I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
Scream really did usher in a lot of these particular horror movies in the late 90s and early 2000s. I was a kid/teenager at the time, so the genre was very popular among my age bracket, but it was pretty clear, then, that some of the entries from this wave of slasher films were far better than others. This film, actually, is not awful as far as those movies go. I always thought it was a credit to Williamson that he didn't try to mimic the hip dialogue and self-referential humor of Scream in the film that most immediately followed it. Turns out, though, that he wrote this screenplay years before Scream and it only got greenlit, seemingly, because of Scream's success.
As it stands, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a bit of a paint-by-numbers slasher movie with almost no levity at all. It's a mixed bag, really. On the one hand, I think that the stars actually give good performances despite the lack of characterization. Hewitt and Gellar do a solid job of infusing their characters with the trauma of dealing with the aftermath of their actions and the way it seems to have truncated their future ambitions. Phillippe very convincingly plays a p.o.s. and Prinze does the sort of decent dude/bland likability thing well enough.
There's also a good chunk of the film that functions more as a suspsense/thriller film rather than a straight up slasher horror. I like those stretches of the film better because the more standard genre sequences just feel bogged down by the overplayed conventions of that subgenre of horror.
Actually, I think there's a decent little mystery plotline in there as Hewitt and Gellar try to piece together the identity of the person who knows their crime and is threatening them. The scenes with Anne Heche, in particular, add a layer to the plot and keep things interesting. Heche herself actually does so well with the role that you almost don't notice how her scenes are so focused on exposition that they defy logic- why would she divulge so much information to these people she has no connection to and is just meeting for the first time??
But logic is not in the wheelhouse of these types of films. There are plenty of ludicrous elements to this movie but I think it's pretty entertaining. I do find that there are some narrative contrivances that hurt it. For instance, the filmmakers make certain choices so that Prinze Jr. can be the red herring. The three other main stars all have scenes where they face serious menace and intimidation that is shown onscreen. Prinze doesn't. Given the resolution of the film, it really makes no sense that he was, effectively, left alone, while the others were seriously antagonized. It only happens because the script needs it to happen to manipulate perceptions.
5.8/10
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Absolute classic comedy. Gene Wilder was firing on all cylinders in this film. Given all the hilarious comedic performances around him, the film could have easily made him into more of the straight man but, instead, he outright has many of my favorite hilarious moments in the film. I love, for instance, the scene where he's giving the lecture and becomes increasingly irritated and then unhinged when the student keeps pressing him about his grandfather’s work. Another moment of his that cracks me up is when Boyle gets perturbed by the spark during their performance of Puttin' on the Ritz and Frankenstein tries to casually dismiss it and coax The Monster back into the song and dance..."A five, six, seven, eight!" (starts manically doing a tap dance by himself and with no musical accompaniment).
Credit to Brooks and co. for assembling just a terrific cast overall. Wilder, Feldman, Garr, Kahn, Boyle, Leachman and scene-stealing Kenneth Mars are all hilarious in it. Hackman's cameo is priceless. Brooks and his team also do a great job of visually re-creating the vibe of James Whale's classic Karloff film. One of the best parody films ever in my view.
8.2/10