When Scream was released in 1996, it ushered in a new appreciation for slasher flicks, but also had the unfortunate and unforeseen side effect of bringing about a resurgence of parody films following the success of Scary Movie. Now, one of the latter’s stars, Dave Sheridan, has expressed interest in returning in a series of shorts offering up further lampooning.
Sheridan played Doofy Gilmore, a send-up of Scream’s Dewey Riley, the pic from which, alongside I Know What You Did Last Summer, the bulk of the inspiration was taken. True to his name, throughout the movie, Doofy is portrayed as having severe learning difficulties, and at the end (spoilers for a 20-year-old film), in a recreation of the climax of The Usual Suspects, it’s shown that he was faking his disability the whole time and is in fact the killer.
Many of the principal actors, regardless of whether or not their characters were still alive, returned for various sequels, with Sheridan being an exception and Doofy never being seen or referenced again. While speaking to The Production Meeting podcast, though, the actor outlined his idea for building on his storyline, saying:
“It could be a really funny but captivating tale about ‘Who is Doofy?’ and really, ‘Who is the guy that plays Doofy?’, because at the end [of the film] I take the mustache off and my hair’s slicked back and I tear off the shirt and I’m a good looking guy. It would be like an anthology. They would all be à la carte serial killer shorts that could be cast with a lot of comedic actors. I think it would also fall into the realm of spoofs – recent ones that haven’t been done yet like [Halloween] and Annabelle.”
While the notion of exploring the character and satirizing famous screen killers has the potential to be an interesting one, it needs to be more than just lip service reference to famous movie scenes and repetition of oft-quoted lines.
Most specifically, any comedy needs to transcend the level on which the 2000s’ glut of spoofs operates, the humor of which has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and about as much intelligence. Although, as long as those films’ ‘creative’ minds, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who mistake passing trends for relevance and believe plagiarism is the same as parody, are kept well away from it, it could be something to watch out for.
