Movie

Urban Legend (1998)

One of the wave of slasher flicks released after the success of Scream (1996), this is a formulaic yet stylish horror outing. The villainess makes the legendary tier thanks to some inventive kill sequences – themed on urban legends – and a great post-reveal overdose of insanity.

The movie begins with a woman driving at night. When her vehicle runs low on fuel, it’s inevitable she’ll be the only person who pulls into a gas station. I could stop right there, as being the opening female in a slasher is invariably a death sentence.

To fill in the details, Brad Dourift plays the weirdo attendant in a cameo. So when he asks the woman to come inside and answer a phone call (cell phones were rare in the 1990s), she doesn’t hesitate to use her mace spray when things get creepy. After a daring escape, the real threat is revealed: someone hiding in the back seat. A bloody axe shatters the side window, and we have our first victim.

The action switches to the Pendleton University campus, which is full of attractive young students for the unknown psycho to kill off. Among them are the main character, Natalie (Alicia Witt) and her best friend, Brenda. For potential victims and psychos, we have reporter Paul (Jared Leto), sexy radio host Sasha (Tara Reid), urban legend guru Parker (Michael Rosenbaum) and joker Damon (Joshua Jackson). Stereotypes are in force, but the film feels fresh thanks to the theme.

To set the eerie tone – and explain the urban legend concept – meet Professor Wexler, played by Robert Englund of Nightmare on Elm Street fame. This gives Damon the opportunity to fake a death scene after swallowing Pop Rocks and soda. Legend says he will explode, but this is too early in the story for a public murder. False alarms are common, with many characters surprised in dark locations and/or when they’re alone. Jump scares and loud music will keep viewers on their toes, but it’s obvious when an actual kill is on the cards.

When Damon drives Natalie out into the woods, he’s surprised she rejects him. Perhaps choosing a more suitable location for a date would have helped? Damon has a lot more to worry about when the gloved killer surprises him and scares Natalie by jumping on the car. This makes her drive off without realising the murderer has hung Damon from a tree and tied the rope to the vehicle. How a lone female pulls off this physical feat isn’t explained, though Brenda is a strong swimmer. Must be psycho-killer adrenaline.

Naturally, the body has disappeared by the time Natalie brings security guard Reese to investigate. This woman is the typical unbelieving authority figure, played by Loretta Devine in a comedic homage to Pam Grier. Everyone thinks it’s another Damon prank, but Natalie is on edge and also knew the first victim, Michelle Mancini. If her reaction to news reports didn’t confirm it, looking in an old school yearbook does.

Natalie researches urban legends at the library and finds a sketch that matches Damon’s murder scene. Another image foreshadows the next: a girl murdered while her roommate sleeps. We’ve already been introduced to Tosh (Danielle Harris), an aggressive goth girl who has sex in the dark. Since she’s a minor character and the main cast needs to remain suspects, she’s next to die. The unwitting victim sets up an online date, only to realise she’s been messaging a psycho. Natalie returns and conveniently doesn’t turn on the light as the killer strangles Tosh.

When Natalie wakes up, she finds her roommate’s body with the wrists slashed and a message in blood. Reese has a body this time, so the Dean gets involved. Somehow Tosh’s death gets written off as suicide, but this is horror movie reality where every creepy person (and female swimmer!) has a parka coat like the murderer. And clueless teens party hard while dead bodies drop over campus.

Villainess

Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart)

Moving into the second half, it’s time for another minor character to get killed. The dean checks his back seat, but guesses the wrong urban legend. The killer – hiding under the vehicle – slashes the man’s ankles and releases the brakes so the car presses the latest victim against tire spikes. Nasty way to go, but Parker has it worse when the psycho phones him (using a voice disguiser) and explodes his dog in a microwave oven. Alone in the toilets, he’s easy prey for the killer, who force-feeds him Pop Rocks and drain cleaner.

That’s the same legend Wexler brought up at the lecture, so when Natalie and Paul find a parka coat (another one!) and an axe in the professor’s office, he becomes their number one suspect. He looks even guiltier when he vanishes during the last act.

The best stalk and slash scene is when the murderer attacks Sasha during a radio show. She’s wearing her microphone, so the terrified screams are broadcast all over campus. Nobody takes her cries for help seriously, leaving the axe-wielding psycho free to chase her around the radio station. Sasha narrowly escapes a fall, but this merely prolongs her fate. Natalie arrives to watch the killer add another student to the death list and wave from an upstairs window.

Time to – you guessed it – eliminate another suspect. The weird janitor (there had to be one) ends up in a fatal accident when the killer re-enacts a gang initiation legend. For non-experts, this involves a car with its headlights switched off at night. This is familiar to Natalie, as she and Michelle caused the death of a man with the same deadly prank. Genre-savvy viewers will guess this backstory is important, but there are some red herrings to dispose of before the villainess’ reveal.

Wexler is ruled out when Natalie and Brenda discover his body in the trunk of Paul’s car. Thinking he’s guilty, Natalie flees into a deserted building. There was a massacre at the site many years ago, and the killer leaves a series of dead bodies for the heroine to find. This ends with Brenda’s “corpse” on a bed, but it’s a trick and the murderess knocks her surprised friend out cold.

Natalie wakes up to find herself tied up and at the villainess’ mercy. Motive rants are the norm in these movies, but this bad girl prepares a full presentation. She even sets up a slide projector just because the images splashed across her face look sinister. It turns out the guy who died was Brenda’s boyfriend, and she didn’t take it well. The actress plays a full-on psycho brilliantly, and it remains a wonderful villainess reveal decades after the film’s release.

After Brenda finishes explaining, she prepares Natalie for the kidney heist – as gruesome an urban legend as it sounds. The murderess hasn’t killed everyone, and both Reese and Paul arrive to confront her in the finale. There’s a drawn-out confrontation with crazy words exchanged and Reese slashed. Paul has a lengthy struggle with the killer before she grabs the handgun and prepares to shoot Natalie. Reese reveals she has a second firearm, and the rescued victim blasts Brenda through a window.

Paul reminds us to expect a twist, and we finish with two. Brenda – like any horror film villain – is not so easily killed and surprises the survivors in a car. She’s out of urban legends by now, so recycles the axe murderer in the back seat. During a claustrophobic struggle with the enraged Brenda, Paul crashes the vehicle and sends the villainess flying off a bridge into the river below.

But that’s not the end of the story! Still alive, Brenda returns for the epilogue set at a different university campus with students who appear to be crew member extras. She recounts her version of events, now an urban legend.

Discussions: Urban Legend Series

Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

The premise remains the same: a psycho killer kills university students with murders themed on urban legends. The victims are budding filmmakers competing for a prestigious prize, which is really an excuse to have bizarre backdrops for gory deaths. When murders are shown, they’re usually more disgusting than frightening, and the sequel has none of the original’s style.

Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) teams up with the twin brother of a suicide victim to prove the death was actually murder. But somebody in a fencing mask and black overcoat will kill to protect their secret. The murderer switches things up with “disguises” such as a scarecrow mannequin and a Halloween mask that looks downright stupid. In the best scene, Amy is attacked in a sound studio and pursued across the deserted campus, but the overall movie is derivative even by slasher movie standards.

The urban legend killer is a male professor (Hart Bochner) who wants to massacre a film crew to pass their work off as his own. There’s a welcome return by Loretta Devine as the security guard Reese, who gets some genuinely funny moments. And female villain fans who make it to the end will be rewarded by a spoiler cameo from Rebecca Gayheart. However, it’s a case of too little, too late.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)

The third film ditches the slasher theme in favour of supernatural horror, though its title villainess is a sympathetic character and the chief antagonist is actually a corrupt politician. Many decades ago, Mary Banner was killed during a high school prank gone wrong, and the boy responsible hid her body in a trunk to cover up the murder.

In the present, Samantha (Kate Mara) and her friends are victims of a similar incident, and Mary’s ghost returns to exact revenge. There’s no connection to the first two movies except for a brief mention of the serial killers in a newspaper clipping and a few urban legends. Deaths involve an invisible foe, mostly. One victim is roasted in a tanning bed, and a second girl is attacked by spiders that hatch inside her body.

Considering Mary is the title character, we see very little of her. Her main on-screen attack comes when she crawls out from under a bed to stab a guy with a broken bottle. Samantha teams up with a voodoo priestess to recover the girl’s body and return it to the grave, thus ending the curse. There’s an easy to solve murder mystery where a figure in black kills Samantha’s brother, and a scheming politician is the culprit.

The finale has Mary literally return from the grave to save Samantha, with cheap CGI effects to end this unrewarding tale. No honourable mention, but there’s always the legendary villainess in the original.