1990s Dark R-Rated Slasher Horror On Max Turns Legends Into Reality

Urban Legend begins with the decapitation of college student Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) as she is inside her car. This segues into co-eds Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum), Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt), and Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart) discussing the story of a massacre that took place on their school’s campus several decades before. When fellow student Paul Gardner (Jared Leto) scoffs at the story being nothing more than an urban legend, a series of events kick off that show a number of urban legends being used to kill off the characters.

Natalie seemingly becomes the target of a serial killer on campus as she is on hand to witness the brutal deaths of her friends. While parked in a car with Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson), she sees him attacked and hung from a tree by someone concealed under a hooded coat. A night later, Natalie’s roommate is murdered while she sleeps, the terrified student waking up to find the words “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” written on the wall in the victim’s blood.

Urban Legend sees many of its players dispatched in brutal fashion by the killer in the coat as Natalie and Paul try to uncover the truth. As the body count rises, more questions emerge than answers as the students struggle with the motives behind Dean Adams’ (John Neville) attempt to squash the stories and the revelation that their folklore professor William Wexler (Robert Englund) turns out to be the only survivor of a real massacre on the campus years before.

Urban Legend was a box office success, raking in more than $70 million off a $14 million production budget. Despite the impressive fan base, the critics at the time denounced the film as a blatant rip-off of the 1997 film Scream, though both films contained a myriad of horror film tropes. At the very least, Urban Legend was creative in that it used many of our culture’s folklore as a method of executing each of the characters, one at a time.

There are numerous urban legends demonstrated as modes of death in the film, beginning with the opening scene where the “killer hiding in the back seat” myth was utilized. Eight additional urban legends were used to dispatch the characters, including the “high beams initiation,” “pop rocks and soda combination,” “ankle slasher hiding under the car,” and “kidney heist.” The movie also references more urban folklore in conversations between the characters.

Urban Legend serves as a great example of a tame slasher film, lacking the graphic nudity and over-the-top gore that lower budget entries possess. This certainly worked to lure in better performers and gave the film a wider audience to appeal to.

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Urban Legend was a great teen slasher film and was able to reel in audiences with plenty of faces that were familiar to fans. Alongside Jared Leto and Alicia Witt, soap star Rebecca Gayheart, scream queen Danielle Harris (the Halloween franchise), and Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street) carried the film over its predictable story arc with great performances.

You can catch the bloody slasher film Urban Legend with a subscription to Max or by renting it On Demand through Vudu, Google Play, Prime, and AppleTV.