The Origin Of The Ghostface Mask In Scream Is Delightfully Mundane
Horror fans love a masked slasher, but not all masks are created equal. Designing a quality disguise for a masked villain is crucial not only for scaring the bejesus out of the audience, but for the future merchandising possibilities. Michael Myers' modified Captain Kirk mask, Jason Voorhees' hockey mask, Leatherface's patchwork skin mask, and the Silver Shamrock masks have enjoyed generational longevity, as has the horrifying Ghostface mask from "Scream," now celebrating its 25th Anniversary.
The Ghostface mask is so effective, it feels like it must have been developed in a nightmare lab dedicated to scarring the lives of six-year-olds catching a commercial for the film late at night while walking through the living room. (No, just me?) However, as Kevin Williamson discusses in a new video for the anniversary of "Scream," the real backstory behind the iconic mask is a lot more mundane, yet somehow delightfully perfect for what "Scream" is all about. Check out the exclusive clip below from IGN.
Ghostface Was A Cheap Halloween Costume Mask
It's been relatively common knowledge for a while that the Ghostface mask was meant to emulate Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream," one of the characters on the cover of the Pink Floyd album "The Wall," and the ghostly characters that appeared in the 1930s "Betty Boop" cartoons. However, what many may not realize, is that the mask was not created for "Scream," it was an existing costume mask sold by a company called Fun World and designed by a woman named Brigitte Sleiertin. "Scream" screenwriter Kevin Williamson had this to say about finding the mask:
"No one could agree on a mask and I remember we were in a location scout, and we found Ghostface... in a box of stuff in a garage... 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, 'Riff on this... make something like this.' They must've done 20 different designs. 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?"
The maks was created in 1991 as part of the Fun World "Fantastic Faces" collection, and Dimension Films was able to reach an agreement to use the mask. This proved extremely profitable for Fun World, who owns both the mask design and the name "Ghostface." Since the production of "Scream" in 1996, the Ghostface mask has become the most worn and sold costume for Halloween in the United States. Yes, that does include that awesome blood-pumping Ghostface mask we all owned in the early 2000s.
Get your Ghostface masks for the Halloween season now, and prepare for the fifth "Scream" movie due out in theaters on January 14, 2022.