Non Canon Review: Black Xmas (2006)

DECEMBER 23, 2007

GENRE: HOLIDAY, REMAKE, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

You’re goddamn right the source was my own DVD collection! I like Black Xmas, goddammit, and I will defend it to the death! In fact, I even tried picking a fight at last week’s screening of the original by saying, loudly, “Morgan and Wong did it better!”. But no one bit (and for the record, I don’t really feel that way; Clark’s film is better, but Morgan’s is good too), probably because a lot of the haters are likely people who just hate the film without having bothered to watch it and thus don’t know who the filmmakers are.

I really don’t understand why this one gets so reviled. Most fans love the Final Destination films, and this film has a lot of the same elements (ridiculous death scenes with Rube Goldberg style setups, lots of gore, black humor, hot girls), albeit applied to a loose remake of a slasher movie. Bob Clark even gave it his blessing, and he was always a guy who spoke his mind, not a paycheck grabber like Carpenter, which leads me to believe he truly did approve of what they were doing. So what’s the problem, exactly?

Is it a great film? No, not at all. They set up the 2nd killer to be some sort of surprise, but two girls die before the killer escapes. Also, there seems to be two of each girl: 2 bitches, 2 final girls, 2 dumb girls... as hot as they all are, they definitely could have combined a couple of them. And no, it’s not particularly scary (though there are some decent jumps and set-pieces). But really, that’s about it. Otherwise, it’s the exact type of modern slasher I would expect from Morgan and Wong, remake or not.

And as it only retains the basic plot and setting from the original, it can’t really be accused of bastardizing it in the same way the Psycho or Halloween remakes did. Say what you want about the film, but you can’t accuse them of copying the original scene for scene. Like Dawn 04, no characters were retained, no specific set-pieces (all of the murders are different, though the first girl to get killed again ends up in the attic by the window) were copied, the killer has a motive this time, and, unsurprisingly, there is ZERO social commentary (i.e. no abortion talk). Like I said the other day, from a thematic and sensibility standpoint, it’s more of a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night than Black Christmas.

In addition to all the hot girls, there's some bonus incest!

Plus, they do a great job of making the girls even in terms of survival probability. The Final Girl is a bit easy to pick, but the others are equal game, since they are given equal screen-time and also are about the same in terms of how famous they are in real life.

The DVD has some of the usual extras, though I am bummed about the lack of a commentary. It’s also unrated, but I can’t tell what’s different from the theatrical, though I think Michelle Trachtenberg (I’m glad she’s finally old enough that ogling her is OK) has a slightly different death, but that’s about it. I should note that the scenes in the trailer that are missing from the film were in fact only shot for the trailer, without Morgan’s knowledge. However, they do break the norm with a piece about, well, Morgan’s hatred of the film. While technically a making-of piece, he spends most of the time he’s on camera explaining why he hates these types of movies. He also points out that when he makes a movie that he likes (Willard), it bombs, so he has to cater to the audience just to get the opportunity to make something he DOES care about in the future. So there ya go, even the director hates the movie. I truly am the only one in its corner.

What say you?

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Holiday, Non Canon, Remake, Slasher,

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Murder Party

DECEMBER 23, 2007

GENRE: COMEDIC, INDEPENDENT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I heard conflicting reports about Murder Party. One friend said I would love it, another declared it one of the worst films he had ever seen. Well, now that I’ve seen it, thanks to Zach's recommendation, I must admit that they are both right. At times the movie is great, and then other times, it is insufferably bad. Overall I’d say I enjoyed it but would never want to watch it again.

I think part of the problem is that we have almost an hour of nothing really happening, just a bunch of pretentious art scenesters mostly yelling at each other as some poor sod who stumbled into their ‘party’ gets chained to a chair and makes big eyes at everything. It gets boring, quick. Then, the main art hipster guy is revealed to be a phony, at which point they all start killing each other. The final 20 minutes is a blood bath, while retaining the humor. Certainly, the idea of seeing a bunch of pretentious artsy fartsy types get chainsawed to death is appealing, but it should have comprised more of the film. Like... all of it. In fact, 80 nonstop minutes of “artists” getting graphically killed could very well be the finest film ever made.

On more than a couple occasions, the humor doesn’t work quite as well as it’s supposed to. For example, at one point a photographer gets shot in the head, and as he’s bleeding everywhere, he moans that he just wants to take a photo before he dies. This is fucking stupid, not funny. He would be instantly dead from his wound (a bullet goes into the back of his head and comes out of his forehead). If you break realism, the humor is immediately gone. There’s also a scene where one of the guys forces another to remove his vampire costume. It goes on for like 3 minutes, and it’s not only pointless, but the possible amusement it provides runs out long before the scene itself does (plus it’s merely setting something up that would be much funnier, or at least interesting, if it came completely out of nowhere). But there are still quite a few laughs. My favorite is when the poor non-artist sod is running around trying to get help from a bunch of art snobs, and he’s yelling “He’s trying to kill me”, to which one guy responds “Good, asshole!” Hahahahah, awesome.

Spoiler: This happens to a guy.

The music at the beginning of the film sounds like Halloween III and Prince of Darkness, so that’s good. In fact, while I usually dislike such things, the tone of the first 15 minutes is completely different from the rest, and I think it works. The absurdity of the situation he finds himself in wouldn’t be as surprising if the film began on a silly note. So, nice work.

As this is an independent film, several of the actors are also listed as producers and other crew members (and what has to be the first instance of an executive producer also being listed as a regular producer), and they all play characters that have the same name as their real life names. None of them are truly bad, but I think the film would work a bit better with names. It would have been a lot more exciting if Lukas Haas suddenly went apeshit and began beating everyone to death than it was when some no-name who just kind of looks like him did it. As I learned on the commentary and making-of (which is pretty amusing in its own right), these guys grew up together making films that, from the clips they show, aren’t that dissimilar from the ‘films’ my friends and I made for various school projects (or for the hell of it), which warmed me to the film a bit. Still, the unevenness of it hurts what could have been a classic.

What say you?

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Comedic, Independent, Survival,

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Boy Eats Girl

DECEMBER 22, 2007

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

In an odd way, it's kind of a bummer that Shaun Of The Dead is so damn good, because every "funny zombie" movie that has come along since gets compared to it, and usually unfavorably. In fact, it's almost impossible to find a review of Boy Eats Girl that DOESN'T mention Edgar Wright's film, which must be particularly annoying for the filmmakers.

Luckily for them, their film is quite good. In fact the biggest complaint I have about it is that it is too short. Running only 80 minutes with credits, the movie could have used another setpiece and maybe a tad more character time, but it works without them. It's funny when it's supposed to be, with a very good hit/miss ratio for the gags (I could do without a few of his geeky friends' quips). Almost all of the characters are likable, even the bitchy girl who you're supposed to hate is somewhat endearing (mainly for her response to "I'll eat you myself!"), and since the movie doesn't really spend a lot of time 'getting to know' them, that's high praise for the (mostly no-name) actors playing them. The lead in particular is quite good (and I am sure this is just coincidence, but he actually resembles Edgar Wright), pulling off the raging zombie version just as well as the lovesick emo kid version.

On that note, I'd like to point out the soundtrack: it's great! If you like pop rock. If not, oooh boy you'll hate this soundtrack. But for the rest of us, it's a treasure trove of UK pop.

My only other complaint is, again, the amount of production company logos (counting them, this movie is really only like 70 minutes!). There's a half dozen animated logos, and then EVERY SINGLE ONE IS REPEATED during the opening credit crawl!! Why, why why all of these goddamn things are at the top of the film is beyond me. On TV shows, the logos are shown at the END. Would you want to hear "Sit Ubu sit" every time you wanted to watch an episode of Family Ties? Of course not, that's why it's at the end, so you can shut it off. I've said it before - no one cares whose production companies worked on it except for the people whose production companies worked on it. If you just want to suck yourselves off, for the love of Christ stick it at the end of the film so people who just want to watch a movie don't have to sit through this crap to satisfy your whimsy. In this case, Lionsgate should be the only one at the top. Even though they didn't work on it, they are the ones directly responsible for distributing it in a manner that allowed me to see it in the comfort of my own home. I thank them in advance; if the movie is good I can see what companies 'presented' it at the end. Imagine if you put a CD in and before the first song came on, you had to listen to the names of all the guys who pro-tooled it to hell.

Kind of bummed the DVD has no extras though. Alexander gets 3 2-disc releases and this movie doesn't even get a blooper reel??? Then again, as it is a "foreign" film (Ireland, I believe), perhaps the Region 2 release has the usual stuff... anyone know? I'm too lazy to go look.

What say you?

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Comedic, Zombie,

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You Better Watch Out!

DECEMBER 21, 2007

GENRE: HERO KILLER, HOLIDAY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I should have known from the start... You Better Watch Out! (aka Christmas Evil) is a movie that was recommended to me by someone who didn’t like the end of The Mist, and given to me by someone as an apology for losing my “treasured” Halloween: Resurrection DVD. What kind of pedigree is that for a movie? It’s a wonder I managed to even make it until the end.

The problem with the film is that it doesn’t go far enough in any direction to be worth a damn. It’s not scary or creepy, like your Black Christmases. It’s not overly mean-spirited, like Silent Night, Deadly Night. And it’s not particularly funny, like Black Xmas (or really, any of the other films mentioned). It’s just sort of there. There are attempts to go in these directions, but they are very half-assed, and it’s only in the film’s final 20 minutes that it shows any signs of life (and even then the film is hit or miss). In fact, according to the director, it’s supposed to just be a sort of off-kilter character study (hence the slow pace) about a guy’s mental deterioration, but even as that it doesn’t work, because all of the other elements, light as they are, distract away from this idea. It’s 4 different types of movies in one, and none really deliver.

Like The Burning, nothing much happens for the first hour, and then we get 4 kills at once. But UNLIKE The Burning, the sequence isn’t particularly good, nor does it offer any inventive gore or makeup work. It only sticks out because it’s pretty much the first time in the film that something has fucking happened.

There are a couple of future stars here though. Most famous is Patricia Richardson as the mother of a kid who’s deemed naughty for having poor hygiene and looking at a spank mag (but NOT actually pleasuring himself – which any other writer/director of a Killer Santa movie would surely have done). But also, Raymond J. Barry (who appears in The Ref, a much better “anti-Christmas” movie) shows up as a cop, and Darabont regular Jeffrey DeMunn plays the killer’s brother. So there’s something.

Also this guy. He’s a newscaster, but he looks like a sleazy pimp. And he comes across as sinister. As hilarious as this is, it’s yet another one of the film’s problems – the killer Santa Claus is never as frightening as the creepy Guido that’s merely discussing his crimes. And since almost nothing in the movie is particularly funny either (if anything, it’s sort of sad, since the guy is clearly a bit disturbed and lonely), it succeeds at neither horror or comedy.

But it has its fans, and the DVD (a director’s cut) has a nice collection of extras, including an entertaining commentary by John Waters (I wish he was solo, the director keeps interjecting things that aren’t funny), making it an easy recommend if you like the film (and props for making the deleted scenes anamorphic, something even big budget studio movies don’t often bother to provide). In fact, the most entertainment I got out of the disc was the collection of comment cards from a test audience. Most are negative, unsurprisingly, and many females indicate they want to meet Harry. Whores.

Incidentally, when I bought the original budget pack (Chilling Classics), the description of the set that I read online had this film included, but it was replaced (with what I’m not certain, I figured it out once but have since forgotten), likely due to the rights being bought by another company (in this case, Synapse). So if you have that pressing of the Chilling Classics, you got a good deal: this movie is worth just about 40 cents, and not much more.

What say you?

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Hero Killer, Holiday, Independent,

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Atom Age Vampire

DECEMBER 20, 2007

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Maybe it’s because I was so happy to watch a budget pack film shot on actual film and with actual actors, or maybe it was all the rumballs I ate while watching it, but I really enjoyed Atom Age Vampire (aka Seddok, l'erede di Satana), despite the lack of vampires and a fast pace. Hell, it was even letterboxed (sort of), the only film across any of my three Mill Creek sets that wasn’t entirely full frame (so far).

As this is an Italian film, some things are a given. There will be bad dubbing. There will be nonsensical translation errors (my favorite, from one man to another - “You know professor, I’d say I know you intimately.”). There will be an alternate version listed on the IMDb that runs another 15 minutes, yet they won’t provide any details or useful information concerning what is different (it’s the IMDb’s own version of “I know something you don’t know!”). Etc. As a bonus, there’s even a guy named Mario Fava in the credits. The legendary Italian horror bean.

On that note, I can’t imagine that the film would be longer. Even in this version, which runs just shy of 90 minutes, it seems like there’s a lot of padding. For example, late in the film, some cops go to a theatre to investigate the seat where the bad guy was seen sitting. For what seems like 5 straight minutes, they discuss where he was sitting, where the witnesses sat, what he wore, etc. It’s all pretty pointless, since they find him through other means a few scenes later anyway.

But there’s something sort of alluring about the film. Maybe it’s the cute little bat animation at the beginning, or the out of nowhere Casablanca homage, or the hero who says things like “Am I wrong or are you getting fatter?” to a girl who actually seems flattered by his remark (remind me to try this on a woman)... or a combination of them all!

Plus, you know, the actual horror movie elements. The mad scientist guy is killing folks to use their vital... whatever in order to heal a beautiful woman who was badly scarred. But he sort of gets sick of doing that and goes nuts. That’s cool, and some of the murder scenes are pretty stylish, particularly one about halfway through at a university. The finale seems lifted out of any old Universal horror movie, with the monster and hero punching one another and knocking over tables while a woman screams, but that’s OK. No one ever watches an Italian horror movie and expects total originality.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Mad Scientist, Monster,

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Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

DECEMBER 19, 2007

GENRE: HOLIDAY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

You know, for years I bought into the belief that more than half of Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 was recycled footage from the first film. Having only seen the film once, nearly 20 years ago, I couldn’t remember much other than it DID indeed have lots of “flashbacks”. Well, now that I’ve seen the film again, I can safely say “Fuck you” to them. For starters, the last bit of recycled footage ends before this film even REACHES its halfway point, and up until that point there is plenty of new footage mixed in with the old footage to boot. And Christ, even some of the “recycled” footage is actually new (the two people fucking in the orphanage, as well as a different actor playing young Ricky at the end of part 1). It’s still excessive, but wildly over-exaggerated nonetheless.

I WILL complain that the footage suffers from a cinematic pet peeve of mine: flashbacks from a character who wasn’t present when they occurred. Ricky (the brother of the killer from the first film) is the one telling these stories, and even if we assume that Billy, for some reason, told Ricky the story of his father being shot and his mother being sexually assaulted and stabbed on Christmas eve at some point, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to tell him about his exploits as the killer Santa, since Billy was shot and killed before ever speaking to Ricky again. And on top of that, these flashbacks also include scenes that Billy HIMSELF wasn’t even around to see. And they even try to explain this at first (Ricky says things like “Billy told me…”), but they give up after a while.

Lots of movies threaten this, but never follow through.

There are also some bizarre errors in the flashbacks. For example, Father O’Brien, the deaf priest who was shot in the first film after being mistaken for the killer, has become Kelsey the Janitor in this film? Why change that? A dead priest is way more crassly hilarious than a dead janitor. And why does Mother Superior look like she was burned when we are told she suffered a stroke? On the other hand, they also re-edit the antler scene in a manner that makes a hell of a lot more sense; making it seem that her boyfriend DOES hear the sound of her being thrown around and screaming. Nice work.

Also, at one point, Ricky goes to see Silent Night, Deadly Night, which defies pretty much all laws of cinematic physics. It’s one thing when the characters in H20 watch Scream (a film in which the characters watch Halloween), it’s another when a character goes to see the first film in his own series.

Hilariously enough, in addition to the 2 writers of the first film, there are FOUR credited writers with the story of this film, which is pretty astounding when the entire story of the new footage is “Ricky talks to a shrink, kills him, then goes and kills Mother Superior”. There are some other murders, including one committed by a “teen Ricky” who looks much older than the actor playing “older Ricky”. And, keeping with the series’ tradition, he looks absolutely nothing like any of the other actors who played the character – which totals about 6 at this point (7 if you count Bill Moseley, who played him in part 3). But these elements aren’t exactly story-heavy, amounting to nothing more than random killings; nothing that you’d need four people to come up with at any rate. Did each guy tackle a scene?

Cleanest decap in cinema history!

While nowhere near as awesome as the first, the sequel carries on the tradition of this reprehensible series pretty well, in my opinion. It’s just as ridiculous, mean-spirited, and downright wretched as the original, only less funny (“Garbage Day!” sequence aside). In fact, it almost seems at times that the filmmakers were trying to make the film too legitimate, what with diopter shots and lots of camera movement. Come on guys, no one is going to use this on their reel; just have some fun (i.e. kill more people for no reason).

What say you?

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Holiday, Slasher,

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Patricia Gussin's "Twisted Justice"

Patricia Gussin is the author of Shadow of Death, which was nominated for Best First Novel in the Thriller Awards sponsored by International Thriller Writers, and the recently released Twisted Justice.

Here she develops some ideas for actors and director should Twisted Justice be adapted for the movies:

The heart wrenching drama of Kramer vs. Kramer and the violent scenario of The War of the Roses bracket the domestic deception and betrayal that explode onto the scene in Twisted Justice. No one ever really knows what goes on in another’s marriage and in Twisted Justice what appears on the surface to be the ideal family, in the blink of an eye implodes, spiraling out of control toward devastation.

The perfect lives of Laura, a surgeon mother – Steve, a television news anchor father – and their five great kids – disintegrate into a nightmare when Steve’s sexy co-anchor is murdered. Both Laura and Steve are successful professionals and dedicated parents. Each in their own way. Each motivated by their own agenda. Each with dark secrets they are desperate to protect. But how does Steve react when Laura is accused of killing Kim?

The part of Laura would best be played by a mom-actress. A great choice because she is a dedicated mother and such a versatile leading actress is Gwyneth Paltrow. At the crux of the drama in Twisted Justice is a mother’s worst fear. Separation from her children is a visceral emotion for any mother, an emotion that would surely evoke genuine empathy from a woman who loves her children as much as Gwyneth Paltrow does.

Steve turns out to be the character everybody loves to hate. He has his reasons, and because Twisted Justice is a mystery, they cannot be revealed here. Steve’s character could be played very well by Kevin Costner. He’s handsome, egotistical, yet insecure and vulnerable. It is Steve who sets off the downward spiral and tangled web of intrigue as he turns on Laura in the worst imaginable way when she is charged with Kim’s murder.

As Laura’s fight for freedom dissolves into a bitter battle, pitting husband against wife, five innocent children are caught in the crossfire. Fourteen year old, Mike; eleven year old Kevin; ten year old identical twins, Natalie and Nicole; and the most victimized of them all, eight year old Patrick. Five casting opportunities open to young actors and actresses to play the children. It is difficult to imagine the pain that these kids go though as their parents’ betrayals and deceptions plunge them into a world of mortal danger.

The action is fast paced in Twisted Justice. The emotional stakes are high. And just as in real life, justice can be twisted, but it is seldom ever thwarted.

The last question: Who could best direct Twisted Justice? Steven Spielberg, of course.

Visit Patricia Gussin's website and view the Twisted Justice trailer.

The Page 69 Test: Shadow of Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

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