Scream School
Scream School
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Book information
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About as terrifying as a remedial class.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
Front Tagline: Student body stalker... (What.)[Note 1]
Brief Synopsis:
Add "Movie Sets" to the list of things RL Stine is not qualified to write about, right below "Everything." Not content with merely ripping off books from the original series, Scream School opens with a riff on the opening to Cry of the Cat, as fictional characters in a film are presented as the novel's protagonists. Unfortunately, the illusion is shattered when Jake, the son of the film's director, Emory Banyon, accidentally messes up a take while offscreen. Emory calls "Cut" and rolls action against his son.
Emory is obsessed with the idea that his son is scared of things. Jake refuses to admit he was scared. Probably because it would be really embarrassing to be scared of the movie Emory is shooting, an entry in the titular horror film series for kids featuring as villain an incredibly obvious riff on Freddy Krueger (complete with melted skin and long sharp nails), Johnny Scream. That's supposed to be him on the cover, only he isn't exactly described as a leprosy-ridden Irish Longshoreman in the novel. Creative liberties.
After being embarrassed on the set in front of his friend Chelsea, Emory continues to test Jake, prodding him with scary stimulus and looking for an honest admission of fear. His first effort is hiding an eyeball in a bucket of chicken-- I've heard about Original Recipe,[1] but Original Reci-see? Sorry about that joke, it was pretty cornea?
Jake cautiously revisits the Scream School set. While on-set, the star of the film gets sick and throws up (of course). Emory is such a visionary director that he casts his son to serve as the star's double. The actor was supposed to emerge from a shuttered art cabinet at the back of a classroom, only to be greeted by a cadre of snakes on the floor. Emory insists that no one will notice his son isn't the star, as he intends to film him from the back. Unless Jake exits the art cabinet backwards, that's going to be some feat. Jake then mistakes an electrical cord for a snake, to much deserved embarrassment.
Jake now obsesses about not appearing scared. His father leaves him a note on his birthday to take the limo to the studio. Once he arrives, he's greeted by zombies and it somehow never occurs to him that he was set-up. Jake runs away from his own surprise party in tears after being embarrassed by his father. His mother runs after him. The actors playing the zombies shuffle slowly off the set, as they are method actors.
After some healing time passes, Emory comes up to his son while in the pool and spits water at his chest. This is his way of saying, "Hey, I'm shooting a new Scream School movie in a haunted school in the middle of a desert. Want to come with me?" I checked in a book about body language and shockingly, that is actually an exact translation of spitting water at someone's chest.
Once father and son arrive in the desert, Jake makes a keen observation:
"Wow! It's hot in the sun!"
Jake is sent to look around the abandoned building while the crew finishes setting up their film equipment. Because Hollywood productions often scout locations after setting up filming, not before. Jake stumbles upon a mysterious gamine in the midsts [sic] of the cobwebs. She introduces herself as Mindy, a teenage extra on the film. She claims she got lost from the rest of her friends, and that they all drove over from a neighboring desert town to be extras on the film. When she reveals that she gets killed by Johnny Scream in the film, it becomes apparent that either she or the author doesn't understand what being an extra in a film means.[Note 2]
As they walk around the spooky school, Mindy tells Jake the story of how the school got haunted. See, the town council, like most responsible governing bodies, insisted on building the school over the existing cemetery, despite there being plenty of available land elsewhere. Though they did move the bodies, the souls were still pissed about not getting their security deposit back[2] and decide to take revenge on the children. The ghosts do this by tying up some kids in a volleyball net, which clearly was the one thing Emory didn't do to scare his son.
After Mindy finally meets up with her friends, one of them warns Jake that she's a notorious liar. He asks her if he can believe what she said. Mindy tells him "You decide," ensuring her a long career with Fox News.[3]
Ghostly accidents and horrors befall the set, such as human appendages showing up in the cafeteria food and a cheerleading scene being interrupted by the discovery of a human skull. Where be your gibes / You ain't got no alibi / Yorick! Yeah, Yeah, Yorick! Woooo![4]
Finally, in a bizarre, anti-climactic finale, Emory is led onto the classroom set, only to be greeted by actors he knows he didn't hire. He knows this because they are effectively scary, and in fact they terrify him with their ghostly intimidations. It's then that Jake reveals he got Mindy and her friends to play a prank on him by making him scared. Triumphantly, he asks his father to admit that he's scared.
But the Twist is:
Emory is upset at being tricked but thrilled that the cameras were rolling, as he can use the footage in the film. Yes, he can use the footage showing the director and none of the film's stars being scared for a few seconds in the film. However, artistic sacrifice is foisted upon the auteur by external forces: none of the children have shown up on film. Jake's friends really were ghosts.
But the Twist Really is:
They aren't really. Turns out Jake had the hindsight to film the empty classroom himself before his father entered. Yes, because members of a film crew love to work when they don't have to. Or is the point that Jake operated the camera himself without any training? And that the cameras were left unattended? And that for whatever reason his father watched the footage in horror without noticing that, y'know, it doesn't show him or his son either? I think even Gig Young[5] would have had trouble sycophanting it up on this set.
the Platonic Boy-Girl Relationship:
Jake may remember her well,[6] but Chelsea disappears halfway through the novel.
Questionable Parenting:
I can't believe Mindy's parents were okay with her wandering around a film-set unescorted.
Hey, California. The Novel Takes Place in California. California. California California California. California Alert:
Jake and his friends propose walking around the UCLA campus for fun and going to eat at In-And-Out Burger. What, too busy to see the sign or a palm tree?
Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending:
Ch. 2/3:
Nothing scares Jake. Nothing except whatever causes him to open his mouth in a scream of terror.
Great Prose Alert:
He spun around. Stared. And opened his mouth in a scream of terror.
Conclusions:
I guess they never let Stine on the set of the television series?[Note 3]
Comments[edit | edit source]
An annotated list of blog comments that received official replies can be found here.
Notes[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Troy occasionally makes parenthetical comments prior to the "Brief Synopsis" section. Since they're exceptionally easy to miss, we've made a note to draw your attention.
- ↑ If the murder is something that is implied to happen off-screen, you could conceivably use extras for that. However, if Mindy provides a unique and memorable performance, she should qualify as a day player, which would entitle her to higher pay and a mention in the closing credits. This is because actors have an incredibly strong union protecting their rights.
(In the book, Mindy has to memorize a cheer and dance routine, which is absolutely not an "extra". On top of being paid as an actor, she should also be getting paid more for being a dancer — and possibly even more for performing in the rough conditions of a desert. Oh, and her parents should be present. Duh.) - ↑ Amusingly, he appears in the introduction to multiple episodes.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ A slogan of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
- ↑ A security deposit is money you give to the land owner when you move in. Once you move out, they're supposed to return the deposit — unless you broke one of the agreements you made to the land owner.
- ↑ The slogan of the infamous news channel is "We report. You decide."
- ↑ This refers to a famous scene in Hamlet where the titular character finds the jester Yorick's skull and mourns his passing. "Where be your gibes?" is a question he asks. The structure of the joke, however, is lifted from a specific schoolyard chant:
U-G-L-Y
You ain't got no alibi
You ugly!
Yeah, yeah, you ugly! Woo!
(It's up for debate where this rhyme originated from.)
- ↑ As the Wikipedia link explains, Gig Young was the host of Warner Bros. Presents, an umbrella series wherein he would present movie production from behind the scenes.
- ↑ A reference to the opening lyric of "Chelsea Hotel #2" by Leonard Cohen: "I remember her well in the Chelsea hotel."
