On a Sunday in December 1996 somewhere around central Long Island, NY a ten year old is dragged to Scream and becomes a lifelong horror fan. Thanks for that, Mom!

Before diving into that December of the mid ’90s let me take a moment.

Were you always a horror fan? Did you grow up on big screen frights as far back as you can remember, or can you pinpoint the genesis of your love of the macabre to a memorable experience that sticks with you? Horrific Origin will be an ongoing series where we explore what got our various team members into the horror family throughout the decades with our own accounts of what makes this bloody well so worth returning to over and over.

For a while I didn’t even really consider the where/when/how/etc of being enthralled by things that go bump in the night as it felt an ever-present part of life. Once I put a little thought in, however, I realized I wasn’t *always* this way. I remember my Horrific Origin like it was yesterday…

Dec 22, 1996

“Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton is the number one song in the US, though surely Los Del Rio’s Macarena still lingers in many brains after a months long reign at number one (thankfully my older sister prefers 311 to all that). Seinfeld and ER fight it out at the top for ratings supremacy with things like Home Improvement, NYPD Blue, Barbara Walters specials, The X-Files, Suddenly Susan, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Touched by an Angel, and so much more ’90s gold filling out the rest of the top 20 shows every week.

Dolly the Sheep, Clinton wins a 2nd term, Michael Jordan, Tickle-Me Elmo, Atlanta Summer Olympics, Yankees win the World Series, both Oprah’s book club and Fox News begin, Madeleine Albright becomes first female Secretary of State, JonBenet Ramsey, and that’s enough for the yearbook summary.

Bringing myself and my five year old sister along to Scream probably isn’t intentional on my mother’s part but a palate cleanser is surely needed after choking down hours of kiddie movies. Plus, as a single mother I’m positive getting private movie theater time wasn’t given much breathing room. My mom started us off that day with one for me in Jingle All the Way (I’m ten, give me a break) so little Adem’s already a happy camper before having my mind blown when Schwarzenegger’s done hamming it up with the fact that movie hopping to Space Jam is next. 

My sister’s sold at “Looney Tunes” and I’m on board with the whole sneaky idea, period–watching movie after movie for hours on end with free flowing popcorn and soda (which I later discover are thanks to my mom hitting up a different concession employee now and again with a sob story about her kids dropping everything). I can’t be more jazzed. Space Jam ends, however, and with it comes shocking news: now we’re hopping into Scream. 

Terrified ten year old me tries to push back but a younger sister minutes away from sleep and a mom hungry for something rated R leads to that executive decision–it’s Scream time, buddy! Quick backstory: at about age five I’d seen Child’s Play, which on its own would have sufficiently put me off scary movies for the rest of my life but there was also a disappearing & reappearing My Buddy doll of mine I thought was alive. Why? Well, I kept trying to get rid of the thing by hiding it away in the back of a closet, then in the laundry machine, and finally by just throwing the damn doll away except–as I found out much later–my mom kept finding it and putting it back (upping my Child’s Play fears to maximum “This doll is *definitely* alive, the movie was true!” levels). Point being, I actively do not want to watch Scream or any scary movie ever again yet here I am en route to the auditorium.

While trailers blare away with my sister somehow already asleep my mom explains it’s all “make believe” on a loop–just grown-ups “playing pretend.” Mom crosses her fingers things go well as anonymous loud screams over the title screen do nothing to calm young Adem. The frights begin…

Casey Becker gets a strange call one night from someone with exactly the kind of voice you *wouldn’t* want to hear when home alone. They chat about good scary movies and ones that suck while Casey makes popcorn, preparing to sit down for a movie any minute. As you know, things progressively get worse for Casey (and her boyfriend who’s tied to a chair by the pool) until intestines dangle from his sliced open torso while she hangs from a tree swing in the front yard with a pile of steaming entrails directly below her eviscerated corpse.

I’ve absolutely never seen anything like this outside stolen glimpses from things like The Silence of the Lambs before being shuffled back to bed (plus the previously mentioned Child’s Play, which certainly left a mark). Being able to watch such a violent, bloody, funny, scary take on horror with no magic, ghosts, monsters, or anything aside from regular people wearing costumes as they murder has me rapt–I finally have a seat at the grown-up table even if much of what they’re discussing flies right over my head. The rest of the movie drags me deeper into their world of callous teens, out of depth cops, and a conniving reporter all trying to survive the slasher murder mystery they find themselves living through and I can’t get enough of it. I don’t recall every second of the viewing, obviously, but these things stick with me:

• I have no desire in the world to see Sid’s oft-teased boobs.
• Principal Fonzie touches Sidney too much.
• “Liver alone!”, “Did you really put her liver in the mailbox?”, etc.
• Everyone seems rich.
• I’m curious about the Tom Cruise cock talk–show me a dick!
• Using a computer to call 911 is the most unreal thing I’ve seen so far.
• Dewey is funny.
• Gale is Monica.
• The bitchy girls in the bathroom look so old. Definitely not teenagers.
• Why does a Principal have so many different clothes at work?
• “She’s with me!” Dewey’s a big goof.
• Tatum’s nipples are sure on display.
• Kill the guy, Tatum, stop running away!
• Relationship drama is boring.
• I like Randy a lot.
• “I’m on duty.”
• TWO killers??!?
• Billy & Stu stabbing each other is nuts–what’s happening!?
• Stu is a *hilarious* murderer.
• “Guess I remembered the safety that time, bastard.”
• Everyone’s shot or stabbed or somehow blood-soaked.
• Woo, Dewey’s alive!

Then credits roll and it begins–“Can we go to Blockbuster?”

Enthralled by everything, I need to see more horror. All the movies Randy, Stu, and everyone jokes about are my jumping off point. My mother has no idea her cosmic punishment for dragging me along to see one scary movie is now she’ll be seeing *all* the scary movies. Turns out I love being scared, not knowing what the hell is going to happen, wondering what I’d do in that situation, and that it’s a completely safe way to feel those things then go about the day. Upon a recent re-watch I’ll add these to that list of ten year old Adem’s thoughts:

• The computers are huge.
• I still don’t want to see Sid’s boobs 😉
• Rose McGowan in a Weinstein movie–awkward…
• The fountain scene introduction to our main cast of teens still makes me laugh.
• Everyone *is* rich (and white).
• Just having a cell phone casts suspicion on Billy–whereas today is exactly the opposite.
• Dewey’s mom & Billy’s mom, from Gremlins, are the same actress twelve years apart. Forever “Mom,” I guess.
• There’s a bunch of rather obvious ADR.
• Dewey’s desk at work is a wonderland of immaturity–the boob hat, in particular. 
• “Cotton murdered my mother”–Sidney could shill for Big Spandex with that attitude.
• The extra behind Randy at the video store at the “always some stupid bullshit reason to kill your girlfriend” moment certainly makes the most of it.
• Ghostface in the market is lame.
• The party guy talking about that part in Halloween having blood that’s “too red” makes no sense since there’s no blood in that scene (and barely any in the movie as a whole). Fail.
• “I’m on duty” endures with a chuckle.
• “Fuck you both!” is a pretty reasonable call in the moment, I’ll say.
• Good moment where Billy’s motive is news to Stu–who apparently requires extremely little convincing to kill people.
• Once he’s unmasked Matthew Lillard really goes for it with Stu and we’re rewarded with movie magic–I can’t say enough about how entertainingly insane he is to me.
• Cox & Arquette really do have pretty great chemistry and I can see why Craven spares Dewey from death at the last second.
• Marco Beltrami’s score works well, even if things get bombastic at times, and the soundtrack is a fun mid 90s collection.

As a final Remember That? for 1996 here’s the top 20 movies of December 20-22nd (putting aside previous hits of the year whose runs wrapped like Independence Day, Twister, and Mission: Impossible). As you can see below, Scream starts with quite a whimper. If you don’t follow what all these numbers mean and don’t care to, just know its opening weekend isn’t a good omen and “dud” status is just around the corner.

However, it goes on to make over 103 million domestic/173 million worldwide on its 15 million budget and become quite the pop-culture milestone to the complete surprise of every single person anywhere. For comparison, here are all the noteworthy “horror” movies released & their domestic/worldwide box office for the few years before Scream opens in late December of 1996 (“horror” being a little loosely defined):

1994

• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – 22mil/112mil
• Wolf – 65mil/131mil
• Interview with the Vampire – 105mil/224mil
• Wes Craven’s New Nightmare – 18mil/20mil
• The Puppet Masters – 9mil/-
• Serial Mom – 8mil/-

1995

• Demon Knight – 21mil/-
• Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh – 14mil/-
• The Prophecy – 16mil/-
• Showgirls (absolutely frightening) – 20mil/37mil
• Se7en – 100mil/327mil
• Copycat – 32mil/-
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers – 15mil/-
• Vampire in Brooklyn – 20mil/-

1996

• Mary Reilly – 6mil/12mil
• Hellraiser: Bloodline – 9mil/-
• From Dusk Till Dawn – 26mil/-
• The Frighteners – 16mil/29mil
• Thinner – 15mil/-

Takeaways? For years before Scream the horror genre was bleeding out with dud after dud at the box office. Unless it has a “star” factor–Brad Pitt, specifically–nobody cares about horror movies, especially slashers. Thanks to well over a decade of repetitive ’80s horror audiences are exhausted with an endless parade that checks off all the same boxes every time and are more centered on the killers themselves above all else when it comes to slashers. Even when a series like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Friday the 13th *does* have surviving cast to work with they’re inevitably bumped off for a quick shock leaving supernaturals like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees as the sole constants.

Suddenly Kevin Williamson comes along with a script full of likable, memorable characters who’ve lived through all the same scary movies as the audience these many years. Wes Craven brings the hilariously frightening story to life with an energetic cast, enough murder mystery twists to keep you guessing, and a blood-soaked finale that sends you out on a high. A wave of sequels and imitations follow in the years to come (because you don’t ever leave money on the table), including an upcoming Scream 5 which hopefully doesn’t ruin everything by having our survivors die at some monster’s hand.

Hopefully you’ve somewhat enjoyed the Scream nostalgia on our debut edition of Horrific Origin and I promise they won’t all be so number heavy–I’m just a box office guy. See you next week when Horrific Origin has Steph Cannon covering Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark–don’t miss it!