Scream has a lot of references to John Carpenter’s Halloween, but one of those got the 1978 horror classic wrong. In 1996, Wes Craven’s Scream arrived to change the horror genre with a combination of comedy and slasher, all through a critical lens that fired shots at some of the genre’s biggest clichés. In the process, Scream introduced a new killer known as Ghostface and a new final girl in Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, while also reviving the slasher genre.
Scream went on to become a franchise with a total of four movies (and a fifth one now in development) and an anthology TV series set apart from Sidney’s storyline. Given its satire of horror clichés, Scream included various references to many horror classics, including Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, the movie that was referenced the most, in both subtle and obvious ways, was Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween.
One of Scream’s most obvious references to Michael Myers’ debut movie can be found in one of the scenes at Stu’s party, when Randy and company are watching Halloween. Moments before he stands up to share the rules on how to survive a horror movie, the guy next to him says that the blood “is all wrong” and is “too red”, but that’s actually a big mistake when talking about Halloween. Though the movie is part of the slasher genre (and a very important one as it set the basis for many others), Carpenter took it easy with the amount of blood shown on screen, and the scene that Randy and the rest are watching doesn’t show a single drop of blood.
Carpenter’s decision to not include lots of gore and blood came after his experience making Assault on Precinct 13, where he killed off Kim Richard’s character and the audience wasn’t pleased with it. The only scenes in Halloween where blood is shown are at the beginning (when Judith Myers is killed), when Laurie discovers Annie and Bob’s bodies, and when Michael cuts her arm, and they are all very toned down compared to other slasher movies. While the guy at Stu’s party might have had a point in saying the blood in Halloween was “too red” (it’s all about perspective, really), the comment was out of place as there was no blood in that particular scene.
It’s a detail that’s very easy to miss, as everyone is shouting and talking loudly while the guy complains about the blood, and it’s specially forgettable as seconds later Randy explains the famous rules to successfully survive a horror movie, but it serves as a reminder of Carpenter’s attention to detail when making Halloween.