Hey, remember Kevin WIlliamson? Sure you do! He was the highly paid screenwriter who was going to revolutionize the horror cinema for a new generation with his 'smart' thrillers, starting with Scream in 1996. Unfortunately, it turned out that by 'smart' he meant 'marginally rewarding for those who had spent as much time watching crappy horror movies as I did'. His moment quickly passed, and in the 2000s, torture porn and J-horror have become the new touchstones of Fangoria fans, while Williamson went on to a whole 'nother kind of showbiz glory as the creator of the slasher-deficient Dawson's Creek. Still, he meant well, and about ten years ago, his movies were about the only evidence that could be found that the genre had any life left in it at all. So why not give the guy a break and make one of his most famous films the subject of an entry in Summerfest '08, the weekly Screengrab feature where we review movies with the word 'summer' in the title to give you something to do for a couple of hours while you're waiting for the potato salad to cool? If nothing else, we can guarantee you that this week's installment is going to be a bit more fun than the gloomy 1950s psychodramas we've featured for the last couple of weeks.
So strap on your fisherman's slicker, polish up your favorite boat hook, and join us for a look at 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer!
THE ACTION: Julie, Helen, Barry and Ray are a quartet of remarkably photogenic North Carolina teenagers who happily correspond to some of our very favorite big-screen stereotypes (respectively, the good girl, the wannabe starlet, the party boy, and the jock). On the Fourth of July weekend just after their graduation, they're cruising around one nigher after a fun trip to the beach, and wouldn't you know it, their car just happens to plow into a shambolic wino whom they are forced to leave for dead. Hey, it's happened to all of us, right? Let those who have not accidentally run over a wino cast the first stone, that's all I'm saying. A year later, they find themselves wracked with guilt and unable to fulfill any of their teenage dreams, except the dreams that involve staying drunk all the time. That's when they get a mysterious missive reading "I know what you did last summer", and a number of their friends start to turn up dead, the victims of sharpened implements wielded by a dead ringer for the Gorton's fisherman. Which one of them has turned on his or her friends? Or is it some phantom stranger who has it in for them? And which horror movie cliches will Kevin Williamson take pokes at while pretending he's above them in his own screenplay? Only time will tell, or looking at any number of movie spoiler websites.
THE PLAYERS: In aid of his how-much-can-I-get-this-dialogue-to-sound-like-Joss-Whedon-wrote-it script, Williamson (and forgotten director Jim Gillespie) recruited four of the hottest young talents in Hollywood, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself: our quartet of menaced teens aren't some backlot collection of nobodies, but Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr. For the benefit of our younger readers, who are even now shrugging and saying "Who?", let us assure you that those four were the cream of the crop when it came to screamworthy teens ca. 1997. While none of them ended up as huge big-screen names, at the time, you'd have been hard pressed to find a more stellar group of young actors. So what if their careers didn't exactly pan out like they hoped they might? It's not as if, like their characters in the movie, their hopes and dreams for the future were dashed because of the massive guilt they felt at having performed an unspeakble act that left them...hey, wait a minute!
SUMMER FUN: There's all sorts of summer fun going on in this feel-good celebration of murder. We start out with a beach party -- probably the greatest kind of summer fun there is; we move on to some exciting teenage sex, which everybody loves even if you know the poor kids are gonna have to die for it; after that, there's a thrilling car wreck, which always gets your heart racing; and finally, there's a bloody killing spree, which is the way everyone wishes their July 4th weekend could end, even if it's a wish that only comes true for a selectr few people. The movie also features an appearance by a wan, unhinged Ann Heche as the sister of the hapless gent who gets run over early in the film, and you know whenever Ann Heche shows up, somebody's gonna be having a good time soon enough.
HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Seeing as there are a lot of dudes in this movie, and dudes who, portrayed by latte-sipping left coast elitists as they are, are nonetheless supposed to be swaggering drunken teenagers from North Carolina, I am pleased to report that not only are there a few fleeting glimpses of Hawaiian shirts in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but there are even several incidences of the main male characters wearing shirts that, if they are not actually Hawaiian shirts, at least might as well be Hawaiian shirts. The point needs to be made in this film that several of its principles are good-time party guys, and if there is a better vector for delivery of this message than the Hawaiian shirt, I have yet to encounter it.
BIKINI PARTY TIME: Curiously enough for a movie that contains Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, their breasts, and a beach, there is not really as much bikini action as one would perhaps anticipate, let alone desire. That said, the makers of this film are not idiots, and while they do extract from us the concession that we make do with half-sweaters, denim pimp hats, and whatever else the movie's wardrobe designer was into at the moment for much of the movie, it's not as if we are entirely denied our bikini party time. Which, given the fact that arguably the most important character in the movie spends an inordinate amound of time in a rain slicker, is probably a good thing.