Editorials
Five Horror Movies Perfect for Valentine’s Day to Stream This Week
Love is in the air this week with the arrival of Valentine’s Day. Naturally, that means this week’s streaming picks are dedicated to Valentine’s Day-appropriate horror movies.
While there is no shortage of horror dedicated to exploring and exploiting the best and worst of love and romance, these titles cast a wider net. These five horror movies play with concepts of love or simply take place on Valentine’s Day. So cuddle up with these horror movies that are perfect for the holiday this week, from demonic lust to enigmatic genre-benders.
Here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Luz – Crackle, Plex, The Roku Channel, Tubi, Vudu
Luz, a taxi driver, arrives at a police station for help and a lengthy tale of demonic possession. Meanwhile, the demon is working its way there to reunite with the object of its desire, Luz. It’s not just the setup that makes Luz feel different from any other possession horror film out there, though the demon’s body-hopping style is reminiscent of The Hidden. It’s the avant-garde way in which director Tilman Singer relays this story and the unique motivation driving the body-hopping horror: love. Through wide-tracking shots, dreamlike and smoky staging, and an electronic score to boot, Luz is firmly planted in the experimental. With Singer’s Cuckoo on the way, now is a great time to catch up with this unique possession gem.
Pontypool – AMC+, Shudder
Stephen McHattie is a commanding presence in this atypical outbreak horror movie. The actor plays shock jock DJ Grant Mazzy piecing together an outbreak on Valentine’s Day in Pontypool, Ontario, from his radio station booth as events play out in real-time on air. That means much of the action happens via audio, with reports and town residents calling into the station. Yet, none of that detracts from the suspense. It’s an unusual yet effective take on an outbreak, and winter serves as an excuse to keep its main character trapped inside and feeling secluded. Not in the mood for love this week? This pick is for you, as the immediacy of the outbreak leaves no time for romance here.
Picnic at Hanging Rock – Criterion Channel, Max
Director Peter Weir’s moody, atmospheric, and enigmatic feature is for those who don’t mind unwieldy mysteries and an abstract sense of reality similar to “Twin Peaks.” The plot revolves around the strange disappearance of multiple school girls and a teacher during a Valentine’s Day picnic at Hanging Rock, and it’s an adaptation of the 1967 novel. There’s an eerie, romantic quality that makes this beguiling Australian film feel more like a surreal nightmare. The more clues that surface, the weirder things get. Don’t expect easy answers here, but do be prepared for one unsettling Doctor McKenzie (John Fegan), who frequently inspects the girls that return for their “intactness.” It’ll give you the creeps.
Spring – AMC+, Shudder, Tubi, Vudu
Evan Russell (Lou Taylor Pucci) is on a significant tailspin after losing his mother to cancer. His friend recommends traveling to clear his head, so he flees to Italy. He meets the enigmatic Louise (Nadia Hilker), a guarded woman who eventually gives in to Evan’s feelings. Louise harbors a dark, monstrous secret that will irrevocably change both of their lives. Filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead use sci-fi and horror to deliver a romantic, Lovecraftian reminder that change might be scary, but it can also be beautiful. Spring offers the most swoon-worthy horror movie on the list, making this the pick for those wanting something more traditional this Valentine’s Day.
Tales from the Crypt – Crackle, Cultpix, Plex, The Roku Channel, Tubi
This classic horror anthology features five segments based on EC Comics stories. The wraparound features five strangers confronted by a Crypt Keeper who regales them with tales of their demises. While the first segment, “…And All Through the House,” receives the most attention thanks to its television series’ update and yuletide theming, Tales from the Crypt also features a Valentine’s Day segment. The great Peter Cushing appears in this story, “Poetic Justice,” as a mostly beloved neighbor, Arthur Edward Grimsdyke, who finds himself at the center of a smear campaign by someone who seeks to drive him from the neighborhood. Of course, there’s more to Grimsdyke than meets the eye, and Valentine’s Day serves as the pivotal turning point toward, well, grim poetic justice.
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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