7. Principal Himbry (Scream)
A fairly random and inconsequential killing, Principal Himbrys death has no real connection to the other murders nor does it tie neatly into the killers professed motives. But I guess if two high school kids were going to go crazy and go on horror movie murder spree, it is not illogical that they would take a detour to off their principal. In fact, Himbry was not even supposed to bite it in the original script, but producers thought there was too long of a gap between the opening scene deaths and the melee at the party, so Himbry had to take one for the team. After a misleading game of knock and run on the principals door after school hours, the middle-aged Himbry evades one horror movie cliché by checking in the closet for the killer, but in turn, fails to look behind the door (which is essentially the same horror movie rule) and is brutally killed (and apparently hung from the football field goalpost without anyone seeing). Maybe if he was as horror-savvy as his students he would not have fallen for that trick. This scene is just one of the many where
Scream playfully goes back-and-forth between circumventing established horror movie tropes one minute only to fall right into them the next.
Trivia: The scene also features director Wes Craven cameoing as Fred the janitor, who is dressed in a same hat and striped sweater of Cravens other horror creation Freddy Krueger, who was also a school janitor.