Interesting, I never thought of Scream as a bit of silly fun. It actually scared me quite a bit when I saw it in the theater at 15. I'm still puzzled at how it's distasteful that a character in a horror movie is tortured and killed. Isn't that the point of a slasher movie?

At the risk of starting a rant, I think it's a mistake to transfer the thoughts and behaviors of fictional characters onto their creators. Writers have always given their creations opinions and ideas that they themselves do not hold. It's the same sort of thing that's happening to Tarantino right now with Django Unchained. I can't stand QT as a person, but I don't think he's a racist for putting "the n-word" in the mouths of his characters.