Scary Movie

An unhinged young man accompanies his friends to a haunted house attraction around Halloween right as a deranged mental patient has escaped. As the night wears on, this young man starts to think the mental patient has broken into the haunted house and is going to kill them one by one.

It's amusing to see John Hawkes so young and in such an early role and Scary Movie works mostly due to his bizarre, scared rabbit performance. The Halloween visuals will give you the warm and fuzzies for all of those who love that time of year and it's fascinating to see how many films have cribbed from this later on like the recent Hell Fest and Haunt. Even at about 80 minutes, it's a little too slow and there's not a lot of terror or danger for a good majority of that run time, so less patient viewers might want to sit this one out.

Once again, Turner Classic Movies managed to dig up a real obscurity for their weekly "Underground" period - I hadn't even heard of this movie until I saw it on the TCM schedule, and with my interest of obscure cinema I had to give it a look. Unfortunately, the movie for the most part doesn't work. I will give credit to the filmmakers for taking their extremely low budget and make things look more expensive than they really were. There is even some interesting camerawork that you wouldn't expect. But this movie really needed to have its script punched up before filming started. It's endlessly padded, with almost nothing happen until towards the end, and it capped by a so-called twist that you'll probably be able to predict. The tedium could have been eliminated with a high bloody body count, but the body count is very low, and hardly any blood is seemed. What really irked me, however, was the main character of Warren. Although this nerdy wimp starts off sympathetically, his bumbling and whining eventually becomes extremely annoying. If you want some clues as to what can make a horror movie work or fail, only then should you give this a look.

Scary Movie (1991) - I have never judged a movie for the amount of times the lead actor made me twitch.

But it happened with this one.

All I know is that it might take me two weeks to stop twitching after watching this brilliant performance by John Hawkes.

Holy smokes. What a workout for your nervous system.

I never knew that this Scary Movie existed nearly a decade before the horror comedy franchise started up in 2000.

This one might have a tinge of dark comedy in it, but it's definitely not silly funny.

John Hawkes plays Warren, a young man who is battling many things in his head.

He's shy. A nerd. Paranoid. Phobic.

The last place in the world Warren should be is at a Halloween festival in his small town in Texas, one that has a particularly aggressive haunted house of horror.

Warren is dragged there by his friend Jerry (Mark Vogues), who sets him up with a girl named Barbara (Suzanne Aldrich). She's a bit gothy and borderline slutty, and should run for the hills rather than link up with Warren. But she tries to give him a chance, God bless her.

The bottom line is, though, Warren is afraid of girls, afraid of haunted houses, afraid of bullies, afraid of everything. And he shows it. When everyone around him catches on, they make fun of and poke at him. Poor Warren gets more and more nervous and paranoid.

To top it off, Warren hears about a serial killer named John Louis Barker (Lee Gettys), who has broken out of custody and could be on his way to the very Halloween festival.

Warren, of course, thinks that Barker will be waiting for him in the haunted house of horror. And of course, he is forced to go in.

The twitching has only begun.

I'll give it to you straight. This is not a slick or lavishly produced movie. If you're looking for gore, there's not a whole lot, and what there is isn't particularly impressive. There are no real naughty bits. If you are easily annoyed by a nervous lead player, it'll have you heading for the exit early on.

I wasn't annoyed. I thought Hawkes hit it out of the park with his portrayal of high-level paranoid Warren. The haunted house of horror, on the cheap, grimy level of low-budget movies, I thought was pretty cool.

Watched this by accident when me and my husband wanted to watch Scary Movie (2000). We wanted a funny movie to watch while getting drunk and honestly this was it. It was so hilarious and so stupidly funny. Its definitely one of our favorite movies now.

We definitely think this movie is worth watching if youre looking for something stupid or funny to watch.

This film has it all! Scary Movie is a truly one of a kind watch that's also perfect for Spooky Season! The film's haunted house setting really brings back those memories of nostalgia while the plot commands your attention leading to a pretty amazing twist towards the end of the film. Huge thumbs up from me!