Welcome back to “Best of the Bad Guys” where we celebrate the best of horror’s worst villains. Today we’re celebrating all that corn syrup in the Scream franchise with the top 10 most violent Ghostface moments in no particular order. Let’s get right into it, Sidney!
SCREAM – Poor Steve and Casey
It all starts with Casey’s boyfriend Steve being horrifically gutted from behind whilst tied to a chair. We mostly only hear the gushey gushey’s as the camera focuses on POOR STEVE’s face in agony but Wes Craven was always a master at horrifying you with sound, going way back to 1972’s Last House on the Left. There is, however, an unrated film cut that features all of Steve’s innards flopping out and into the universe. There’s emotional violence as well in this scene considering that as Steve was about to be gutted his girlfriend was inside the house a few feet away flirting with some random midnight caller and telling him she didn’t have a boyfriend. That’s pain, brother.
Finally, after a few intense chase scenes around the house, Ghostface catches his prey in the yard outside. Still in motion, Ghostface covers her mouth with one hand and plunges the knife somewhere around her clavicle and shoulder area. When they hit the ground Ghostface makes one of the most haunting grunts ever heard in cinema before he starts to choke her. She gives him the ole’ knee to the groin move and escapes but only for a fleeting, emotionally wrenching moment. Casey sees her parents arriving home just in time and tries to yell out for them to save her but can’t. It’s f*cking horrifying because once again her would-be saviors are right there and she can’t reach them. It’s like those dreams where you try to scream but can’t. Instead, Ghostface catches up to her and raises the knife as Marcos Beltrami’s score rages in the background.
Her parents pick up the phone to call the police and realize they can hear their daughter’s death in real time because she’s still grasping the cordless telephone still. When they open their front door they realize their daughter is hanging from the tree in the front yard, her stomach completely gutted. When you freezeframe the Drew Barrymore replica, it’s quite haunting and I don’t like it one bit. This is not only a graphic kill, but it’s one where the violence isn’t merely in the gore but rather in the sadistic way it attacks all of your senses.
SCREAM – Tatum’s Death
While Tatum heads out to this apparently extremely cold garage to get more beers as Republica’s “Drop Dead Gorgeous” plays in the background (Scream has the BEST soundtracks!), I only have one thought: Who keeps eggs in their garage beer fridge? I mean, it just seems inconvenient. It’s all the way in the garage and you have to take the eggs all the way to the kitchen? Anyway, Ghostface shows up looking shimmery as ever and cuts Tatum-tots across the forearm just to let her know he means business. It’s the kind of slow, unusual, cut that makes you squirm.
Their fight continues before finally, Tatum makes the fatal mistake of trying to fit those things through a cat door. Ghostface hits the garage door button and it begins to carry her to her doom Emilio Estevez Mission: Impossible style. The garage door impales her face in a gnarly fashion and her head sculpt has the same freaky look as the Drew Barrymore piñata we saw in the opener. As far as the realism of this scene goes? Let’s just assume that Stu’s rich parents had the money to get a really strong garage door opener with no safety settings.
SCREAM – Stabby Stab Kitchen Scene
Later in Scream, While Billy and Stu’s kitchen reveal didn’t feature a victim or even a death (yet), the site of these two nutbars stabbing each other repeatedly sticks with you. No pun intended. The house is already covered in blood and dead bodies, yet here you have these two psychos all jacked up on Mountain Dew and stabbing each other. Billy only lets Stu stab him one time in the side but Billy stabs Stu several times, with several of them happening off-screen as the camera focuses on Sidney’s horror. Something that probably happened because of MPAA issues with all the stabbing. Though they are doing it to make themselves seem like the only surviving victims, there’s still something extremely unsettling about volunteered mutilation. The fact that Stu pleads with Billy to stop because he can’t take anymore gives it an even more sinister feel. And once again, the sound effects team on Scream was top-notch. This even sounded nasty.
SCREAM 2 – Phil and Maureen
Finally making it to Scream 2 we have the deaths of Phil and Maureen. It opens up with one of the coolest-looking movie theater experiences of all time until it isn’t. First off, they get entire Ghostface outfits for FREE (not in this economy!). But despite Maureen’s awful attitude and penchant for ordering popcorn with no butter, this crowd is a blasty blast. But not for the happy go lucky probably fun dude to hang out with in real life, Phil. He takes a knife to the ear hole while trying to ear hustle on some perverts in the next stall.
Maureen’s death comes in the form of simple stabby stabs, but it’s the fact that she’s murdered to death in a room of people wearing her killer’s mask that makes her kill feel more violent. Bleeding out of the mouth and several other places while screaming for help on the stage of a theater of folks partying. What a ballsy Ghostface moment. Title drop!
SCREAM 4 – Olivia’s Murder
Moving right past the MPAA and Dimension neutered Scream 3, the death of Olivia in Scream 4 is no doubt one of the most heinous in the franchise. With a great setup that includes tricking Kirby into thinking he’s in the closet, Ghostface bursts out of the closet of Olivia’s home directly across the street instead. The others are forced to watch Olivia be carved like a pumpkin from across the street, continuing a haunting trend in the franchise where people often die within arm’s reach of safety. I’m not sure what Olivia did to Charlie Walker in their personal lives before this scene took place but one thing was clear: Ghostface was pissed. He stabs Olivia multiple times and performs multiple wrestling maneuvers from the sweet chin music chest edition, to a rope toss, to a choke slam. He then hacks away at poor, hot, Olivia so many times he turns her bedroom into a goddamn Jackson Pollock painting. When Sid finally arrives Olivia’s intestines are splayed all over her bed.
While this kill was already gnarly in its own right, even this version was tamer than what Wes Craven filmed in his initial cut. Several scenes of the film actually had to be toned down or deleted entirely to avoid an NC-17 rating.
SCREAM 4 – Deputy Perkins Smells Muffins
Speaking of which, another Scream 4 kill: Deputy Perkins. There are a litany of knives to face moments in the Scream franchise and we like it. In this particular scene, Ghostface quickly impales Deputy Perkins with a knife to the forehead and pushes it all the way up to the handle. What’s even more disconcerting is watching him stumble around for moments afterward, brain synapses firing off randomly, and finally… “F*ck Bruce Willis.”
SCREAM 5 – Wes and Judy Hicks’s Death
Moving on to Scream 5, Judy is racing home to save her son from Ghostface as he toys with her emotions on the phone. Knowing she will race up to her front door immediately, Ghostface is there waiting in pure daylight and stabs her 7 or 8 times right there in her walkway and in front of the whole neighborhood. You can almost hear the birds chirping in the background as no one seems to notice or care. It’s wild. Then he follows THAT up by slowly entering the Buck knife into her son’s neck as he tries to fight him off. This kill is specifically gross because the knife goes in all slow-like and in an awkward position. The knife just kind of dangles out of the other side of his neck like one of those popsicles in the plastic sleeves going back and forth. It’s really cool and to be honest both of Radio Silence’s Scream films were underratedly violent as a whole.
Dewey’s Death – Scream 5
Speaking of which, this next one inflicted violence indeed. Not just on Dewey. But all of us. Specifically me. I get it, you have to have stakes, man. But not Dewey. Not like this. A Ghostface that the franchise claims is Amber surprises Dewey when his attention is taken away by a phone call from Gale; Ghostface stabs him once in the gut, reaches over, and connects another Buck 120 knife into his backside before splitting him from groin to sternum. The pull-up of the knife is long, slow, noisy, and agonizing for everyone as Dewey’s blood grossly splashes all over the hospital floor in droves. The Ghostface who stands above him in his final moments is oddly just as tall and strong as Dewey and it makes you wonder how that was supposed to be Amber, but to be fair, there’s no way Charlie Walker or Jill Roberts are doing some of the physical things Ghostface was doing in Scream 4, either. It’s an unfortunate franchise trope. But also maybe it was Stu. Anyway. Long live Dewey!
Anika’s Death – Scream VI
Of all the ripping and the tearing in Radio Silence’s two films, it might just be poor, sweet Anika who gets it the worst. Not only does Ghostface slam her against the fireplace and stab her seemingly in and around the belly button area (which just sounds so much worse than being stabbed anywhere else in your abdomen), but Ghostface TWISTS the knife while it’s fully submerged in there. There have been scenes in horror that have done this over the years but there is something extra unsettling about this one. Maybe it’s the belly button thing?
It’s Scream VI, however, and folks can survive just about anything. So, she still manages to almost escape and finds herself on a ladder between two buildings while Ghostface slams it up and down behind her like a HUGE d*ck face Mcgregorton. Though she definitely would have survived had she not spent so much time arguing like the elevator lady from Speed, it’s still a heartbreaking death.
Anika begs for her life when she’s finally flipped off the ladder and plunges to her death. But not before clinking her face off the side of a steel garbage container first. The results are… well we can’t show them to you here but it’s more definitive than a TV to the head.
SCREAM VI – Mulroney Massacre
Now, regardless of how you felt about the Scream VI reveal… that family died in the most violent of ways. Jack is stabbed five or so times and is completely fine because this is Scream VI and not only do you have to shoot them in the head but you have to stab them in the mouth and turn it. Yeesh! Quinn gets off relatively easy with a bullet in the head but Papa Mulroney gets turned into a f*cking pin cushion during Sam’s Ghostface moment. Despite how you feel about Sam as a character she might have the best stabbing form of the entire franchise. It’s like she was playing Whac-a-mole with every piece of body hair on Dermot Mulroney’s body here before finishing him off with a knife to the eyeball. Fifty percent chance he didn’t survive.
There’s also of course the bodega scene and a pretty sweet knife to the face for Kittridge the therapist. But one is super quick and Ghostface with a gun does feel a little less inspired. Oh, and shout out to Jill shooting Trevor right in the dick in Scream 4. While wearing khakis. Which somehow makes it so much worse. Hell, even the opening of Scream VI featured a chopped up fridge corpse, Samara slashing, and tum-tum openings. But it just missed the list, of which there were so many options.
We hope you enjoyed this list of awful no good nastiness regardless and will join us for our entire playlist of Best of the Bad Guys including everyone from Freddy to Pinhead. Hope you have an awesome day! Goodbye Sidney!
A couple of the previous episodes can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
