This article discusses mental illness in relation to violent crime, including sexual assault.
In a sunny American town in the 1990s, attractive young co-eds are terrorized by a killer who makes bizarre displays of their remains. They seek safety in numbers, avoiding the deadly phrase "I'll be right back!" but they can't escape the assailant despite the omnipresent police and news vans. When he is finally caught, he blames a horror movie for his criminal acts. This story may sound familiar to horror fans, but no, it's not the plot of Scream — it's the true story of Danny Rolling, the serial killer who inspired the classic slasher movie.
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Scream is mainly a movie about movies, in which the ultimate toxic fans commit killings based on traditional tropes. However, screenwriter Kevin Williamson didn't originally set out to pen a post-modern critique of the languishing horror genre; he was first inspired by a news program that scared him out of his mind. The franchise that became famous for Williamson's clever cultural commentary started out as a response to the real-life crimes of the Gainesville Ripper.
Scream Has True Crime Roots
For director Wes Craven, the 1996 surprise hit Scream seemed like a natural next step from his 1994 meta-movie New Nightmare. That film commented on horror culture by depicting Freddy Krueger as a demonic force made real by extreme fandom, while Kevin Williamson's slasher script took a more down-to-earth approach with its focus on horror-obsessed stalkers. It is strange to think that something as self-reflexive as Scream is based on a true story, but it contains many elements of the case of Danny Rolling.
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In August of 1990, the so-called Gainesville Ripper killed five Florida college students in four days, sexually assaulting them and leaving their bodies in provocative poses. When he was finally caught, he attempted an insanity defense by claiming that the terrifying film The Exorcist III had convinced him that he was possessed by the demonic Gemini Killer. He also described a supposedly pre-existing split personality called Ynnad, though the idea of demons speaking backwards was also taken from The Exorcist III.
Jeffrey Dahmer was also obsessed with the Gemini Killer. The series Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story dramatizes an incident in which he forced an intended victim to watch The Exorcist III with him.
Rolling was obviously hoping to invoke the Satanic Panic-style paranoia that made a scapegoat out of horror cinema in the 1980s. It didn't work, but this detail must have stuck in the mind of Kevin Williamson, who saw a 1994 ABC special on the killer while he was house sitting, as he told CNN:
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I was getting so spooked. ...I went into the living room and a window was open. And I'd been in this house for two days. I'd never noticed the window open... So I went to the kitchen, got a butcher knife, got the mobile phone. I called a buddy of mine... I went to bed that night so spooked I was having nightmares and I woke up at like three or four in the morning, and I started writing the opening scene to 'Scream.'
In addition to Rolling's reference to horror cinema, other details made their way into Scream, including his compulsion to pose his victims, and the possibility that there could have been two culprits.
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Scream's later entries have sullied the horror franchise's cult legacy, failing to recapture the winning formula of those earlier films.
Some Wondered If the Gainesville Ripper Was Really Two People
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According to the 2022 documentary Lights, Camera, Murder: Scream, the Ripper's ability to take on two victims at once suggested that he may not have acted alone. It isn't clear that Kevin Williamson had this exact thought when he created killer pals Billy Loomis and Stu Macher, but a secondary suspect did create a very Scream-like red herring. The press went after Edward Lewis Humphrey, a mentally ill and occasionally violent student, but he was cleared in light of the evidence against Rolling — and after seeking psychiatric assistance, he eventually graduated magna cum laude.
In prison, Danny Rolling became engaged to Sondra London, who had previously been involved with convicted murderer and suspected serial killer John Gerard Schaefer. Oscar-winning documentarist Errol Morris featured London in the second episode of his television series First Person, which the filmmaker has made available on YouTube.
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To be absolutely clear, there is no material evidence that Danny Rolling ever had a partner in crime, just as there is no truth to the notion that horror movies cause homicidal tendencies in otherwise healthy individuals. In the immortal words of Billy Loomis, "Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!" The role the Gainesville Ripper played in Scream's origin story only goes to show that life may not always imitate art, but even the wildest art may imitate life.
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Kevin Smith opens up about how a humorous cameo in Wes Craven's Scream 3 led to the creation of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
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Scream
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A year after the murder of her mother, a teenage girl is terrorized by a masked killer who targets her and her friends by using scary movies as part of a deadly game.
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- Director
- Wes Craven
- Release Date
- December 20, 1996
- Studio
- Paramount Pictures
- Cast
- Neve Campbell , Courtney Cox , David Arquette , Skeet Ulrich , Drew Barrymore
- Writers
- Kevin Williamson
- Runtime
- 111 minutes
- Main Genre
- Horror
