Scary Movie

On Halloween night, Drew Decker is home alone when a stranger calls and quizzes her about scary movies. A killer in the Ghostface mask and robe chases her through the house and out onto the lawn, tearing her clothes and stabbing her in the chest, which pops out one of her breast implants. Her father is driving up the street at that moment. He is distracted by her mother in the passenger seat and runs Drew over. She gets one look at the killer before he finishes her off.

The next day at B.A. Corpse High School, Cindy Campbell meets up with her boyfriend Bobby Prinze and their friends: Brenda Meeks, Ray Wilkins, Greg Phillippe, Buffy Gilmore and Brenda's stoner brother Shorty. Bobby keeps pushing Cindy to have sex. News crews swarm the school, led by the pushy reporter Gail Hailstorm, who flirts with Buffy's brother, Special Officer Doofy, to get information out of him. Doofy appears to be mentally disabled.

In class Cindy sees the killer watching her through the window. Then she gets a note and realizes Drew died exactly one year after she and her friends ran a man over on a dark road and dumped his body off a pier. Greg finds a photo of his tiny penis taped to his locker with the words I KNOW on it and blames Ray. Cindy wants to go to the police. Greg beats her up instead, afraid they will all go to prison.

That night at Buffy's beauty pageant, the killer murders Greg right in front of the crowd. Buffy's cries for help are taken as part of her dramatic reading, and she wins the crown and forgets about Greg. The killer then attacks Cindy at home. She calls the police and he runs. Bobby climbs in through her window, a phone, a knife and gloves fall out of his pockets, and he is arrested. Cindy spends the night at Buffy and Doofy's house and gets another call from the killer.

Bobby is released the next day. The killer cuts off Buffy's head with a cleaver. Gail and her cameraman Kenny drive to a makeout spot hoping to film a murder. They catch the killer stabbing a girl named Heather, and he chases them into the woods and kills Kenny. Gail records a teary, snot-covered apology to Kenny's family. Ray and Brenda go to see Shakespeare in Love. The killer stabs Ray through the ear in a bathroom stall. Brenda survives the killer, but the audience is so fed up with her talking and spoiling movies that they stab her to death themselves.

Cindy throws a house party, figuring there is safety in a crowd. A girl named Tina is killed in the garage while fetching beer. Down in the basement the killer gets high with Shorty and his friends and ends up killing everyone but Shorty. Upstairs, Cindy finally sleeps with Bobby. The killer then stabs Bobby and disappears. Cindy grabs a gun, Shorty runs up to warn her, and Bobby, suddenly fine, shoots Shorty. Ray walks in alive and well.

In the kitchen Bobby and Ray explain they are copycats. They plan to kill Cindy and her father and pin it on the real killer. Bobby says Cindy's refusal to sleep with him pushed him to experiment with Ray and admits he is gay, which Ray denies. The plan falls apart when Ray, furious that his favorite show The Wayans Bros. was canceled without a final episode, stabs Bobby over and over. The real killer walks in and stabs Ray. Cindy fights him with moves straight out of The Matrix and kicks him through a window, but he is gone by the time the police arrive.

At the sheriff's station, Cindy and Sheriff Burke work out that the killer was Doofy, not David Keegan, the man the friends ran down a year earlier. As Cindy drops her mug, Doofy walks out of the station, loses his limp and his act, and drives off with Gail Hailstorm. Cindy finds his backpack with the mask and knife in the street, screams at the sky, and gets hit by a car while the sheriff walks away.

Story notes

• Parodies: Scream, 1996. The whole opening with Drew Decker is Casey Becker beat for beat. Cindy Campbell is Sidney Prescott, Doofy Gilmore is Dewey Riley, Gail Hailstorm is Gale Weathers, and the rules speech is Randy Meeks. One character asks whether Scream even had a plot and gets told no.
• Parodies: I Know What You Did Last Summer, 1997. The hit and run, the pier, the pact to say nothing, and the hook.
• Parodies: Scream 2, 1997. Brenda dies in a crowded cinema the way Maureen Evans does. Cindy throws a bicycle down the stairs the way CiCi Cooper does.
• Parodies: Scream 3, 2000. Shorty leaves a video message about how to behave in a sequel.
• Parodies: Halloween, 1978. Cindy sees the killer through the classroom window, kicks him out of it, and he is gone when she looks again.
• Parodies: The Matrix, 1999. The final fight, bullet time and all.
• Parodies: The Usual Suspects, 1995. The ending, with the dropped cup and the limp that stops.
• Parodies: American Pie, 1999. The bedroom scene, taken a very long way further.
• Parodies: The Sixth Sense, The Shining, Psycho, Candyman, Friday the 13th, The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, Shakespeare in Love, Election, Amistad, Dawson’s Creek and Budweiser’s Whassup adverts all get a turn.
• This is the franchise that got renamed more than any other. Hungary wins outright: Horrorra akadva, avagy tudom, kit ettél tavaly nyárson"Hooked on Horror, or I Know Who You Ate on the Spit Last Summer". It is a pun. The Hungarian for "last summer" is nyáron; they changed one letter to nyárson, "on the spit".
• Japan called it 最終絶叫計画, "Final Scream Plan", a play on the Japanese title for Final Destination, and named every sequel off the same joke. Russia used Очень страшное кино, "Very Scary Movie". Brazil went with Todo Mundo em Pânico, "Everybody in Panic", and kept it for all six. Slovenia chose Film da te kap, "A Film That Gives You a Stroke". Lithuania went with "The Scariest Film of All".
• Italy added a subtitle that tells you what they thought of it: Scary Movie: Senza paura, senza vergogna... senza cervello!, "No fear, no shame... no brains!"
• Spanish speaking markets kept "Scary Movie" as an anchor and bolted a different joke onto each film. This one was Una película de miedo, "A Scary Movie". Quebec used Film de peur.
• America got it on July 7, 2000 and Europe waited three or four months. Japan September 2, the UK September 8, Germany October 5, Brazil and Mexico in October, France October 25, Spain October 31, Italy November 10. The full rollout took nine months.
• The ratings spread on this one film is the widest in the franchise. Finland banned it under 18 and Hungary rated it 18, while Sweden passed it at 11 and Italy passed it for all ages. In British Columbia it was rated 18A, then cut to 14A on appeal, a decision that drew a record number of complaints from parents along with objections from cinema owners. Germany rated it 16 and the German cinema version runs about four and a half minutes shorter than the circulating workprint.
• 121 million dollars of the 278 million worldwide came from outside America, about 43.5 percent.

Release facts

• Rated: R (strong crude sexual humor, language, drug use and violence)
• Worldwide: $278,019,771 (Box Office Mojo, original run); The Numbers lists $277.2 million
• Studio: Wayans Bros. Entertainment, Gold/Miller Productions, Brad Grey Pictures

Dimension opened the film on July 7, 2000, on 2,912 screens. It went straight to number one with $42,346,669, more than double its $19 million budget. That broke the record Air Force One held for the biggest opening by an R-rated film. At that point in the year, only Mission: Impossible 2 had opened bigger.

It finished with $157,019,771 in the United States and Canada, passing Good Will Hunting as Miramax's highest grossing film there, and was the ninth highest grossing film of 2000 in the U.S. Overseas added about $121 million, for a worldwide total of $278 million by Box Office Mojo's count and $277.2 million by The Numbers. It is still the highest grossing film in the series.

Critics were split. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 52 percent from 122 reviews. Metacritic gives it 48 from 32 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a B minus.

Joe Leydon of Variety said it was unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness and would make you laugh until you were ashamed of yourself. Roger Ebert gave it three stars out of four. He called it raucous and satirical, but said it lacked the shock of Airplane! Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it a hilarious skewering of teen movie cliches, and the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Daily News were also positive.

Others hated it. A. O. Scott of The New York Times found the jokes annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness. Bob Longino of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wondered how it got an R instead of an NC-17.

Regina Hall later said it was huge to have an African-American director open an R-rated comedy that big.

The reviews split down the middle, which is what a 52 percent and a 48 both mean. Variety called it unbounded by taste, inhibition or political correctness and practically guaranteed to make you laugh until you are ashamed of yourself. A. O. Scott in the New York Times said the jokes were annoying less for their vulgarity than for their tiredness. The Washington Post called it an annoying gas pain. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star said it does not just push the gross out envelope, it folds, spindles, mutilates and mails it to your mama, and then said many of the jokes are sexist, racist, homophobic and not funny. Twenty years on, producer Bo Zenga admitted there is a lot of gay humor in it that would not make it into a film today. Marlon Wayans agreed it would be hard to greenlight now but said the reaction would still be the same.

Scores

Cast

Crew

Production

Shawn Wayans came up with the idea of spoofing the 1990s teen slasher boom. He, Marlon Wayans and their writing partners Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman wrote a script with the reported working title Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th. At the same time, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who had written the Bond spoof Spy Hard, were working on their own spoof, Scream If I Know What You Did Last Halloween. Dimension Films, the genre label of Miramax, bought both and handed the Friedberg and Seltzer script to the Wayans.

The Writers Guild gave writing credit to both teams. That made the Wayans furious. They said none of Friedberg and Seltzer's work ended up in the finished movie.

The title came from the studio's own shelf. Scary Movie was Kevin Williamson's working title for Scream, which Dimension released in 1996. So the label that made Scream also made the spoof of it, under Scream's old name.

Keenen Ivory Wayans saw a long list of actresses for Cindy and kept saying no, to the point that the casting people got annoyed. Anna Faris had just graduated from the University of Washington and had no agent, no manager and no headshot. Her mother shot the first scene of her audition tape on a big shoulder VHS camera in Edmonds, Washington, and Faris got her neighbors to film the second scene because it was too raunchy for her mom. It was her first movie role. Keenen said she had a natural innocence and was funny. Faris later said she had no idea what to say the first time he called action, and turned to Jon Abrahams to ask what they were supposed to do.

Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart tried out for Drew Decker before Carmen Electra got it. Electra had also auditioned for other parts, including Buffy. Keenen told Entertainment Weekly the studio did not want her, and that what they did not like about her was what made her perfect. Her hair was cut shorter to look like Drew Barrymore in Scream, and the opening scene was shot in one night. Aaliyah turned down Brenda because she felt the part made fun of Brandy's role in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Regina Hall auditioned four times for Brenda and told Fast Company a producer advised her not to take it. Alicia Silverstone reportedly turned down Cindy, and Jared Leto reportedly passed on Bobby to make Requiem for a Dream. The original script reportedly had a Jamie Lee Curtis cameo as her Halloween character, hiding in Cindy's closet.

Doofy was Dave Sheridan's first big movie role. He based the character's personality and mannerisms on Chip, a character from his comedy act, and the part is loosely based on David Arquette's Dewey from Scream. He also voices the killer.

Principal photography ran from August 16 to October 18, 1999, mostly in British Columbia. The cast stayed at the Sutton Place hotel in Vancouver. Keenen, his brothers and a few other writers held a roundtable every night to punch up the next day's scenes. The Budweiser Whassup parody went in because those ads were just getting hot as the movie was wrapping.

Shannon Elizabeth told Entertainment Weekly that Keenen's rule on set was to shoot what was on the page first and then let the cast do anything they wanted. Regina Hall said she studied Jada Pinkett's death scene in Scream 2 so she could die the same way.

The title: The Wayans script was called Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th. Some sources reverse the two holidays, so the exact wording is not settled.

The title: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were writing a rival horror spoof at the same time, sold to Dimension in 1998 under a title of similar length. Wikipedia gives it as Scream If I Know What You Did Last Halloween. Variety and E! reverse two words in it.

The title: Scary Movie was Kevin Williamson’s own working title for Scream. The Weinsteins made him change it because it did not suggest the film had a sense of humor about itself, which left the name sitting unused for four years.

Why Dimension bought it: Producer Bo Zenga put it plainly in Variety’s twentieth anniversary piece: everyone turned the script down except the Weinsteins, and the Weinsteins wanted it because it made fun of their own franchise. Elsewhere he said they did not want anybody else cannibalizing their movie.

Why Dimension bought it: That is the whole connection in one sentence. Dimension owned Scream. Rather than let another studio make money mocking it, they bought the parody and made it themselves. Dimension put out Scream 3 in February 2000 and Scary Movie in July 2000, and the parody made more money than the film it was mocking.

The credit fight: Shawn Wayans came up with the idea. He, Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman wrote it. Marlon has said they went through a lot of versions: a Black draft, a white draft, a high school draft and a college draft.

The credit fight: Dimension bought both competing scripts and handed the Friedberg and Seltzer one to the Wayans. The Writers Guild then arbitrated and gave credit to both teams. The Wayans were furious, arguing that none of Friedberg and Seltzer’s work was in the finished film.

The credit fight: That credit is what Friedberg and Seltzer used to get Date Movie and Epic Movie made.

Casting: Anna Faris was nobody. No agent, no manager, no headshots. Her audition tape was filmed by her mother on a VHS camera in Edmonds, Washington, and when the material got too explicit for her mother she asked the neighbors to hold the camera instead. She told Variety she packed a tiny bag, slept on a friend’s couch in Burbank and bummed rides to auditions. Keenen Ivory Wayans turned down a lot of actresses before her and said she had a natural innocence and was funny. Faris spent the shoot frightened, telling Frame Rated she was too terrified to try much and would go home thinking she was not funny.

Casting: Dave Sheridan turned up to his audition in character as the killer and deliberately ruined it, which got him an emergency callback. Then he made the offer that solved a budget problem: he would play Doofy, but only if he could play the killer too. The studio said that was great because it saved them money. That is why one actor plays both.

Casting: Carmen Electra got Drew Decker over Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart, against studio resistance. They cut her hair shorter to look more like Drew Barrymore. Regina Hall auditioned four times and was advised not to take the part.

Casting: Aaliyah turned down Brenda because she felt it made fun of Brandy. Alicia Silverstone turned down Cindy. Jared Leto turned down Bobby to make Requiem for a Dream. Jamie Lee Curtis was written in reprising her Halloween role and never appeared.

The rating: The film got an R and plenty of people thought it should not have. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that it dives so deep into tasteless humor that it is a wonder it landed an R instead of an NC-17. The 2000 Stinkers awards nominated the ratings board itself for a special award, for rating it R.

The rating: How many times it went to the ratings board and what came out is not on the public record. The one trade story from the time is behind a paywall.

The rating: British Columbia’s own board rated it 14A, letting fourteen year olds in, which brought complaints from parents.

Where and when: Shot from August 16, 1999 to October 18, 1999, mostly in British Columbia. Vancouver Technical Secondary School on East Broadway played B.A. Corpse High School, and a lot of the film was made in the fishing village of Steveston Harbour in Richmond.

August 16 to October 18, 1999, in British Columbia. Steveston, Richmond, Vancouver and Victoria. Vancouver Technical Secondary School doubled as B.A. Corpse High School.

Anna Faris had just graduated from the University of Washington and moved to Los Angeles; this was her first film role. Keenen Ivory Wayans rejected many actresses before choosing her for her "natural innocence." Carmen Electra was cast as Drew Decker after Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart auditioned. Aaliyah was offered the role of Brenda and declined, out of respect for Brandy. The character parodies Brandy's role in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

Filming locations

• 1260 Grant Street, Victoria, British Columbia: B.A. Corpse High School
• Gulf of Georgia Cannery, 12138 Fourth Avenue, Richmond (Steveston), British Columbia: The dock where the friends dump the body
• 3580 Moncton Street, Steveston, Richmond, British Columbia: Exterior of the sheriff's department
• 3551 Moncton Street, Steveston, Richmond, British Columbia: Exterior of the movie theater
• Moncton Street, Steveston, Richmond, British Columbia: The reveal that Doofy is the killer and the final shots of the film

Effects and makeup

Makeup and prosthetics were handled by department head Stan Edmonds, prosthetic supervisor Corey Adams, makeup effects artist Holland Miller and prosthetic effects artist Ryan Nicholson. Gary Paller coordinated the physical effects, and J.J. Makaro ran the stunts and the second unit.

The big effects set piece is the fight between Cindy and the killer, which copies the bullet time shots from The Matrix. Brian Jennings supervised the visual effects, with Mara Hamilton producing and Brad Kuehn as digital effects supervisor.

The gross-out gags start in the opening, with Drew's breast implant popping out when she is stabbed.

Props and costumes

The Ghostface mask and robe used for most of the film were replicas. The real costume from the Scream films was used for one shot: the killer standing outside the classroom window when Cindy first sees him.

Carmen Electra's hair was cut shorter so her Drew Decker would look like Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker in Scream.

Costumes were designed by Darryle Johnson. Robb Wilson King designed the sets, with Louise Roper as set decorator and Clive Edwards as property master.

The killers

Deaths

David Kitay composed and conducted the score, with orchestrations by Don Nemitz. Michael Dilbeck was music supervisor.

The album Scary Movie: Music That Inspired The Soundtrack? came out on TVT Soundtrax on July 4, 2000, three days before the film. It runs 55:07 and mixes hip-hop and alternative rock. AllMusic gave it three stars out of five, and it reached number 26 on the UK Official Soundtrack Albums Chart in 2004.

Track list: Too Cool for School by Fountains of Wayne. The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope by Bloodhound Gang. Stay by Radford. The Only Way to Be by Save Ferris. My Bad by Oleander. Punk Song #2 by Silverchair. Everybody Wants You by The Unband. Superfly by Bender. I Wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones. Scary Movies (Sequel) by Royce da 5'9". All About U by 2Pac with Top Dogg, Nate Dogg and Dru Down. I Want Cha by Black Eyed Peas. What What by Public Enemy. Feel Me by Rah Digga, Rampage and Rock. I'm the Killer (Killer Rap) by Lifelong featuring Incident.

The last track, I'm the Killer (Killer Rap), lists editor Mark Helfrich, Dave Sheridan, Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans among its writers.

When Cindy and Bobby are in bed, Paula Cole's I Don't Want to Wait, the Dawson's Creek theme, starts playing and James Van Der Beek pops up in Cindy's window as Dawson, saying he is on the wrong set.

Home Media

• VHS and DVD, December 12, 2000, from Buena Vista Home Entertainment under the Dimension Home Video banner. The DVD is 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1. Extras: six deleted scenes running about seven minutes, a behind the scenes featurette about the writing and the cast, a full frame trailer, animated menus, and DVD-ROM content with a screensaver, a screenplay viewer, character profiles and a Guide for the Culturally Challenged. DVD Talk reviewed it on December 31, 2000.
• Blu-ray, October 23, 2007, from Disney. 1080p AVC at 2.35:1 with uncompressed PCM 5.1. Carries over the eight minute featurette, the deleted scenes and the trailer. High Def Digest praised the picture and called the audio and extras a letdown.
• Blu-ray triple feature with Scary Movie 2 and Scary Movie 3, December 6, 2011, from Lionsgate under license from Filmyard Holdings.
• Paramount reissued the film on Blu-ray in 2020 after buying into Miramax, and reissued the Lionsgate triple feature on Blu-ray and as a DVD triple feature on February 1, 2021.
• Germany: LEONINE lists a two-disc 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray limited SteelBook of the 2000 film, item LEO-00717, scheduled for October 30, 2026. The German edition lists English and German audio and an 88-minute runtime.
• 4K Ultra HD SteelBook, October 20, 2026, from Paramount. Two discs (a BD-100 4K disc and a BD-50 Blu-ray), inner print, Digital 4K, $39.99 list.

• LEONINE: German Scary Movie 4K UHD and Blu-ray limited SteelBook (LEO-00717)

Official Fun World masks

Bleeding Wassup! Scary Movie (1) Mask

Fun World · SKU 8503 · adult mask with hood

Included

Hand-held pump, tubing and theatrical Fun Blood

Scary Movie (1) Mask with Shroud Assortment

Fun World · SKU 8511 · three-style assortment

Styles

Wass-Up!, Smiley and Stoned

Where to watch

Trailers and videos

Official Trailer

Miramax

The studio trailer, posted by the people who own it.

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Theatrical Trailer

Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

An archive copy of the original trailer.

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Final Trailer

IGN

The last push of the 2000 campaign.

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Wazzup?

Miramax

The Budweiser parody, posted officially in high definition.

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Wazzup, the full scene

Movieclips

A second licensed copy of the same scene.

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Turn to Page 54

Miramax

Carmen Electra and Dave Sheridan in the classroom.

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The Scream Parody Opening

The Film Scene

SPOILERS

The whole Carmen Electra opening.

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Surprise, Cindy

Miramax

SPOILERS

Cindy ambushed by the killer.

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Tootsie Pop

Miramax

Cindy and Shorty.

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The Killer Gets High

HorrorClips

Shorty and the killer sharing a joint.

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Anna Faris Interview

majorfilmevents

A press interview from the original release.

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Anna Faris on Joining the Wayans

Straw Hat Goofy’s Movies

Faris on fitting into the family.

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Burning Questions with Anna Faris

IMDb

A short question and answer about the franchise.

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Anna Faris Looks Back

PEDESTRIAN TV

Her reaction to watching the first film again.

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Bloopers

jaemina

Outtakes and flubbed takes.

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Press & Promo