The nineties saw the evolution of the John Hughes teen movie into a different sort of beast. That coincided with the development of the slasher flick the sub-genre of horror films which also began in the eighties, and also stars a mostly adolescent cast into a weird blend of the burgeoning teen film and the traditional stab-'em-up, mainly thanks to Kevin Williamson's script for Scream. That's the same Kevin Williamson who created Dawson's Creek, the rare venture of the nineties teen aesthetic into the world of television. After a period of history bogged down in video nasty moral panics and the like, the nineties saw a resurgence of the horror film as much as it did the teen movie. So it made sense that they'd team up, right? In doing so, however, Scream and its many ancestors gave us a very different look at high school life. As divorced from reality as the stars, styles and musical tastes of the nineties teen movie were, the slasher flicks were worse. Based on the silver screen depictions attending any high school in the mainland United States during that decade was a daredevil act, since you were risking death any time you stepped through its doors. Or had sex. Or did drugs. Or left a room after saying I'll be right back! Thanks to Scream (and all its sequels), Jeepers Creepers, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, and the return of Michael Myers with Halloween H20, actually attending high school was like harbouring a death wish. Erm, we don't have to explain why this was a huge lie, do we? You won't get stalked by a mysterious, masked killer at school. You might die of boredom, sure. But not at the hands of Ghostface. Whoever he or she is nowadays.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
