly looking, bleeding off slowly, Stu conjures enough energy to get into a little hand to hand combat with our girl Sidney. They slap each other around a bit, roll around on the floor, but when push comes to shove, Sidney bites homey’s hand, shatters a potted plant over the dude’s dome, then, as he lies there in a dormant torpor, Sid tips an antiquated TV set on his face. Sparks fly, his body quavers, hilarious sounds emanate from what’s left of his voice box. An interesting aside, the final banter between Stu and Sid: “I always had a thing for you, Sid”…”in your dreams” was adlibbed by the two actors. It’s also fascinating to think that, apart from being one of the only kills on our list not achieved with a knife, it’s the only one not done performed by Ghost Face himself.
5. Omar Epps – SCREAM 2 (1997)
Gloryhole anyone? Okay, maybe I’m just thinking of the Wayans Bros. lampoon in SCARY MOVIE 2, but there’s no denying how phallic the impalement is my man Omar Epps suffers in the opening of SCREAM 2. You know the setup, homey goes to the loo for a little pre-film relief, hears an odd noise in the stall next his and wisely sticks his ear up to the conjoining wall to suss what the f*ck it is. After a beat, dude gets face-penetrated harder than Jenna Haze. But instead of a steely cock, it’s The Face’s sharpened Rambo knife he gets stuck with. Yikes! But aside from Epps’ reaction, what with blood instantly drizzling from his mouth, the expression of sheer agony, it’s the way Ghost puts the finishing touch on him by pushing the blade all the way through the stall, so to exit the wound point and leave dude a bloody mess. Epps slumps out of the frame, while a semi-shocked Ghost leers at his blood-covered knife with relative agog. Thing is, if Q (Epps) could take a gunshot blast from Bishop (Tupac) in JUICE, how the hell could he let this shite happen to him?
6. Sarah Michelle Gellar – SCREAM 2 (1997)
O Buffy, wherefore art thou not? The same year Sarah Michelle Gellar took over Kristy Swanson’ mantle as TV’s teenage vampire slayer, the poor girl was getting insidiously toyed with by our pal Ghost Face. In a drawn out cat-and-mouse sequence, Gellar’s Cici ambles through her sorority house, gets tormented by eerie phone calls, and when is finally face to face with the masked (wo)man, does what any college educated person should do: run upstairs! What I particular dig about the way Cici is dispatched is how brutally tossed through a glass balcony door she gets. F*ckin’ rag-dolled! And if that’s not bad enough, the poor girl gets savagely lanced twice in the back while on all fours. But she’s a fighter, so Ghost Face finishes her off once and for all by casting her off the third story veranda, where she splatters on the pavement below. Even more amusing, just as Cici’s being dismounted from the ledge, in the bottom right corner of the frame you can see an eager crew member’s head pop up out of the f*ckin’ blue. Straight comedy!
7. Liev Schreiber – SCREAM 3 (2000)
I can just see the conversation between Liev Schreiber, Craven and Bob Weinstein. “Look, I’ll appear in another goddamn Scream movie under one condition: kill me the f*ck off before the damn credits roll.” Kudos Liev, I’d have done the same. As such, in yet another gauchely insulting death sequence, Cotton Weary finally gets the final curtain call. After fending off a febrile co-ed who thinks he’s the killer, Cotton sustains a golf club whack to the ear, a stab wound to the arm, then a bookshelf to the dome that catapults the f*cker across room like he was Randy Savage. And if that’s not enough, he then he gets loped plum in the heart with Ghostie’s blade. Not to be outdone, he’s told “It was a simple game Cotton, you should have told me where Sidney was…now you lose!” The look on Schreiber’s face is priceless. It’s like he’s thinking, “bitch I’m a future Tony winner, what the hell I’m doing in such embarrassing dross.” He then gets stuck once more for good measure, though it’s a 90s style cutaway to the title card. Still, it’s an amusing way to kill of one of the franchise mainstays.
8. W. Earl Brown – SCREAM (1996)
Ah, nothing like a swift throat slashing. During the fevered third act of Craven’s inaugural SCREAM, Sidney is on the lam as all of her classmates are gorily falling by the wayside. When she decides to seek refuge in the news van parked outside of Stu’s party-house, technology seems to be just as adversarial as Ghost Face himself. You remember, as Sidney and Kenny the cameraman survey Ghost Face’s movement inside the house, “a 30 second delay” causes them to let their guard down just enough for death to commence. What’s so effective about this kill is the simplicity, the brusqueness. Framed tightly, as soon as Kenny whips his head around toward the front door to spot his maker, a quick blade across the throat is as much of a sucker punch to the audience as it is a death blow to the dude himself. Also, Craven holds on Kenny for a moment, we see him emote, his eyes twitch, blood seeping from his neck onto his white undershirt…all of it feel as close to the real thing as perhaps any kill in the entire canon. Damn technology!
9. Jenny McCarthy – SCREAM 3 (2000)
Here’s another fatality of headshaking proportions. While on set, locked in a prop room festooned with row after row of Ghost Face ensembles, Jenny McCarthy (never looking better, mind you) does her best to put up a fight. Okay, it’s about as potent as a eunuch. After hiding among the black cloaks and dialing the studio instead of the police, McCarthy is accosted by Ghost Face, knocked to the floor, at which point she grabs a rubber machete and lops it across her assailant’s body to no avail. She then picks up a golf club and gives two healthy lunges that couldn’t be more inaccurate. The best part? Ghostie then decks the girl plum the grill with a fierce left hook that spins her around and sends her face crashing through a door window, her body bent over the wooden frame like she’s ready to get f*cked from behind. And that she does. Ghost Face jousts the girl’s backside with his trusty hunting knife, leaving her facialized in blood. Cartoonish, sexually charged, utterly ludicrous, I think we’d all rather see McCarthy scream in bed than a bad sequel!
10. Parker Posey – SCREAM 3 (2000)
Admittedly, all of the kills from SCREAM 3 mentioned on our compilation are done so out of pure hilarity and not much more; a sort of “so bad they’re good” tip of the cap. And since her character is so damn annoying, her gory comeuppance is not only welcomed, it’s downright stupefying. If you’ve forgotten, Parker Posey plays an actress tasked with portraying Gale Weathers in the fictionalized STAB 3 film. Sure, it’s mildly amusing to watch Posey trade verbal barbs with Courteney Cox, but her death sequence takes the f*ckin’ bakery. Ensnared behind a wall of one-sided interrogation room style mirrors, with Gale and Dewey feebly trying to help her on the other side, Ghost Face first impales Posey in the back leaving nary a scratch. Then the blistering Dewey line: “Look Gale, the mirrors are moving,” followed by gut slashing from Ghost Face, to Dewy then shooting through the mirror to find Posey’s corpse drop to the floor. Not only suffering the indignities of being stuck in the gut, the boyfriend of the bitch you’ve been arguing with all movie (a cop no less) does you in via gunshot? Wow, sir!
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