World, meet Anna

SCARY MOVIE, written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans (and four other guys), directed by big brother Keenen Ivory Wayans, took $19,000,000 to make a 2000 parody of the already satiric Scream franchise that began in 1996. Their kidding of kidders slammed home $157,020,000 domestically, the 9th biggest strike in 2000, with international returns taking the total grab up to $278,000,000. This may be proof that good-natured bad taste isn’t the worst thing the world faces, though that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to put the four sequels (and counting) on a watch-before-you’re-killed list. *

The field of slay play takes in not only the first Scream but a slew of other genre related fright flicks, and executes an Airplane!-fueled landing on familiar tropes and cliches worked to death (literally) since the slasher heyday/payday of Halloween, Friday the 13th and mutant offspring. Junior-high level giggle fare gets a fair amount of laughs, some clever, some crude, all silly. The cast plays it for all its worth, with the grade point average lifted by newby (and diamond gift to comedy) Anna Faris, 23 in her first major role, and SNL fave Cheri Oteri, 37, as reporter ‘Gail Hailstorm’, sending up Courteney Cox’s ‘Gale Weathers in Scream.

                                          Cheri so very Otari

With Jon Abrahams, Marlon Wayans, Regina Hall, Shawn Wayans, Shannon Elizabeth, Lochlyn Munro, Dave Sheridan, Carmen Electra (a good sport–and proof one can go to heaven without dying), Kurt Fuller, David L. Lander and James Van Der Beek. 88 minutes.

* Followed in 2001 by Scary Movie 2 (cost $45,000,000, $141,221,000 grossed, landed in 32nd place), Scary Movie 3 in 2003 ($46,000,000/$220,673,000/22nd), Scary Movie 4 in 2006 ($40,000,000/$179,711,000/21st) and Scary Movie 5 in 2013 ( $20,000,000/ grossed $78,619,000/ big drop to 88th). Scary Movie 6 is due in 2026.

We’ll always have Carmen. Okay, make that never in a thousand years, but it is The Nature of Man to dream.