Editorials
Sun-Soaked: 8 Great Horror Movies Set in Broad Daylight
In horror, dawn tends to be the most pivotal time for survival. When the sun rises, the evil that thrives in the dark is forced to retreat. The sun is a reprieve from unrelenting terror. All you have to do is survive until dawn and you’re home free. The dark is a scary place to be, which is why so many horror movies are set at night. From a technical standpoint, the dark makes it a lot easier to craft scares and hide any creature imperfections, too. Which is why daylight-set horror is such an interesting niche.
Creating atmosphere and chills is so much trickier to pull off under the blazing sun. When it’s done well, not much is as inherently unnerving as horror set in the broad of day; where can you escape to if even the rising dawn won’t give you shelter from horror’s worst? Ari Aster’s sophomore follow up, Midsommar, makes a bold gamble by setting itself in the far North of Sweden where the sun doesn’t set at all during June. If the trailer is any indication, that bright sunshine makes things seem even more sinister.
While we wait to see just how nightmarish Midsommar will be, we look back at some of the best sun-soaked horror movies.
The Wicker Man
When you think of Pagan horror or daylight horror (or both), The Wicker Man is nearly always the first one to pop in mind. Police Sergeant Howie travels to the remote island Summerisle in search of a missing girl after receiving an anonymous letter. Howie, a devout Christian, is disturbed to find that no one on the island seems to know the girl, but he’s even more disturbed by the islanders’ Pagan celebrations of May Day. Of course, the true terror comes with the iconic closing moments of the film, where Howie discovers the horrifying truth about his summoning to the island. Based on David Pinner’s novel Ritual, and starring Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, The Wicker Man is an unsettling summer hellscape for poor Howie.
Jaws
The opening moments of this seminal summer set horror film might take place during dusk, but the vast majority of the runtime is set over the bright Fourth of July holiday weekend. For police chief Martin Brody, professional shark hunter Quint, and oceanographer Matt Hooper, tracking and stopping the massive man-eating shark swimming the crowded waters of Amity Island is much easier by day. It is when the shark is going to be most active, thanks to the summer crowd buffet, after all. Steven Spielberg made audiences afraid to go into the water, and it had nothing to do with the dark.
Piranha 3D
A somewhat remake of the 1978 film, Piranha 3D lets loose a school of prehistoric man-eating fish on unsuspecting spring breakers partying on Lake Victoria. While the original film also counts for great sun-soaked horror, Alexandra Aja’s take injects a lot of humor and gore to the proceedings. Starring Elizabeth Shue as Sheriff Forester and Adam Scott as the seismologist investigating the earthquake opened a chasm that unleashed the carnivorous fish, this one is an entertaining summer gorefest. Look for fun cameos, like Jaws’ Richard Dreyfuss, and a rare film to embrace the 3D format (hello severed member).
Predator
Not all daylight set horror takes place at the beach or at Pagan festivals; sometimes they take place in the jungle. Sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger might have had his final face off with the alien creature after the sun sets, but much of the film takes place during the day, under the blazing sun that left much of the special ops team drenched in sweat. Until they were picked off one by one in brutal fashion, anyway. Seeing a group of highly lethal men get eviscerated so quickly and easily by an unseen creature, during a time of day with they should have an advantage, is a large part of why this film works.
Race with the Devil
This underseen gem is an action horror hybrid that crosses Satanic horror with a car chase movie, all set under the scorching Texas sun. For business partners Roger Marsh and Frank Stewart (Peter Fonda and Warren Oates), an RV road trip to Colorado with their wives turns into a harrowing fight for survival when the men stumble upon a Satanic sacrifice across from their campsite in central Texas. Looking to keep their coven a secret, the Satanists set out to silence the group permanently. While there are some night sequences, the bulk of the movie is set during the day, with Marsh and Stewart trying to out drive the enclosing Satanists. There’s nowhere safe for them to turn, either.
Death Proof
Like Race with the Devil, Quentin Tarantino’s half of the 2007 Grindhouse double feature showcased car chase horror set during the Texas sun. After a visceral scene that demonstrates the “Death Proof” part of Stuntman Mike’s car at night, the movie skips to fourteen months later where we meet a new group of ladies targeted by the murderous stunt driver. He closes in for the kill while the girls are test driving a car to play game of “Ship’s Mast,” resulting in an intense cat and mouse chase. Both the vehicles and the stunts/action deserved every bit of that bright sun spotlight.
Tremors
Perfection, Nevada is an isolated ex-mining town set in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In other words, it’s a pretty tiny desert town with a miniscule population. So, there’s really no outside help to fall back on when strange underground creatures start picking them off one by one. Perfection is a town filled with personality of its own, and leads Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) bring a buddy comedy sensibility to this fantastic creature feature. But it’s Tom Woodruff Jr.’s Graboid design and creation that delivered one of the most unique movie monsters and inspired an entire franchise. For the residents of Perfection, the underground monsters proved extra problematic thanks to the scorching desert sun.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
If there’s one thing this list makes abundantly clear, it’s don’t come to Texas during the summer. If the scorching heat doesn’t kill you, something else will. In this case it’s the cannibalistic clan Sally Hardesty, her brother Franklin, and their friends cross paths with when they decide to visit the old Hardesty home after stopping by their grandfather’s grave. While the traumatic climax takes place at night, which sees Sally flee toward the infamous house only to suffer as the guest of one brutal dinner party, much of the film takes place under the grueling summer sun. Including one startling introduction to the iconic Leatherface.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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