Scary Movie (1991)

Baby-faced Hawkes, before character actor renown, in the relatively obscure '91 horror curio.

John Hawkes just has that face. He's a bit more weathered and grey now. He's aged and has this maturity, a depth and gravity in his character actor grab-bag. Often in roles featuring characters from all strata of life, he's the go-to actor for a particular dreg of society or everyman, always leaving an impression.

In Scary Movie, he is quite fresh off the bus, perfectly fit for this awkward, angst-ridden teen misfit suffering nightmares about a specter in skeleton mask, carrying a scythe, seemingly coming for him out of an all-consuming fog.

The film is like folks out of the 80s, located in the 70s low budget, poverty row aesthetic, released in 1991. This felt to me like a 1979/1980 release, but the characters have 80s clothes, hair, and language. I was trying to find out if this was a late 80s film released after sitting on the shelf for a few years. It certainly reminded me of a struggling project suffering from unlucky film distribution, eventually released to no fanfare. And this is not a slight or knock against it. I like how it looks as if the film crew burrowed from some studio shed old stored away camera and film. I could see the raggedy film pulled from the deteriorating can, fed through a tired projector for midnight screenings at the drive-in.

The film might be marketed as a slasher at the tail end of the genre before Craven brought a resurgence in 1996. But to me it's best described as a funhouse horror film, very off-kilter, with a neurotic, constantly-in-panic Hawkes navigating himself clumsily and erratically through a regional spook-house on Halloween evening. The film offers a cliched "escaped mental patient" subplot, clearly included as a threat to any locals at the funhouse, basically interconnected buildings, sheds, and rooms hosting a number of holiday horror themed gimmicks, decorations, and iconography. Lots of fake blood, pumpkins, spooky sounds from records on turntables bellowed from speakers, mimick skulls, melting ritual candles, hanging lights, faux snakes, mummies in caskets, locals costumed as hatchetmen, scythe-wielding maniacs, butcher victims, and pendulum tortured sufferers. There's plenty of mood lighting, hanging sheets and cornsacks designed as ghosts, dark and claustrophobic spaces, even a bridge over a pit of fake rattlers. Hawkes with bulging eyes and nervy face stumbles and scurries about, bumping and bumbling around until he can somehow escape the funhouse, which, really only to him, seems like an unending labyrinth. The film, to its credit, really establishes early that he's troubled and fraught with anxiety and stuck with a difficult ability to converse with even his jerky, jokey bud, too busy necking and swapping spit with his gal (sexy in a honey bee outfit). Suzanne Aldrich is a bored, apathetic possible romantic interest but when she yawns after he kisses her, it's clear this potential coupling probably won't work out. I'd like to say that this will gain acclaim from the audience clamoring for visceral thrills, because the film ultimately is more about Hawkes clinging to his sanity while lost in the funhouse, and the ending certainly benefits from his talents at bolstering the character's fracturing mental state.

This looks like a Texas small-town production utilizing locals as mostly extras, crew, and even perhaps some of the talking parts and funhouse staff. It looks like it was made on the cheap by an enthusiastic bunch of filmmaking hopefuls wanting to plant their own flag in the genre. I am such a sucker for funhouse horrors. Prepare for tightly shot close-ups and framed emphasis on limited area. This will be more geared towards those that welcome independent horror with well worn tropes that try and apply their own personality to the genre. 3/5

*There are also leather jacket droogs looking to cause mischief, a sheriff hoping to find the escapee, deputized locals such as a pickup elder, a kid with a werewolf doll I badly wished I owned, a shotgun and decapitated-hand victim.