BEFORE: We're halfway through October (already?) but I'm more than halfway through the horror chain (already?) because remember, I'm limiting myself to just 27 horror films this time. Four days off for NY Comic-Con, and 27 plus 4 equals 31. Coincidence? No such thing.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead carries over from "The Ring Two". I freaked out a little when I heard her character in that movie had her scenes cut from the film, but since she still is listed in the IMDB as being in that movie, she's still in there somewhere, for at least a second or two. Reports are a little sketchy, but I'm relying on the "Trivia" section of the IMDB, which is reporting that she's seen at the very least in photos in a newspaper article, but also a few seconds of footage that wasn't cut.
THE PLOT: On Christmas Eve, and escaped maniac returns to his childhood home, which is now a sorority house, and begins to murder the sorority sisters one by one.
AFTER: Naturally, since I work in both an animation studio and a movie theater, I talk with my co-workers about movies, like a lot. Most of them know about my linking system, and I think they know if they ask me, "What have you been watching lately?" I might have something interesting to say. Some of them are also aware that I try to only watch horror movies in October, so they may ask which ones I've been watching this time around. When I said "Black Christmas" to a co-worker tonight, she said, "Oh, which one?" and that was kind of the correct follow-up question, in the same way as when I go to a German deli and I ask for some head cheese and they ask, "Which one?" Yes, exactly, that means they HAVE more than one kind, so they are very correct in asking. (The mild one without the pistachios, please.)
There are at least THREE prominent versions of the slasher film "Black Christmas", one from 1974, this one from 2006, and one from 2019. Only this one fits in with my linking, I think, and I'm wary of the 1974 one because it looks too schlocky, and I'm wary of the 2019 one because it looks too woke. Somehow the most recent version added female empowerment to the typical slasher film, and that could be a bit like putting chocolate sauce on an onion. Also my co-worker referred to it as "the one with the weird ending" and I said, "Whoops, say no more, point noted, but please, no spoilers." I'll consider both for future editions of the horror chain, but after watching this one, really, I'm in no rush.
I said I'd get to some Christmas-themed movies, but really, this is not what I meant. This is the worst kind of horror movie to me, one with a high body count and no real justification for the killings. Sure, I get that serial killers in real life are driven by emotions and violence and can be sick and twisted and kill for no reason, but there's no real reason to reflect their meaningless violence in movies. To just have violence against women for no purpose other than to create a transitory thrill on screen, I mean, what's the point? No good can possibly come from it, unless I'm missing something. At best it's mindless fodder for the eye, an outlet for dark impulses so that maybe such things would satisfy someone and prevent them from committing similar atrocities in the real world, but it's just as likely to cause those dark impulses in the weak-minded, and suggest terrible courses of action which are just not OK.
Torture porn, that's what it feels like - pretend killing for the sake of entertainment, it's not really healthy unless there's a point to it all, and there's just not, just variations on how the victims get killed and under which ironic circumstances. Look, I suppose you can make a case for "Friday the 13th" movies that promote teen abstinence as long as they ONLY kill off the teen characters who have sex out in the woods, but that doesn't apply here - these college-age women are on holiday break and snowed in, so clearly they all have to die? I'm not following the logic there.
At least the killer in the "Scream" movies calls ahead with a warning, and I think he tests young women's knowledge of horror movies before he kills them, so it's like some twisted trivia contest where a wrong answer costs them their lives, but hey, at least it's a contest. "Black Christmas" features Billy Lenz, a mental hospiital inmate who killed his family years ago, and he figures out a way to escape, thanks to a wayward carton of eggnog and a guy in a Santa suit who got lost visiting the children's ward. (There's a children's ward at the mental hospital?). Billy heads for his old family home, which is now a college sorority house - gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there?
But the killings actually start before Billy escape, so something else must be taking place, unless the scenes are shown out of chronological order, that means someone else killed the first few women - who could it be? That's the only real redeeming feature here, trying to see if you can outsmart the screenwriter by determining the other murderer before that's revealed, if in fact there is one, and it's not just faulty writing or messing with the timestream.
Through flashbacks we learn that Billy had some bad Christmases as a boy - his mother and her boyfriend killed his father one Christmas (does not justify him being a serial killer) and his mother locked him up in the attic for years (also does not justify him being a serial killer) and his mother also sexually assaulted him, used him to get pregnant, so he became the father to his own sister (still nope). But yet all this backstory is presented to us as kind of an explanation as to why he kills AND why he hates Christmas, only once we explain it, we kind of condone it, and that is something we must not do. Neither is Billy being born with yellow skin any kind of excuse, or any kind of justification for later making Christmas cookies from his mother's flesh. But no, by all means, let's feed the serial killer chicken because it tastes the most like a certain other meat that people say tastes like chicken. Not helping, prison guys.
Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here, since the house mother calls the police and is told that they can't possibly make it across town in under two hours, because of the storm. OK, so how does an escaped convict with no vehicle or warm clothing then make it from the prison to the sorority house in, let's say, half that time? It does not compute. For that matter, how does the killer make it everywhere he needs to be, inside and outside and around the house, without ever being seen by anyone?
I kind of never realized how many showers everyone in horror movies seem to take, but I did kind of noticed it last week in "The Rental". Of course, my mind goes back to "Psycho" and that famous shower scene there - but people take showers in horror movies to get spied on by the killer, then again when the killer makes his move (because nobody sees him coming when they have shampoo in their eyes, right?) and then if anyone is lucky enough to survive the assault from the killer, what's the first thing they do? Take a shower, because they may be covered in blood, dirt or sweat, or maybe they pissed their pants because they were so scared. Think about it.
Look, I get it, you're looking for some cheap thrills, maybe you just want to watch a bunch of college girls take showers, I've been there. But if you're looking for a thrill watching over a dozen college girls get killed in gruesome ways, yeah, this might be the movie for you, but please, take a moment to think about WHY you want to see that so badly. Sure, I'm probably overthinking this, it's just good unclean mindless fun, right? Well, it's fun until it isn't, perhaps, which means that it's questionable fun to begin with, and I don't see it leading to anything positive. You do you, but maybe make better choices regarding what you consider to be entertaining?
I realize there's a whole weird genre of Halloween-meets-Christmas films, but I'm guessing very few of them are gems like "The Nightmare Before Christmas". There's "Silent Night, Deadly Night", "Christmas Evil", "Jack Frost" (not the one with Michael Keaton, the other one) and "Better Watch Out", and if there's not a movie called "Slay Ride" then there really should be, but I'm not really into this slasher genre, as you can probably tell.
Also starring Katie Cassidy (last seen in "Taken"), Michelle Trachtenberg (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Lacey Chabert (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Kristen Cloke (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe (last sene in "Good Luck Chuck", Oliver Hudson (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles"), Karin Konoval (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Dean Friss, Robert Mann (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Jessica Harmon, Leela Savasta (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Kathleen Kole, Cainan Wiebe (last seen in 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Christina Crivici, Howard Siegel (last seen in "Man of Steel"), Peter Wilds, Ron Selmour (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), Peter New (ditto), Michael Adamthwaite (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Christian Sloan (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1), Aly Purrott-Armstrong, Juan Riedinger (last seen in "The Day the Earth Stood Still"), Aaron Pearl (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Peggy Logan (last seen in "Cats & Dogs"), Jill Teed (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014), Peggy Jo Jacobs, Jerry Wasserman (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Derek McIver (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Evan Adams, Jody Racicot (also last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Anne Marie DeLuise (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Greg Kean, Kent Kubena.
RATING: 2 out of 10 Secret Santa presents
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