A horrifically unfunny horror spoof that achieves the seemingly impossible in that makes the Scary Movie series actually look like comedy genius. If there’s an obvious joke to be cracked at the expense of the slasher film, but particularly the Scream films, you can guarantee that writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms will crack it and that the hopeless cast will then bludgeon it to death with their broad, obvious performances. Don’t waste time looking for a plot – there isn’t one, just a barrage of sketches and throwaway gags name-checking every horror film that the writers could think of. Given the sheer volume of spoofs and references, you’d think that at least one of the jokes would hit home, but no, not a single one of them actually lands. Surprisingly quickly, the writers and director John Blanchard tire of having a pop at horror films and start taking swipes at all manner of pop culture targets with the same lack of success.
Blanchard’s direction is clumsy, leaving gags hanging as though he was expecting a laugh track to be dubbed on to cover up the gaps, further exposing the discomfort of the cast. They need all the help they can get as their performances run the gamut from terrible to passable, which is really no more than the script deserves. They’re expected to just appear in a series of skits that often don’t even have any intrinsic comedy value – at one point the main cast walk in slow motion accompanied by a tune that sounds just enough like George Baker’s Little Green Bag to be sort-of recognisable but not to be actionable. Yes, it’s a reference to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) but to what end? There’s no joke there other than the fact that they’re doing a scene from Reservoir Dogs – and we’re supposed to find that funny?
There’s a lot of this sort of thing going on in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th. Girls in red bikinis run around the school’s pool in tribute to Baywatch (1989-2001) (hilarious!), a piano tinkles on the soundtrack in a rough approximation of Tubular Bells (hysterical!!) and the killer and a potential victim race in slow motion accompanied by the sound of something that might be the main theme from Chariots of Fire (1981) (oh my aching sides…) This scattershot approach betrays a lack of confidence on the part of the writers who seem to have thrown every gag they thought off at the script, quoting any and every film they’ve ever seen with no editorial sense whatsoever. Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th constantly feels like it was made from the first draft of the script before anyone had a chance to cool down, come back to it later and realise just how unfunny it was.
The cast is mostly terrible though there are a few familiar faces on show. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen had survived the indignity of TV’s Saved by the Bell (1989-1992) and had just recently been in Beverly Hills, 90210 (1999-2000), Kim Griest was a very long way from the likes of Brazil (1985) and Manhunter (1986), Julie Benz was about to turn up as Darla in the Buffy spin-off Angel (1999-2004), Tom Arnold probably should have known better and the less said about rapper Coolio as the school’s Prince-impersonating head teacher, Principal Interest the better. The first victim is played by Aimee Graham, Heather’s less high profile younger sister.
It seems a bit of a lost cause to be making a low-brow, bodily-function obsessed knockabout comedy that spoofs Scream, a film that was much smarter and a hell of a lot funnier, primarily because all involved knew their horror film history and actually seemed to enjoy the films they were sending up. No-one here shows any indication of actually understanding what they’re spoofing and quickly run out of genre films to parody, pressing American Graffiti (1973), Grease (1978) and what appears to be a television advert for mints into service and hoping that its target audience would recognise them. Indeed one suspects that a lot of the seeming non-sequiturs are actually culturally specific references that American viewers will get but which go over the heads of anyone not familiar with the more obscure corners of 80s and 90s US pop culture. Certainly time won’t be kind to it as many of the films being spoofed fade into half-remembered obscurity.
Occasionally racist and frequently homophobic, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th will appeal only to hardened film buffs who will recognise all of the references (you’ll see and/or hear Psycho (1960), Scanners (1981), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Christine (1983), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the Pamela Anderson sex tape and many, many more) yet at the same time they’re the very audience who will, quite rightly, be expecting a lot more than they get here. Spoofs are notoriously hard to do right and sadly Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is a very long way from getting anything right.
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