On October 17, 1997, two films opened at the weekend box office and one of those films was expected to finish on top while the other was expected to come and go. On one end you had The Devil’s Advocate, starring Hollywood heavyweights like Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. In the other corner was a modestly budgeted teen slasher film called I Know What You Did Last Summer. The film starred relatively unknown actors, with lead Jennifer Love Hewitt in her first starring role in a film after gaining attention for her role as Sarah Reeves on Party of Five. Co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, had season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer pretty much beginning at the time of the film’s release and the supporting male cast which consisted of Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr., were far from household names. The only ace they had in their pocket was that film was written by Kevin Williamson, who saw great success with his breakout film Scream. “From the creator of Scream” was used heavily in the promotional materials for I Know What You Did Last Summer but that definitely didn’t guarantee success.
Imagine the surprise of just about everyone in the industry when the number one movie in America was not the Al Pacino vehicle, but the little slasher movie that many were ready to dismiss. It won the weekend by a nice margin (debuting to $15.8 million compared to the $12.2 million for The Devil’s Advocate) and the narrative quickly began to change in the industry. The rebirth of the slasher movie craze that began with Scream in 1996 was no fluke, the slasher film was back and here to stay in a big way.
It’s interesting to note that this was actually the first script that Kevin Williamson tried to sell but he couldn’t get anyone to bite. He also was pitching a little movie called Killing Mrs. Tingle but as we know that wouldn’t come about until a few years after the release of Summer (and with a title change to Teaching Mrs. Tingle). When Williamson was trying to sell these films the horror genre was a bit of a dying breed and a lot of major studios didn’t see the monetary value of investing in them.
Kevin Williamson based his script on the book of the same name by Lois Duncan. This has caused some controversy over the years because her book (which I have read) is VERY different. The book isn’t a slasher story by any means and plays more like a mystery thriller. Duncan publicly took issue with Williamson’s take on her work, particularly the violence in his story, due to the real-life murder of her daughter. On July 16th, 1989, Duncan’s youngest daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, was shot to death coming home from a friend’s house in Albuquerque, New Mexico in what police believed was a random drive-by shooting. However, the more Duncan delved into trying to make sense of the tragedy, the more she believed there was something far more sinister to the crime than it just being a coincidental random act of violence.
It was approximately 11 PM that Sunday night as Kaitlyn headed South on 19th street and prepared to make a left on Lomas Blvd, just past the railroad tracks. It was lightly raining when two shots entered the passenger side striking her left temple and cheek. The car spun out of control and she landed in front of a wooden telephone pole some 700 feet from the actual shooting. She was rushed to the hospital in a coma. Later that day, she was pronounced brain dead and taken off her respirator.
Kaitlyn had just completed high school and moved into her first studio apartment. She had a serious relationship with her boyfriend, Dung Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who had met her a year and a half prior, and who was a seemingly good guy that the Arquette family all took an immediate liking to. On the day of the murder, the couple had had another argument, and that evening, Nguyen was out drinking with a few friends at a bar. They dropped him off at her apartment, but she never came home. Detectives tested his hands for gunpowder residue, which came back negative and also found a letter from Kait to Dung apologizing for their earlier argument.
Five days after Kait’s death, Dung had attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the stomach with a 4-inch folding knife. When the Detective questioned him in the hospital, he was wracked with guilt over her death, saying if he had not gotten into an argument with her she would not have been in that area of town or alone. When Lois went to visit him, he thanked her for coming and told her, “I didn’t kill her.” She replied that she knew he didn’t. But that if he knew who did, he needed to decide whether he loved Kait enough to tell them who did. Lois recalled his reply as, “I know. I’m deciding.”
Despite skepticism, Lois employed the help of psychic detectives, since the police weren’t coming up with any solid leads. After meeting with one, she had sent out artifacts from Kait’s life to several more psychics with the hope they’d come back with some sort of useful information. The strangest incident to come of these interactions was from psychic Noreen Renier, who was able to come up with a police sketch of the supposed shooter. The man in the picture looks exactly like a character that Lois had created for her as-yet-to-be-released book DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU. The similarities were eerie. The character in the book was a hitman named Mike Vamp, who drove a Camaro and targeted the main female character of the story, whom Duncan had based on her daughter Kait.
There were a series of theories as to what actually happened to her daughter but Duncan ultimately never got to get all the facts she was seeking. On June 15th, 2016, Lois Duncan passed away at her home in South Sarasota, Florida at the age of 82. In 1997, Duncan sat down in a local theater to see the film based on her novel, I Know What You Did Last Summer, but it did not resemble much of the book she wrote and since her personal life had the death of her daughter hanging over it, Duncan did not see the appeal of turning her mystery thriller into a slasher film. While the crowd ate up the modernized throwback to ’80s “slasher” flicks kicked off by its predecessor, Scream, the previous year (from I Know screenwriter Kevin Williamson), Duncan was somewhat horrified by the all-but-unrecognizable version of her story.
Sure, there was a character named Julie James at the center of it, and her & her friends begin receiving ominous warnings stating “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” But that’s basically where the similarities end. In the book version, Julie and her friends accidentally hit and kill a 10-year-old boy on his bike, and the impending story was always intended to be an emotional morality tale. In the movie, the group hit a man on the road and toss his body into the lake, leaving him for dead when he was still alive. He comes back for revenge in the form of faceless, hook-handed killer. But it wasn’t so much the changes to the source material that bothered the creator. In actuality, she had suffered such a terrible loss in her personal life that it was hard to see these young people murdered up on screen and not think of what had happened in her reality.
It would be easy to assume why a studio wouldn’t want to touch Summer. It was based on a fairly famous young adult novel but it wasn’t a huge bestseller that was clamoring to be made into a film. Williamson was also an unproven screenwriter when he first tried to sell the film. Summer played like a traditional throwback to 80s slasher films such as Prom Night or Friday the 13th. Needless to say, it was very basic and there hadn’t been a slasher hit film released in years. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger were shells of their former selves and definitely weren’t lighting up the box office like they once did.
Williamson had another script in his back pocket that was actually a bit of a satire of the genre that also spun its own original horror tale. The script in question was for a film called Scary Movie and the script was a self-deprecating take on the genre that featured characters who were in a horror film but were also aware of the conventions of the genre. The characters were smart and it didn’t talk down to the audience. It had respect enough for the fans to know they would be smart enough to get what it was trying to do and it was a readily unique script that was looking for a home. Instead of trying to sell Summer, Williamson shifted his focus to Scary Movie and what resulted was a huge bidding war for the script that ultimately had Dimension Films coming out on top. Eventually, director Wes Craven was attached to direct, it had a group of relatively unknown but talented young actors on deck and it would change its name from Scary Movie to what we have come to know and love it as, Scream.
The film became a word of mouth sensation when it was released in December of 1996. Despite not having a huge opening weekend, the film held consistently week after week and eventually grossed over $100 million at the domestic box office and was loved by critics and fans alike. With a success like that, suddenly other studios wanted in on the game and that little Summer script that no one wanted, became a hot commodity.
Columbia Pictures ended up nabbing I Know What You Did Last Summer and gave the film a modest $17 million budget. The turnaround on Summer was fairly quick. Scream was pretty much a hit by early 1997 and this film went into production soon after with a release date set for October 17, 1997. The studio hired director Jim Gillespie to direct the project and while Williamson did do some re-writes on his original script, he was less involved on an on-set level when compared to Scream. Columbia Pictures is a pretty big studio so they had a bit more control over the project but that doesn’t mean the project was a top priority either. Several of the actors have said there weren’t many studio execs popping in to see how things were going when they were filming on location in Southport, North Carolina. This ultimately ended up being a good thing for the creative team behind the film because anyone in the industry will tell you that studio interference is a big nuisance when getting a film made. It was clear they were anxious to have Williamson’s script but Scream could’ve been lightning in a bottle that wouldn’t strike again for Summer.
Much like Scream, the casting was shaped by a crop of good-looking performers who also happened to have acting chops to boot. As mentioned earlier, Jennifer Love Hewitt was known mostly for her TV role on Party of Five before she landed the role of Julie James in this film and this was to be her first lead role in a major motion picture. Hewitt was 19 at the time of filming and if the film had a name, it was her. It may be a bit much to say a lot of the film’s success was riding on her, but it could’ve been a film to make or break her transition into films.
Sarah Michelle Gellar had season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer under her belt when she was cast in I Know What You Did Last Summer but the masses had yet to see it as it premiered in March of 1997. Gellar was a child actress and best known for Emmy winning role as Kendall Hart on the soap opera, All My Children. Gellar landed the role of Helen Shivers who, while not the bad girl of the film, was basically the opposite of the more innocent Julie James. If you follow horror movie rules, it was easy to see what her ultimate fate would be.
Ryan Phillippe landed the role of Barry Cox and he was also relatively new to the scene. Phillippe played the role of Billy Douglas on the soap One Life to Live, which was significant as being the first openly gay character on daytime TV. He played the role from 1992-1993 and transitioned to roles in films such as Crimson Tide in 1995 and White Squall in 1996. Summer would be his highest-profile movie role to date.
Even more obscure, if not for his famous name, was Freddie Prinze Jr. He is the only child of comedian Freddie Prinze, who was the star of Chico and the Man. Freddie Prinze suffered from depression and ultimately shot himself at the age of 22, when his son was less than a year old. Prinze Jr. actually auditioned for the role of Ray Bronson in I Know What You Did Last Summer and this led to his first major role in a film, although he had a minor role in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday the year before.
Supporting players included Johnny Galecki, then of Roseanne fame and now part of the behemoth known as The Big Bang Theory and Anne Heche, in a small but critically acclaimed role as Missy Egan in the film. Rounding out the cast was Muse Watson as Ben Willis, otherwise known as The Fisherman, our would be villain.
Coming into the film’s opening weekend, critics were very mixed on I Know What You Did Last Summer. The main complaint was that it came off as the very film that Willamson’s Scream seemed to have a great time poking fun at. I guess it would be assumed that we’d be getting something else clever along those lines but this film was never intended to be that. This was the 90s version of 80s slasher films that defined that decade. In that sense, the film completely works and while it may not have the sharp wit of Scream, it doesn’t make it any less fun. That being said, critic Roger Ebert gave it one out of 4 stars and the film has a rotten rating of 35% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But to hell with reviews right? This was the rebirth of the slasher film and much like the Brat Pack in the 80s, it was also the emergence of a new crop of teen stars who spoke to the target audience. The youth market was clearly still craving more from this genre and this film delivered that for them. Adding to this, the film carried a trailer for Scream 2 which made Summer feel like the proper appetizer before the entree.
I was one of those fans who clamored for something like Summer because I thoroughly enjoyed Scream. It felt like my generation was getting the horror films we would be talking about years from now, much like people did in the 70s and 80s before it. I saw the film 3 times in theaters (once on opening weekend and 2 times the following weekend) and each time we had to get someone older to buy our tickets because the R-rating prevented us 12 and 13-year-olds from just walking up and buying a ticket for ourselves. Now that I think of it, I wish I could thank all those random people who let us pretend like we were with them so we could see these films (it was a different time, you could trust people a little bit more). If Scream reignited my love of horror films, I Know What You Did Last Summer kept that fire alive and it looked like it did for many others as well.
As stated before, I Know What You Did Last Summer won that opening weekend battle against The Devil’s Advocate but its box office supremacy didn’t end there. The following weekend the film maintained its number one position and dropped only 20.9% to $12.5 million, a great hold for any film but especially a horror film. The next weekend, its third, the film took the top spot again with a gross of $9.4 million and dropped a still slim 24.8% weekend to weekend. When it was all said and done, the film grossed a solid $72.5 million in the states and $125.5 million worldwide, all on a $17 million budget. Even though Scream grossed more overall, the success of Summer was significant because it was the number one film in America for 3 weeks in a row, a position Scream never hit and it was proof that the success of Scream wasn’t a fluke. Summer was the first of the imitators so to speak but since it came before the new wave of teen slasher films, it got to stand out on its own.
The success of the film was a bit of a pre-party for the genre. Scream 2 followed just 2 months after Summer and it was a huge hit right of the gate and managed to cross the $100 million mark like its predecessor. The film was also very good to its stars which benefited from a hit film and blowing up in their own right via other jobs. By the time Summer ended its run, Sarah Michelle Gellar was riding high on the critical and growing success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer during its second season. She would also go on to appear in Scream 2 and earned a status as a sort of scream queen of sorts due to appearing in two big horror films and a genre TV show. Jennifer Love Hewitt remained on Party of Five until 1999 and was even given her own spin-off called Time of Your Life that same year but it was canceled after half a season. She followed up Summer with another iconic late 90s endeavor called Can’t Hardly Wait, which has gone on to become a cult classic in its own right. Ryan Phillippe continued to dabble in the teen market after his role in Summer with a starring role in 54, with Neve Campbell & he reunited with Sarah Michelle Gellar in 1999 with another late 90s teen staple, Cruel Intentions. After that film, Phillippe took on more mature roles and became successful in his own right. Freddie Prinze Jr., who had the least experience of the bunch, had another teen movie hit in 1999 with She’s All That and string of other teen movies that may have been creamed by critics, but enjoyed moderate box office success. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this for him is that he met Sarah Michelle Gellar on I Know What You Did Last Summer and they would eventually marry in 2002. In Hollywood, where celebrity couples seem to crash and burn, they are still going strong and now have two kids together.
The success of I Know What You Did Last Summer led to more films of the sort with some doing ok (Urban Legend in 1998) but some also not generating the same amount of success (Disturbing Behavior, also released in 1998). That same year, Summer would get a sequel called I Still Know What You Did Last Summer which brought back Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. Joining them this go round was singer Brandy Norwood, Mehki Phifer, and Matthew Settle (who would go on to play Rufus Humphrey on Gossip Girl). While the sequel opened a tad higher at the box office ($16.5 million) it placed second behind The Waterboy and saw significant drops in subsequent weeks due to poor word of mouth. The film was still technically successful, grossing $40 million on a $24 million budget and $84 million worldwide but it definitely didn’t have the same impact as the first film. It was also treated much harsher by critics with a dismal 7% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Another sequel, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, came in 2006 but it was released straight to video and featured none of the original cast. Due to the lucrative home video market at the time, especially for low budget horror films, the sequel was still successful, earning $20 million based on DVD and Blu-Ray sales.
It has now been 20 years since I Know What You Did Last Summer came out and surprised just about everyone in the industry. It may not be considered a classic on the level of Scream but it’s a pivotal film when comes to how horror in the late 90s really hit its stride with the youth market. It’s funny now that 20 years has come and gone, a film that I grew up with (that doesn’t even feel that old) could also be getting the remake treatment. On September 14, 2014, Sony reported that they had plans to remake the film with Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard rumored to be writing a script. In a June 1, 2016 Blumhouse.com “Shockwaves” podcast, writer Mike Flanagan revealed and further confirmed this new iteration and re-imagination of the franchise would not have any inventions of the Lois Duncan novel (the antagonist being a central character) nor the 1997 feature (the fisherman Ben Willis and 4 primary protagonists Julie James, Helen Shivers, Barry Cox, and Ray Bronson). Further, the new direction and scope of the film necessitates an estimated budget of $15–20 million. Sony also states that the film is a high priority and is set for a release somewhere between as early as 2020. Whether this comes to together for sure has yet to be seen but at least the 1997 film still holds up today and has earned its place as a go to watch for horror fans who are in the mood for a fun ride with late 90s nostalgia.
