With the Scary Movie 6 (or Scary Movie as its actually titled) released after a 13 year gap we thought we’d take a look at the franchise which started way back in 2000. So here is the Scary Movie franchise rated starting with the worst and, if possible, working up to the best……
Here’s the Scary Movie franchise rated here….
5. Scary Movie 5 (2013)
By the fifth film the franchise was really flagging and getting stale. Naked Gun director David Zucker who had been helming the films since Scary Movie 3 was now co-directing with Malcom D Lee who had pedigree in black oriented films. There had been a 7 year gap since the previous film giving the writers some time for new horror films to be parodied but the jokes here were still pretty stale and for the first time Anna Faris did not appear though this was due to her pregnancy and her co-star Regina Hall had declined to appear. So what we had was a generally lacklustre cast of which the only notable member was Charlie Sheen who at this point was famous for all the wrong reasons having been fired from his TV sitcom in what was a seemingly downward spiral for him especially after he gave an astonishing career crash interview to ABC. The celeb star cameo was Lindsay Lohan who like Sheen was also in the midst of personal career crisis issues. At best Scary Movie 5 was poor and audiences kept away with the film scraping $78m, a franchise low when all other film prior to this had earned well over $100m and it was enough to end the franchise for thirteen years.
4. Scary Movie 4 (2006)
As has been proved by just about every long running franchise a fourth film is rarely maintains any quality form previous films and was the case with Scary Movie 4. It was the first film that the Wayans had not been involved in writing instead it was Craig Mazin (who would later change genre to stunning effect with Chernobyl and The Last of Us). Pat Proft and Jim Abrahams who had worked with director David Zucker had created Airplane! and The Naked Gun. After three previous films over the past six years material was getting thin to parody and even a star turn from the master of dead pan Leslie Neilson along with unexpected cameos from Michael Madsen and Bill PuIllman and the return of Carmen Electra providing the glamour that saw the film take in a respectable $178m off a $40m budget.
3. Scary Movie 2 (2001)
After the huge and unexpected success of the first film a sequel was quickly greenlit arguably too quickly because this second film was turned around for release in nine months an insanely short time even for the most low budget of films. The original cast returned and even managed to rope in an unexpected Tim Curry and arguably even more unexpected was a rumoured Marlon Brando who was ill and was replaced by James Woods. The Wayans were not keen on the film being rushed out so quickly and in fairness they were right with the film earning £141m making it the second lowest earner of the franchise.
2. Scary Movie 3 (2003)
Perhaps because of the second films box office and the Wayans being vocal about the rushed production a new director was bought in, David Zucker whose comedy credentials with Airplane, Naked Gun and Top Secret were impeccable and he bought with him new writers that ousted the Wayans. Those writers were Craig Mazin and Pat Proft and whilst Mazin was at the time a relatively new writer, Proft had been writing TV series since the mid 1970’s but perhaps more troubling was his credit for the notorious Star Wars Christmas Special and then seven, yes seven, Police Academy films! But the new writers bought new blood to the franchise which this time heavily parodied The Ring. They bought in celebrity glamour with a radiant Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy and Denise Richards. Though Anna Faris and Regina Hall stayed on there was to be no sign of the Wayans on screen and instead Zucker bought in Leslie Nielsen, George Carlin, Charlie Sheen and …ur… Kevin Hart. It was enough to make the film the second highest earner of the franchise with a box office tally of $220m more than four times its original budget.
- Scary Movie (2000)
The brainchild of Wayans brothers, Keenan, Shawn & Marlon who had a long pedigree in comedy (albeit Marlon had a role in the jarringly different and traumatizing ‘Requiem for a Dream’) along with four other writers. Taking both ‘Scream’ and ‘I Know what you did last Summer’ as inspiration they parodied it mercilessly in what would become their standard scatter gun and often puerile approach to comedy with Carmen Electra proving the opening scene of Scream that had starred Drew Barrymore. The title Scary Movie had been the original title for Scream but seemed more suited for a spoof than a horror film that had deconstructed the genre. For Anna Farris the role and the success of the film was something of a career saver having only appeared in 3 films (one of which was a short film) in the previous nine years and it reset her career and though she does appear in both Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain she has been seen as a predominantly comic actress appearing in all but one of the following sequels. The film earned a franchise high $278m off a franchise low budget off a tiny $19m budget.
…….and that’s the Scary Movie franchise rated (to be updated with film no 6 soon!)
related feature : ‘Scary Movie 6′ reviewed here
related feature : Behind the scenes of comedy horror, ‘Cold Storage’ with director Jonny Campbell
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