BEFORE: I fell asleep early on Friday night (busy week, for sure) and Saturday I had to work, it was the last night of an LGBTQ film festival at the theater, so my viewing of "Scream 3" has been delayed, but that's OK, I've got just enough days left in October to get all my movies watched, even if I have to work a couple more nights, which I do. Cutting the October list down was a smart move and then cutting it down AGAIN to move one film to next year were smart moves, and now I can finish the month right on time.
Same link as last time - Courteney Cox and David Arquette (and a few others), carry over from "Scream 2".
THE PLOT: While Sidney and her friends visit the Hollywood set of "Stab 3", the third film based on the Woodsboro murders, another Ghostface killer rises to terrorize them.
AFTER: It's another murder spree taking place within a VERY self-referential universe, one where it seems maybe all the characters KNOW that they're in a slasher movie, so none of them really take it all very seriously, and perhaps they shouldn't, because they are. But shouldn't murder be a more serious business? Shouldn't they be just a bit more afraid of getting killed? Nah, they're not real, what does it matter?
Things have progressed within this universe so that the movie "Stab", based on the killings that took place in their small California town, was a big hit, and is now filming its second sequel, "Stab 3" - but they sort of missed the opportunity here to base "Stab 3", the film-within-the-film here, on the events we saw in "Scream 2", which to them were REAL, but just a movie to us. So what the hell was the plot of "Stab 2" about? Now, within the "Scream" universe there's the real town of Woodsboro, and also a FAKE town of Woodsboro, which is built inside a sound-stage, which the cast visits at one point, and it's really hard for the home viewer to tell the difference, the set is THAT good. If not for the fact that the houses are prop-houses and not decorated inside, you might mistake it for the real town. Now, NITPICK POINT here, the houses used for exterior shots almost NEVER contain real rooms, or even the fake rooms used to shoot interiors, but that's they way these houses are done up, as if the shoot's bedrooms are inside the fake houses - nah, that's just not the way it's done. Just look at "The Brady Bunch" show, the house used for the exterior shot just could not have contained the interior architecture of the Brady's living room and bedrooms, they're just two different houses.
(My wife's Facebook memories popped up recently from our October 2017 visit to Southfork Ranch, where the TV show "Dallas" both was - and wasn't - filmed. When we visited, of course she recognized the exteriors, the swimming pool scenes were shot there, and if the show called for other Dallas landmarks to be referenced, then the actors were flown to Dallas to shoot them, but the vast majority of the show's interiors were filmed on sets in Los Angeles. This seemed very inefficient to me, to shoot half the show in Dallas and the other half in L.A., plus it shows that actors are just like living props to producers, they don't care that an actor might have to fly back and forth ten times over the course of a season to get the show made. Of course, maybe they shot all of the interiors for a season at once, then flew everyone to Dallas ONCE to shoot the exteriors, but that means that the whole thing had to be written in advance, continuity in wardrobe and make-up needed to be maintained, and there was no improvisation allowed in script or plot. Either way, it's a logistical nightmare - and by the time the series run was over, and they made some follow-up TV movies, I think they realized this and used the Southfork Ranch for both exteriors AND interiors. Isn't that just much simpler? But really, every show from "Cheers" to "Frasier" did something like this, with select exterior shots filmed in Boston or Seattle, just to add some local color to the shows shot in L.A.)
(My wife's Facebook memories popped up recently from our October 2017 visit to Southfork Ranch, where the TV show "Dallas" both was - and wasn't - filmed. When we visited, of course she recognized the exteriors, the swimming pool scenes were shot there, and if the show called for other Dallas landmarks to be referenced, then the actors were flown to Dallas to shoot them, but the vast majority of the show's interiors were filmed on sets in Los Angeles. This seemed very inefficient to me, to shoot half the show in Dallas and the other half in L.A., plus it shows that actors are just like living props to producers, they don't care that an actor might have to fly back and forth ten times over the course of a season to get the show made. Of course, maybe they shot all of the interiors for a season at once, then flew everyone to Dallas ONCE to shoot the exteriors, but that means that the whole thing had to be written in advance, continuity in wardrobe and make-up needed to be maintained, and there was no improvisation allowed in script or plot. Either way, it's a logistical nightmare - and by the time the series run was over, and they made some follow-up TV movies, I think they realized this and used the Southfork Ranch for both exteriors AND interiors. Isn't that just much simpler? But really, every show from "Cheers" to "Frasier" did something like this, with select exterior shots filmed in Boston or Seattle, just to add some local color to the shows shot in L.A.)
Anyway, this time the killer is knocking off the cast of "Stab 3", roughly in the same order as the killings seen in "Scream", in that the killer is finding actors with the same first names, or something like that. This was pretty confusing, if you ask me. And then Jay and Silent Bob showed up for some reason, and who thought that a crossover with the View Askew-niverse was warranted? That didn't really add anything to the movie at all, so why the hell did it even happen?
But this I found funny - at the studio that's filming "Stab 3", there's a character named Bianca working a menial, thankless job in the records department who supposedly looks a lot like Carrie Fisher, and she claims that she was up for the part of Princess Leia in "Star Wars" back in the day, but she didn't get the part because she refused to sleep with George Lucas, so the part went to Carrie Fisher, that whore. This studio worker, of course, is played by Carrie Fisher.
And of course, David Arquette and Courteney Cox were a real-life couple during the first three "Scream" films, and their characters definitely seemed to have a thing going on, though by "Scream 3" their fictional counterparts had broken up, and Arquette's former cop Dewey began dating the actress playing Gale's part in "Stab 3". But in real life, the couple stayed together for a few more years, and then split up in 2012. Did life imitate art here, or was it the other way around?
There's more, because as Sidney is tracking down the secret history of her mother, whose murder took place before the first "Scream" movie, her search leads her to a horror-movie director who employed her, and was infamous for his "casting couch", and parties where women were expected to pimp themselves out to Hollywood moguls to get better roles, and this was treated as a common practice - a disgusting one, but still a common one. And what company produced the "Scream" movies? Miramax, of course, with executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein - you might recall Harvey got into a bit of trouble for this, and it's one reason why the "Scream" films weren't shown for a while, because the legal battles made the distribution of Miramax's films all screwed up. But the "clues" about Hollywood producers and their kinks were on display here, there's a mansion with all kinds of sliding bookcases, secret screening rooms, two-way mirrors and, well, it's all implied kinky sex stuff.
This also leads to what are essentially two versions of the same characters, both the "real" people who survived the Woodsboro killing spree and the "fake" versions of them being played by the "Stab 3" actors. Not all actors believe that they should meet the real-life people who inspired their characters, but hey, some do - and this leads to a bunch of extra characters who can be killed off by Ghostface, so it's another plus for a horror plot that's relying on a high body-count.
No spoilers here, but there are obviously more revelations about Sidney's mother, which lead to more motivations for yet another killer - this film series treats murdering as if it's some kind of virus, this year's murders and the secrets they reveal are just going to inspire NEXT year's killer to pick up that knife and go on a spree of his (or her) own. And nobody seems to be asking, how do we STOP this crazy train? Is there a way to solve one killing spree without accidentally causing another one?
Plus, they never really gave us the goods on Cotton Weary, did they? He went from incarcerated murderer to exonerated patsy, and at the start of this film, he's a successful talk-show host (Oh, like that's SO much better?) with his hit show, "100% Cotton". But he still came off as a guy who was probably guilty of SOMETHING, even if we didn't know what. I guess we'll never know for sure.
Sidney is out of college in this one, and she's working as a crisis counselor, but she lives in seclusion - just in case there's yet another potential killer out there who still have a (literal) ax to grind with her. She's very prescient on this point, of course, but by living off the grid, isn't she just putting her family members and friends in danger, because any potential killer's bound to start with them to find out her location, right? This seems very selfish of her - but at least it does provide proper motivation for Ghostface, something that the previous films didn't always provide. So let's call that a "push".
One of the previous "Scream" victims comes back and makes an appearance via video-tape, which also lets us all know that the "rules" for a third horror film in a trilogy are different (gee, it's almost like he KNEW a third film was coming...) and everyone is at risk in the third film, even the main character(s) can die. But that's crazy, I think this just represented regret for that actor, he wished that his character wasn't among the victims in "Scream 2" (or...was he?) because after a year or two, he stopped getting hired for parts.
Also starring Neve Campbell, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Kennedy (all carrying over from "Scream 2"), Patrick Dempsey (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Scott Foley, Lance Henriksen (last seen in "Dead Man"), Matt Keeslar, Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Parker Posey (last seen in "The Con Is On"), Deon Richmond, Kelly Rutherford, Patrick Warburton (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Josh Pais (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Heather Matarazzo (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Carrie Fisher (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Lynn McRee, Lawrence Hecht (also carrying over from "Scream 2"), C.W. Morgan (last seen in "Scream"), with cameos from Kevin Smith (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Jason Mewes (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Roger Corman (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Wes Craven (also carrying over from "Scream 2"), Nancy O'Dell (ditto), and the voices of Roger L. Jackson (also carrying over from "Scream 2") and Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Scream").
RATING: 4 out of 10 script pages received as faxes (kids, ask your parents)
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