THE COLLECTION, SILENT NIGHT & Holiday Horror Roundup: CFQ Spotlight Podcast 3:48

Did you see SILENT NIGHT this weekend? It's okay, you can be honest with us.
Did you see SILENT NIGHT this weekend? It's okay, you can be honest with us.

It’s a funny ol’ thing: Guess the studios figured that after the tension of all those family reunions last week, audiences would need to vent some of that sublimated hostility. So this week, depending on where you live, you could spend time with a sadistic murderer with a penchant for elaborate death traps in THE COLLECTION, or with a sadistic murderer with a penchant for weeding out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice in the Xmas-themed SILENT NIGHT.
And if neither of those openings quite fit your taste, well, you’re probably not alone. So after quickly giving their impressions of this week’s two (relatively) big openings, Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons round up some more-desirable, and some less-desirable, holiday-themed horror films to feed your winter-depression-fueled blood lust. Among the titles discussed: GREMLINS, JACK FROST, BLACK CHRISTMAS, and the off-kilter Finnish film, RARE EXPORTS.
Then, Larry gives his quick impression of HITCHCOCK, and Dan briefly reviews the fanciful new Hong Kong martial arts film, DRAGON. Plus: What’s coming to theaters next week. Oh, who are we kidding? Nothing’s coming to theaters next week. Save up that energy for THE HOBBIT.

The One You Might Have Saved

Barbra (Judith O'Dea) in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEADRiffing on an earlier essay at Arbogast on Film, Final Girl offers this opinion on why Barbra in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), is the one horror movie victim she would have saved if she had the chance. Barbra (Judith O’Dea) of course receives undue contempt from contemporary audiences because she is – realistically and quite believably – traumatized by the horrible events around her; instead of morphing into a monster-fighting icon of female empowerment (something that would not really happen until Sigourney Weaver played Ripley in ALIEN eleven years later), Barbra simply sinks into catatonia until she briefly flares up at the end – only to be devoured by her dead brother. Barbra sets the standard as the archetypal character who cannot handle what is happening (she foreshadows Veronica Cartwright in ALIEN and Bill Paxton in ALIENS), and her ultimate fate is less shocking than deeply disturbing – which is to say it packs a deep emotional resonance that provokes viewers to think, “Oh no!” instead of “Ain’t it cool!”
I have never had quite such a memorably profound reaction to the death of an on-screen character as Final Girl records, but many are victims I have seen who did not deserve their fate. Below I offer my list…
A Woman of the Streets in MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932). Arlene Francis (who would later become famous as a panelist on the TV show WHAT’S MY LINE) plays this euphemistically-named character (obviously a prostitute). Practically crucified on a rack, Francis screams – and screams – and SCREAMS while Bela Lugosi’s Dr. Mirakle examines her blood, hoping it will help his experiments. The way she is trussed up vaguely suggests some kind of S&M dungeon device, and this may be the distant grand-daddy of Torture Porn. And as if it were not enough to kill the woman, Mirakle insults her as well, adopting a tone of moral outrage because her blood is “polluted” (presumably symbolic of her state as a fallen woman), which means it is not suitable for his work. What is most amazing, however, is that this quaint relic from an earlier era actually still packs a punch, thanks to Francis’s unnerving vocalizations – which provoke an almost instinctive protective reaction in the listener.
Josef in THE BODY SNATCHERS (1945). Lugosi gets payback for Francis in this film, playing a dim-bulb assistant who makes the mistake of thinking he can blackmail the murderous body snatcher played by Boris Karloff. Josef is not much of a character, but it is sad to see Lugosi, briefly the reigning king of horror thanks to DRACULA, killed off by Karloff, the star who dethroned him by playing the Monster in FRANKENSTEIN.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956). This is the one where meddling scientists operate on the Creature so that he can no longer breath underwater, forcing him to become a permanent land-walker. Some jerk commits a murder and tries to blame it on the innocent beast, who goes on a rampage, killing the real murderer. The Creature then heads to the ocean, lured by the sound of crashing waves, and the film leaves us in no doubt that he will drown to death attempting to return to the water that used to be his home. The humans in this film have much to answer for, and one wishes the Creature didn’t have to pay the price for their mistakes.
Dandelo in THE FLY (1958). Dandelo the cat becomes the unwitting victim of his master, scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) who puts him in a matter transmitter. Dandelo disappears – but never rematerializes. All that is left is an echoing wale on the soundtrack. Poor Dandelo, I wish I could bring you back to our dimension; I have a little cat bed here, some cat toys, and a little catnip….
Miles in THE INNOCENTS (1961). Exorcising a malicious ghost proves to be a fatal experience for this young boy played by Martin Stephens. The tragedy of the downer ending hits you over the head like a sledgehammer. Did his governess (Deborah Kerr) save him from the evil influence, or did she unwittingly give him a heart attack by forcing him to confront the ghost? I don’t know if I could have handled the situation any better, but I would like to try.
The Monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL (1969).This Japanese masterpiece tells the story of  Korean painter who can only paint what he sees. When his Japanese lord asks him to paint a divine vista, the artist insists on painting Hell instead. To aid in his endeavor, he asks his lord to stage a scene with a burning chariot; the lord complies – and puts the artist’s daughter in the chariot! As she burns to death, her pet monkey leaps from a nearby tree, joining her in the living funeral pyre. That’s right: in this film, no one comes to a good end – even the monkey dies! It’s such a gratuitous bit – an extra added sucker punch, just to make you feel even worse as you view the tragedy – that you want to point your fire extinguisher at the screen.
The Private Eye in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971).This Dario Argento thriller features a gay private detective in a supporting role. He brags that he has never solved a case but confidently insists that the odds must therefore now be in his favor. He does identify the murderer but only in time to become a victim himself. His demise by poison is poignant – as he realizes, at the moment of his death, that he was, for once, right. You really wish he had lived to enjoy his success instead of expiring ignominiously in a public restroom.
Dr. Martin in ASYLUM (1972). For me, actor Robert Powell will always be JESUS OF NAZARETH – that and the almost mystical father-figure in Ken Russell’s film version of TOMMY. The death of his well-meaning young psychiatrist at the end of this film is too horrible for words. Dr. Martin’s murder, I have to admit, is a pretty effective sick joke (the murderer strangles him with a stethoscope, then uses it to listen for the heartbeat that is no longer there). But the film had set him up as an idealist who objects – quite rightly – to the situation he finds in the asylum. When he dies, it is as if a small piece of hope dies with him.
Edward Lionheart in THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973). Vincent Price plays a hammy Shakespearean actor who kills the critics that trashed his performances. Although inspired by Price’s role in the DR. PHIBES films (in which the mad doctor triumphed), THEATRE reverts to a standard formula at the end, with Lionheart dying in a fire while the final critic walks away to live happily ever after. The injustice is infuriating: Lionheart should have survived and toasted the arrogant twit. (By the way, this is the only suggestion on my list that I mean literally: the film would be better if the script had been rewritten to make Lionheart triumphant.)
Sergeant Howie in THE WICKER MAN (1973). As he investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a Scottish Isle, Howie (Edward Woodward) is set up as a bit of a dullard and an unsympathetic prick to boot. The effect for me is that he comes across as a pathetic patsy – a victim less of the murderous pagans on the island than of the unsympathetic screenwriter (Anthony Shaffer) who created him. Howie, I never really liked you that much, but I can’t stand to see anyone forced to take a fall like that. If there were any C02 left in my fire extinguisher after saving the monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL, I would use it on the flaming Wicker Man.
Jessica Bradford in BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974). We do not actually see Jessica (Olivia Hussey) die in this film, but the movie ends with her character drugged unconscious while the idiot police department (having fingered the wrong man) leaves her alone in the house with the real killer. Director Bob Clark later said in an interview with Cinefantastique that Hussey’s character had earned the right to live, and I have to agree. I have a hypodermic of adrenalin here that should wake her from her drugged-out torpor, if only I could reach through the screen…
Carrie in CARRIE (1976). I would have saved Sissy Spacek’s psychic girl long before her death at the end of the movie. When the film builds up to the horrible prank at the prom, it is one of the few moments in a horror film when I found myself dreading what was about to happen – even though I knew it had to happen in order for the horror to break out (which was, after all, what I had paid to see). Unlike most films, in which one eagerly anticipates this kind of thing, so that the film will get to the “good stuff,” I did find myself involuntarily reaching out to the screen, wanting to stop Nancy Allen from pulling that rope and dumping pig’s blood all over poor Carrie White.
Officer Jim Kelly in ALLIGATOR (1980). Robert Forster plays Madison, a cop who lost a partner years ago. When he needs someone to help check the sewers where some bodies have been found, most of his chicken-shit colleagues make up lame excuses, but Kelly (Perry Lang) steps forward – even though he knows about Madison’s past. Kelly’s reward for his courage is to be eaten by the titular alligator, while the cowards back at the precinct live to see another day. If Madison couldn’t save Kelly, I don’t know what I could do. Maybe flip the alligator on his back and rub his tummy till he fell asleep? (They say this works, but it never did with my pet alligator – I’d probably just end up joining Kelly’s dismembered body parts in the monster reptile’s gullet.)
Godzilla in GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER (1995). The radioactive reptile has been responsible for more death and destruction than one could possibly tally, but the payback he receives in this one more than settles his karma: a full-blown nuclear meltdown reduces the beast to nothing but a pile of ash blowing in the wind. There is a certain grandeur about this attempt to create a convincingly “final” death for the long-lived monster, but his destruction looks really, really painful. If I could just find a few cadmium rods to slow down the chain reaction before it reached critical levels…
The rat in THE EYE (2002). A distant cousin of the monkey in PORTRAIT OF HELL, this rat serves a similar, though slightly vaguer purpose: it’s not enough for the humans to die, the filmmakers have to hammer home the relentless destruction by offing an innocent animal as well. Whatever the point, the rodent’s desperate but failed attempt to outrun the climactic conflagration by diving down a sewer pipe is a great piece of film-making – a perfect little exclamation point to the human destruction above ground. Poor rat, I wish I could adopt you and create a litte menagerie, including the monkey from PORTRAIT OF HELL and Dandelo the cat from THE FLY (I don’t think my facilities would accommodate Godzilla, however).
[serialposts]

Black Christmas (2006) – Film & DVD Review

[NOTE: Today, the Weinstein Company is releasing a DVD double bill that includes two disappointing remakes: BLACK CHRISTMAS and PULSE. With that in mind, we offer this review of the unrated BLACK CHRISTAMS DVD.] This ill-conceived remake takes the premise of the effective original and turns it into a routine gorefest. The 1974 version of BLACK CHRISTMAS, which predates HALLOWEEN by four years, is the true grandfather of the ’70s slasher craze, with the presence of its unseen serial killer suggested through the use of a subjective camera stalking a group of sorority sisters during the holiday season. Not content simply to redo what worked before, writer-director Glen Morgan throws in bits and pieces of other films, creating a mismatched quilt that ultimately falls to pieces; then he tries to hide the ripped seams beneath a bucket-full of blood. The result is a tedious film that seldom scares, the eruptions of grue serving simply to remind you of how desperate the film is to achieve its horror.
Perhaps the biggest strength of the first BLACK CHRISTMAS was the mystery surrounding its killer, whose identity is never revealed (although his name seems to be Billy, based on the disturbing obscene phone calls he makes throughout the movie). The remake commits the catastrophic mistake of showcasing a back-story for Billy, through an interminable series of flashbacks that bog down the first half of the film without telling us anything we really need to know.

By setting up a story in which Billy was institutionalized for killing family members years ago, then escapes on the anniversary of his crimes to return home, Morgan turns BLACK CHRISTMAS into an inadvertent remake of HALLOWEEN. In effect, what was once original becomes a rehash of its own imitators. Morgan then compounds the problem by adding in bits of PSYCHO IV (the awful relationship between a boy and his mom that turns him into a killer) and even Dario Argento’s DEEP RED (Mom kills Dad at Christmas, which really freaks junior out).


But what really sinks the film is that it recycles the tired clichés of 1930s mystery movies. The new BLACK CHRISTMAS is a manipulative who-done-it wherein clues are kept deliberately vague and characters wear dark and sinister expressions like signs that read “SUSPECT ME!” Proving that no writer’s device is too old to be hauled out of the mothballs, the roads are closed by snow (of course), which prevents the police from arriving, but a new character unexpectedly pops up at a key moment, so that we will think she might be the killer. And just to keep the audience guessing (is she who she claims?), the last name on her driver’s license does not match her sister at the sorority house.
Of course, the sum total effect of this is almost zero, because we know the story is about a killer who recently escaped from his cell, which pretty much eliminates all the characters as suspects. The only question mark arises from the fact that the first murders occur before Billy’s escape, so we know there must be a second murderer. Since all those flashbacks tell us Billy had a sister, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who the accomplice might be.
With its uninvolving mystery, BLACK CHRISTMAS relies on a series of gruesome deaths to generate whatever feeble horror it can manage. The gore is overdone and quite gratuitous (the killer for some reason enjoys raw eyeballs, though how that figures into the homicidal psychopathology is not clear). With little suspense, a cast of unlikable and mostly interchangeable characters, and a silly storyline (which illogically brings the killers back to life for a few more shocks in the final reel), the new BLACK CHRISTMAS ranks as one of the worst examples of a debased form. Viewers would be well advised to leave this Christmas present unwrapped.

TRIVIA

Actress Andrea Martin, who appeared as one of the sorority sisters in the first BLACK CHRISTMAS, shows up in the remake as the house den mother.
Lacy Chabert plays one of the beautiful but not particularly brainy sorotiy sisters.BLACK CHRISTMAS perpetuates the New Age myth that the Christian holiday of Christmas is simply a Roman holiday in disguise, citing mistletoe and Christmas trees as pagan symbols of seasonal rebirth. Even though one of the film’s characters is supposed to be a Christian believer, she does not bother to point out that the Romans were not celebrating the birth of the Messiah, nor that most of the traditional accoutrement’s of Christmas date more from the Victorian era, not from ancient Rome.
In one of the film’s more bizarre stretches of incredible illogic, one character insists that what Santa Claus does (sneaking into your house) is this is no different from what Billy has done. In a roomful of college students, no one is smart enough to point out that there is a considerable difference between leaving a lump of coal in a stocking, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, strangling someone to death and eating her eyeball.

DVD DETAILS

Dimension Films released BLACK CHRISTMAS on DVD in an Unrated Widescreen Edition (ASIN: B000MM0LIM) and an Unrated Full Screen Edition (ASIN: B000MM0LIW). The DVDs divide the film in twelve chapter stops, with English-language Dolby 5.1 surround sound and optional subtitles in English (for the Hearing Impaired) and Spanish. Bonus features include seven deleted, extended, or alternate scenes; three alternate endings; and two featurettes.
The Deleted/Alternate/Extended Scenes:

  1. “Someone in the Attic” is am overlong montage that introduces the sorority house and establishes the presence of the killer.
  2. “Christmas Ringtones” is a minor dialogue exchange.
  3. “Gift Exchange” features Lacy Chabert’s character unwrapping a giant dildo, which flops around to (allegedly) hilarious effect.
  4. “The Girls Discuss Kyle and Eve” is a bit of dialogue that points a finger at two suspects.
  5. “Extended Version – Phone Call From Dana” offers more suspicious finger-pointing at Eve.
  6. “International Version – Melissa Killed in the Hallways” is a longer version of Melissa’s death, featuring the killer chomping down on an eyeball that goes “smoosh!”
  7. “Alternate Version – Lauren’s Death” more closely mimics the murder of Margot Kidder’s character in the original BLACK CHRISTMAS.

The Alternate Endings suggest that a more low-key approach was originally intended; the successive version amp up the final reel violence, trying to end with a bigger bang:

  1. Leigh (Kristen Cloke) delivers a speech about family to Kelli (Katie Cassidy) in the hospital. The inspiration message is undercut by a call from the cell phone of Cassidy’s dead boyfriend, implying that the killer is still active.
  2. As it is in the final film, Leigh’s inspirational speech is cut out. Leigh is called down to identify the body of Agnes, who turns out not to be in the body bag. Meanwhile, Billy dies in the E.R. from burns. Agnes invades Kelli’s hospital room, where Kelli electrocutes her (as in the finished film), before Kelli’s parents arrive to take her home.
  3. A nurse wheels Kelli into the E.R. room to see that Billy is really dead (a plot point weakened by the fact that he seems to be breathing). After Kelli’s parents arrive and take her home (as in Ending #2), Billy’s body goes missing. Ridiculously, the camera pans up to reveal his eye peering out from behind a smoke detector.

“What Have You Done – The Remaking of BLACK CHRISTMAS” is a standard puff piece crafted to promote the 2006 theatrical release. The back-patting and self-congratulatory tone is a bit off-putting (taking the film to a “different level” or “another level” is a repeated talking point). There are interviews with writer-director Glen Morgan, his producer-partner James Wong, the cast, and Bob Clark, who produced and directed the original film. The featurette suffers from an absence of footage from the original, despite much discussion about its similarities to and differences from the remake. This featurette’s highlight has to be Andrea Martin’s brief but hilarious EXORCIST impersonation – an apparent spoof of the raspy voice heard in BLACK CHRISTMAS’s obscene phone calls.
“May All Your Christmases Be Black – A Filmmaker’s Journey” is the more interesting of the two featurettes: it gives some insight into why the film turned out so badly. Glen Morgan laments the box office failure of his first directorial effort, a remake of WILLARD starring Crispen Glover, and offers this as a justification for pandering to the gore crowd (“giving the people what they want”) in the hope of turning BLACK CHRISTMAS a box office hit. Even though he insists that BLACK CHRISTMAS is not a slasher film, he admits to including shock scenes that he himself would prefer not to use. The featurette then takes an unnecessarily extended detour to examine Dean Friss, the film’s male focus-puller who ended up cast as the female serial killer Agnes. The piece wraps up with Morgan informing us that he will be on “Filmmakers Death Row” if BLACK CHRISTMAS flops. The unpleasant implication is that we should buy tickets and/or DVDs to enable Morgan to go on making films, even though he admits that commercial considerations are forcing him to make movies in a way that he himself does not like.

Sorority sisters line up like ducks in a shooting gallery.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006). Directed by Glen Morgan. Screenlay by Morgan, based on the screenlay for “Black Christmas” (2974) by Roy Moore. Cast: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Kristen Cloke, Crystal Lowe, Lacey Chabert, mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Hudson, Andrea, Martin, Jessica Harmon, Leela Savasta