Scream: Kevin Williamson reveals eerie inspiration behind iconic Drew Barrymore scene

Opening sequence to 1996 film involves a high school student being menaced over the phone by a killer

Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson has revealed the eerie inspiration behind the film’s iconic opening scene.

The 1996 horror movie begins with high school student Casey – played by Drew Barrymore – being menaced over the phone by a mask-wearing killer. In the scene, the killer asks Casey a number of trivia questions about famous slasher movies from history, with Casey bungling the identity of the killer in the first Friday the 13th.

In a new behind-the-scenes interview for the 4K UHD + Blu-ray edition of the film, Williamson has revealed that the scene came into being thanks to his own experience of being alone in a house armed with a knife.

“I was house-sitting for a friend of mine and I walk into the family room and I see that the window’s open, and I’m freaked out,” Williamson recalls. “So I go and I get a butcher knife and I start walking around the house and I call up my friend on the phone and [say] ‘I think someone’s in the house.’”

Williamson elaborates on the rest of the spooky story in the exclusive clip above.

The screenwriter – who created the TV series Dawson’s Creek in the wake of Scream – also revealed that the 1996 film served as his “love letter” to Halloween. Williamson said that the classic John Carpenter movie – starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a babysitter stalked by a masked murderer – made him want to be a screenwriter.

Last week (12 October), the first trailer was unveiled for the forthcoming Scream, a reboot of the franchise in which beleaguered heroine Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is once again thrown into a murderous crisis.

Scream will arrive in cinemas on 14 January, while the 4K UHD + Blu-ray version of the original Scream is available to download and keep now.