Editorials
Short-Lived TV Series “Special Unit 2” Is an Underprized Horror-Comedy
“DARWIN WAS HALF RIGHT.“
Back in the spring of 2001, this curious intertitle greeted anyone who tuned in for the premiere of Special Unit 2. The mid-season replacement aired right after Star Trek Enterprise on UPN, and it joined the likes of WB castoffs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell. Unlike the now-defunct network’s other genre offerings, Evan Katz‘s series was distinctly a comedy. From start to finish, Special Unit 2 is not only a whimsical tale of good versus evil, it reminds us that humor is often the key to comprehending the horrors of day-to-day-life.
Set in Chicago, a street cop named Kate Benson (Alexondra Lee, Paranormal Activity 4) learns that monsters do exist after all. Or, as the covert division Special Unit 2 prefers to call them, “Links.” After she’s partnered with hothead Nick O’Malley (Michael Landes, Final Destination 2), Kate’s brought up to speed on how to deal with these “missing links” between animal and man. They come up against various otherworldly threats such as a fear-eating scarecrow, wall-dwelling ghouls, and sisterly gorgons. It’s never a dull day at Special Unit 2.
The X-Files forever changed how scripted television does horror. Older entrants like Kolchak: The Night Stalker paved the way, but Chris Carter made the template that modern shows follow when it comes to investigating the paranormal. Special Unit 2 doesn’t deal with aliens (or vampires, as the mere thought of their existence is “ridiculous”), but its two main characters are absolutely caricatures of the iconic Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.
Heading up this colorful cast are Kate and Nick, two good-looking twenty-somethings with complementary personalities. They first meet during a rash of gargoyle-related abductions. Kate Benson, tolerably skeptical about everything in life but the supernatural, is always sensitive to things that go bump in the night. Everyone around Kate always discounted her suspicions until she found a home at Special Unit 2. From the red hair, to the occasional bout of academic insight, she’s the Scully in this duo. Nick, on the other hand, is a crude echo of Mulder. While Fox had his fair share of skin rags, Nick is hardly shy about what he did after hours. In truth, O’Malley’s overt sexuality is a cover-up for a rather horrifying past that’s touched upon from time to time.
In a smart move, the writers never tried to force a romance between Kate and Nick. Their winsome chemistry comes from a playful revulsion towards one another’s quirks and life choices. At any cost, they always have each other’s backs when the going gets tough. Like when Nick attends Kate’s disastrous high school reunion, he recognizes how selfless his partner is even after being humiliated by her classmates. And Kate puts herself in harm’s way to save her friend when his obsessions and loyalties get the best of him. As much as they are considered an ersatz Mulder and Scully, Nick and Kate’s steadfast friendship is a large part of why fans can look past the show’s other flaws.
In charge of this troop of misfits is Special Unit 2’s boss, Captain Richard Page (Richard Gant, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday). He’s the stern fatherly figure that his employees never asked for. And when Captain Page isn’t handling Nick and Kate, he has to contend with the office gnome. Not a metaphor seeing as gnomes reasonably exist in this universe. Due to his penchant for robbery, Carl (Danny Woodburn, Death to Smoochy) is bound to helping Special Unit 2 until further notice. For all that necessary Link background, the team looks to resident biologist Sean (Sean Whalen, 3 From Hell) in the first season, and then to his eager replacement, Jonathan (Jonathan Togo), in the second. Last, but not least, Pauley Perrette (The Ring) has her job cut out for her as Special Unit 2’s overworked PR manager, Alice.
Aside from its most obvious muse, Special Unit 2 enthusiastically takes cues from Buffy, CSI, and The Matrix. It was a post-Y2K world where trance music, pop culture laden wit, and wire-fu were all used un-ironically. Slow-mo fights, dance club stakeouts, and celebrity references weren’t uncommon in the series. This all might seem like a demonstration of the show’s low originality, but Special Unit 2 was really a clever send-up of the time period.
Over the span of nineteen episodes, Special Unit 2 created an offbeat collection of beasts and frights rooted in both ancient folklore and modern culture. The episodic format of the show allowed for many single-use yet memorable adversaries. One minute mermen are targeting virginal maidens, the next a monster composed of liposuctioned body fat is looking for its next meal. It may seem as if the majority of these Links are too disposable, but there was a hint of an overarching story and a potential Big Bad. Unfortunately, the show was canceled before the writers could revisit that budding plot. Still, this sundry gang of imaginative creatures will speak to those who like hands-on visual makeup and charmingly dated special effects.
The writing was breezy and tongue-in-cheek; episodes were easy to jump into without needing too much prior knowledge. Critics at the time were unimpressed only because they took the show at face value. In hindsight, they realize Katz had crafted a misjudged, low-stakes satire of action and horror movies. Special Unit 2 isn’t great television in the conventional sense, but it is a perfect time capsule of an era where small-screen horror was approachable, weird, and just plain fun.
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.