It’s about time the world has caught up with “Black Christmas” and (thanks to Shout!) given it the proper treatment it’s always deserved. What is arguably one of the first slasher films ever made was always out of print and hard to find while “Halloween” was granted various editions of VHS, and DVD. While “Halloween” is a masterpiece, “Black Christmas” is far more superior. It works as a slasher film, a mystery, a dark comedy, and is genuinely spine tingling in a movie draped in Christmas ephemera. It’s surprising since the tone for “Black Christmas” is almost the same tone from his other Christmas classic “A Christmas Story.” Yet director Bob Clark really never misses a beat, offering up a very scary tale about an inexplicable maniac wreaking havoc on a small neighborhood during the holidays.
Tag Archives: Christmas
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
“Home Alone” already stretched the idea of logic and suspension of disbelief already, but when Dreamworks squeezed out a sequel hoping for equal to more success, we instead got “Lost in New York.” Not only did this follow up basically prove that the original’s premise was a tad far-fetched, but something of a flash in the pan. This sequel is just leaps and bounds sillier than even the third “Home Alone” and even presents a ton of misguided morals within its narrative. You can sense the movie is one giant misstep, when it casts the likes of Tim Curry as one of Kevin’s adversaries, and turns Rob Schneider in to a hilariously slimy bellboy, and wastes them in favor of rehashing the same dynamic we saw with Marv and Harry from the first film.
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
IN SELECT THEATERS OCTOBER 28TH – Although Henry Selick does a damn fine job of directing what is one of the most entertaining stop motion animated films, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has Tim Burton’s stamp all over it. It’s about an outcast, a love for the Gothic and Halloween, and it’s unabashedly menacing. Though Henry Selick’s animated movie was originally touted to kids, the film is very much a dark and harrowing narrative about monsters from the Halloweentown infiltrating the Christmastown, and using the traditions and rituals to terrorize random victims. One montage even features kids getting very creepy presents like a shrunken head, and a snake. Jack Skellington is the pumpkin king who is the anti-hero that finds himself restless with Halloween and accidentally becomes the villain when he falls in love with Christmas.
Black Christmas (2006)
Glenn Morgan’s remake of the Bob Clark 1974 slasher film is one of most preposterous, blatantly awful films I’ve seen in the last two years. As a remake and as its own film, it’s awful. Director-Writer Morgan seems to aim for the exact opposite effect the original established, and does so through often hilarious methods of murders, and vague characterization. All the characters are loud, one-dimensional, and despicable, none of the actors give stand out performances, there’s an awfully predictable plot twist involving our killer, gross out gore for the sake of gross out gore. Of course, Billy uses every element of Christmas as a method of murder for his victims.
All Through the House (2015)
Todd Nunes takes “Black Christmas” and wraps it in the Santa slashing madness “Silent Night, Deadly Night” for what is a pretty wonky slasher film. I appreciated the humor and inherent mean spiritedness of it all, as Todd Nunes definitely has a love for slasher films. He and his crew even seem dead set on creating their own iconic slasher with our silver faced Santa who has a knack for mutilating his victims with garden sheers. There’s also his habit for turning his male victims in to eunuchs, which is of shocking importance once the finale rolls around. I really like that Todd Nunes stuffs the film with more Latin and Hispanic actors, providing a very welcome diverse cast.
Little House on the Prairie: Legacy Movie Collection (DVD/Digital)
When I was a kid, “Little House on the Prairie” was one of my favorite shows and I saw it all the way through the end. It was the drama that always kept me interested and engrossed, as Michael Landon was a favorite of my household. For fans of the series, the “Legacy Movie Collection” comes to DVD with three movies that close the series and resolve the entire saga of the Ingalls once and for all. The famed TV show starring Michael Landon and Victor French, and loosely based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, followed the Ingall family as they dealt with the hardships of living in the late 1800’s America, and how they fared against various obstacles in their lives. The series was a compelling drama that ended in 1983, and gained another life among a new generation that followed the series when it went to syndication.
Red Christmas (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
A mother wants to have the best Christmas ever with her family. During the traditional day, tensions come to a boiling point when a stranger shows up at their door and wants to kill them all. This sets the mother on a warpath to protect her brood.
This Australian horror film is written and directed by Craig Anderson who starts by building a family with lots of issues and strife between its members. Most of their issues are the same as a lot of families while others are more unique. This family cares for each other against these odds and when all hell breaks loose, their bonds are tested. The writing here develops this family well and then brings some original kills to the table but the characters are not the most likable so it’s hard to root for them. This is all well directed for most of the film so the few issues seen here and there are not entirely awful, but the film lacks a bit in fun. Sadly, the killer’s motivation feels a bit preachy at times, making his condition a bit of a case of one too many things in the story. The way the killer is portrayed is unfortunately a bit grating and not really menacing.
The cast does ok with the material but it’s hard to tell if their characters were written that way or if they were directed to do this or if the way they act leads to this, but almost all the characters come off as unlikable and just disagreeable, selfish people. From the looks of things, it seems to be a combination of the three with other factors added to those. Knowing that Dee Wallace can play mother so well, her performance here is not as expected which may be due to putting too much hope on her. She is good, but some angles of her character are so dislikable, it’s hard to look over those. The rest of the cast being less familiar, they did not have as much expectations put on them, yes they still come off as dislikable to despicable as well.
As Red Christmas is a slasher, the kills and their effects are of high importance. The kills here are good with some original ones. However, the effects are decent at best with some pieces being not so good to just bad. The make-up and prosthetics on the killer look a bit like Toxie, with a low budget look and even somewhat of a family resemblance. Also an odd choice is how the kill set pieces are shot. In some cases, the lighting makes it hard to see what is going; on while in other cases, the shaky cam is nauseating, making the viewer look away and miss out on the scene.
This film has a lot of potential, but does not go for it. It has good ideas for kills with effect that are just not good enough to support those ideas. The characters are not people the viewers can get attached to. The killer is one of those that could have been good but his background and reason to kill make him hard to get into or behind. This reviewer wanted to love this as the last few years have given us so many good holiday themed horror movies, but even after giving Red Christmas as much slack as possible, it’s not a movie that can be considered good. A few good scenes here and there do not a great movie make.
Fantasia International Film Festival ran from July 14th until August 3rd, 2016 and will be back in the summer of 2017.