Breaking all the rules

“There are certain rules one must abide by to successfully survive a horror movie”

By 1996 we thought we knew those rules, but then came Wes Craven’s Scream. A chilling tale that has been added to the lexicon of iconic slashers, but this one has a twist. Complex back stories, and an understanding from our characters how horror movies work. Craven took pieces of the genre that he helped shape and then completely upended them, leaving us as the audience wondering and guessing with every beat. You can see a lot of this in his 1994 film A New Nightmare, where he’s taken the actors from the original Nightmare on Elm Street and has them playing themselves while Freddy has now weaved himself into their “real” lives. Commenting on things that had been done in the films or on set. Personally, I think New Nightmare is a brilliant way to tell a story, and while it isn’t as popular as the other Nightmares you can see the foundations that would later become Scream. Not to focus to much on Nightmare but I do believe the over exposure of Freddy Kruger as a character in popular culture, made Craven’s meta attempts in New Nightmare less effective to the masses. Scream and more specifically its characters did appeal to the masses, and redefined the genre moving forward. It was the perfect send off for the slasher sub-genre. After Scream we see a stark shift in more internalized horror, or fears that are happening in the personal space of the human. We see the shift more to torture porn, where the mutilation put forth by slashers was kicked up several notches. And what is now being titled “grief porn”, what real life forces can internally manifest the breakdown of the human mind on a smaller scale. Wes Craven and his intellectual tour de force of filmography informed all of that.

Expanding on my interview with Cynthia Bergstrom from the previous installment on masks, we are going to talk all things Scream. How fitting that 24 years later, and with the announcement of Scream 5 seeing the return of David Arquette and Courtney Cox (hopefully Neve Campbell to follow), that we are still talking about this film. One of the first things Cynthia pointed out to me in our discussion, was how Wes really wanted to make the look of this film to be timeless. The 90’s brought out some very distinct trends, bright colors and patterns, hair styles and candy pop aesthetic abound. When I think of very distinctly 90’s America I always go to Clueless. Of course, there are some pieces that you look at, like the bagginess of the male jeans, and those extremely specific ribbed sweaters every male owned from 96-04, but it is timeless. I am still wearing those black skinny jeans that Sydney is wearing, and those brightly colored suits of Gale do not date her but characterize her to exactly the type of women she is. When you are making a film set in the year you are filming, our jobs as designers are harder than crafting something period. You must think harder and more precise with your purchases because these are real people now and they must fit into our world. As I have gotten to know Cynthia more personally and seen a broader body of her work, I can honestly say that she is a brilliant designer. The level of detail she brings to the characters and how she pieces the story through the closet, is the reason so many designers go unnoticed. For 90 minutes these are real people you are watching navigate and avoid, or succumb, to mutilation.

We are treated to the ruthlessness of Ghostface within the first ten minutes of the film, in a twist that has gone down in movie history taking its precedent from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho. We are met with Casey Becker, played by Drew Barrymore, in her kitchen settling in for the evening. Unlike Janet Lee in Psycho, Drew’s face was all over the poster art and even in the original trailer we are shown cuts of her and Sydney exclusively. We are taught to believe that she would survive, but Casey is met with the knife and everything we thought we knew about slashers has been thrown out the window. Cynthia recalls to me the first meeting with Drew and Wes in Wes’ Hollywood home. Her concept for the character was to make Drew one of the hot girls in school but keeping her sweet and innocent. The perfect girl next door. With the perfect pair of lavender pants from Fred Segal and the creamed ribbed sweater from J. Crew, her character has a softness to her. Keeping in mind the range of movement she and her stunt double would have to perform and allowing squibs to be placed under the garment for when she is caught and struck. Something I put together for myself upon my last viewing, whether intentional or not, we see quiet a few variations of this cream sweater throughout the film on various characters. This really spoke on a deeper level as if these kids were lambs being led to slaughter, since the texture and look of these were lamb-like. The loss of innocence and youth that comes through witnessing tragedy.

We see that most prominently in Sydney Prescott. While the other girls around her specifically her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowen) are seen in these bold prints, bright colors and form fitting garments, Sydney lives mostly in the grey/blue pallet. Cynthia wanted the shapes on Sydney to be slightly over-sized and concealing. When we are first introduced to her, we learn that this murder and the ones to follow are on and around the anniversary of the rape and murder of her mother. We are then told that it was Sydney who came home to find her mother awfully mutilated. The trauma and PTSD that she carries follows through in her behavior and appearance. After turning down sexual advances from her boyfriend Billy in the first scene we meet Sydney, the nightgown she is wearing shows us that her virginity is still a driving force to her behavior. Delicate cotton with little flowers on them, laced trimmings, there is a vulnerability to this garment. As Billy places her onto the bed after sneaking through her window, the ease at which her legs and vagina can be accessed is strongly recognized. You would not receive the same effect of her gentle but forceful reminder to keeping things “PG” had she been wearing at pajama set with pants. There is not added barrier that pants would provide, leaving her as a character open and vulnerable, which we are shown each time she evades Ghostface and comes closer to the identity of this murder. The blues and greys, the softness of her sweaters and textures of the material used on her is most definitely a teenage girl who is laced with sorrow. As the movie progresses and we see her alliance with Dewey, Randy, and even Gale towards the very end, become stronger we see more black seeping into her color pallet. She is still in face a teenager and none of that was lost in her transformation. By the final scene when she picks up the gun and becomes our Final Girl, her black skinny jeans and tighter blue cropped tee, show us that she is bridging the gap between the old her and the woman she is becoming, and the women we see later in subsequent sequels.

The character we see in most stark contrast to Sydney is Gale Weathers played by Courtney Cox. When coming up with the initial concepts for her designs Cynthia drew a lot of her color inspiration from the Edward Munch painting The Scream. Those deep reds and oranges paired with the creams and blues, this painting has gone down in infamy, and always comes up along Monet and Van Gogh when speaking about the era of impressionism. This color pallet is displayed so elegantly within the character of Gale. Gale is the most driven character within the plot, hungry for that one story that will make her a household name in journalism. After coming off the coverage and writing a tell all book about Cotton Weaver, the man who Sydney thought to be her mothers murder, Gale comes into this story full force (pun intended) when the teens of Woodsboro High are being murder in the same vain as Sydney’s mother. The clean and sleek lines of her suits, pressing and tailoring, shows us that she is most likely not from this small town or if she is her dreams are bigger then this place. The colors used on her are bright, bold, and really display to you who is in charge. Of course, Cynthia talked about that famous chartreuse suit, which happens to be a Versace. That suit almost did not make the cut, but Cynthia says that she is glad she did not have time to change it like she wanted too. Courtney Cox is one of the only women that can actually pull off a suit that loud of a green, something about her 90’s hair highlights that pair so well. We even see hints to the gradient color pallet of the sky in the painting in the “Top Story” jacket her camera man wears, you can see the color gradient pattern hugging the text on the embroidered patch on his back.

There are so many details and nuggets of costuming gold at every character that graces the screen. I spoke a lot about Ghostfaces’ costume in my last post so this time I really wanted to focus on everyone else around the two killers. What I will say about him however is that if you track the trajectory of Ghostface from the original through the fourth the fabric that was used was changed. Cynthia says that at some point that metallic threaded black that was used for the killer, was not being made anymore. Now as a costumer I noticed these details when I watch movies, but you can see the sheen of the garment shift within the fourth installment. That was not just because of the wide use of digital editing, which as a costumer is the bane of my existence because so many fine garment details ultimately become lost. C’est la vie, I cannot avoid that as no one, if they do is rare, shoots on film anymore, the ways of analog recording are gone.

 Wes Craven certainly got his wish of the timelessness that has come from this film. There is a reason we are still talking about it today, there is a reason why the fans continue to flock to it, and to have a fifth installment on the horizon is an absolute treat. Wishing Wes was still alive to see the love for his work is something I wish we were still able to give him. Even though each film that followed has a different costume designer, the foundation laid by Cynthia is not lost in the maturing of the characters and of Ghostface. Ghostface has been weaved into the threads of Cynthia’s own life, she recounts a Hollywood Halloween party one year when a Ghostface guest stalked her most of the evening in jest. She has gone on to continue the incredible work on programs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, Medium, Private Practice, and countless others. I highly recommend her first job a film titled Zombie High, with a young Virgina Madsen, Paul Feig, and Sherilyn Fenn, which can be found on Prime Video. After a 27-year career in Costume Design, she now lives close to her hometown in Northern California and works for an architecture firm. Is there anything this woman can’t do!  

I hope this installment brought new light to a film so familiar to you, allowing you to see more then two sides to Ghostface and his victims. As always until next we meet, I hope that this leaves you hanging by a thread, oh and if someone asks you who the killer in Friday the 13th is make sure you same Pamala Vorhees not Jason.