The Exorcist (1973), Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(1974),
The Conjuring
(2013)... So many horror films that gave us goosebumps and even forced us to close our eyes so as not to watch certain scenes that are too bloody or scary.
All these films have another point in common: they are inspired by a true story, just like
Scream
and his masked man mercilessly killing everyone he meets.
“Ghostface”, as it is called, made its big comeback with Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox on Wednesday January 12 in a fifth installment in the saga.
The opportunity to come back to the reality hiding behind this story that has terrified us since 1996, the year the very first film by Wes Craven was released.
Who is really hiding behind the mask?
Kevin Williamson, screenwriter of the first two films and the fourth, drew his inspiration from a famous case of the 90s, that of the Gainesville Ripper alias Danny Rolling, a serial killer who raged in the United States. Danny Rolling knows the same journey as all the other bloody murderers before him. Born in 1954, in Shreveport, Louisiana, he grew up in an unstable home, abused by his father, and witnessed his mother's suicide attempt. Very young, he made himself known to the police services by being arrested for voyeurism and burglary. He will wait until he is 35 to commit his first murder. On November 4, 1989, he broke into a house in his hometown and killed the three inhabitants, a 55-year-old man, a 24-year-old young woman, raped and found in a strange setting, and an 8-year-old child. year.
The Gainesville Ripper
May 1990, he tries to assassinate his father, without success.
He then left home and moved to Florida, to Gainesville, a student town.
He will then reproduce the same pattern as in Shreveport by breaking into the homes of his victims.
There, he tapes their mouths, ties their wrists, rapes them and stabs them in the back, always arranging the bodies in sordid positions.
Five people will fall under the blows of Danny Rolling between August 24 and 27, 1990: Tracy Paules (23 years old), Manuel Taboada (23 years old), Christa Hoyt (18 years old), Chritina Powell (17 years old) and Sonja Larson (18 years old). ).
Terror seizes Gainesville and these killings earn him the nickname "the ripper".
On campus, students get into the habit of staying in groups, cloistered in their rooms and sometimes even changing universities.
September 7, 1990, the killer is arrested during a burglary near Gainesville.
The police make the connection by discovering tools in his home that may correspond to the weapons of previous crimes, as well as voice recordings where he confesses to the murders committed.
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The key testimony of Cindy Juracich
If several elements fully accuse Danny Rolling, it is with the testimony of Cindy Juracich that the case will be clarified.
This resident of Shreveport makes the connection between the November 1989 massacre and the one that took place in Gainesville in the summer of 1990. She confides that Danny had revealed to her husband Steven Juracich, as well as to herself, that he had murderous urges and a serious attraction to female students.
The accused will eventually confess to the eight murders.
He was sentenced to death in 1994 at Florida State Prison.
But will not be executed until 2006, confident that he wanted to become a "superstar like the American serial killer Ted Bundy", one of the criminals
the best known having raged in the United States in the 1970s and killed nearly thirty young women.
The birth of "Scream"
While watching a documentary on Danny Rolling in the mid-1990s, screenwriter Kevin Williamson, taken by this story, hears a noise in the house he has been living in for two days. He takes a knife in his kitchen, while calling a friend: an event that is reminiscent of the inaugural and emblematic scene of the first
Scream
(1996) with Drew Barrymore. This fear, which will inhabit him in many nightmares, he will make with Wes Craven one of the most cult horror sagas in the history of cinema. By adding a few elements, such as the black suit and the white mask, which Danny Rolling has never worn. But which, in turn, haunts the nights of many of those who have seen it.
Scream
by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, in theaters since Wednesday, January 12.
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