Hey if you wanna see a font called "Superchunk" go here: 
http://www.prototype-typeo.com/chunk.html

Okay. That was fun.

Scream:

This is the best horror film I've seen in a long long time--but then
it's the only horror film I've seen in a while, I think. Does "Shallow
Grave" count?

Point being, I'm not the sort of horror fan who has so internalized the
genre's conventions that I can overlook it when a horror film gets
generic. And special effects and bad music have never saved a lousy
movie for me, either. I'm no mindless Clive Barker drone.

So when I tell ya "Scream" is worth the five bucks, I mean the old guy,
Wes Craven, has managed to make a horror satire/homage which gleefully
fucks with every horrorfilm convention but still managed to wake me up
from my late-afternoon stupor and get me all nervous and creeped out.

So amend that: One of the best pulp films I've seen this year, period.
The set design and casting and costuming are all just primo.

Most parody these days is the series-of-set-pieces
type--"Airplane"-style, if you will. There's a plot, but it exists
primarily as framework for one autonomous gag after another.

"Student Bodies," the most memorable horror-parody in my brain at the
moment (there's something timeless about that sequence from the killer's
POV where he's digging thru the desk looking for a murder weapon,
discards scissors, paperweights, pens, before settling on a box of
paperclips . . . but I digress), was more the set-piece variety.

"Scream" succeeds, marvelously, because the parody/pastiche elements are
far more organic to the plot. (Craven's always had sort of a thing for
killing people in grossly funny ways, anyway). And the subplot (a horror
film with a real live subplot!) about media overexposure works on its
own level, as well as riffing on Oliver Stone (who makes a cameo, I
swear to god, as an anonymous shopkeeper locking his store in
preparation for the curfew that's imposed halfway through).

I mean, a serial-killer movie which features a scene where the
video-store dork, ranting on about potential suspects, yells "who needs
a motive? It's the millenium! the Millenium, I tell you!" . . . I was
rolling.

One big hassle with writing about horror is the whole
giving-away-the-ending thing. I used to be ruthless about that, but
fuckit. I'm supposed to be in bed anyway. Let me just reiterate: It's
not gag-laden, it's just quietly, deeply humorous while maintaining that
sort of bladder-weakening tension I can't usually sit still for. But I
managed to forget some of the suspense by listening for the
horror-film-score motifs hidden, some quite subtly, in the soundtrack.
Yes, it's *that* good. Works on all kinda levels.

Oh yeah: this guy Skeet whats-his-name. He really *does* look just like
Johnny Depp. An added plus for all you "Nightmare on Elm Street" fans .
.. .

Ross
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