Sarah Michelle Gellar Was In Real Pain During I Know What You Did Last Summer's Big Chase Scene
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" almost worked as a phantom wave for the neo-slasher genre, hitting theaters in the wake of Wes Craven's game changer "Scream," and sneaking in just a couple of months before "Scream 2" in October of 1997. Spawning an inferior sequel, a third entry called "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer" with an entirely new cast, and a recently canceled Prime Video series, the original film has stayed surprisingly relevant. Now, a legacy sequel is on the way with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. in talks to return. Once again, the "Last Summer" franchise is capitalizing on the resurgent success of the "Scream" series, giving genre fans even more reason to get a little nostalgic for the late '90s horror craze.
For all the derivative tropes and fairly predictable jump scares in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," the screenplay by "Scream" scribe Kevin Williamson had a few tricks up its sleeve. Add a cast of teen idol sensations along with a hook-handed killer based on a popular urban legend and, suddenly, all the makings of a successful thriller started to fall in place. 17-year-old Hewitt took center stage as an unlikely final girl, especially considering that 19-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar was waiting in the wings. Gellar's star was certainly rising then, as well, with the second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in full swing at the time "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was released.
No stranger to action, Gellar has an elaborate chase scene through a deserted department store that leads up to her character Helen Shiver's untimely demise. "IKWYDLS" director Jim Gillespie recently revealed that Gellar actually suffered a fairly substantial injury during the sequence.
My fear of elevators is justified
Personally, I try to take the stairs whenever possible. I've been stuck in an elevator before, and it's not fun. At all. Historically, horror innately understands the deep-seated fear that some people have with elevators. The 1983 Dutch film "Der Lift" by director Dick Maas features a self-aware killer elevator that decapitates people, M. Knight Shyamalan trapped a bunch of people in a cramped elevator with the Prince of Darkness in "Devil," and "The Shining" famously features an elevator of blood, just to highlight a few.
In "I Know What You Did Last Summer," Gillespie chose the department store in the film after discovering a dilapidated, wooden, hand-cranked elevator. He built the entire sequence around it. Towards the end of the movie, Helen (Gellar) hightails it through the store, navigates her way through the elevator, and jumps through a window. The elevator cables were razor sharp, leaving Gellar to endure quite a bit of pain, according to Gillespie. "For Sarah, god bless her, she's the one who had to pull the damn thing and the fibers were like fiberglass, they just went right into her hands," the director told TooFab around the film's 25th anniversary. "We coated her hands with a special solution, it was a bit like rubber on her hands to protect them, but it still wasn't perfect. She was a real trooper. She just went with it."
In a fun bit of horror movie trivia, the lead-up to the elevator scene had to be reshot, allowing time for the set to be re-dressed with creepy mannequins covered in plastic. That proved to be a perfect setup for the movie's best jump scare featuring the killer fisherman hiding amongst the dummies — a moment that is probably paying homage to "Tourist Trap" from 1979.
Would Helen have been the better final girl?
Gellar's character in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" actually did wind up avoiding ol' Ben Willis' (Muse Watson) fish hook for about as long as she could. Because she was playing a more snobby role as pageant queen Helen Shivers (love that last name), it was almost a foregone conclusion that she would meet a grisly fate before Jennifer Love Hewitt's nerdier character Julie James (who also made it through all of "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"). But wouldn't it have been an interesting twist if Kevin Williamson's script actually had Helen wind up as the final girl?
The movie is based on Lois Duncan's 1973 suspense novel of the same name, and Helen Shivers is an entirely different, more relatable character who actually doesn't die in the book. Helen is decidedly more vapid in the film, yet she did have some aspirations to leave her small oceanside town behind and go to New York City to make it as an actress. She had dreams! She did make bad choices, though, like deciding to date the bratty jock Barry Cox (Phillippe) who wanted to avoid the cops after their drunken hit-and-run on the 4th of July. Still, Gellar is remembered for being a fighter and a survivor in "Buffy" and the shock of having her make it to the end of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" would have made for a truly memorable conclusion.
To add insult to injury, Gellar's character Cici Cooper was killed off in the opening minutes of "Scream 2"! But she did put up one hell of a fight. We're keeping our fingers crossed that Gellar's new series "Wolf Pack" will help restore her survivor status.