Head to Coeur d’Alene for a Sunday ‘Scream’

Above : A 25th-anniversary screening of “Scream” will take place at Regal’s Coeur d’Alene Riverstone Stadium. (Photo/Fathom Events)

Every year it seems that holiday marketing comes earlier and earlier.

Take Halloween, for example. I started seeing spooky displays in grocery stores in early September. And Halloween isn’t until Oct. 31.

Snickers bars, mmmmmmmm.

Movie theaters are the same. Trailers for the next episode in the “Halloween” series, “Halloween Kills,” have been all over TV. (Look for the next episode, “Halloween Ends,” sometime in 2022.)

But if you want to enjoy a few movie thrills before then, then you’re in luck. A 25th-anniversary screening of the first in the “Scream” series will take place on Sunday and Monday at Regal’s Coeur d’Alene Riverstone Stadium.

Sunday’s screenings will be at 3 and 7 p.m., while Monday’s will be at 7 only.

“Scream,” if you’ll recall, was a clever take on the traditional slasher movie. Yes, it features the deaths of several people, mainly teenagers. But as envisioned by the late director Wes Craven , but even more so by screenwriter Kevin Williamson , the main theme of “Scream” was to parody the very genre it belonged to.

Starring the likes of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy, “Scream” was a pleasant surprise to many critics – especially those tired of the “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” films.

Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “No one will ever consider Wes Craven’s ‘Scream’ Oscar fodder, but this funny and scary little experiment in terror from the man who invented ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ puts some fun back into a very tired genre.”

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “A bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that’s also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.”

Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle wrote, “Whatever you do, don’t close your mind to such an inventive concoction. One last time, despite all your better instincts, go ahead – open that theater door.”

There were, of course, the naysayers. Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote, “Not even horror fans who can answer all this film’s knowing trivia questions may be fully comfortable with such an exploitative mix.”

Ah, well, you can’t please everybody. Or sell them something either.