Scream (1996) — Does It Hold Up? | feat. John Detoy

Scream 7 is dropping, so we went back to where it all started. Kyle, Seth, and friend of the podcast John Detoy — fresh off the Nateland at sea cruise — sit down to break apart the 1996 original that didn't just survive the 90s, it rewired the entire slasher genre.

We dig into why killing Drew Barrymore in the first five minutes was one of the boldest creative swings in horror history (and how Wes Craven told her animal cruelty stories between takes to get real tears out of her). We talk about Kevin Williamson writing this script in 72 hours in Palm Springs while broke, pitching Teaching Ms. Tingle to nobody, with the Halloween soundtrack playing in the background — and somehow delivering one of the sharpest debuts in genre history. We get into why Wes Craven was the right guy to direct a movie that satirizes Wes Craven, and why him having zero ego about it is actually the whole reason it works.

We also debate whether Ghostface is the weakest major slasher villain physically (two teenagers who get lucky, basically), whether Scream is actually too smart to be called the greatest slasher ever made, and what this movie would have looked like if Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez had taken the job instead. Plus: the Counting Crows / Courtney Cox / Jennifer Aniston love triangle that nobody asked for, Roger Jackson being forbidden from meeting the cast so his voice on the phone would genuinely terrify them, and Matthew Lillard sounding like a surfer from Woodsboro for the entire runtime.

1. Then we run it through the War Zone — our four-category scorecard: Cast, Writing, Directing, and Film Composition. Three yeses and a couple of squeaks. It's a good one.