Urban Legend (1998)

Director Jamie Blanks
Writers Silvio Horta
Starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Tara Reid, Robert Englund, Danielle Harris
Genre Revenge
Tagline It Happened to Someone Who Knows Someone You Know … You're Next..
Country

Jamie Blanks first Hollywood movie rode on the shirttails of the brief interest in slashers that Wes Craven's Scream managed to generate back in the mid to late 1990s. To the 101 online reviewers at the time that started calling about anything horror released at the time both a "slasher" and "post modern", uhm do you know what makes a "slasher" and have you any idea what the term "post modern" means? Didn't think so! Urban Legend is pure and simple a revenge flick wrapped up in a sales pitch that highlights the whole "it could happen in your town" notion of urban legends. Blanks did what he could with a movie that is aimed at the sort of chick audience who love to scream and pretend they are frightened, you know the sort that wouldn't go anywhere near an actual go for broke horror outing. Have I managed to antagonise enough people yet? Good lets break it down.

Talk us through it

Pendleton University is under siege by inclement weather, wish we could get those lightening storms up my way, and a psycho killer who is murdering people in line with certain urban myths that may or may not exist. Guess since our slice and dice master has a hooded parka as his/her disguise you have to be slightly more creative with your kills than either Jason or Michael in order to be taken seriously in psycho circles. I was actually going to drop in a joke about a certain gunman who killed a whole bunch of people down Tasmania but figured that it would be in exceedingly bad taste and that tosser doesn't need any more publicity.

Uni hottie Natalie "Nat" Simon and news reporter Paul "Paul" Gardener have to figure out what the school is hiding, who the killer is, and why exactly they are involved in this before they too become victims. That's actually the entire plot encapsulated right there.

Look Ma a revenge movie that is once again being called a slasher.

Review

"Well, supposedly, your stomach and your intestines and everything bursts." - Brenda

Blanks opens his film with an effective and straight to the point prologue piece that sets the tone, share stupidity, and fun times Urban Legend will parcel out to us. It's probably all post modern and stuff but what the hey let's rock the Kasbah. A young woman is driving late at night, naturally alone, with your standard electrical storm going down. She's currently singing along to "Total Eclipse of the Heart", badly enough to warrant a quick demise, as she drives past a well lite gas station of the chain variety. In a shock development the car runs out of gas and our soon to be departed chick manages to find a shabby looking petrol station of the inbred variety. Shockingly the station is manned, sorry to be sexist there, by the sort of person who wouldn't look out of place at a Sawyer family meal or in a certain township in backwoods Tasmania. While fuelling up our young lady's tank with what one would hope is high octane, inbred dude notes something in the back of her car. In a case of biting the hand that tries to feed, our petrol jockey almost gets run over as the chick escapes from what she probably thinks is a meal date she really doesn't want to attend. Inbred dude finally manages to overcome a speech impediment and screams out "look in the back seat" as "not to be long for this world" girl screeches down the road. Apparently the U.S version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" runs a lot longer than our local version as the song is still playing as clueless chick finally discovers someone has been hiding in the back of her car. Someone with an axe to grind and the place to do it. Jamie Blanks pretty much nails this scene in terms of tension but unfortunately it sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

Yes I'm hearing the "wtf do you mean by unfortunately" from over here so lets pause and knock on wood with three things Blanks opening gambit has going down that will drive you insane by the time Urban Legend's end credits roll. Firstly the refrain from the song "Turn around bright eyes" is simply overused in a sort of Rob Zombie fashion. Yes we all got the joke but for sure it was obvious enough to raise the obnoxious flag, Blanks you are going to get more groans than laughs over that one. Secondly the whole "urban legend" thing, the dude on the backseat of the car, am on the same page with that one but we do tend to stretch the concept as the movie progresses. Actually not as far as Roger Ebert who was on about a "Phantom Doberman" during his review of Urban Legend, I swear that Roger is on heavy illicit drugs or gets his movies mixed up. And finally, uhmm, was it just me or wasn't there room to swing a cat in that car? Which is got to be easier than swinging an axe truth be told, and I've tried both. Cats flying out of fast moving car windows does lead to pretty satisfactory results, but the whole axe thing just isn't a workable concept. So before you ask, yes the laws of physics do not apply in Urban Legend, or at least the laws of writing a good script.

Blanks, as usual with a sub standard Boredwood committee developed script, is trying his level best to get a half decent horror flick happening end of day. There's something about pigs ears and silk purses, but I've already managed to offend feline lovers so lets not get the pork marketing board up in arms as well. Hey we love your product fellas, keep up that excellent porcine work folks. There's a number of scenes where the Director absolutely nails the tension and has things bubbling away horror wise. But overcome a script that would have appeared to have been written by a Hollywood test audience made up of recovering cats and advertising styled pigs is almost beyond even Blanks formidable talents. The movie simply makes no sense overall, some victims have it coming in context of passed sins coming back to haunt them while other victims seem to have been simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Spare a thought for poor Tara Reid, she has the bad luck of the odd boob popping out during interviews, and has to be a random victim in this souped up concoction of the inane. What happened to the career Tara … oh wait. Any chance we can set up an interview with Tara by the way, maybe during the height of summer? [Editor's Note: Sorry I don't think we can come up with thirteen or so questions that are completely inane].

Blanks is trying his level best with the movie but when you have a script that is simply a collection of death scenes taped together with bad plot development there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do.

Compounding Blanks problems here is a very problematic script structure that might make the average viewer wonder if they wouldn't be better off driving nails through their head than sitting through anything remotely similar to Urban Legend ever again. Yes there is a sin in the past and the movie really must be set un Utah where teen marriage is condoned, as long as it involves some old dude and a horde of nubile younger teen girls. But I digress, in one of the more silly reasons for a murder spree we find a deranged character is driven to committing murders based around urban legends, real or plot writer imagined, due to her intended coming to grief as a result of a feared urban legend. Holy Mary even Michael Bay couldn't have dreamed up that chain of events. Also impacting is the evil Dean of Pendleton University who has covered up a frat house massacre that sort of comes into play, goes out of play, and shakes it all around for no discernable purpose. This is the sort of script that someone trapped in the twilight zone would come up with folks. Oops should have added a spoiler warning there for the two or three people in South Australia who haven't worked out who our antagonist is by about the tenth minute.

For the sharp eyed there's a couple of horror icons getting roles here because they had mortgage payments to make. Freddy Krueger himself Robert Englund gets to ham it up as Professor Wexler, one of the many red herrings swimming in the shallow waters of the Urban Legend lagoon. Prof Wexler is of course giving a course in urban legends and is linked to one of our background influences on the current situation. Talk about your six degrees of separation folks. And if that isn't enough to wet your horror loving appetite, assuming you haven't already turned the movie off, lead chick Natalie's Goth room mate is Tosh played by Danielle Harris in yet another slutty role. You may be getting type cast there Ms Harris but at least you didn't have to go topless in this one. Tosh likes to play "hide the sausage" with other Goths which leads to one of those funny scenes that will probably have pre-teens rolling in the aisles but which makes the rest of us wonder if the writers of this "script" weren't perhaps having a bit of a "piss take" at the Studio's expense. Anyone know if campus cop Reese is played by the same chick from the early Police Academy movies?

I'm going to give Blanks the benefit of the doubt here and claim his final scene was a shoot at the dark and decaying heart of the Hollywood Horror conveyor belt. We have a whole new crop of college kids digging on a certain urban legend who are more or less identical to our first batch of victims, indicating in no uncertain terms how generic these type of movies really are. Check your local guide there's probably one on down Village even as we speak.

A final question for Director Blanks and then we'll try and wrap this before the movie gods descend to spread some mass destruction. We know there's only one phone line into Natalie and Tosh's room which sort of begs the question, did the murderer sneak another computer in there and possible a modem as well while no one was looking? Try to make sense of the whole "he's in the house" bit there otherwise.

Jared Leto (Paul) gets top billing here mainly due to having done some television show or other, sorry couldn't be arsed researching which one. Leto looks like he has just worked out his career is rooted due to appearing in this movie. Alicia Witt (Natalie) simply comes off wooden and unsympathetic. She would be probably more at home in those "over coming all odds" midday movies that apparently are going to be shown till the end of days. Rebecca Gayheart (Brenda) was nutty enough and surprisingly I didn't mind her. The rest of the cast simply mince around the set playing out their cardboard cut-out characters in various levels of ineptitude, sorry when Tara Reid is looking like a thespian you know the rest of the cast are sucking on hereto unknown levels of badness.

In terms of T&A, well did you hear the legend of lack of nudity in modern slashers? Danielle Harris doing it doggy style wearing her undies did get a laugh out of me, which is just as well as apparently I was meant to laugh at some stage during this movie.

For those caught up in the whole draino thing, it's meant to recreate the urban legend about the exploding candy. Watch the scene again more closely to get something the antagonist does before going funnel on us.

Christopher Young provided a score that is interchangeable with any number of other horror movies so nothing to send home in dispatches there.

Summary Execution

I have to finally admit it, I may just have seen a few horror movies over my allotted limited in the past decade. For some reason nothing in Urban Legend struck me as being either new or unique, and as the end credits rolled I had the feeling that I had seen the same movie before. Another one from the conveyor belt that I will no doubt forget about within an hour of submitting this review. Entertaining enough I guess but not exactly a flick I would go out of my way to catch again.

There something slightly manic about a movie where the antagonist has this scene toward the end of the movie where he/she gets to hold forth on why "I'm the killer and that's why I did it". Urban Legend goes one further, our killer not only gets to tell a possibly interested audience why the murders are going down but even brings along a slide show to illustrate! This is like the ultimate show and tell, and I really really wish I was making this part up.

If you have tweens in your household that are bugging you to see a "slasher" and you are unsure whether or not they really should be exposed to Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers then this is the movie for you. Absolutely nothing going down in Urban Legend is going to corrupted their minds any further than those video games they have been playing for the past few years.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

Pick it up from the weekly bin if interested, nothing new here folks.