Halloween Diary -- Urban Legend (1998)🪓

 

I was looking at the release dates in 1998, and Urban Legend was released in September of the year while Halloween H20 was released in August. These are films you'd think would be perfect for October, and yet, for whatever reason, studios just didn't seem interested in what would seem to be the most obvious strategy. I was looking at Scream 3 (2000) and it was released in February the next year. You certainly see the rotating casts of the late 90s when you watch all of the Scream era slasher releases. Rebecca Gayheart was just Lois, a bubble-headed sorority sister in Scream 2 (1997) -- released in December of the previous year -- graduating to the psychopath on a rampage in Urban Legend, with the big exposition at the end conveying just why she went on her spree...and why Natasha Gregson Wagner was the first victim. She uses a Southern accent at the end once her true self is revealed to Alicia Witt, the stunning redhead who happened to survive a wreck involving Wagner, resulting in a "no headlights" crash that killed Gayheart's beau. While Gayheart was more of a high-wattage dingbat in Scream 2, along with Portia de Rossi, the two really wanting Sidney and her friend, Hallie (Elise Neal), in their sorority, her role in Urban Legend is second only to Witt, positioned as the potential survivor. The cast in Urban Legend, a film I found on Tubi and decided fit within my current trend of Scream like films -- going back to the likes of "Valentine" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" -- really would go on to produce television favorites such as Joshua Jackson (he was a film student in Scream 2, becoming quite popular on "Dawson's Creek") and Michael Rosenbaum (Luthor on "Smallville"; I really like his YouTube podcast). And, of course, Jared Leto gets the starring credit as a newspaper journalist looking to unravel whether or not a series of deaths on campus are the result of a serial killer using urban legends as inspiration. Oh, and I don't want to leave out Tara Reid, as this was one of her early roles, as a radio jock trying to talk sense to young people who call into her show for advice about sexual mishaps she struggles to take seriously.

Gayheart, once revealed as the killer, if you look back at the whole film is a great suspect to finger because there are great periods of time she is absent. I think the film's attempt to raise suspicion towards Leto, for me, falls flat...I'm not sure they made him suspect enough to be even considered the killer. Rosenbaum doesn't like Leto because of an early exchange about a certain urban legend discussed with Gayheart and Witt...Leto challenges his story, and Rosenbaum clearly finds his attitude frustrating. Then at a party -- one of those distasteful "celebrations" of a 25 year old tragedy where the only survivor was a current professor (played by Robert Englund; it was fun to see him in one of those big theater classrooms, discussing urban legends in literature through slides, contradicting these hometown tales as false) -- Rosenbaum tries to embarrass Leto in front of his frat's attendees by stopping the music and poo-pooing possible urban legends murders. 

The violence of the Scream era remains intact with Urban Legend as very little is on screen. Director Jamie Blanks does a lot of cuts and angles with obstructions in view to avoid axes hacking up victims. An ax through the driver's side window with a little blood in Wagner's SUV, Witt looking on from outside as swings of the ax come down on Reid with her begging for life while the building walls block any visible damage. Rosenbaum gets Pop Rocks and Drano (instead of Pepsi) funneled down his throat after a toilet face submersion while Englund is found all bloodied in the trunk of Leto's vehicle. I guess John Neville (as the dean of the fictional Pendleton College) gets the honors of the gorier of deaths when his ankle is knife-sliced, and as he tries to drag himself to safety is driven over by his own car, flattened on tire spikes in a parking garage. Loretta Devine as the security guard, Reese, goes along with Neville's claims that the deaths on his campus aren't a series of murders...to her own detriment. Too bad Devine is made to look stupid when she has the killer cornered, being too lax on her frisking.

I can't forget to comment on Danielle Harris' goth, quite a far cry from her sweetheart Jamie from "Halloween 4" and "Halloween 5", With a lot of vitriol and temperamental angst, Harris really unleashes on roommate, Witt. Even if Witt just wants to use the phone or arrives to her room later at night (to Harris screwing around with some random guy she finds on her goth hookup site!), a good tongue-lashing seems almost assured. This is a completely different Harris than you are used to...one might see this as Jamie after all that trauma from her childhood with Michael Myers.

The score and "jolts of music" when the director needs to try and shake up his audience follows the Scream standard. Look, this is certainly the era where opportunities were there for directors to get a foothold if they could fashion a similar feel and look to Craven's 1996 hit. I can't blame them for taking the opportunity when given them. Still I can remember when horror fans were starting to tire really fast of these studio sanitized slashers that were more than palatable for a mainstream audience. With "Halloween Kills" coming this Friday, carrying the reputation for being quite violent and bloody (with quite a body count), looking back at the Scream era, these films are almost PG-13, if some of the profanity (you hear all over YouTube and other internet areas, sites, and platforms) was perhaps scaled back. I've seen plenty of these films almost uncut on the standard channels putting out a lot of horror content this year. Really, Urban Legend, among the Scream class, is of the tamest entries. The film is typical Hollywood slick. I just don't really have the nostalgia for this one as I do for "I Know What You Did Last Summer". 2.5/5

Brad Dourif as a stuttering gas station attendant mistaken by Wagner to be a danger to her life is in it for about five minutes. You could have thrown him into the first segment of "Body Bags" (1993) and it would have felt right at home.