The Scream Screen Saga boxed set is a collection of the three diminishing horror films that originally revived the slasher genre, then proceeded to sink it once more with two mediocre sequels. For further comments regarding the plots of each film, you can take a look at my plot synopses below. The first thing that one should know about this boxed set is that the three films contained within are transferred identically to the versions that have been available separately on retailer's shelves for the past three to twenty-odd months. The only significant difference lies in the extras disc, my summary of which you can read here. At a recommended retail price of $99.95, the boxed set might represent good value for determined completists, but the DVD of Scream in this boxed set is identical to the slipshod version of the film released by Magna Pacific a little while ago. If you're really determined to own all three Scream films and the extras disc contained therein, then I would advise buying this boxed set, and then importing the Japanese version of the original film while using the local version for a coffee coaster.
 
 

Overall Boxed Set Ratings

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot	(Scream) (The other two films)
Overall

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Menu Audio and Animation  Theatrical Trailer (1.33:1, Dolby Digital 2.0)  Featurette - Behind The Scenes (10:43)  Featurette - Director's Comments (2:58)  Untitled Featurette (6:11)  Cast & Crew Interviews  Music Video - unnamed: Drop Dead Gorgeous (3:41)
Rating
Year Released	1996
Running Time	106:35 Minutes  (Not 111 Minutes as per packaging)
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (76:46)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Wes Craven
Studio Distributor	Magna Pacific	Starring	Neve Campbell  David Arquette  Courtney Cox  Matthew Lillard  Rose McGowan  Skeet Ulrich  Jamie Kennedy  Drew Barrymore
Case	Click
RPI	Individual Disc: $34.95 Boxed Set: $99.95	Music	Marco Beltrami

    Yet, for such a celebrated horror film, the story is actually quite a simple one. It begins with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) receiving a phone call from a stranger, during which she is questioned about her knowledge of "scary movies" as the killer, voiced by Roger L. Jackson, puts it. One of the most clever in-jokes of this film is Casey's claim that the first Nightmare On Elm Street is good, but the others sucked. This is not just a display of self-indulgent wankery on the part of Wes Craven, who directed A Nightmare On Elm Street and then sold the rights to the franchise before it was a hit. It was his way of striking back at the sequels that took his cleverly-researched idea and ran it into the ground (although he did have some input into the third episode of the series). Casey is then killed by a figure in a black robe and a goofy Halloween mask, which surprised a lot of the audiences when the film was exhibited on the silver screen. After all, Barrymore was one of the screen's biggest crowd pullers a few years beforehand, and in many minds the idea of featuring her name on the theatrical poster only to kill her off in the first reel was too ridiculous to even contemplate. However, Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven obviously thought it was a better idea to kill off the most obvious choice for the film's hero and replace her with a complete surprise, a decision that they were a hundred percent correct with. Next, we are introduced to the actual hero of the movie, a young woman by the name of Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), whose mother was brutally raped and murdered a year prior to the film's setting.

    When Sydney learns what has happened to Casey, she is confronted by the possibility that the man she had sent to prison for her mother's murder may not be the killer after all. This thought is made all the more unpleasant by reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who follows Sidney around and badgers her about the case until Sydney punches Gale's lights out in one of the most satisfying sequences of the film. For much of the film, Sydney is protected by her friends Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), as well as Deputy Dwight Riley (David Arquette). For a significant portion of the film, we are left waiting for the next death instead of the story simply being moved along by solely by creative gore, and we even start to care about the less important characters that make up this film. However, when these characters (including some great uncredited cameos by Wes Craven, Linda Blair, and Henry Winkler) are killed one by one, Sydney finds herself confronted by her mother's killer, and surprised by their actual identity. Indeed, I was quite surprised by the way the film ended by sheer virtue of the fact that it doesn't follow your typical happy fairytale finale as dictated by what seems to be Hollywood convention.

    Obviously, this is not the most complex or original idea to come out of a horror film, but it is one that works surprisingly well for a number of reasons. The first is a clever script by Kevin Williamson, which works well both as a parody of the often self-recycling horror/slasher/thriller genre, and as a serious story in its own right. The second is some clever direction by Wes Craven, who also directed Shocker (the film Fallen sorely wishes that it was), with a number of false scares and witty references injected into the story both on a dialogue and visual level. However, the best thing about this film is the acting and the character development, especially from Neve Campbell, whose only previous appearances in horror films were in such productions as The Dark, and an abysmally written piece known as The Craft. The characters are engaging enough to carry the film on their own, unlike what happened in the two sequels, and the actors seem to be caring about their jobs rather than going through the motions as in the other Scream films.

    I was going to say that if you only buy one Scream film on DVD, buy this one, but Magna Pacific's treatment of this film leads me to recommend you buy none at all, unless you're interested in importing DVDs from Japan (see the R4 vs R2 vs R1 comparison below). Scream 2 may suffer from a mediocre script that severely hinders the actors, and Scream 3 was obviously rushed through production at the expense of plot development, but their DVD versions are far more preferable to look at.

Video

    The transfer is presented in the Pan & Scanned aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is not 16x9 enhanced. I didn't buy an eighty-centimeter television set with a selectable 16x9 mode so that I could watch Pan & Scan transfers of a film that appears on my list of most highly anticipated releases. Wes Craven is quite adept at composing for the ratio of 2.35:1, in spite of having only previously used it once, and I have even taken to calling Pan & Scan transfers of such films "half the film", i.e. "I'm watching Scream right now, well, half of it".

    The transfer is sharp, but not nearly as sharp as we have every right to expect from the DVD Video format, and even looks somewhat soft in comparison to the noticeably overcompressed Scream 2. While the backgrounds are not as soft and ill-defined, the foregrounds have a certain haze that looks halfway between an all-digital transfer and a recycled VHS master. Adding to this is the fact that panning shots lose a great deal of definition, with any camera movement reducing the resolution in direct proportion to its speed. The pitch of the audio made me repeat several shots in slow motion in order to check for that once-a-second judder, but it didn't seem to be there. I will expand on this point later. The shadow detail of the transfer is good, although I felt that it could have been slightly better. There is no low-level noise in the transfer, and a virtual absence of grain.

    The colour saturation of this transfer appears to be somewhat on the muted and dull side. Having seen this film on VHS a while ago, I felt that the colours in both formats suffered the same problem, in that the greens are not really green, and the reds are not really red. However, flesh tones look natural, and there is little evidence of bleeding or misregistration.

    MPEG artefacts were not especially prevalent in the transfer, but watching the film in slow motion to check for judder revealed that there is a moderate problem with motion blur. A camera pan across a brick wall soon dissolved into a blurry mess, and it doesn't take much distance from the camera to lose the sharpness that was somewhat incomplete to begin with in the foreground. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some aliasing in fine lines, but this artefact was quite well-controlled, all things considered. Film artefacts were also a very well-controlled artefact, with only a handful of black marks appearing in the entire feature.

    This disc is presented in the RSDL format, with the layer change taking place at 76:46, between Chapters 11 and 12. Given that this is right in the middle of the sequence in which Sidney discovers the identity of the murderer, I could think of a number of better places to put the layer change. The fact that the music pauses noticeably during this layer change does not help matters.

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. This is simply pathetic, as the VHS version of the film was quite heavily encoded to take advantage of the somewhat limited surround space offered by the Pro-Logic format. Much of this film contains opportunities to spread creepy, haunting, and disturbing sounds throughout the soundfield, truly engulfing the viewer in the action. All of these classic opportunities have been passed up in favour of a transfer that defies any notion of regard to the people who have been waiting for this film to arrive for countless months. Thankfully, the dialogue is always clear and easy to make out, although some limitations are posed upon this by the channel constriction at times. Furthering my theory that this soundtrack has been processed in order to compensate for the effects of PAL's speedup is the fact that much of the speech in the film seems out of sync by a very small percentage of a second.

    The score music in this film is credited to Marco Beltrami, although the contemporary music used in the film, including that distinctly ordinary Nick Cave number, has much more presence. This can be partly blamed on the fact that the makers of the film obviously went to a lot of trouble to make sure that the record company affiliate's picks of the moment got their thirty-second ad spot, but it also has to do with the timing of the score in combination with the limitations of the soundtrack. The lack of any separation between the music, sound effects, and dialogue means that all three elements have to fight very hard for ease of listening, and the score music is the big loser. This is not to say that the score doesn't slot into place within the overall composition of the film, but the odds are quite stacked against it when it comes to making an impact.

    Being that this is a straight stereo soundtrack, there is no usage of the surround channels, which is just criminal when the number of sound effects that would be quite stunning in the proper format is taken into account. Thankfully, the subwoofer was still present to add something of a bottom end to some sound effects, but its timing seemed to be just a little off.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (1:57)

Featurette - Behind The Scenes

Featurette - Director's Comments

Untitled Featurette

Cast Interviews

Music Video: Drop Dead Gorgeous (3:41)

    To cut a very long story short, the Region 4 version of this disc is a loser and should be avoided like the plague. The Japanese Region 2 version of the disc is by far the best version simply because it is mostly immune from all the shortcomings of the other versions. It might be expensive and hard to get hold of, but if you really must have this film, it is hands down the only version of this film worth owning for the time being. If you're on a tight budget, buying the Region 1 Dimension Collector's Edition also makes sense in spite of the absurd censorship and lack of 16x9 Enhancement.

    The video quality may have been acceptable (just) on VHS, but it is quite unacceptable on DVD.

    The audio quality is (just) reasonable, but strongly suggests some kind of digital pitch alteration.

    The extras have that telltale ring of desperation.
 
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
November 3, 2000.
 

This review is sponsored by

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General		Extras
Category	Horror/Thriller	Theatrical Trailer - 1.33:1 (16x9 Enhanced), Dolby Digital 2.0 Cast Biographies
Rating
Year Released	1997
Running Time	115:43 Minutes (Not 120 Minutes as per packaging)
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	Wes Craven
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	David Arquette  Neve Campbell  Courtney Cox  Sarah Michelle Gellar  Jamie Kennedy  Laurie Metcalf  Jerry O'Connell  Jada Pinkett  Liev Schreiber
Case	Brackley
RPI	Individual Disc: $34.95 Boxed Set: $99.95	Music	Marco Beltrami

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	English (Dolby Digital 5.1) English (MPEG 2.0 )
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	None	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is now attending college and trying to put the past behind her in a location some distance from the site of the murders that made up the original Scream. As one does when they narrowly avoid being killed by someone they trusted quite deeply, one would think. One day, she wakes up to find that two seniors at the same educational institution have been murdered at the premiere of a film based on those murders, which is a stressful enough event to begin with, except for the added annoyance of constant hounding from the press. In particular, she is hounded by the reporter from the original Scream, one Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), with her attempt to get an exclusive between Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) and Sidney gaining a less than positive response. Adding some flavouring to this mix of characters is the new mixture of victims and suspects, with reporter wannabe Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf) and Sidney's new squeeze, Derek (Jerry O'Connell) adding a tinge of the B-grade acting one would normally expect from a real slasher film. The role of Dewey Riley (David Arquette) is reprised, but really contributes very little to the overall film except for added tension between Gale and the rest of the characters. A pair of sorority sisters, Lois (Rebecca Gayheart) and Murphy (Portia De Rossi) add the predictable and useless red herring, and Tori Spelling keeps the quotient for the dogs you actually want to see killed, by playing herself playing Neve Campbell's character. Confused? Well, so am I after being expected to believe a rather attractive woman with few flaws would be portrayed in a movie within a movie by a woman for whom an unrequested fission surplus could actually constitute a makeover.

    This, not unnaturally, leads me to the question of why lame sequels are currently being brought out before their much-superior originals. First, Warner Brothers indulged us by bringing out both Mad Max sequels before the much more compelling original was given a chance to so much as gestate on DVD. Second, we had Columbia Tristar managing that trick by bringing us Robocop 3, which is undeniably the single worst sequel to one of the best films of the previous century. Now, Roadshow Home Entertainment have favoured us by bringing out Scream 2 (or Scam 2, as other fans of Wes Craven's actual good films that I know like to call it) before bringing us the moderately entertaining original. So this brings me to yet another law about which films get the best treatment on DVD: the crappy imitation is always brought out before the much more compelling bright idea. This law applies across all genres: Science Fiction (The Matrix before Tron), Sports Action (Futuresport before Rollerball), and even Christ-Theme based vengeance Action (The Crow before Robocop). Now that I have outlined another one of my beautifully asinine theories about what goes on in the minds of release schedulers, I hope you find the rest of the review just as enlightening. Let's dive right in...

Video

    This particular transfer is presented in the original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, complete with 16x9 Enhancement. This transfer appears to have been downconverted to the 16x9 shape rather than upconverted from an inferior source, as the resolution is very good, to the point of almost being too good. The transfer is immaculately sharp, making full use of the superior resolution that DVD offers. Shadow detail was excellent, even for a film of this recent vintage, and there was no low-level noise in this film at any time.

    The colour saturation was completely spot-on from start to finish, with all tones and hues coming up in a realistic and vibrant fashion. It almost made me want to crawl through my television screen and into the picture, the film appeared to be so very full of real life.

    MPEG artefacts were absent from the film, in spite of there being just over two hours of high-motion film on the one layer. Film-to-video artefacts, however, were a noticeable problem in the context of the original source material, but nothing that would disturb the casual viewer. The most noticeable examples occur on some chrome near windows, venetian blinds, Gail's clothing, and the usual moiré effect that can be found in your average photography of a television display. Gail's clothing in particular was a problematic source of aliasing, as it contains many fine lines that shimmer whenever she begins to move. Compared to some other transfers in this ratio that I could mention, this film is remarkably free of such artefacts. Film artefacts were more or less completely absent, except for the mid-way point of the film, which shows a small but noticeable amount for a few minutes.

    I just thought I should mention that there are absolutely no subtitles on this disc, which is rather annoying when you want to look for character names or exact spellings of locations.

Audio

    The dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand for most of the film, but the odd word here and there was indistinct and hard to make out. This, however, was the fault of the actors rather than the people responsible for this transfer. There were no audio sync problems at any point in the transfer, which is remarkable considering the number of overdubbed telephone conversations.

    The score music of this film is credited to one Marco Beltrami, with a large number contemporary songs being used to fill out more sedate moments in the film. Personally, I hate the contemporary music that shows up in American films so much that I will severely lower my opinion of any film that uses it as anything more than a prop. Now if they used contemporary music from real artists on the other hand, things might change. In any case, the score music added a certain tense and strangely enveloping sound to the proceedings, without becoming anything too exciting.

    The surround channels are used in a borderline-heavy manner to support the music, occasional special effects, and some ambient sounds such as the low hum of the library. Unlike a lot of sound fields for films of this kind, it draws the viewer into the overall experience of the film and creates the illusion of actually being there, as a part of the onscreen events. The subwoofer was used in moderation to add some extra punch to some sequences, but otherwise did surprisingly little. It was rather effectively integrated into the overall mix, however, not giving itself away for one second.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Cast Biographies

• 16x9 Enhancement

    The video quality is excellent, and would have been reference material if not for some small, momentary problems.

    The audio quality is a shining example of how a film of this genre should sound.

    The extras are ordinary, but better than one would normally expect for a film like this.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
May 2, 2000

This review is sponsored by

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Audio Commentary: Wes Craven (Director), Marianne Maddalena (Co-Producer), Patrick Lussier (Editor) Alternate Ending with commentary  Deleted Scenes with commentary  Outtakes  Behind-The-Scenes montage  Music Video: Creed - What If Theatrical Trailers (2)  Cast & Crew Biographies
Rating
Year Released	2000
Running Time	111:48 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (75:32)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Wes Craven
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Neve Campbell David Arquette  Courtney Cox Arquette  Patrick Dempsey  Scott Foley  Lance Henriksen  Jenny McCarthy  Emily Mortimer  Parker Posey  Deon Richmond  Patrick Warburton
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	Individual Disc: $34.95 Boxed Set: $99.95	Music	Marco Beltrami

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448 Kb/s)  English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 224 Kb/s)  English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 224 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, the usual picture credits for the principal cast members

    The real reason to see this film is to see what becomes of the real lead character of this film, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and much of this film goes by without her presence. The reason for this is that work obligations restricted Campbell's involvement in the film to twenty shooting days, which is certainly not a good thing to pile on top of the rushed script. Much of this rushed script is so clichéd and blasé that I began to feel I could have written a better horror film when I was ten years old. The film begins well enough, with a spree of murders taking place in Hollywood near the set of Stab 3, while Sidney is working as a counsellor for a women's crisis line. Unfortunately, the film takes a quick detour to Hollywood, where the lead actors on Stab 3 are being murdered by a serial killer who is also in possession of a vocal harmonizer that has the paradoxical ability to take the voice of whomever is speaking into it and make said voice sound like someone else. I don't care what plot excuse you come up with, a vocal effect that can take a voice and shift the pitch far enough to change its gender without distortion, as indicated during the murders, is not possible even with today's technology. The pointless raving of the killer at the moment where we learn his identity also severely hurts the film, making me scream out that I simply didn't care about this nonsense. Real murderers do not trumpet their reasons for the benefit of the audience. Most of them don't really know the reasons why they behave the way they do themselves.

    Now, it wasn't too long ago that I fitted into the teenaged audience this film is obviously aimed at, and I can tell you with some certainty that I cared a lot about such things as character and plot development. I cared about such things at a much earlier age, as a matter of fact, a time when I sat down and had a look at such films as Halloween and The Evil Dead. While the original Scream was a valiant effort to revive the ailing horror genre, I'm sorry to say that the two sequels, especially this one, have left it in an even weaker state than ever. There are some directors who can take a patently awful script and make the best of it, but this film makes it very clear that Wes Craven is no Paul Verhoeven. Maybe if the latter had written or directed this disappointment, things might have turned out a lot better.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced.

    The transfer is exceptionally sharp even when the combined photography and compression would normally lend itself to a diffuse look, clearly a benefit of the extra space provided by a second layer. Unlike Scream 2, which looked lifeless and flat on a single-layer DVD, this film looks even better on an RSDL DVD than it probably did on the silver screen. The shadow detail is impeccable, balancing itself between the darkness needed for horror films and the clarity needed for an enjoyable viewing experience without any problems. There was no low-level noise in any of the darker scenes, making me pity the fool that tries to view this film on VHS.

    Having read Rod's assessment of this transfer when the disc was originally released, I was specifically looking for problems with colour saturation, but failed to find any, at least relatively speaking. Just to make sure, I took a few looks at the suspect shot which occurs at 50:31, and only noticed the same emphasis of red that pervades the night-time sequences. There did not seem to be any problems with bleeding or undersaturation at any time in the feature.. Of interest, however, is the fact that many daytime scenes in the film have an overly rich saturation that the previous episodes in the series lacked, and this takes a lot of getting used to when you've grown used to the lifeless and dingy colour saturations of Wes Craven's previous horror films, A Nightmare On Elm Street being the best example.

    MPEG artefacts were not noticed at any point in the transfer, in spite of this disc being stuffed to the gills with variable-quality extras material. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some occasional mild shimmer, but this artefact was not nearly as bad as it probably should have been. Film artefacts were completely non-existent, as you'd expect from a film as recent as this one.

    This disc is presented in the RSDL format, with the layer change taking place at 75:32. This is during a brief break in the dialogue, but it passed by more or less completely unnoticed on my setup, with only a slight hiccup in the sound effects being a clue to its location. It's nice to see that Village Roadshow are taking more care to hide their layer changes than merely inserting an artificial fade to black.

Audio

    The audio transfer provided for Scream 3 consists of three soundtracks: the original English dialogue rendered in Dolby Digital 5.1, at the higher rate of 448 kilobits per second, as well as a downmixed version of the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0 with surround-encoding, and finally a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded commentary track. I listened to all three soundtracks, but all the comments in this section relate to the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. For some reason, the dialogue is mixed in a little low for this soundtrack, and the surround channels were unusually loud for a Dolby Digital soundtrack. In spite of this, the dialogue is generally quite easy to understand, with no clashes between the dialogue and the sound effects. Audio sync was never a problem, although some of the lines spoken when characters wander off-camera are quite obviously ADRed.

    Marco Beltrami is credited with the score music in this episode, but it really sounds as if it were simply recycled from the previous two films. Another slight problem was that the score music seemed to be trying to fill emotional gaps in the story, and failing. Maybe I have been watching too many films with orchestral scores, but I really found that this one failed to connect on any level. You know a score is in trouble when the lamentably tryhard Nick Cave is leaving more of an impression on the viewer than the orchestration.

    The surround channels were used to support a myriad of sound effects, such as flashbacks in the form of auditory hallucinations, but it seemed like too much effort was being made to divert attention from the fact that the film itself had no real story. If you enjoy the use of sound effects to draw you into the story being shown on-screen, you will be disappointed by this soundtrack. If, on the other hand, you enjoy having sounds blasted at you from all directions without adding anything to the story, then this is a fine soundtrack. There really seems to be little rhyme nor reason to the use of the surround channels, with the original monaural soundtrack of A Nightmare On Elm Street, which I have only seen on VHS so far, seeming to have more resonance. The subwoofer was limited to supporting the occasional explosion or piece of bass-heavy music, with the gunshots sounding more like popping corks than actual gunshots.

Menu

Audio Commentary - Wes Craven (Director), Marianne Maddalena (Producer), Patrick Lussier (Editor)

US Theatrical Trailer (1:17)

International Theatrical Trailer (1:34)

Alternate Ending (9:43)

Deleted Scenes - Scream 2 (4:12) and Scream 3 (13:37)

Music Video - Creed: What If (4:54)

Outtakes - Scream (4:17) and Scream 2 (8:57)

Featurette - Behind The Scenes Montage (6:18)

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is okay, but seems haphazardly put together, much like the film.

    The extras are comprehensive.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
October 24, 2000.

This review is sponsored by

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General		Extras
Category	Extras	Featurette - Behind The Scream (31:34) Featurette - Screen Tests (7:46) Featurette - Scream 2 (6:48) Sunrise Studios Trailers (10) Music Video - Master P: Scream (3:03) DVD-ROM Extras - Trivia Game, Scripts, Character Web, SS, Web Site Easter Egg - Scary Movie Trailer (2:26) Crew Biographies
Rating
Year Released	2000
Running Time	Approx. 70 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Wes Craven
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Neve Campbell David Arquette  Courtney Cox Arquette  Patrick Dempsey
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	Boxed Set: $99.95	Music	Marco Beltrami

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

Menu

Featurette - Behind The Scream

Sunrise Studios Trailers

Featurette - Scream 2

Music Video - Master P: Scream

Crew Biographies

Easter Egg - Scary Movie Trailer

DVD-ROM Extras - Trivia Game, Scripts, Character Web, Screensaver, Web Site

DVD-ROM Extras

The DVD-ROM extras on this DVD are actually quite worthwhile, whilst at the same time not lessening the enjoyment of the rest of the extras disc for non DVD-ROM owners. This is probably the first time I have ever considered the DVD-ROM extras on a DVD to actually be more than just pointless filler.

Trivia Game

A very difficult and well-thought out trivia game kept me occupied for quite some time before I managed to get through all 10 questions. Well-and-truly a multimedia experience, a short clip from the movie plays and then you are asked a question with four possible answers. The questions get harder as you go along, and you are rewarded at the end with quite a lengthy video clip. Three incorrect answers and you have to start again.

Script Viewer

This contains the entire scripts for all three movies, along with multimedia links at various points throughout each script. I can't say that I did any more than glance through a few pages of each, but they would undoubtedly be of interest to budding filmmakers.

Character Web

This is a unusual extra. It consists of a screen with images of all of the characters from Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 3, linked together by coloured lines which indicate their respective relationships. Not overly useful, but certainly attractive and interesting to look at, at least for a while.

Screensaver

This uses footage from the DVD as a screensaver.

Website Archive

A mirror of the Scream 3 website.

Link to Website

A link to a Scream DVD website which promises future events for owners of the box set.

    The overall video quality is excellent.

    The overall audio quality is excellent.

    The whole disc is an extra.
 
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
December 29, 2000