The influential horror comedy has cast a long shadow for almost 30 years

Article content

With Calgary Expo panels now focusing almost entirely on fan questions rather than moderated discussions, it’s intriguing to see the actors dodge the strangest questions.

Not that fan questions tend to be particularly blunt. They are often of the “what-was-your-favorite” variety. . .? ‘ variety. But it’s fun when more speculative queries come up and get even the quickest of us on their feet. On Friday, the Calgary Expo welcomed a sold-out crowd to the BMO Center for one of this year’s biggest events: a reunion of the cast of Wes Craven’s 1996 classic Scream featuring Neve Campbell, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Lee Waddell from the original film and Dermot Mulroney from Scream VI.

Article content

Article content

Of course, the artists were not hostile to the questions. In fact, in a rare move, both Ulrich and Lillard, who played best friends and (spoiler alert!) teen killers Billy Loomis and Stu Macher in the original, ventured into the audience to solicit questions personally. Some, while certainly interesting, became more or less non-starters. What young actors could you see playing your roles today? What horror franchise is better than Scream? Which non-Scream actors have been favorites to work with?

They were all asked. They were all cleverly dodged.

It was Lillard, now 54, who finally summed up the impact of his film, at least on their individual careers.

“This movie came and changed our lives,” said the actor. “If it weren’t for this movie, we probably wouldn’t be here.”

Scream, which hit theaters in 1996, was a genre-shaking horror film that played with horror tropes and dismantled them. It would eventually expand into a self-referential franchise consisting of six films (a seventh is on the way) and a television series.

The original starred Campbell as Sidney Prescott, a resourceful teenager haunted by the murder of her mother a year earlier. The small California town where she lives is haunted by a murderer “Ghostface”, who taunts his victims and appears to know Sidney’s mother. The body count rises and the audience meets a series of teenagers, many of whom, including Jamie Kennedy’s Randy Meeks, are obsessed with horror movie clichés. Wes Craven was already an established horror master at the time, but it was Kevin Williamson’s curved script that set the film apart. As is often the case with artists working on a classic film, Campbell says he knew the film was special, but he had no idea it would cast such a long shadow over the genre for nearly 30 years.

Article content

Article content

“I don’t think there was any way I could have predicted this,” he said. “It’s very rare for something to last so long. It is very rare for something to have a sequel, much less what will be seven. We knew the script was incredible. You know when you read a script and you can’t put it down and you keep turning the pages and you have to finish it, it’s brilliant. And this certainly was one of those. We knew we were having a great time. “I knew these guys were phenomenal in the movie.”

The artists revealed some behind-the-scenes nuggets. Waddell, an American stuntman who had worked with Craven on the original Nightmare on Elm Street, was the first to don the Ghostface mask and robe. That was him in the iconic first scene in which Drew Barrymore is shockingly gutted, an unlikely fate for an A-list actress so early in the film. It’s rare for a movie to be filmed in sequence, but that was the first scene filmed. Waddell said Craven wanted Ghostface to “move like a ghost.” It was easier said than done.

“In that case, I was an actor, I was a stuntman who had to take care of my protagonist, Drew,” he said. “We were running around with pointy things. It was a multifaceted and very technical shot. So first the actor, then the stuntman, I hit my marks where you can’t see (anyone who has worn those masks knows it’s not the best vision) and I’m in a costume piece where you can’t walk let alone run. . . . The only thing Wes kept coming back to was ‘he’s a ghost, he’s aggressive, he moves with authority and purpose.’”

Article content

When asked how many different costumes the cast wore “with slight modifications,” Campbell said the deviations were determined by the amount of blood or corn syrup that had been spilled. The bloody finale, which may be one of the great horror movie climaxes of all time, took two weeks to shoot.

“I would come in, at night, we would go to work, and my jacket was so covered in blood at that point that it was like cardboard, it was hard and you couldn’t break it,” Campbell said. “They would just come and spray it with water and I would have to get my hands in these really sticky costumes. It was incredible”.

While Craven encouraged experimentation and improvisation among his young cast, much of the comedy emerged from Williamson’s clever writing.

“The script was amazing and so unique that it really did it itself,” said Kennedy, who is also a comedian. “In terms of other things, it was just the right moment. Wes was very good about letting us try things. If you tried something and it didn’t work, he’d say, “Yeah, that didn’t work.” But if it was, he would say “try again.” So it was very open and I know Matthew and Skeet did their thing in that scene.”

When the film was finished and released, there were first signs that Craven, Williamson and the cast had hit upon something special.

“What I remember is how interested the audience was,” Campbell says. “I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a movie theater and experienced that in my life. I’m not sure if any people have done it, it was like a concert. “It was crazy.”

Calgary Expo runs through Sunday at Stampede Park.

Article content