100 New Movie Classics: No. 75-51

Poised on the knife's edge between parody and homage, Wes Craven's mock thriller revived the slasher films of the '80s in all their gruesomely ritualized glory. Except that the teenagers in Scream have been raised on endless replays of those films, so the sudden appearance of a mad killer becomes a case of life imitating schlock. The killer's mask suggests a plastic version of Edvard Munch's The Scream, and it has the eerie effect of reflecting the audience's fear right back at it.