Some of the best slasher franchises are known for thing above any other: their killer's iconic look. If you don't find a right look that scares the audience, nothing else matters. It's why the blank face of Michael Myers in his white painted William Shatner mask has helped to carry the boogeyman through thirteen Halloween movies. It's why the hockey masked Jason Voorhees is still so popular, even though a Friday the 13th movie hasn't been made in fourteen years. The same goes for the Scream franchise. These films are even more dependent on the killer's look. While Michael and Jason's look can vary a bit in the films, it's okay, because we still know who's underneath. With Scream, there's a different copycat killer under the Ghostface mask each time. The look has to stay the same, and stay scary each time, for the mask is the connective tissue that holds each film together. Scream hit it out of the park with their mask choice, but it's a choice that came about by accident.
The Ghostface Mask Was Discovered After Being Found in a Garage
It's ironic perhaps, yet it makes sense, that the masks of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Ghostface all came to be by happenstance, for we can't force fear. It finds us when we least expect it. As Scream's writer, Kevin Williamson, tells it in a clip for the film's 25th anniversary release, "No one could agree on a mask, and I remember we were on a location scout, and we found Ghostface. It was in a box of stuff in a garage that we were location scouting, and we asked the owner if we could take it because Wes [Scream director Wes Craven] immediately looked at it and said, 'This is like the famous Scream painting. And so we took that to our production, and we said, 'Can you make something riff on this, and see if you can make something like this.' So they must've done twenty different designs and every one of them was rejected by the studio, and finally we were like, 'Why don't we just get the rights to this mask?' because in the script it did say it was a dime store Halloween mask. And so that's exactly what we found."
Not only do you have the finding of a mask here, but also the film's title, for through much of production the film was called Scary Movie (hence why the parody film has that title). To change the film's title to Scream to fit the look of the mask, which is based on the famous Edward Munch painting called "The Scream", is a perfect choice.
The Production Crew for 'Scream' Tried To Create a Mask That Riffed on the Ghostface Look
Williamson is not exaggerating about the number of similar masks the production crew tried to create first. The mask they first found was mass-produced mask by a company called Fun World. The title of the mask shows that it didn't know how famous it would one day be, as it was simply named "Peanut-Eyed Ghost." The production team set to make something similar yet different enough to not be "Peanut-Eyed Ghost." They all kept the long face and mouth, but almost all of them then went in a completely different direction, giving the mask eyeballs and ears and skin, wild hair, rotting flesh, exposed brains. The ideas looked more like something from Killer Klowns from Outer Space or Hellraiser than what Ghostface would be. One look at them and it's no wonder why they were all rejected.
The Ghostface mask works because of its simplicity. It has the blank face of Michael Myers, but as if pulled apart, which is in essene what Scream was doing, pulling apart slasher tropes and taking us inside a meta world.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, sadly the last he would give before his death that same year, Wes Craven spoke about his love for the Ghostface mask. “I knew it in my bones that [Ghostface] was a unique find, and I had to convince the studio that they had to go the extra mile to get it.”
The Creators of 'Scream' Fought To Keep the Ghostface Mask in the Movie
In another interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Scream producer Cathy Konrad spoke about how the crew had to fight with the Weinsteins over keeping the Ghostface mask in the movie. "The controversy, which is pretty notorious, had a lot to do with the ghost mask. They felt like things looked flat. They felt like things were unexciting, that the mask wasn’t scary. I was getting calls early in the morning that were very demanding about ensuring that things change... What was being asked of us was to shoot everything that we’d already shot with several other masks so that Bob could decide which one he liked best. No, nobody’s doing that. So the idea was presented, can we cut together what we have shot, and can we prove to you it’s effective?"
After the Weinsteins saw a cut of that chilling opening scene, editor Patrick Lussier said, "They immediately called out and said, 'We are so wrong. This works so incredibly well. We can’t believe how suspenseful and terrifying this is. We clearly had no idea how to look at what you were doing.' Suddenly there was money for an orchestra, there was money for all sorts of things."
Everyone involved knew they had a great look on their hands with Ghostface. This wasn't just another pale faced hulk in a jumpsuit. Ghostface was something new, which is what the film aimed to do with a slasher genre that was pretty much dead and buried. To breathe fresh life into something that has collapsed, you must do what once worked before, but with a different spin. The Ghostface mask is certainly that.
“In general,” Craven said, “we didn’t mess with the mask at all. It’s something we didn’t try to change. With Freddy [Krueger] and the New Nightmare, I felt that I probably should have stuck with the original face. [With Scream,] we just let Ghostface be Ghostface... It would have been safer [not to change Freddy]. I’m not going to speculate in public, probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it, but you know, sometimes you realize that something’s not broken, so don’t fix it. And that was the course we took on all the Scream films: Don’t mess with that, it’s just perfect.”
For twenty-seven years and counting, Ghostface has haunted us through six films. The killers under the mask may change, but the look never has. And to think, an icon was born simply because someone on a film crew happened to see a cheap mask in a room and thought it looked good. The history of horror would certainly look a lot different had they not visited that particular house on that particular day.