I Know What You Did Last Summer - Dir. Jim Gillespie - 1997

This is by guest reviewer Daniel Schaub. This guy is fuckin' awesome. Trust me, I know. He also loves trash flicks and is one of the founders of a weekly (sort of) festival called "Totally Terrible Tuesdays." He is also part of a comedy sketch group (with me) called "Frozen Peas."

Here is his review:

In 1973 Lois Duncan wrote a young adult suspense novel entitled “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. In 1989 Lois Duncan's daughter was murdered and the case is still to be solved. In 1996, riding the coat-tails of his “Scream” fame, Kevin Williamson sold a script loosely based on this novel. Duncan was barred from the set and disowned the film upon release. So, after wrapping your head around the controversy and contorted horridness of reality, you couldn't believe this film came in singing to the tune of 72 million dollars and two subsequent sequels, one that doesn't even include one member of the original cast. But it did.

How you might ask? (Or you might know the answer already) Is it the cast? Maybe, young hotties at the height of their teen ideology, why not? Is it the direction? Maybe, wait, who the hell is Jim Gillespie? Didn't he direct a Stallone flick a few years back? What about the cinematography, music, sound? All maybes, but there is one and only true answer. Marketing my friend, marketing.

It works out like a recipe, how do you mix the ingredients to make a movie that makes money. So, shedding my critic hat for my poofy chef's hat, I shall share the recipe for good marketing with you. Feel free to whip it up this Thanksgiving; it's delicious with cranberry sauce, canned or made from scratch.

The Crew- Kevin Williamson wrote the seminal horror work of our generation, and future generations to come, with “Scream” which finally taught producers that people who watch horror movies that they are in fact watching horror movies. They were tired of the bullshit viewers were spoon-fed, like they had no idea what was coming next. Williamson became a name overnight and early promotional material bore his name as the creator of “Scream”. And viewers knew immediately that they were in for a treat, where they weren't bored and truly scared. Boy, don't we have egg on our faces now. Is that phrase still in use? Anywhere? No? Oh well. To say the script is formulaic and cliched is saying that Kanye West is retarded. Their producers don't care both the script and West will make money. As far as anybody in the marketing department was concerned, Williamson was the only one on the crew; no director, no cinematography, no best boy, nothing. More or less, in their minds, Williamson typed the script up on his computer, printed it out, subsequently ate the paper the script was printed on, and shat out the completed film on crisp, smelly celluloid. So, you take your crew member and put him a poster (Maybe not even his name) and let simmer for several months. Oh, be sure the poster actually gives no clues about what the film is about. Perhaps a black background with red letters and nothing else, people love this.

The Cast – Young, nubile hotties. Boobs and bronzed pectorals should be in abundance. The second run posters should also include said T-and-A , so if the poster was viewed in 3-d you'd duck under the nearest table to avoid Sarah Michelle Gellar's left nipple. Said film is populated with this spectacular display of human “perfection”.

The Meat - Jennifer Love Hewitt's only... first, let's get this out of the way, Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot; Jennifer Love Hewitt with bangs is not hot... anyway, continuing, Hewitt's biggest movie endeavor prior to this was Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit (but should have been subtitled Whoopi Is Black, Check It Out) which doesn't exactly spell box-office. Hewitt's performance could spell box-office but it doesn't. Acting should be fluid and an actor should be in complete control of their characters mind. What she does qualifies more as rigid and unaware, like she doesn't know if she should be frightened or heroic. The answer is neither. So you need to surround your meat with vegetables, spices, and broth.

The Vegetable – Ryan Phillipe is at least trying to act. He's playing against type, an arrogant asshole, nothing like his character in “Cruel Intentions” or “54” or... So, Phillipe is our life-form which barely qualifies as alive, gliding along feeding from the roots and water spilled out of your glass. It seems second nature for him to play a prick and it wears thin quickly, about 40 seconds in actually. I want to like Ryan Phillipe, I really want to like Phillpe. He's been in some good films “Flags of our Fathers”, “Way of The Gun” and “Breach”. But when he isn't playing an asshole, he's playing confused and skiddish, like a cat in a rocking chair factory. Oh, that saying is out of style too? Damn.

The Spices – Sarah Michelle Gellar is the peppy, pretty type in the film and a peppy, pretty type in real life. What luck, aye? For some, the spices might make a film spicy and bring an entire new palate to the film. In her case, it bring a lot of screams and empty stares. She more like ginger than crushed red pepper. In concentrated portions, it is piercing, and mixed in, you won't even know it was there. Gellar's job is to carry most of the “better” scares but it doesn't work, mainly because she stares blankly until a dead body is found, and then, you guessed it, she screams. And then stares blankly. Another dead body. She screams. But hey, she shows lots of cleavage. There you go. And she was fresh off “All My Children”. Throw it in like Emeril. Bam!

The Broth – The recipe begins and ends here, a headlining, strong element that will give the recipe it's heart. So, we'll cast... Fred from “Scooby-Doo”? Well, truthfully, Freddie Prince Jr. didn't have the box-office power house of “Scooby-Doo” behind, but he did have good looks (really?) and a fan following based solely around the posters apparently, as his biggest endeavor prior to this film was the hilariously named “Detention: The Siege at Johnson High”. But he was listed in the credits second and his face was enormous on the poster so people knew he would be important. Oh, wait, he's actually in the movie about as much as Anne Heche? Wait, Anne Heche was in this movie? Never mind. The importance of a movie about four teenagers being stalked by a killer is to have “FOUR”, count 'um, four teenagers being stalked by a killer. Freddie is relegated to what seems as more of incidental character, like he wandered off a different movie set and was asked to play a cameo part that could be filmed in five days. But we should pray to God, Zeus, or whoever to thank that he doesn't appear more frequently. Its bad, just bad. “Freddie, raise an eyebrow! You're confused!... Thank you!”

The Trailer – Once you have taken the celluloid that Williamson that has shat out, and added the cast from the boiling point of mediocre but beautiful, you need to cut yourself a trailer. Time to get out the big carving knife and chop out the best bits. The trailer needs to make the audience ask questions. Like, what did they do last summer? For most teenagers, in the summer, the killer most likely filmed the day they masturbated seven times in one day. Did I say that out loud? But wait, there's more at stake! Oh, wait. You showed that in the trailer. Well, what does the killer look like? Damn, showed that too. Did you give some nice cleavage shots and screaming? Yes? Huzzah, success!

The Release – Now that you've teased us with the sweet smell of posters and trailers, its time to set the film out on the table to gorge. And just like Thanksgiving, you need to tell everybody, everywhere, to get to the table quick before Uncle Kevin can inform the whole family that the turkey is in fact actually what Williamson shat out. Put these posters, tv spots, trailers, teasers, and the like every-God-damn-where. I was a young, nubile boy in 1997 and I still remember the trailers, thanks to the number of times I dived under the table to avoid mammary glands trying to stab me in the retinas. Keep in mind, I was young and television was foreign to me, just like combustion to the cavemen in “Quest For Fire”. But teenagers, who weren't frightened by cleavage, and who weren't Puritans loved. And you'll love it on your Thanksgiving table, right before Uncle Kevin passes out in the turkey.

Let me get this straight, this movie is awful and is every reason why I dislike the horror genre. But men like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Alfred Hitchcock (That's right, the fat guy with the awesomely phallic last name) have shaped more filmmakers of our generation than you can shake a stick at. What? That phrase is archaic too? Damnitt. Jim Gillispie, you are not Hitchcock, Craven, or Carpenter; you're not even Eli Roth, who is the absolute nattier of everything I hate about horror films. Roth will be remembered. Carpenter will be remembered. Hitchcock, Craven; they'll be remembered. You, and this film, won't.