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Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth
Directed by John Blanchard
Released: 2000
Starring: Julie Benz, Harley Cross, Majandra Delfino, Simon Rex, and Danny Strong
A masked killer is terrorizing the students of Bulimia Falls High School. New kid, Dawson Deary (Cross), befriends a group of students with a secret, or secrets. Barbara Primesuspekt (Benz), Martina Martinez (Delfino), Slab O’Beef (Rex), and Boner (Strong) were partying the previous summer, ran over a deer accidentally, and now the killer is stalking them as well. First, it was just threatening notes but soon attempts are made on the lives of the members of their clique. Everyone is a suspect, including reporter Hagitha Utslay, played by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Deputy Doughy Primesuspekt, played by Tom Arnold.
John Blanchard, TV comedy director (SCTV, Kids In The Hall), tries his hand at slasher parody with the unfortunately titled,
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth. This comedy, although funny in places, misses the mark too many times to be considered a comedy classic. There are too many references to not only horror movies but other parodies as well, including
Hot Shots! and The Naked Gun and Airplane! which just causes the proceedings to go from silly to sad. I understand the tendency of films to reference other genre staples but not so much that the viewers wish they were watching something else.
That’s about as much judgment as I can pass on this film (with the exception of Coolio’s excruciatingly unfunny performance as Principal Interest) which really makes no pretensions whatsoever about its purpose. This is a parody pure and simple with some gags that work and some that fall flat. The alluring Majandra Delfino is definitely one of the film’s highlights as tomboy, Martina Martinez. Simon Rex
(The Forsaken) plays the ludicrously stereotypical jock, Slab O’Beef, perfectly right up to his explosive (literally) mishap with steroids. Oddly enough, Tom Arnold has some of the best lines in the movie and delivers them with surprising comic timing.
This movie, made around the same time as Scary Movie, never got a theatrical release, and I think that’s okay. While it did air on television (in an edited version),
Shriek… is a film that was meant to be released straight to video. From the very beginning, I found myself laughing out loud to some of the jokes and just shaking my head at others. At its best
SIYKWIDLFTT will be a guilty pleasure for those viewers still willing to give parody films a shot, at its worst this is an overly cheesy comedy full of references to better
films and runs about 10 minutes too long. I’ll probably get skewered for admitting this, but I’ll definitely be watching this
one again in the future. Proceed with caution.
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