Scary Movie has a long list of references to various horror movies, and it almost had what could have been its most epic cameo, all thanks to Jamie Lee Curtis – here’s what happened. The horror genre went through what’s considered its best decade in the 1980s and struggled to remain afloat in the 1990s, and by the following decade, things had changed in the genre and the audience started to look for different content. The 2000s saw an emergence of parody movies, and one of the most notable titles in this trend is Scary Movie.
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and released in 2000, Scary Movie is a comedy horror that serves as one big parody of multiple genres, mostly horror and mystery, and as such, it includes numerous references and Easter eggs of popular horror movies at the time. However, this doesn’t mean that Scary Movie didn’t have a story, and it followed Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), who on one night with her friends ended up being involved in a crime. One year later, they begin to be stalked, and a mysterious person starts killing them one by one. Scary Movie’s plot is an obvious parody of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream, and even the killer wore the Ghostface mask and costume. Other movies parodied in Scary Movie are Scream 2, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, The Shining, The Matrix, and The Usual Suspects, and it could have had an unforgettable reference to Halloween.
Scary Movie was written by Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans (who also played Ray Wilkins and Shorty Meeks, respectively) with Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman. As part of the process of writing a movie, the script goes through various rewrites until the writers find the tone, story, and characters that work best for the project, and it was during that part of the development of Scary Movie that a great idea for a cameo got lost. The original script reportedly featured a cameo by none other than Jamie Lee Curtis, and it would have referenced one of her most memorable scenes in John Carpenter’s Halloween, in a very Scary Movie way.
Curtis played Laurie Strode in Halloween, the only survivor of Michael Myers’ first killing spree in 1978 and later his main target. Halloween saw Laurie doing her best to keep Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace safe as well as herself, so at one point in the movie, she ends up hiding in a closet, where she takes a coat hanger that she later uses to stab Michael Myers in the eye when he breaks in the closet. Now, the cameo Scary Movie had planned for Jamie Lee Curtis would have seen Cindy finding Curtis (most likely in full Laurie Strode mode) hiding out in the same closet while Cindy was running away from the killer. Unfortunately, this was eventually cut out of the movie and there were no other direct references to Halloween and Laurie Strode in the movie, with Cindy simply running away from the killer through the house (while mocking other movies in the process, of course).
While this cameo appearance by Jamie Lee Curtis and reference to Halloween would have been fun to watch, it was perhaps the best decision to leave them out of Scary Movie. Although the first movie parodies fewer horror movies than the sequels did, adding one more to the list would have been a bit too much, which is what happened with the rest. Cindy finding Laurie hiding in the closet is a fun idea, but it will only live in the imagination of horror fans.