“A hundred bucks apiece to look at a slum in the desert. Coulda stayed home and done that.”

Drake’s rating: The director should have been arrested on the charge of impersonating a filmmaker

Drake’s review: Everyone knows about Wes Craven’s Scream, right? After all, it was a blockbuster hit that packed the theaters, raked in the cash and spawned five sequels (with a sixth in the works), a TV series, and countless rip-offs.*

But did you know there was a movie with the same title from the early ‘80s? No?

Well, that’s probably because it’s terrible. No, seriously, 1981’s Scream is a bad movie that makes other bad movies feel just a bit better about their wretched existence in combo DVD packs as they lie at the bottom of the discount bin in your local Walmart.

To call this a movie is honestly being generous, as it rarely even moves. This is one placid, dull flick that just kind of sits around waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever does, mind you, but Scream is nothing if not patient, and will happily spend its 82-minute runtime navel-gazing until the film ends and leaves the viewer wondering just who could make such a piece of drek and why they hated their prospective audience so much.

Ostensibly a slasher, Scream opens with a truly nice panoramic shot with three rafts heading down a river. It’s an encouraging start simply because that opening sequence looks so good. But it all goes downhill quickly once the campers** make their trek up the hill and find their destination spot, an abandoned ghost town. And this place is truly abandoned, with nary a piece of furniture left in the empty, wooden buildings. leaving the characters to sit around on bare floors in bare rooms and dashing any hope that this film will live up to that simple but effective opening shot.

From there characters disappear and die at the hands of a mysterious killer. Looking to flee the area, the campers retreat to the river, only to find the rafts predictably gone. One of the campers thinks they should try to walk out of the mountain range they they’re in, but their guide nixes the idea since it’s a good 30-mile hike to the closest ranch.

Really, though? I’d happily walk 30 miles to get away from this movie.

So, since walking would involve moving, and as mentioned before this movie lacks anything in the way of forward motion, the characters resolve to continue on with sitting around in the ghost town, just waiting to be picked off by the killer.

And speaking of the killer, this is yet another flick that never really shows the slasher, instead just giving us a view of a weapon swinging in one frame, and a victim collapsing in the next. There’s no personality to the killer, and no real mystery since it’s not even a character. It’s just a weak plot device to keep the campers cooped up in the ghost town where the director can safely pop a camera on a tripod and roll away rather than take advantage of the surrounding natural scenery.

Eventually a couple of dirt bikers show up to give the group the hope of salvation, and a man in black wanders in on horseback to drop some confusing exposition before riding off again in search of a better movie. But then he comes back at the very end in a brief sequence that is as confusing as it is appreciated, simply because it means the movie is over.

So 1981’s Scream wasn’t a franchise starter, nor a blockbuster, and it never inspired anything but antipathy from its audience. Still, at least it was a title that Wes Craven could dust off and make use of some fifteen years down the road, which is in all likelihood its only legacy.

*And also a pretty nice banger of a Misfits song.

**I’d name some of the characters, but the movie itself barely acknowledges them so it’s hard to get too invested. There’s definitely a Bob, and possibly a Steve…or maybe a Stan… Look, if you ever watch this (and I don’t recommend that you do), just come up with the character names and backstories on your own. I guarantee that the three minutes of thought you give them is about two minutes longer than the actual screenwriter gave.

Intermission!

• A saxophone & keyboard-heavy soundtrack. Welcome to the early ‘80s.
• Sleeping in the old ghost town. They better hope someone bug bombed that place first.
• Grandpa scare! It’s like a cat scare, but slower and with less yowling.
• Well, grandpa’s not going to have to worry about dying of old age.
• Dude’s wearing a Houston Oilers cap. If he survives this flick, he’s in for a rough next few years.
• Now the soundtrack is edging into disco. And you ALL know how much I LOVE disco.
• I’m kidding, but go ahead and drop your top three disco tracks in the comments. Anything to get my mind off this flick.
• OK, I’ll go first: “Disco Inferno” by the Trammps, “Last Dance” by Donna Summer and “Atomic” by Blondie.
• That’s not just because those are the only disco songs I could think of. Honest.
• Just loooooong stretches of nothing going on.
• And we’re onto the sad piano. I’m not sure why. It’s possible I dozed off and missed something.
• And now there’s a cowboy! Man, I have no idea what this flick is up to, and neither does the director.
• It’s over? It’s over. Man, if we ever do a “Worst Movies Ever” podcast, this thing is a sure finalist on my list.