(music)
Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies. I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at Scream 3,
released in the year 2000 as the final chapter of the Scream trilogy...until the fourth one came out 11 years later.
Just like the first two films, Scream 3 is self aware and metatextual, commenting on tropes and traditions in horror movies,
this time focusing on what happens when a trilogy ends.
Unlike the first two, though, this movie is not very good. The tone has shifted drastically away from horror and into comedy,
which, to be fair, was mostly because production began less than a month after the Columbine shooting.
But there's also just a bunch of bad decisions all over the place - for instance, Jay and Silent Bob show up for a quick cameo
and the killer's new plot device is painfully lazy - Ghostface now has a tool that lets him mimic absolutely anybody's voice,
meaning you can never trust that the person on the phone is who they say they are. That technology doesn't even exist today, yet alone 17 years ago.
Oh well, at least there aren't, like, ghosts of Sidney's dead mom running around, right?
"Sid?"
You're joking. Let's just get to the kills.
(music)
We all know by now that the Scream movies have intro scenes that kill off a couple of characters so it's a little sad when the first person we see is Cotton Weary.
He's finally got the fame he's always sought, with a TV show and a home in Los Angeles,
but he's also got a problem in the form of a phone call from our favorite sexy-voiced killer.
"Let's play a little game."
Ghostface tells him that his girlfriend Christine is in danger so Cotton rushes home, driving very recklessly down Hollywood Blvd.
Back at home, Christine is the first one tricked by that stupid fucking voice changer thing when Ghostface pretends to be Cotton in her apartment.
"Who is it, who's there?"
(Cotton's voice) "Christine? Hon, you alright?"
He chases her down then still pretends to be Cotton from the other side of the door?
(Cotton's voice) "Okay, okay, I'm sorry, babe. I didn't mean to scare you that bad. It's me, come on, open the door."
What the fuck, this thing is supposed to sound perfectly like another human being even in person? I can't with this, for real.
Cotton finally gets home but because Christine got fooled by that bullshit she takes a golf club and whacks him in the head with it.
Ghostface comes from behind and stabs her in the back for our first kill of the movie.
I'm already so mad about the voice changing thing again guys, I'm sorry. I'm gonna be pissy this whole Kill Count. Stupid thing.
Cotton tries to escape and knocks a book case down onto Ghostface, but then gets thrown across the room with a ridiculous sound effect.
(crash)
Yeah, I'm sure 6 foot 3 Liev Schriber would fly through the air from a hit like that.
Anyway, with Cotton down, Ghostface plunges his knife into his chest and reveals his little voicebox thing.
"It was a simple game, Cotton."
then goes to stab him in the head to end the intro sequence.
I know it's sad to see him go, but at least he exited the Scream series with some dignity in tact by not being in the rest of this crappy movie.
It's time to check in with Sidney Prescott who's living her best life in the California mountains with a bunch of security measures and cute little pup named Cherokee.
She's taken up a job as a Crisis Counselor, which, you know, I would probably avoid phones after having been the target of multiple
phone-based murderer sprees, but I guess I'm not Sidney Prescott strong.
Meanwhile Gale is giving lectures to college journalism classes and she's contacted by Detective Mark Kincaid about Cotton Weary's death.
Apparently the murderer left a picture of Maureen Prescott on Cotton's body, our first hint that this movie's gonna steep itself in a bunch of retconning backstory.
Over on a Hollywood lot where they're producing Stab 3, director Roman Bridger and producer John Milton
argue with a bunch of studio execs about whether or not to move forward with production after the murders.
"Violence in cinema is a big deal right now, Roman."
Pretty meta considering the whole Columbine thing.
Next we meet the cast of Stab 3 - you got Tyson playing a Randy Meeks-like character, Angelina replacing Tori Spelling as Sid,
Tom Prinze as a much sexier Deputy Dewey, and Sarah Darling as some character named Candy.
When Gale comes to set in her finest, fresh new highlighter-colored dress, she runs into Jennifer Jolie, the actress playing her in Stab 3.
Looks like Jennifer's hooking up with the Dewman, who shows up with his trademark face twitching and weird line readings only David Arquette can deliver.
"Well, surprise, surprise. Someone dies and Gale comes running."
Seriously dude, learn to do something with your face 'cause right now you're unsettling.
Anyway, Dewey's a technical adviser on the film because, fuck it, we need some reason to have all these people together again.
Sidney's dad comes over for a little grocery party and they talk about Sid's mom, so when Sidney goes to sleep later that night she has a dream where her mom comes and visits her.
It's pretty stupid but also actually kind of creepy. I mean check this out:
(dramatic music)
Yeah! that one got me. It's not quite as scary when she just kinda slides down the window but whatever.
Sidney's dream ends with Ghostface attacking her through the window but she wakes up and everything's okay...for now.
Sarah heads to the lot in order to work on her lines and test herself for breast cancer.
Roman calls and she complains to him about her character in the movie and the filming process.
"Has there been another goddamn rewrite? How the fuck are we supposed to learn our lines when there's a new script every 15 minutes?!"
That's actually also another super-meta line because that happened to the real cast during Scream 2 and 3.
Eventually he starts getting creepy with her and he becomes Ghostface.
"And it's called 'Sarah Gets Skewered Like A Fuckin' Pig.'"
When she goes to hide in the prop closet among a bunch of empty Ghostface costumes, the real Ghostface pops out and attacks her
and we get a gimmicky fight where Sarah keeps grabbing prop weapons to defend herself with.
Ghostface ends the farce by punching her through a glass window and stabbing her in the back, giving us our third kill of the film.
I keep wondering if Sarah was supposed to be Sarah Michelle Gellar's character from Scream 2,
or if that makes any sense, or if it even matters at all. Spoiler alert: It doesn't.
That night, the cast assembles at Jennifer's house in the Hills to rip up their scripts because the movie's finally been shut down.
Jennifer shows Dewey a headshot of hers, and Gale oversees their little bedroom interaction by spying in through the window.
She's discovered by Jennifer's body guard Steven Stone, played by Patrick Warburton who is just the best guy ever. Aw, Patrick, hold ME like a baby.
After he brings Gale inside, she tells Dewey that another picture of Maureen Prescott was left at the scene of Sarah Darling's murder.
Dewey notices that one of Maureen's pictures was taken in the exact spot that Jennifer's headshot was, revealing that Maureen had been in Los Angeles
when she was 19 years old, unbeknownst to her family or the audience or the writer back when he wrote the original. Retcon!
Stone does a perimeter check and gets a call from Dewey right as he's going inside Dewey's trailer to snoop around.
As you've certainly guessed by now, the call isn't really from Dewey but rather Ghostface, who pops out and stabs him in the back.
Stone fights back because he's Patrick fucking Warburton but Ghostface grabs a frying pan and drives the knife deeper in.
Still, Stone manages to stumble to the front door before finally falling down and dying.
And with Patrick Warburton dead, my interest in the movie drops by half.
Now everyone's freaking out and the lights go out and they get a fax from the killer detailing what's happening in screenplay form.
It's a super unlikely sequence, with all of them going back and forth outside and inside, and for some reason just HAVING to read
the next page of Ghostface's shitty first-draft screenplay.
"I wanna know what happens! I wanna know what happens!"
Betcha the first scene is a dude waking up.
Tom goes inside by himself to read the final page, and although he's able to read part of the script,
"'A-and the killer will give mercy to whoever...'"
I guess it's too dark in there to read more than eight words.
"Piece of shit."
He strikes a zippo for light and blows the fuck up because the house was filled with gas...?
There's SO MUCH unlikely shit that led to this death successfully happening that I don't have the time to bitch about right now,
so let's just move on and we can all whine about it together in the comments.
On a road down the hill, Ghostface attacks Gale but Dewey shoots him down causing Ghostface to scramble underneath a car.
On the ground by the car, they discover another headshot of Maureen, this time with a little note.
WHAT? Come on, Scream 3, Billy Loomis and Stu Macher killed Maureen Prescott, remember, for flashing her shit around town like she was Sharon Stone?
"Yeah we put her out of her misery, 'cause let's face it, Sidney, you mother was no Sharon Stone."
Even Gale and Dewey know that shit's whack and they tell Kincaid as much.
But he's too busy being borderline obsessed with Sidney, asking Dewey where she is in a very creepy way.
"Where is she?"
Lucky for him, earlier Sidney got a call from Ghostface on her home line,
scaring her out of her safe haven and causing her to come to the police station where reunions and hugs are had aplenty.
She doesn't have any info about her mom, though, so she's not too much of a help to Kincaid.
The next stop for the gang is the backlot where this chick shows up and I guess it's Martha Meeks, Randy's never-before-mentioned sister?
"Randy's sister?" "Yeah, can't you tell?"
She has a tape for them and it ends up being Randy, who apparently filmed himself before his death in Scream 2 so he could inform them all
about the rules of a trilogy and also so Jamie Kennedy could make rent that month.
Randy makes an excuse for this movie's shitty retconning
"Because true trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn't true from the get-go."
and then he signs off, never to get meta again.
Gale and Jennifer team up and go to the studio archives where Carrie Fisher cameos as a character who looks like Carrie Fisher and has some sharp words about Carrie Fisher.
"I was up for Princess Leia. I was this close. So who gets it? The one who sleeps with George Lucas."
God, rest in peace Carrie Fisher. You were amazing.
She gives them Maureen's file which reveals that she worked on a couple of John Milton movies back in the day, making him a suspect.
Meanwhile Sid runs into Angelina in the bathroom, who has a Ghostface mask on her, making HER a suspect.
You know what Randy would say,
"EVERYBODY'S A SUSPECT!"
but he's dead so he's not really saying anything anymore, is he?
Sid wonders out onto the set of Stab 3, which for no fucking reason has all the locations from the ORIGINAL Scream,
which would have been covered in Stab 1, so what the fuck was even in Stab 2? What the fuck are these Stab movies?!
Ghostface pops up and grabs Sidney, setting off a classic chase between them, including the whole running-up-the-stairs-and-throwing-shit-down-at-him thing.
When Sidney gets away from Ghostface she discovers a bloody room and then gets attacked by super creepy Ghost BOD
"Give mommy a kiss and we'll make up!"
(screams)
causing her to tumble out the 2nd story window. The cops show up and save her, finding no trace of Ghostface upstairs.
Dewey and the Gales burst into John Milton's office to question him, where Roman has been bitching about his movie being shut down.
Also it's his birthday and he's having a party that night.
"Oh god, I forgot your birthday!"
Yeah so did the writer until he was writing the scene.
Milton confirms that Maureen did in fact work for him but he never mentioned it because she had gotten caught up in some rapey-sounding Hollywood sex parties.
"Nothing happened to her that she didn't invite, in one way or another, no matter what she said afterwards."
Ew.
Dewey gets a call from Sidney who says she's going to Roman's party at Milton's house, so he and the ladies head over there
to find that, gasp, Sidney was never invited to the party in the first place!
Wow, it's almost like the killer having everyone's voice creates cheap and easy ways to get characters to go places!
The Stab cast and crew start wandering around to explore Milton's Old Hollywood home even though Tyson makes a pretty good point.
"You wanna go traipsing around this gigantic mansion? Have you ever actually seen the Stab movies? Every time this dude enters a room, he ends up a goddamn shish kabob."
While they're gone, Dewey and Gale discover the phone that called Dewey is in the hall closet along with that awful fuckin' plot device.
"Dewey, it's got our voices!"
How?! How does it have your voices?!
Dewey and Gale split up because nobody has any goddamn sense anymore, and in the basement Gale discovers Roman's body in a coffin.
She checks his pulse- oh wait, hold on. She checks. His pulse. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil that he's not actually dead here,
because it doesn't make any fucking sense, because SHE CHECKS. HIS PULSE. Goddamn it this movie is dumb!
The ladies all wind up together but Angelina gets scared and kinda does a Gollum yell at the Gales,
shocking them both before she runs off down that hallway in a super funny way.
She doesn't make it very far though, getting cut off by Ghostface who stabs her in the chest, killing her as she screams.
I really like Emily Mortimer but she was definitely wasted in this role. Not much to do besides look shady and run awkwardly.
After a Disney-channel like scream from the Gales,
(screaming)
everyone gets attacked by Ghostface again, and when Tyson tries to fight back he gets stabbed in the gut.
He runs away, yelling about calling the police and getting in a funny line during the pursuit
"Oh, you motherfucka!"
but Ghostface catches up and pulls the rug out from underneath him causing this wicked backflip onto his neck. OUCH!
Just to be sure he's dead, though, Ghostface throws him off the balcony, where his body will lie for the rest of the movie.
Seriously, it's just lying there in so many shots. I really hope Deon Richmond had a solid day rate for all the extra times he had to come to set to just lie there dead.
Ghostface then corners Jennifer behind these pervy two-way mirrors overlooking a bedroom.
Dewey tries to free her with his gun, but she gets stabbed in the gut, her body ultimately falling through the final mirror pane onto the floor.
Just once in this movie I'd like to see an inventive or extra gory kill, but nope, it's just not gonna happen.
Eventually, Ghostface is able to snatch up Gale and tumble with her down the stairs, into the basement.
It knocks him out for a little bit but he comes to just in time to subdue Dewey by hitting him in the head with the handle of his knife,
knocking him out cold. Gale chooses to cuddle up to Dewey instead of being strong like she was in the first two movies, so now Ghostface has both of them.
Sidney gets bored at the police station and finds Kincaid's serial-killer like scrapbook about her. Looking pretty suspicious there, Kincaid.
"EVERYBODY'S A SUSPECT!"
Yeah, we know, Randy! That's what I'm saying!
She ends up getting a call from Ghostface
"The question isn't who I am, the question is who's with me?"
Yeah but like, it's also who you are, ya know? That's kinda the whole point of these movies.
He tells her to come to Milton's mansion by herself if she wants to save Gale and Dewey so she reluctantly agrees to,
but not before spying with her little eye some body armor hanging up in the office.
She also takes another detective's gun, which has gotta be a felony or something.
Ghostface ain't no dummy though, so when Sidney arrives he makes her use a metal detector on herself and throw her gun in the pool before coming inside.
Once inside he attacks her but she pulls a second gun out and shoots him several times. Movie's over, right?
No, we're not so lucky, because after Sidney unties Dewey and Gale, Ghostface disappears like he always does.
Kincaid then shows up with that suspicious timing that's always happening in these movies, but he pushes Sid to safety when Ghostface returns and attacks.
Ghostface knocks out Kincaid with a kick and a fire mantel, then for the umpteenth time chases Sidney around a house. Starting to get pretty old there, guys.
Sidney goes behind a secret bookcase and finds a projector showing old footage of her mom. Ghostface reveals himself to be Roman, who's also Sidney's half-brother.
See, Maureen had another kid when she was in Hollywood, Roman, but when he tracked her down years later she turned him away.
So he started filming her dalliances around town with Cotton Weary and Billy's werewolf-looking father,
which he ended up showing to Billy to convince him and Stu to murder Maureen. You know, like a director.
"I'm a director, Sid."
Yeah, we got it dude.
Roman plans to frame Sidney for everything, making it look like she killed everyone else leading up to John Milton,
the man who Roman blames for Maureen's loss of innocence.
"They fucked her three ways from Sunday; ruined her life!"
He slits Milton's neck and throws him to the ground, giving us our ninth kill in the movie
and the only one where it's like, yeah, maybe that dude deserved it.
Sidney and Roman have a little scuffle during which a lot of things are broken against Roman's head and he just punches and kicks the crap out of her.
Kincaid tries to come to the rescue but gets knocked out by Roman, causing him to drop his gun on the ground. Roman takes it and SHOOTS SIDNEY IN THE GUT, DAYUM!
And he ain't done yet, he also SHOOTS HER IN THE CHEST. DOUBLE DAYUM!
But then he looks away and she pulls a Ghostface, disappearing from sight only to pop up and stab Roman in the back a couple of times with an ice pick.
She shows off her bulletproof vest then delivers one final plunging stab to his chest. Dewey and Gale show up, just in the knick of too late.
Dewey cautions Sidney,
"Randy said the killer's always super-human."
and it turns out he's right cause Roman pops back up and charges at 'em.
Dewey shoots a ton of bullets into Roman's chest before he finally lands a HEADSHOT, putting Roman down for good,
giving us our 10th and final kill of the movie and ending Roman's whiney little massacre.
The film ends at Sidney's idyllic home, with Dewey proposing to Gale.
♪ It's a ring in a book! Open up the cover page, a ring in a book ♪
She says yes, giving us one last happy little meta moment, since Cox and Arquette had already married in real life by this point.
The two of them, Kincaid, and Sidney all have a movie night and when Sidney's door blows open, she leaves it open, because symbolism.
Also because California got that bomb-ass weather and there ain't no mosquitoes here. West Coast Best Coast! Let's do the numbers.
(music)
Just like in Scream 2, ten people died in this movie, but all the kills seemed way less graphic than in the original two.
Six of the victims were male and four were female, the same gender split as in Scream 2.
And with a runtime of 116 minutes, there was a kill on average every 11.6 minutes, the most frequent in the series so far.
Golden Chainsaw is tough since nothing stood out to me but I'll give it to Tyson solely because of that backflip.
I used to do backyard wrestling when I was a kid and just looking at this fall
reminds me of all the times I got real scared someone had broken their neck.
Conversely, Dull Machete has options aplenty, but I'm gonna give it to Tom Prinze. I know his death is actually the most unique in the movie,
but the convoluted lead-up to the kill is just too unbelievable for me to get over.
And that's Scream 3!
I'd consider it the embarrassing third child of the Scream franchise, a child so trapped in the shadow of its older siblings that it can't help but just suck a whole lot.
Next up we'll be looking at Scream 4, which isn't great, but it is a step up from this hot piece of garbage.
Until then I'm James A. Janisse, this has been the Kill Count.
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