The mask and costume are reminiscent of one worn by a killer in the single most dreadful horror movie of all time, Smalltown Massacre. (Not even so-bad-it's-good - it's just a very, very bad movie.) This could, however, just be a coincidence.
The beginning of the movie is much like When a Stranger Calls (1979).
The killers in Scream call and taunt their victims over the phone
just as they do in the first Prom Night.
In the beginning, Casey first grabs a common place home item in attempt to use it for defense and then later a butcher knife just like Jamie Lee Curtis does in "Halloween" when she gets crochet needle and then uses a butcher knife also while both are hidding and running from a lunatic killer.
Just like in Halloween, Casey pops popcorn before she dies-in Halloween, its the character Annie who is popping some corn before she gets it.
The shots of a bloody knife in the air before stabbing Casey is a horror film cliché. In almost all Halloween and Friday the 13th movies, before the killers knife comes down killing the helpless victim, they always show it pausing in the air. Which can also seen on most of the Halloween and Friday the 13th cover boxes.
When Casey is attacked she is stangled crushing her voice box, leaving her unable to speak. The following shots, which include Casey stumbling forward, unable to speak, towards her parents, is a reference to Halloween II. When Laurie is running to Dr. Loomis and the nurse, and the same thing happens. In both cases, the girl is unable to speak, and if they could have spoken, they could have been rescued. The shots of each girl stumbling forward are almost identical. Also in both films the killer is close behind ready to attack.
The "MacKenzies" live down the street from both Laurie in Halloween and Casey in SCREAM.
When Sidney is in her bedroom, her boyfriend, Billy, crawls through her second story
bedroom window, much like Nancy's boyfriend does in A Nightmare On Elm
Street. Also the resemblance between the actors in both films, Skeet Ulrich
and Johnny Depp is unreal!
Just like in Halloween, in SCREAM, has a girl, Sidney Prescott, flashing her breats to her boyfriend, Billy Loomis. In Halloween is was Linda and Bob.
In Halloween Laurie and her friend Annie are driving in Annie's car talking and the song by Blue Oyster Cult, "Dont Fear the Reaper" is on the radio; and when Billy comes through Sidney's window at the beginning of SCREAM, "Dont Fear the Reaper" by Gus was playing.
During the kitchen breakfast scene at Tatum and Dewey's house the television is shut off when the murder of Sidney's mother is mentioned, which is upsetting to Sidney. This has also occurred in the A Nightmare On Elm Street films. In the original, Nancy's mother shuts off the television in the kitchen when the news discusses the death of her friends.
Tatum notes that Sidney is sounding like a "Wes Carpenter flick", where she mistakenly combines the names of two great horror film director/producer/creator Wes Craven and John Carpenter.
Sidney, the raven haired heroine, finds her best friend Tatum, a blonde, dead. The same
thing happens with Laurie in Halloween with her blonde friend Linda and
Nancy of A Nightmare On Elm Street with her blonde friend Tina. (I
guess blondes just dont have what it takes to survive scary movies!=)
Billy's motives are much like Ann's in Happy Birthday to Me.
Sidney falls out of a window, leaving her body print in the tarp. This also happens in Halloween, when Michael Myers falls out of the window, and leaves a body print when after he disappears.
Just like in Halloween, with the character Annie-in SCREAM a character, Tatum, dies in the garage.
Kenny's dead body is hoisted on top of the news van-above where Gale gets in and then finds him there. Putting body's on-top of places where people will be happens in Friday the 13th too. Like when in the first, Mrs. Vorhees places the body of one of the counslers on the top bunk of a bunk bed where two other counslers later had sex when the body was still there.
Stu is killed by a falling TV. This could mean a few things, such as TV is killing us, or TV
killed the horror movie (like how most horror films are edited for television, and TV is
where they now mainly exist).
However, Sidney tells Stu, "In your dreams!"
just before she pushes the television on top of him. Along with the fact that in A
Nightmare On Elm Street 3 : Dream Warriors a girl is killed by being pulled UP
to a TV, that this is yet another Nightmare reference.
Also it could
be Jamie Lee killed Stu...when Sidney pushes the TV on top of him you see a glimpse of
Jamie Lee holding the knife toward the screen (in the movie Halloween )
which is coming right towards Stu's head.
Billy's last name is Loomis, which is in homage to Dr. Loomis of Halloween, which was itself in reference to the Loomis in Psycho.
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This page was last updated on August 2nd 1998