Editorials
9 Hilarious Moments from Season 1 of “Scream Queens”!
Fox’s slasher parody Scream Queens was one of the most controversial shows to premiere last year. Marketed as a horror series, many viewers were surprised to find out that it was actually a parody in the vein of films like Airplane! or even Scary Movie. It premiered well below expectations and gradually lost viewers as the season went on (even hitting a 1.98 in Nielsen ratings at one point). Lucky for fans, Fox decided to renew the show for a second season, which premieres on September 20th. To celebrate the occasion, we decided to look at some of the first season’s funniest moments.
1. When Ms. Bean Doesn’t Know How to “Hit It”
The highlight of the pilot episode was an extremely brief moment in which Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts) is ordering her housekeeper Ms. Bean (Jan Hoag), whom she affectionately calls “White Mammy,” around town. Upon leaving the local coffee shop, Chanel tells Ms. Bean to hit it. Poor Ms. Bean doesn’t fully grasp the concept and Chanel’s reaction is priceless.
2. Chanel-‘o-ween
In a rather obvious spoof of Taylor Swifts very real “Swiftmas” (though not nearly as sweet), Chanel would send grotesque gifts to all of her precious donkeys. Sure, it’s a little on the nose, but the image of her driving around in that little pink car is one of the funniest visuals the series did all season.
3. Where are the Dinosaurs?
Ariana Grande’s appearance on Scream Queens was a much-hyped aspect of the series prior to its release, so it came as quite a shock when her Chanel #2 died in the pilot (albeit in a hilarious, Airplane!-style fashion). That wouldn’t be her best moment though. No, her best moment would come from a dream Chanel had in which she spoke to #2’s ghost, and they both lamented the lack of dinosaurs in Hell.
4. Cafeteria Feminism
Sometimes Ryam Murphy’s social and political commentary can be a little heavy-handed, so it was refreshing to see feminism handled in such hilarious fashion during a cafeteria fight on Scream Queens. The sequence skewers critics of feminism and feminists themselves in the way the Chanel’s respond to the male chauvinistic remarks of men, making Scream Queens an equal opportunity satire.
5. Zayday Williams Is Totally the Killer
There’s a running gag throughout the whole first season of Scream Queens in which security guard Denise Hemphill (Niecy Nash) accuses Zayday Williams (Keke Palmer) of being the killer. It probably happens at least once an episode. The whole bit is hilarious in general, but never so much as when Chanel #5 (Abigail Breslin) deduces that Zayday is the killer because her name is an anagram for “I May Slay Liz Daw.” Who is Liz Daw? I don’t know, but clearly Zayday is contemplating slaying her!
6. Dean Munsch’s Afternoon Reading Session
Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the MVPs of Scream Queens not only because she is one of the greatest scream queens of all time, but because she was able to play so radically against type in the role of Dean Cathy Munsch. Munsch is a sociopathic, selfish awful person. She’s also a total hoot! One of her funniest moments came from the Thanksgiving episode in which Chanel #3 (Billie Lourd) explains how she knows Munsch is a murderer: she saw her reading a Playgirl magazine whilst eating a bologna sandwich, despite supposedly being allergic to bologna. The visual of Curtis reading that Playgirl is too weird to not be funny, and serves as one of the most iconic images Scream Queens ever delivered.
7. Christmas Shopping
What kind of monster would get into stores before they opened the morning of Black Friday and buy all the VR headsets in plain view of the general public? Chanel Oberlin, that’s who. Watching her stack boxes of VR headsets while smiling at the shoppers outside is one of the most demented and hysterical things the character has ever done, and that’s saying something.
8. In Bed With a Goat
It was difficult to pick just one moment from Chad Radwell, the dopey frat boy with a heart of gold (sort of). The best moment had to come in the form of him literally sleeping with a goat. You see, Chad is lactose intolerant, so he keeps a baby goat and cuddles with it at night and rubs its belly so that it will produce more milk for him to drink (since goat milk is lactose milk). It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it sure is funny.
9. Basically Everything Niecy Nash Says or Does
You know how I stated that Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the MVPs of Scream Queens? Well Niecy Nash was the MVP of Scream Queens‘s first season. There wasn’t a single thing that came out of this woman’s mouth that didn’t inspire immediate guffaws so I’m just going to lump every scene of hers into this entry. Excuse the music in the below series of clips though. It really ruins the whole experience of watching Nash do her thing.
What were your favorite moments from the first season of Scream Queens? Let us know in the comments below!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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