Whine and Cheese

After getting the grocery shopping done and a couple of loads of laundry out of the way, I was debating on what to watch. I've been looking through a lot of my Christmas-themed horror flicks and decided to watch "Black Christmas" (1974) again.



There are so many things I love about this movie, but I'd say a great deal of it involves the setting - the early 1970's. As I'm watching the movie tonight, I decided to jot down some things that clearly identify the time setting of the movie.

• Smoking. Several characters smoke, which you don't see in movies very often anymore. In fact, a close eye sees ashtrays in offices and auditoriums.


• Posters. The decorations on the walls of the girls' rooms give away the time frame. Some of them are very cool and I would love to see them come back.


• Wallpaper. Like the posters, the wallpaper is very telling, very elaborate graphic patterns you would have seen on album covers of the period or the Electric Company.


• Rotary telephones. One of the big parts of the movie is the phone calls made to the sorority sisters from the killer. The sorority house only has telephones downstairs for the sisters, so people do have to "run" for the phone, unlike today where the phone is cordless and in your pocket. The rotary dials dates it even more, as there are now whole generations of people who have never made a phone call using them.


• Phone numbers. Probably the best gag in the whole movie is the use of a word to describe the exchange of a phone number. Barb (Margot Kidder) gives the phone number of the sorority house to a bumbling and naive desk sergeant as "Fellatio 2-0880," explaining to him that it's a new exchange "F-E" (This is actually a blooper in the movie as the number is later given/seen as a different number). Now I was born on the cusp of the exchanges no longer being described this way, so I never had to make a call giving one. An exchange, that is... not fellatio.


• Cars. They're boats essentially.


• The fashions. The clothes the ladies wear aren't as dated as they could look vintage today, but the hairstyles I think give the 70's away, including those on the guys. One white guy has an afro while another has hair that looks like a shag.

I was born in early 1973 so I don't recall the early 70's at all, but vaguely recall the later part of the decade mostly. If reincarnation is real, I often wonder if my past life was in this time frame, considering my admiration for the time period.

While I love the advantages of having all the technology we have today, and will have even more in the future, life certainly does seem a little simpler back then. Maybe that is also one of the appealing parts.

If anyone wants to watch the movie, it's posted, in full, on You Tube. The new remake comes out this Friday. I'm going to try my best to judge it on its own merits and not draw comparisons repeatedly to my favorite. I admit, I'm looking forward to it.

So before I packed up and headed south, I purchased a used DVD of "Black Christmas". I've written about this movie over and over again. I'm jokingly obsessed. I have no idea why, I just find the movie fascinating in odds ways.

Now I have the Blu-ray and a DVD copy already, this after I gave away another copy to a buddy, so why buy another? In my research online about the movie, I came across a nearly defunct website that listed some cool features on an earlier DVD release that strangely are missing from later DVD and Blu-Ray releases. So, I found a copy on Amazon Marketplace. It had been sitting at my post office while my mail was held during Christmas.

I got this DVD copy in the mail today and it's full of extras that are absent from the later releases -- good extras.


Black Christmas Movie Poster
Among the extras available are:

• Audio commentary by Director Bob Clark (he also directed "A Christmas Story" and "Porky's").
  
• Audio commentary by stars John Saxon and Keir Dullea.
  
• A "Revisited" Documentary.
  
• A Episode of a TV Series called "Dark Dreamers" staring John Saxon (not sure why this is on here, but okay... something more to watch)

What surprised me about the DVD is that there are even more extras as a DVD-ROM, yet the DVD doesn't even state this on the cover or the interior flier. I wouldn't have even known of them if I hadn't seen them on the aforementioned website.

The DVD-ROM includes a PDF press book for "Silent Night, Deadly Night," which was the original US release title; a PDF of their movie posters (the above pic is a portion of one of them); and (the best part) is a PDF of the original script, with crossed-out scene, hand-written pages, etc. It must have been a working script by the writers. It's nice to be able to read some of the lines that got a bit blurred in the movie. Even more fun was some of the cut scenes, which were actually pretty funny. This is probably one of the fun scenes in the movie, between Sergeant Nash and Barb (Margot Kidder) when she gets the best of the officer, using a word he's unfamiliar with.




Unlike most movies today, where they do whole "making of" documentaries to accompany a film, there is very little production documentation and photos I can find. It is rare that I delve so far into something like this. I have one more "piece" of the movie background to get. In my searches, I came across a paperback novelization of the film in 1976, released in Canada (where the movie was filmed), written from the screenplay. Supposedly, it contains extra scenes that are documented out, probably like the script I have. With the joys of the internet, I managed to find a used copy of a nearly 40-year-old paperback. It should be here next week.

I am such a geek. Seriously.

My Blu-ray of Black Christmas (1974) showed up Friday. It was pretty quick, considering I ordered it three days ago. I can't say I recognize a great difference in the quality, but as always I love the movie.

What's great about watching it again is finding the little things I've missed before, usually a funny line of dialogue or something minor oddity. Tonight, I realized that there was a scene where the housemother puts on lipstick to leave and gets interrupted by the sound of her cat meowing. She walks into the hallway and drops her purse, cursing the cat. I realized that she only put the lipstick on the right side of her upper lip and didn't finish. So she goes through multiple scenes with only the right side of her upper lip bright red and it looks so strange.

My favorite line from the movie:

[after the mysterious caller hangs up]
Clare Harrison: "I don't think you should provoke somebody like that, Barb."
Barb Coard: "Oh listen, this guy is minor league. In the city, I get two of those a day."
Clare Harrison: "Well maybe. But you know that town girl was raped a couple of weeks ago."
Barb Coard: "Darling, you can't rape a townie."

Dramatic irony is all over the movie. The characters are constantly looking for Clare who was the first to vanish. Her body, complete with a clear plastic bag over her head, sits in a rocking chair in front of the attic window. She's completely visible the whole time, except that no one thinks to look up.

The ending is ambiguous about who the killer is, something that I doubt the film producers could get away with it these days. Even though it's 40 years later, all of the main actors are still alive (though most died in the movie). I really wish that Bob Clark was alive as I think he could have actually done a modern sequel to the movie.

Now I'm not much for writing fan fiction, but I've often wondered what the remaining characters would have done after the movie ended. The phone rang after the police and doctor left a sedated Jess (the sole survivor) alone in the house (with a police guard at the front of the house waiting for the "lab guys"). They thought the killer was dead and they had to get a man in shock to the hospital. However, the real killer was shown in the attic after they left and he always called the house after he killed someone. The meaning is clear. He has killed Jess.


The lab guys and police would return, find her dead, and realize that they were mistaken who the killer was. Two bodies still had not been found, including Clare, but I would think would turn up in a final search of the house. By then, the killer would be long gone, as mysteriously as he appeared really.

Think about it. Forty years after the killings, the house's history would be long forgotten except in urban legend. Maybe a new sorority could have moved in, the college masking the history on purpose. The killings could begin again, with the new main characters going to a long retired Lt. Fuller (John Saxon) for info. He would realize that the killer had returned (granted he'd be 60 years old or older himself). Maybe then they could reveal "Billy" the killer and his history.

I would love that!

Ah, if I won the lottery, maybe I could make it happen. It couldn't be any worse than that piece of $#!+ remake in 2006.

Andrea Martin Stars (Again) in Black Christmas
I made it home early enough to catch a matinee of Black Christmas remake. It's a remake of one of my favorite horror movies, so I had to see how it compared. The question of course wasn't if I'd be disappointed, but rather how much.

The story centers around a group of sorority sisters who are preparing to leave for the holiday break, not knowing that an escaped killer is now in the house with them. Unlike the original, we know the identity of the killer from the beginning and learn what made him the way he was. The movie is very fast paced, barely getting to know the girls, if at all really, before they get bumped off.

What is missing, of course, is a coherent plot. While knowing the background of the killer is interesting, there is very little interaction to learn about the girls. They are blank cardboard cutouts of stereotypical college girls who are cut to pieces. The movie lacks the original atmosphere, secondary storylines that made you question who was the killer, the infamous "the calls are coming from inside the house" shocker... basically anything that could make it scary. The movie sacrified any real scares and story for more gore. I shouldn't be surprised, the vast majority of the horror movie remakes of late have been terrible pale shades of the originals. Hollywood must be getting desperate for material these days.

The only good thing about the movie is the acting, which is better than usual, thanks to a decent cast of young actresses. The movie stars Michelle Tratchenberg of Buffy fame and Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Sky High and Final Destination 3. The film also has Andrea Martin, who starred in the original 1974 version. Still, good actors can't save a poorly constructed (or in this case reconstructed) flick. Save your money and rent the original on Netflix.

Did I enjoy it? Eh.. a little.. It was good in some places, but not many.
Would I watch it again? Probably not.
Buy the DVD? No.