I Miss You, EC Comics.

OK, so, this one TECHNICALLY isn't a full-feature about Christmas but 1972's Tales From the Crypt has to be mentioned.

As we all know, I kinda dig creepy anthology movies and this classic Amicus Productions shocker HAS to be mentioned because, you know, it's AWESOME and because of the very first segment, "...And All Through the House".

So, the wraparound story goes like this:  A bunch of tourists being led through British catacombs get separated from the larger group (about the same time as Joan Collins notices her missing brooch which so conveniently happens to be where she's standing even though she walked a good ten feet into the frame before noticing it was missing) and come across the Crypt Keeper (who is not a dust covered hand-puppet this time and actually more closely resembles the Vault Keeper who wore a hood in the comics while the Crypt Keeper did not).  He gets to tell all of them how they'll die.

YAY!!

But not all cute-like.

So, ANYWAY, the reason this one gets a holiday nod is because in Britain nobody put up a fuss when they put a killer in a Santa Suit into a horror film.  Because the British are awesome like that.

"...And All Through the House" finds our perennial "Into the mud, scum-queen" favorite, Joan Collins, being stalked by said mistletoe maniac but she can't really call the police.  See, she's just killed her husband for the insurance money and hasn't disposed of the body, yet.  Why she did this with her young daughter in the house is completely beyond me, but there you have it.  (Also, why she did it in a room almost completely furnished in white is beyond me, too, but I figure that she's allowed to be a little dumb pre-Dynasty.)  

Are Santa's eyes supposed to look like he's been mainlining gingerbread?

She does, eventually, get to make her husband's death look like an accident but completely forgets about the asshole in the Santa suit who's terrorizing her.  Her Christmas obsessed daughter, who, apparently, never got the "Get your ass in bed or Santa will never come" shout from downstairs where parents are feverishly wrapping or assembling presents and will continue to do so until the ass-crack of dawn when the kids will wake up and demolish the living room to the delight of everyone except the people who'll have to clean it up afterward, is awake and not in bed... and she let Santa in.

I happen to LOVE this movie because it's all Hammer-Horror-like, except without the costume porn.  Amicus studios and Hammer studios did share a distinctive style and the films of both are often confused.  It doesn't help that they share stars like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Here's a little tip.  Amicus films tend to take place during the "present" while Hammer Horror is generally period pieces.

All of this being said, I, PERSONALLY, think that the HBO series Tales From the Crypt and Robert Zemeckis did a MUCH better job using "...And All Through the House" as the second episode.  There was just more depth to it.  This does not, in any way, diminish my enjoyment of seeing Joan Collins get badly strangled, though.

He Loves Me, He Wants Me Dead...

In today's installment of Holiday Horrors, we look at St. Valentine's Day.  A day celebrated through the  sending of notes with "hearts" (which are actually representative of a woman's butt or, turned upside down, boobs), flowers (which, considering the number of Allegra D commercials I see every year, should probably stay in the shop or come hermetically sealed in Saran Wrap) and candy (and since I live in the fattest state in the fattest country in the world, we should probably do something about that).

It's also a day celebrated with chubby, winged humanoids with angelic faces that fire arrows willy-nilly without regards to who's going to get hurt.  And it is with THAT image that I bring you today's review:

2001's David Boreanaz vehicle, Valentine.

This is another of those "high school nerd seeks revenge" films that are SO cheesy but SO fun.  In this one, David Boreanaz (who gets top billing only due to his Buffy status), Denise Richards, Jessica Capshaw and Marley Shelton get to go on a spirited romp through slasher town with a killer that really loves to send threatening cards, candy with bugs in it and otherwise harass our successful young adult (Really?  No teenagers this time?  That's a first.) gaggle of girlfriends to death through Valentine's Day trappings and nosebleeds.

Yes, dammit, this is a fetish, too.   Fucking rule 34.

Trivia note:  Katherine Heigle and Jessica Capshaw were to work together again on Grey's Anatomy, not for very long, mind you, because Heigle left Grey's Anatomy after season 6, much like this movie where they never actually saw each other because Heigle was the first one killed and she hadn't spoken to the other characters in person.  This was Valentine's shout out to Scream, by the way.  Woo.  

It's a standard whodunit mystery plot.  There's nothing supernatural going on here.  Just a dude in a Cupid mask who gets nosebleeds.  You have your standard group of victims: the grown-up fat kid, the doctor (in-training), the girl who's always looking for a date and the "completely aware of what she's doing and not putting up with your slut-shaming shenanigans" slut.

Denise Richard's hottest face to date.  Drowning sex doll.  

Also?  Fuck you, Dr. Christmas Jones.

Bitch.

There's really not a lot to tell, here.  It's a popcorn flick and not much more than that.  I mean, yeah, it's fun and the twists are there but they're kind of boilerplate.  I do like that it's more Agatha Christie than Leatherface, though.  It makes for a nice change.

OH!  And before I go, I would like to bring everyone's attention to one of my favorite character actresses, Jessica Cauffiel.  She is ALWAYS amazingly funny and plays the perfect airhead.  She needs to be working way more often than she does.

Not that anyone important reads this thing.  Trust me, we all know that this blog is a big ol' vanity project.

LOVE MEEEEEEEE!

OK, I'm done now.

It's STILL SLIMMING! Gawd.

Sorry about yesterday, kids.  Due to circumstances beyond my control, I got lazy and didn't want to hunt down a computer.  Today, though, to make up for it, there will be an extra long post.  First, as promised, is the review of the 2006 remake of Black Christmas.

I know a lot of you kind of hate remakes and I don't blame you BUT, and this is a big but (much like my own), they aren't always a bad thing.  We'll discuss that later.

Let's get started, shall we?

In 2006, I was recovering from a serious downturn in my life and I spent a LOT of time at theaters alone.  To the point where I actually LEFT a holiday party to go and see this on opening night.  I had been looking forward to it for a while, ya see, and I often forewent social niceties in favor of me time.  For anyone that knew me, then, I'm very, very sorry.

In any case, I really think that instead of calling this "Black Christmas", they should have called it "Let's see how many times Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg can drop the F-bomb in a misguided effort to drop their cutesy-wootsey little sister TV images".  Beyond that, though, it was a lot of fun.

Fuck you, and fuck you and especially fuck you.  Merry Fuckin' Christmas.
Also?  Andrea Martin After: With Decent Hairstylist Kung-Fu Grip

So the premise is about the same except they streamlined it for a modern audience.  Nobody's concerned about an abortion and there's absolutely no ambiguity about who the killer is/killers are.  There's none of this pussyfooting around with "is it the boyfriend or isn't it", we actually have a legitimate outside force.  HOORAY!  

Enter Billy Lenz.  The physically and sexually abused (and very possibly jaundiced) former occupant of the house AND his (also jaundiced) sister/daughter Alice.  

Better watch out.  He LOVES Christmas.

Y'see, Billy really likes the holidays.  No, wait... he actually kind of doesn't.  His alcoholic mother killed his father on Christmas.  Then his alcoholic mother tried to kill him but, like any well-prepared boy of the mid-80s, he already had hiding spots in the walls and attic so he lived there for quite some time.  And then, one Christmas, his mom gave him a very SPECIAL Christmas gift.  Her meat flaps.  Because mom was all about keeping it in the family and she wanted another kid that her current husband couldn't give her.  Pay no attention to the fact that she was at LEAST in her late 40s at this point (or at least she looked like it).

And this was after she killed the FIRST husband... girl is OLD!

After years of this (at least to the point of his sister/daughter turning 8 or so, Billy finally wigs and kills everybody (except Alice, whom people THOUGHT he killed but he didn't) and he gets caught making christmas cookies out of his mom's beef-jerky-like skin.  Personally, I didn't think cookie cutters were that sharp but we're talking about a kid that lived VOLUNTARILY all People Under The Stairs style for over a decade.

So, anyway, Billy, in true b-movie fashion, stabs his guard at the insane asylum (what exactly are we calling those now?  Not sanitariums... mental health facilities?  Why does being PC have to be so fucking wordy?) with a candy cane he sucked sharp (and who didn't do THAT as a kid) and takes off for home.  

Let the wild rumpus start!!

It's pretty standard slasher fare from here on out.  Killer in strange wardrobe goes about killing sorority girls (for fans of the original, the plastic bag and the unicorn are kept in... YAY).  Slasher ultimately gets killed.  Daughter of slasher survives to take over the family business after saying that all of the dead people are her family now...  OK, so it's not standard but at LEAST we get to see Andrea Martin get impaled with an icicle.

Oddly, though, the sex trope I told you about?  Inverted here.  None of the girls but one are shown having sex and it's the one who not only has sex, but her boyfriend taped it and posted it online, that survives.

So, anyway, this one is a little jumbled but it's not NEARLY the cluster that the original was.  I recommend this one for your holiday enjoyment.

Now... as mentioned previously, we're going to talk about remakes.

I have gotten into some DAMN heated arguments about remakes and all I have to say about that is this.

Opinions are like assholes.  Everybody's got one.

Seriously.  If the studios weren't in this business to actually make money, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.  That being said, they know that horror has a built in audience and that a lot of the movies we consider to be classics sometimes really do need a facelift.  Some movies just do not age well and our grindhouse favorites are among the most needy.

See, here's the thing.  Remakes are made to make money on a franchise and to maintain copyright on original characters, we know this, but, often times, the director assigned to helm the remake still has a passion for horror and knows and respects the original for what it is.  These directors are the "best-friend-step-parent" of fandom.  They know they will not replace our original favorites but they want to build a NEW relationship with a whole new generation of fans who, I'm sorry to say, will likely NOT enjoy the original, particularly in the case of some of the older fare such as Texas Chainsaw or even Black Christmas.

We didn't grow up in the age of the MTV quick cut edit.  We had to have patience in our film-making and had to sit through sometimes MINUTES of unnecessary exposition.  Heavens.  Poor us.  But don't hate the younger audience for enjoying what is in their nature to enjoy.  That's like hating a dog for being able to lick its own nuts.  Rather we should continue to enjoy the originals and try to view the remakes as separate entities.  (Of course, this is barring those remakes that are shot-for-shot updates, like The Hills Have Eyes.  Those kind of scream "COMPARE US!") 

If the remakes suck, call them out on it but there's no reason to say "remakes suck" just for the sake of them being a remake.

That being said, where the fuck is my big-budget remake of Frankenhooker?!?

I want it NOW!

My name is Veruca Salt and I approve this message.

It's Slimming, Dammit!

Today we're gonna try something a little new.

Today, we're going to review an original while tomorrow we'll look at the remake.

That being said, one of my favorite holiday horror movies is Black Christmas.

Don't be misled by the poster shown above.  That's just Warner Bros. stepping in and changing the title for the US theatrical release like dumbasses.

Anyway, this 1974 holiday hootenanny is kind of iconic as one of the first slasher exploitation films.  (Not taking into account Peeping Tom, Psycho, any of the Hershell Gordon Lewis splatter films and any Italian Giallo films, of course.)  The difference here is that in the 60s, for the first time film taboos had relaxed to the point that nudity, gore and shock techniques could be used readily, and they were.  So, here we are in 1974 with Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussy and Andrea Martin getting stalked by a psycho in their sorority house.

 Andrea Martin: Before, now with bad perm action!

Bad fashion choices aside, this slow burn of a  flick most definitely falls into the "The Call Is Coming From Inside The House" variety.  It seems to have been written specifically with that urban legend in mind and used a recent set of Canadian murders as a loose basis for a plot.

Loose is the appropriate word, here because the original title was called Stop Me and it was half typewritten and half written on tear-soaked bar napkins by Roy Moore (I assume... the internet can only tell me so much).  Since he died in 1980 and was never interviewed about the movie, we can only be thankful that it wasn't smeared onto a bleak hotel room's wall in his own feces.  Bob Clark did what he could to salvage it and I think he did a darn good job.

There's really not a lot of plot going on here.  Psycho killer on the loose.  Girls in sorority house.  Hey, I have a plastic bag handy.  Look, a pretty unicorn I can go stabby-stabby with.  Oh, the main character wants to have an abortion?  Let's screw with her.  How may voices can I make over the telephone?  How far can we push Margot Kidder before she completely snaps?

This is why they put warnings on bags, now.

The people most likely to hurt themselves with them can't read them.

The world is fucking stupid.

Now, from a cinematic standpoint, this does have some mystery and suspense to it.  Bob Clark may not be the best director in the world but he has some idea of what he's doing.  If you haven't seen this one, color me surprised because it's not like it's not 40 years old, or anything.

Back when smoking was allowed in sorority houses... and during pregnancy.

 

A couple of nifty tidbits:  Originally the role of Mrs. Mac was offered to Bette Davis, the role of Peter was offered to Malcolm McDowall and Gilda Radner was offered the part of Phyllis Carlson.  Also, the studio wanted Clark to change the ending so that it did not leave the story ambiguous but Clark refused.

I know there have been a ton of different college courses taught about this movie alone to analyze it from a feminist standpoint but I'm not sure it needs to be studied that closely.  It's a good movie and that's all that matters.

Tomorrow?  The 2006 version.  Be afraid.