This is a movie about how teenage girls are punished by our society for not knowing anything about movies.

This generation defining movie was directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson who would later do "Dawson's Creek" and regular columns for The National Review as their "roving correspondent" and "theater critic."

Let's acknowledge the iconic cast: You've got Drew Barrymore, who at the time was probably the biggest "teen" movie star in the world, who gets butchered in the first ten minutes of the movie. Neve Campbell as the "last girl", so traumatized by the brutal murder of her mother that she won't let her boyfriend do under the clothes stuff. Rose McGowan, as the best friend, whose connection to this film and the nexus of Miramax/Dimension/Harvey & Bob films of the nineties casts the theme of sacrificing young women on the altar of entertainment in an even darker light.

Then we have a classic hunk and goofball pairing of Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard as Leopold & Loeb-style film buffs. Courtney Cox and David Arquette, as the tabloid TV journalist and hapless local deputy, who met on this film and then got married and became a nineties power couple. Liev Schreiber shows up as a guy we see on TV and has no dialogue. Henry Winkler establishes his title as "a man for all decades" as a High School principal. Finally, W. Earl Brown (Dan Doherty from Deadwood) is Courtney Cox's camerman.

My main takeaway from watching this movie is that I want to go back to the nineties so bad. It was truly the last decade, a golden age. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!