Rish Outfield's reviews
Just to spite tyranist (actually, it had nothing to do with spiting him, I just grabbed it one day), I picked up Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th. And I had to say that, sight unseen, it has to reign supreme as the lousiest titled movie we have reviewed for the site, beating the reigning champion, Blue Monkey by a few feet. After seeing the film--and there were some highpoints--I felt even more negative about the title. A braver person would simply have called the movie "Shriek," counting on viewers to be intelligent enough to get the joke. But a braver person would have probably done a lot of things differently on this film.
So, a bunch of popular high school students (who did a bad thing last summer that someone knows about) are being stalked by a goofy, black-garbed masked killer. Need I go on? The first half hour was highly entertaining, filled with great laughs. The rest, however . . . Well, it pretty much fell apart.
"Shriek" didn't try to remake Scream as a comedy like Scary Movie did, though it mostly followed Scream's killings. It featured some of the same jokes as Scary Movie, including a character mentioning how this is all like that movie, Scream, haven't you seen it? It wasn't nearly as funny as was Scary Movie, which had a lot of I-can't-believe-they-showed-that jokes that this one doesn't stoop to. As it stands, some of the making fun of horror movies comedy really works. The movie and TV show parodies don't, though. About one out of every three jokes is funny (which isn't great, but better than some). The dialogue was usually funny (For their party, they rented Airplane! One says, "I hear if you pause it just right, you can see Leslie Nielsen's penis."). The sight gags were sometimes funny. The physical humor was completely not funny.
I'm not the biggest Tom Arnold fan in the world (who is?), but he was pretty likeable in this. Tiffany Amber Thiessan plays the Gale Weathers character here, and her name (Hagitha Utslay) is pretty funny. I honestly didn't recognise Coolio even though he was featured on the cover and was practically the only black guy in the film. I guess that's good. That I couldn't recognize him, not that he was the only black guy in it. Jeez.
"Shriek" had a lower budget, cast, and production values than Scary Movie, but it felt a bit more genuine. Still, in the end, it came off as rather lame, really, but hey--a broad parody of a brilliant send up of bad movies . . . how good could it be?
Dialogue to remember: "What's the big deal, kids get killed in high school all the time."
"But this girl was WHITE."
I'd Recommend It To: See it if you like this sort of thing. You be the judge.

Total Skulls: 29

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film		Scream, et al.
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears		Shirley Knight, Tom Arnold
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?