Urban Legend (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For information about the folklore, see Urban legend.
| Urban Legend | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Jamie Blanks |
| Produced by | Gina Matthews Michael McDonnell Neal H. Moritz Danielle Harris Joshua Jackson Robert Englund |
| Written by | Silvio Horta |
| Starring | Alicia Witt Loretta Devine Jared Leto Rebecca Gayheart Robert Englund |
| Release date(s) | September 25, 1998 |
| Running time | 99 min. |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Urban Legends: Final Cut |
| IMDb profile | |
Urban Legend is a 1998 horror film starring Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Robert Englund, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Michael Rosenbaum, Danielle Harris, John Neville, and Loretta Devine.
Urban Legend is based on the premise that a killer is using the methods of death described in certain urban legends (such as the fatal mixing of cola and Pop Rocks) as a means to kill his victims.
Parts of the movie were filmed at Trinity College School, Port Hope, Uxbridge, and Toronto, all in Ontario.
Alicia Witt's performance earned her a nomination for a Saturn Award for "Best Performance by a Younger Actor/Actress" by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.
The film was followed by two sequels. The first, Urban Legends: Final Cut was released theatrically in 2000. The second, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary went direct-to-video in mid-2005.
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[edit] Plot
The film begins on a dark rainy night. College student Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) is out driving when she suddenly realizes she's driving with a near empty tank. She stops by a gas station where a creepy gas attendant (Brad Dourif) fills her tank for her. Things get more unusual when the gas attendant tells her that her credit card company is on the phone, and that there's been some problem. Already nervous, Michelle goes with him but freaks out when she finds the phone dead and the gas attendant locking the door behind them. In a fit of fear she maces the gas attendant and runs to her car, driving away before the gas attendant can warn her that there's someone in the back seat. As she drives away, a figure in a dark coat with a fur trim around the hood sits up in the back seat and, with a swift blow from its axe, decapitates Michelle.
The next day, on campus, a group of friends listens to Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum) tell an old story about one of the campus halls. According to the story, in 1973 an abnormal psychology teacher went crazy and one night went around to all the doors in this hall, knocking on them one by one, and whoever answered the door was stabbed to death with a hunting knife. Supposedly, the college officials covered it up, not wanting the university's reputation damaged. The story is interrupted by Paul Gardner (Jared Leto) a school paper journalist who disregards the story as fantasy, just one of many college campus myths. Still, the story sticks in their minds, especially for Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt), who seemed a little freaked out by it. She goes back to her room with her good friend Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart) but accidentally walks in on her roommate Tosh having sex. Tosh yells at her and tells her to turn the lights off, leaving Natalie to fall asleep with her headphones on to block out the noise.
The next day, Natalie finds out about the killing of Michelle Mancini from the front page of the campus newspaper, in an article written by Paul. Paul is angry because the campus officials are confiscating all of the papers, calling them 'inflammatory'. After reading the article, Natalie seems disturbed, and is clearly hiding something. The same day, Natalie and Brenda go to a literature class taught by Professor William Wexler (Robert Englund). Today, the subject is 'urban legends', modern day folk tales passed on under the guise of truth. After Brenda cracks a joke in his class, he decides to demonstrate the power of such urban legends by having her test one. He has Brenda eat a packet of Pop Rocks, then asks her to drink a Pepsi. She declines, due to the famous story about the kid from the Life cereal commercials, Mikey, whose stomach supposedly exploded after he ate the combination. When she refuses to do it, class prankster Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson) volunteers. After eating the combination, he doubles over, choking and gagging, and collapses. When the class responds to his supposed death, he reveals it was merely a joke.
Later that night, Damon comes to see Natalie, since she seemed troubled, and takes her out to a quiet place in the woods to talk it out. Natalie reveals that she knew Michelle, but they hadn't spoken in years. At first, Damon seems to be truly sympathetic, but she soon realizes that he's merely taking advantage of her sudden vulnerability. Angered by her rejection, Damon goes off into the woods. Suddenly, the killer in the fur trimmed coat leaps out and strikes him from behind. He then hangs Damon by a noose, still alive, from the tree overlooking the car Natalie's in. Damon's feet vainly scrape the roof of the vehicle as he slowly strangulates to death. Panicked, Natalie tries to drive off, oblivious to the fact that the other end of the noose is hooked to the back of the car, which sends Damon flailing up into the tree. Natalie then tries to escape the hooded killer, now after her, by backing up, dropping the body of the now dead Damon through the windshield. Natalie abandons the car and flees into the woods, screaming.
The next day, no one believes her story after Professor Wexler's class: Damon's murder closely resembles one of the infamous urban legends, and her friends assume it's just another prank. Suddenly, Natalie realizes something frightening: both Damon's death and Michelle's murder closely resemble famous urban legends: the "killer in the backseat" and the "missing boyfriend" tales. Her friends agree that it's strange, but still believe she's jumping to conclusions. Unconvinced, Natalie goes to the library before she heads back to her room to read up on urban legends. Meanwhile, Tosh is busy picking up an anonymous user off an internet chat room. She flirts with him for a while until she realizes the person is in the room with her, and he is none other than the coat wearing killer. The killer begins choking her on the bed when Natalie walks in. Hearing Tosh's gasps, Natalie assumes she's having sex in the room again and doesn't turn on the lights. Tosh dies as Natalie falls asleep. In the morning, Natalie discovers her roommate's body and the words, "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights" scrawled on the wall with Tosh's blood.
Even when the hospital crew comes and carts Tosh's body away, nobody believes Natalie. Due to Tosh's goth appearance, school officials assume she committed suicide. Natalie, on the other hand, saw a picture in the urban legends encyclopedia that perfectly mirrored the presumed "suicide note" on the wall, and she is now convinced that a serial killer is at work. After the hospital crew leaves, she tells Brenda why she hadn't spoken to Michelle in such a long time; one night, they had been driving together, goofing around and having a good time, when an old urban legend came up in their conversation: the one about gang members turning off their headlights and waiting for someone to flash them before they run them off the road. As a joke, Michelle, who had been driving, decided to play with someone, turning off her lights until an innocent bystander flashed them, and they made a U-turn and followed him. The other driver panicked and ran his car off the road, killing him. The police assumed it had been an accident and only gave Michelle and Natalie probation for the incident. It has haunted Natalie ever since, and in light of the recent events, she thinks someone is coming after her for what she did.
Ever the skeptic, Paul goes and does some research of his own, and begins looking into the old school legend about the hallway massacres. He finds that the official documents for the year 1973 are missing, but the janitor (Julian Richings) provides a newspaper clipping from that year, showing that the massacre really did happen, and that the only survivor was Professor Wexler. Paul comes to the conclusion that Wexler was the killer; the college must have tried to cover up the killings and gave Wexler a job for life in exchange for his silence, and now he's killing again.
The weekend is coming up and the college students are partying as a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the massacre, a grisly excuse to have fun. But as they are partying, across campus the dean of the school (John Neville) is being murdered. After having his ankles slit while getting into his car (another reference to a popular urban legend), he tries to crawl away, but the coat wearing killer releases the parking break. The car rolls over the dean, forcing the emergency spikes of the parking lot into his back and killing him.
Later at the party, after showing off his beer bong drinking dog, Parker gets a disturbing phone call. The mysterious caller on the other end tells him he's going to die tonight. Parker, too soused to take the call seriously, begins walking upstairs, thinking the caller is playing a prank based on the urban legend of the phone call being made from inside the house. The caller on the phone tells him he's got the wrong legend. The one the killer is imitating now is "the dog in the microwave". Parker bolts downstairs to find the inside of the microwave coated with what used to be his dog. Parker quickly rushes to the bathroom and is violently sick over the toilet before the killer finally gets him, shoves a beer bong down his throat and forces him to chug bathroom chemicals.
The killer's next target is Sasha Thomas (Tara Reid), a popular radio college sex therapist. The killer goes to her studio and begins stalking her, her panicked screams, sent over the radio, being mistaken for a tribute to the 1973 massacre. Natalie hears the screams and runs through the pouring rain to the station, just in time to see Sasha killed with an axe. Fleeing from the station, Natalie finds Brenda and Paul and they drive off to try and find help. Paul convinces the girls that the killer is Wexler, but when they stop at a gas station to see if it has a working phone, Brenda and Natalie investigate an awful smell coming from the trunk of Paul's car. They find the bloody corpse of Wexler and run away, now thinking Paul is the killer. With Paul after her, Natalie manages to make it to a major road, but Brenda tripped a long way back and now has disappeared. Natalie flags down a truck, driven by the janitor, and accepts a ride. When the janitor flashes a car with its lights out, it swerves around and comes their way and the driver is revealed to be the killer. After getting run off the road, Natalie once again luckily survives and makes her way back to the boarded up wall where the 1973 massacre took place. She hears Brenda screaming from inside, held captive by the killer. When Natalie breaks into the hall, she is knocked unconscious, now a prisoner herself.
When Natalie comes to, she finds herself tied to a rickety old bed. The killer, standing over her, finally makes their identity known. Surprisingly, it's Brenda, Natalie's best friend. It is revealed that the boy Natalie and Michelle accidentally killed that fatal night was Brenda's boyfriend and soon to be fiancé. Driven mad by grief, Brenda is now enacting her revenge on Natalie, slowly killing those she knows and loves in the fashion of urban legends. The fate she's chosen for Natalie is to remove her kidney (and any other organs she sees fit) in the fashion of the legend about the one night stand organ thieves. When Paul and campus security guard Reese Wilson (Loretta Devine) show up, a brief struggle ensues, and Reese shoots Brenda. Natalie and Paul drive off to get help for Reese, who was wounded in the struggle, but Brenda survived her gunshot wound and attacks Paul while he's driving. Trying to keep control of the car, Paul crashes on a bridge, sending Brenda through the windshield into the river below. Paul and Natalie watch her body float downstream and the horror seems to finally be over.
An undetermined amount of time later, a new group of friends tell the story of Brenda's bloody rampage, and add to the conclusion that the police never found Brenda's body; it simply vanished downstream. The other students at the table balk at the story, saying that every college campus has a similar story. One of the girls at that table, however, tells the story teller she believes him, but that he got the story wrong. The camera reveals the face of the girl to be Brenda, alive and well. The film ends on Brenda Telling the group she'll tell them how the story really goes...
[edit] Urban Legends
Legends referenced in the film include:
- The Killer in the Backseat
- Cheerleader has her stomach pumped after performing oral sex on the school team.
- Bloody Mary.
- Babysitter gets phone calls from killer inside the house.
- Eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda at the same time/Death of Mikey from Life cereal commercial.
- Boyfriend's dead body hanging from tree while girlfriend waits in car.
- Spider eggs in Bubble Yum.
- Richard Gere/gerbil rumor.
- "Aren't You Glad You Didn't Turn on the Lights" (Roommate Murder).
- Gang Highbeam Initiation.
- Muggers/Carjackers/Rapists hide under victims' cars and slash their ankles.
- Real murder scream heard in Ohio Players' song 'Love Rollercoaster'.
- Old Lady dries wet dog in microwave.
- The Kidney Heist.
- The Body on/under the hotel bed.
[edit] Trivia
- Behind Natalie and Parker in the auditorium, writer Silvio Horta can be seen, acting as a college student.
- When Paul and Natalie walk into the hidden room in Wexler's office, a puppet of Freddy Krueger can be seen just before they see the axe. Robert Englund, who plays Wexler, played Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
- The book sitting on the desk in Professor Wexler's desk in his class is "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," which is one of the seminal texts on urban legends.
- Joshua Jackson (Damon Brooks) cranks his car before he takes Natalie to "that" spot in the woods; when it cranks the radio plays Paula Cole's I Don't Want to Wait from the TV show Dawson's Creek, also starring Jackson.
- At the end of the movie, students from an unnamed college recount the movie's events as an urban legend. They joke about the tale's validity, and one says, "And I bet Brenda was the girl from the Noxzema commercials." Actress Rebecca Gayheart, who plays Brenda in the film, did indeed appear in several commercials for Noxzema.
- Brad Dourif, the actor who plays the stuttering gas station attendant at the beginning of the film, played the role of Billy Bibbit, who also had a speech impediment, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
- Brad Dourif who played the stuttering Gas Station attendant was the voice of Chucky, the possesed killer doll from the Child's Play film series.
- The uncredited character played by Brad Dourif, gas station attendant Michael McDonnell, who is suspected to be the murderer, was named after Urban Legend producer Michael McDonnell.
- The author of "The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends" is Charles Breen. The doctor on Tosh's bottle of lithium is a doctor Charles Breen. Charles Breen is the production designer.
- The car driven in the beginning was originally supposed to be a Land Rover. It was changed to the Ford Expedition (the largest 4x4 available at the time) because the filmmakers discovered they couldn't swing an axe inside a Land Rover.
- In addition to this film, The Skulls and Gossip (both starring Joshua Jackson) were also filmed at the University of Toronto.
- Sarah Michelle Gellar accepted the role of Sasha but had to back out due to schedule conflicts with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Jodi Lyn O'Keefe was originally offered the role of Sasha, but turned it down to take part in Halloween H20.
- Since both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe turned down the role of Sasha, Tara Reid took it, leaving it to be the 3rd candidate actress for the role.
- Julian Richings has said in an interview that the janitor's name was "Claude." He was listed only as Creepy Janitor, but credits the movie with teaching him to "lurk convincingly."
- In one scene, the front page of a newspaper is shown, and the writer of that story is credited to "John MacNeil". John MacNeil was the assistant art director on this film.
- The Latin motto of the university, which is featured on its emblem in some scenes, translates as: "The Best Friend Did It".
- Natasha Gregson Wagner, daughter of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, as the first victim was part of a popular trend in horror films which involved casting Hollywood children. A trend that started with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (film) and continued with Drew Barrymore in Scream (film). Others include Freddie Prinze, Jr. in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Clementine Ford, daughter of Cybill Shepherd, in Cherry Falls.
- The scream heard in the Rollercoaster song in the movie is not the same in the actual song.
