Post by No Personality on Apr 16, 2010 5:27:17 GMT -5
The lead singer of Type O Negative died a couple of days ago. I don't think that's what prompted me to dust off my old I Know What You Did Last Summer DVD's. And trust me, they are old. I bought the double feature set in 2007, expecting to get the special edition of the first movie. Now I can't even find a listing for it on Amazon.com. My new discs were old discs. Oh- they had the new 4th of July pretty covers and disc art. But you get the old Columbia-TriStar logos and design when you pop it into the player. One of the reasons I decided the set was a good buy was because of that special edition. I guess nobody really got it. Or, did they? I wouldn't know. Anyway, Type O Negative did an incredible cover of Seals & Crofts' essential-70's ditty, "Summer Breeze," and it's a brooding, atmospheric lead-in to this movie.
Of course, it's helped by some breath-taking and yet foreboding aerial 'copter footage of this vast series of hard, heavy ocean waves coming to the shore. They crash gently and the viewer gets a healthy dose of dread. This could have been a very playful scary movie. Especially when you take the music with this visual. My best friend remarked that she thought this could be a Marilyn Manson track. Hearing that (I hadn't seen the movie at the time), I decided I had to see this (I was a huge fan of Manson at the time- I'm still a moderate fan today). I wasn't disappointed exactly. But, I recall distinctly thinking at some point that I didn't really come for the teen appeal. Some people think that's the only thing that made these 90's "teeny bopper" slasher films so successful. And this movie owes its' success to Kevin Williamson's first effort, the Wes Craven directed Scream.
And then Scream started a series of copycat formula-driven slasher flicks. That had to make Williamson happy; who wouldn't have been if you're cashing in on it? But that's no reason to try to blame Scream. That highly intelligent film was not made to start a trend. If anything, it was made to comment on the trends in other movies. Summer differs from Scream in that it's not only driven by more Murder, She Wrote collecting of clues in female-detective mode and (aside from the obvious cast dynamic's differences in age and romantic involvement) The Haunting-esque putting together a puzzle from pieces of a mysterious family saga. I mean- it wishes. The sequel would elaborate on this further but really, its' creation was just a kind of hook (I really didn't mean to pun) to hang the movie's climax twist / revelation from.
Which itself feels like it's taking more from Friday the 13th than the original Lois Duncan book (which you know I haven't read). That gives us a readymade-to-order ending and a new name for the archive of 90's teen-cult entertainment discussion (the character whose name I won't give away here has no doubt been talked about amongst fans of Gellar's awful Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series). The ending of Friday the 13th came out of nowhere but you could appreciate it. And learn from it. This movie didn't learn from it. It instead decided to homage a classic film. Probably with the attitude that at least they were borrowing from the best (I mean- of the best ilk, not necessarily the best horror movie). On its own, this revelation is not important to the film. Other than it gives us a killer and doesn't anger anyone who liked the hunky guys' characters by making them the killer.
Ooops- I just gave away too much, didn't I? It doesn't really matter much anyway. By the start of the next film, they tell exactly who the killer is. And not in flashback either. That's one of the reasons the killer's name has become the perfect discussion topic among chatters who flock over the Buffy series or Williamson's other great claim to fame, the sappy pretty-teen fest TV-series, Dawson's Creek. Because it would seem the guy's got a motive, which might seem to make him deep. This is the greatest difference between Summer and Scream. When Wes Craven gets involved in a movie, ideas take real shape. He obviously didn't direct this movie. But when he did Scream, it made sense. The would-be motive for the killings in that film gained a cultural, societal relevance. As they continued to have, albeit to lesser effect, in Scream 2.
The only real-life relevance this low-bodycount slasher has is in a series of depressing ego comedowns for our group of "didn't they used to have it all?" teens. Now, who's got the worst sob story? Ray, who was the poor but relentlessly hunky, cleancut guy, so based on that- he was allowed to hang with the rich / popular teens? He works as a fisherman on a boat with a bunch of other guys but mainly just carries basket-nets of fish in to the warehouse. And yet he smiles modestly and has a well-adjusted attitude despite it all. Obviously it's not him. How about Barry? The high school dumb-jock stereotype (I guess), although he truly is much too lean to have me believe he's a real footballer type (lean and slim was certainly the teen market's bread and butter at the time; CURSE YOU, Leonardo DiCaprio!).
He's just got a rotten attitude. We never really hear much in the movie about how his athletic scholarship is going. But we have to assume he went to college at some point. Maybe he's in the same boat as Julie- in college but gone home for the 4th of July weekend. Not getting good grades and feeling low but trying to hide it. In his case, he can't be doing better than she is. Just look at her turn-around by the end of the movie. His grades would be even lower. And I'll bet that's his sob story. That he's in danger of losing the scholarship because of other-class grades being too low. Though, I'd venture to say he'd already been tossed from the sport and not had the guts to tell his family. That would be pretty dire and a cause for major stress. Julie's mother thinks she's on drugs / can sense that something's really wrong.
Still, there's someone even worse off than these 3 losers. Buffy... I mean, Helen. With that long hair (a wig, not too surprisingly), she looks like a Helen. Before the lovable Republican-trainwreck that was Scrubs' infinitely more endearing Dr. Elliot Reed (Sarah Chalke), Helen Shiver was the original, young, privilaged, hip blonde American Girl who had it all and lost it. Only this one has all her dreams smashed only to end up with no other option than to live, permanently, with her parents. Which was one of my personal greatest fears growing up, and is a recurring theme with Kevin Williamson that hit its' peak with Katie Holmes in Teaching Mrs. Tingle. She's also tormented mercilessly by her evil elder bitch sister, Elsa (nice name), played by busty, straight-man's fantasy fixture, Bridgette Wilson. Who here dresses like a librarian (another fantasy role for her resume; she'd previously been a sexy school marm in Adam Sandler's Billy Madison).
This movie just goes to such lengths to make you pity Gellar's character that it quickly becomes overbearing. At a time where my head was still reeling from the infamous "let's just dump the body!" scene. Infamous merely because it's been parodied so many times that if SNL were going to do a random parody of horror movie cliches, you know that scene would be stuck in there somewhere. Yeah, I pity her situation. But if we haven't seen the movie yet, we have to assume she's probably going to die anyway. Can't she die happier? Nobody gets to die happy in this movie. One of the first victims is another character who's bitter and could be more successful in life. Even the sideline incidental characters are unlikable or unhappy. I thought movies were supposed to be about escapism. Yet, this movie is going to make you want to escape the movies!
And you can tell that this movie is kinda desperate to come up with another iconic slasher figure by going back to the old 80's formula of: put the guy in any costume, some working uniform (like the miner of My Bloody Valentine fame). Here, obviously- it's a fisherman slicker. And he carries around a hook for a hand (gee, just like the old urban legend) even though you know he's not a pirate. Now there's an idea for a new slasher get-up! Anyway- Fisher Man is lame. And they really try to Michael Myers (Halloween) this guy up by showing him standing here and there in the fore-or-back ground where characters should see him but they don't because they're preoccupied. So they're not only depressed- they're oblivious too? It's not like anyone in this movie gets to relax. They're all on edge for some reason.
The best we get from this Summer is some nice breezy coastal-town Californian atmosphere. Which I won't lie, does take your mind off some of your real problems for 100 minutes. But this won't scare you. Or, like Scream, make you laugh occasionally. The failure of this film to duplicate the original experience of that film might have lead most to question Williamson as a horror writer. But for Scream 2, sans a few embarrassing one-liners, he delivered another home run. This film as a sophomore effort was always just about the money, so why try your best when you don't have to? Generally speaking, I've never cared who questions him though (just don't call Wes Craven a sell-out). If Scream was Williamson's Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer is his Prom Night. If you have any doubts about that, rewatch Prom Night.
