Black Christmas

source: Black Christmas

In "Black Christmas" a sorority house is terrorized by a killer who makes frightening telephone calls before murdering the sorority sisters during the Christmas break. Black Christmas is a bland slasher film with very few scares. The original was a mediocre horror film with a decent screenplay. It's a little overrated but at least it developed the story and characters instead of just rushing into the murders. That's what this remake does. It's pretty much a disturbing bloodbath from beginning to end with very few memorable scenes. The frantic pace does keep things interesting and it never gets dull. However, watching so many vacant characters die before you get a chance to remember their names does not equal quality. At best, this could be a minor guilty pleasure although I really have no desire to see it again. Glen Morgan did a great job with Final Destination and Willard. Here, he's just lazy and he follows a typical path for slasher movies. As mentioned above, he does an okay job with the pace and I have to give him credit for a few cool death scenes but that's it. The writing was awful and it really brought the overall quality down. The dialog was silly and just laughable. All of the dramatic scenes fell flat because of the unnatural dialog. The way the writers handled the background of the killers was pathetic and the last fifteen minutes were horrible. It wasn't suspenseful at all, just unintentionally funny. The killers looked like rejected stunt doubles for White Chicks. Usually, I can ignore awful acting in slasher movies since it's not suppose to be the main attraction. In Black Christmas, the acting was too bad to ignore. Kate Cassidy was just awful as Kelli. She seemed to be reading her lines and it was obvious that she was just acting. Kristen Cloke gave the worst performance out of everyone. All of those botox injections are really taking a toll on her and she struggled to show emotion. Clearly, she got the job because she is married to the director or is that just a coincidence? Michelle Trachtenberg was just bland as was Crystal Lowe and Oliver Hudson. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was fine in Bobby but she was just horrible here. She was completely unconvincing and just laughable. Lacey Chabert was disappointing average and she didn't get a lot of screen time. Andrea Martin gave the best performance although that's not much of an accomplishment. Overall, Black Christmas may prove to be a decent rental just don't have high expectations and expect something trashy. Rating 5/10

A completely rubbish stupid film with no story and all gore and violence. Me and my friends went into the cinemas to see this film because it is the same creators of the Final Destination series but unfortunately it was a big, big disappointment. One of the worst films I've ever seen the movie was so sick, disgusting and depressing it had popping eye balls out, killing your own family members, taking bits out of them and eating it. Worst of all in one of the scenes of the killer's flashback his mother was pregnant and had a girl but the girl's father was also her brother so basically he had sex with his mum how disgusting can you get? There is already far too much sex in the media but that is totally out of order. Overall such films should not be made and anyone who has given this movie a 2/10 or more must be joking. If I see this film on DVD for free on the shelf right in front of me I would not take it I swear! It is supposed to be a remake of a 70s Black Christmas I've not seen it and I'm glad I didn't and nowadays filmmakers are running out of ideas so they are just continually making remakes e.g. King Kong, The Hills Have Eyes & When a Stranger Calls. You can never run out of ideas they all just need to work harder. But watching this film is like you are a kid on Christmas Eve given the bad news that Santa Clause is dead. People are already losing their Christmas spirit and this movie was even more discouraging, it certainly turned everyone Christmas into black.

Wow. Not worth the 7 dollars I paid to watch. I walked into the theater, and wow! December 26, and nobody there except for me. I sat down and started watching the previews. That's when the people started arriving. Can you believe that a mother went into the theaters with her (seemed to be) 3 year-old? I thought to myself, "If this kid starts crying in the middle of the movie I have been waiting so long to see, I am going to go crazy." But by the first 25 minutes of the movie, I was the one who was about to cry. I love most actresses who performed in this movie. But they seemed one of those unknown actresses who are hyper to be acting in a movie exhibited all over the country. They were just plain dumb. The killers, wow! Glen Morgan tried to create such a fascinating, and disturbing back-story for Agnes and Billy, that made me want to leave the theater at the scene when his mom has sex with him, and nine months later, has a child. Yet, I felt like I had to sit there, and watch the movie sink even more in this clearly-fake-snow crap. The deaths were incredibly stupid, and the blood looked so fake (as well as the snow, if I haven't mentioned!). He tried to make this remake of a classic into another silly-just-want-money flicks such as Final Destination, which most people love. Yet, there is a slight difference of these two movies. Final Destination is made for people to have a wild laugh at how surprisingly (should I say?) smart situations the writer puts the characters in to DIE. This movie is about two demented killers, psychopaths. Go watch this movie if you want to see most deaths off-screen (Ha?), and girls getting killed by icicles, umbrellas, ice skates, Christmas trees, blah blah... And what was up with Billy's sudden obsession with the eyes? Jesus! I love scary movies, but this one looked like a comedy without any funny moments, except for the quote "Excuse me, But I love your coat!" at a moment where... ah, I'll let you watch the movie. The movie is rated R strong horror violence and gore, sexuality, nudity and language. This should be a PG-13 child flick! Go watch the Bob Clark directed classic from 1975. You'll be much better off with that.

Black Christmas is undeserving of its reputation Plot: On Christmas Eve in 1991 Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) murdered his mother (Karin Konoval) and stepfather (Howard Siegel) after he escapes out of the attic where they kept him locked up after he witnessed the death of his father (Peter Wilds) at the hands of his mother and stepfather. He also gouges the eye out of his sister Agnes (Dean Friss). Flash forward to Christmas of 2006 and Billy's house has become a sorority house where Kelli (Katie Cassidy), Melissa (Michelle Trachenburg), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Lauren (Crystal Lowe), Dana (Lacey Chabert), Megan (Jessica Harmon), Clair (Leela Savasta), Eve (Kathleen Kole), and their house mother Miss Mac (Andrea Martin) live. Billy escapes from the mental hospital where he has been kept and heads home with an unknown assailant already at the house slaying the sisters. Clair's sister Leigh (Kristen Cloke) shows up at the house for Clair, but she is nowhere to be found. Kelli's boyfriend Kyle (Oliver Hudson) also shows up and as the night continues they have to fight to stay alive. The Good News: I really liked this film and though it delivered to my expectations. This film has no problem showing off that this was inspired by the classic slasher films in the eighty's. The stereotypes are all here, but the wonderful actresses and actors portraying the characters turn those stereotypes into 3-D characters. The character interactions are a major highlight and they all have distinct personalities and we care what happens to them. Very impressive for a slasher film. Equally impressive is the fantastic splatter and great kills. This is the first really gory film I've seen in a long time. The gore flows natural and looks realistic. The kills are all so great with many of them having a slow and unnerving build up. My favorite kill has to be the death of Melissa. I won't spoil it, but I must say she put up a fight and she has the most creative death. The phone calls are disturbingly creepy and eerie. The back story was as good as you can get and mixed up my emotions by feeling sorry for Billy. I want to give the cast and crew two thumbs up for the final thirty minutes. The whole ending from between the walls to the stalking in the hospital are excellent suspense thrills and chills and move from one scene to the next with a frantic pace. The whole movie moves along faster than the last scene and the cast provides for a great body count. Unusually the scenery is nice and the snow looks real and all the Christmas lights and decorations around the house including the frequent Christmas songs make the Christmas atmosphere. The Bad News: I have the tinniest flaw probably in history and that is that the credits look cheap and fake. Lauging yet? Conclusion: Any hardcore slasher fan will want to give this a look and if you're a fan of the original and are open to change than this is a safe bet, but if you hold the original in the highest regards you may want to skip this one. Recommended Rated: Unrated

i just came back from watching this film in London and i thought it was kinda cool. me being a huge horror nut that i am, thought it was a tab bit tack-less and predictable but still worth the watch. The acting isn't Oscar worthy, but for a group of young up-coming actress's it was OK. The script can be predictable at some points but then goes the other way and leaves you a bit gob-smacked. if you're like me alone this Xmas and wanna have a bit of a laugh and a good scare and have you biting your nails in anticipation of what may happen next then watch this film. WARNING: This is a film i think mainly horror fans will get a kick out of, if you're going to be judgmental then don't waste your money - this one is for the fans. have a black Christmas!

I know by now that when you watch a teen slasher movie you cannot set high expectations. If I go into it expecting the usual formula (a deranged killer separates the hapless youngsters and kills them one-by-one in horrible ways) then it should be fine. Somehow, though, Black Christmas managed to disappoint me anyway. I don't, for example, expect the acting to be stellar. Honestly, even if there are a few skilled actors hidden among the T&A the typical slasher script is not going to lend itself to them flexing any dramatic muscles. But, please. Oliver Hudson played the Kyle character so laughably wooden that it was really annoying. And, what happened to Lacy Chabert? She was touted at one time as being "one of the most promising young actresses" but we find her in this dismal mess as not only one of the generic victims, but also one that gets offed halfway through the movie. No, even by slasher standards, the performances are uniformly horrible. Ah well, there's the gore right? That's the real reason to watch a slasher flick. Strike two for Black Christmas here. And I watched the "Unrated" version. I can only imagine how tame and unimaginative the theatrical "R" version must have been. The one big thing seemed to be the eyeball. Everyone had their eye plucked out, or poked out or even shoved through the back of their head. But, if you're going to make that your central gore theme, at least know the eye. They're actually pretty delicate organs, easily punctured and drained. In Black Christmas they were plucked out and waved about on ridiculously fake looking stalks or, as mentioned, shoved through heads, all the while remaining perfectly intact. The eyes held up so well that the killer used them as Christmas tree ornaments. There was a scene in Alias (Season 4 I think) where, because the writers understood the nature of the eye, Marshall's plucking of one caused far more discomfort without the viewer actually seeing any of the gore than all of Black Christmas' fake splatter combined. Okay, well, how about the story? Your slasher flick needs a killer with a background so twisted that, in retribution, you can only imagine the terror he or she is going to visit on the victims. Strike three, and Black Christmas is out. Billy Lenz is never going to have to worry about being mentioned in the same breath as Vorhees, Myers or Krueger. He was a kid whose mother, with her boyfriend, murdered his father. She knew Billy witnessed them burying the father but we didn't see her do anything violent to him. She made him stay in the attic and even went up to have sex with him. Eh… that's twisted but not in the way to spawn a slasher-flick villain. Oh wait, Billy was also born with a rare liver disease that made his skin yellow. This didn't really matter as most of his scenes were far too darkly lit to notice. Okay but he did have a daughter/sister from his union with mom. She also turned into a slasher-flick villainess. *yawn* It's all really just weak. Including the movie's catchphrase, hissed repeatedly by both killers, "(Insert victim's name here) is in our family noooowwww!" Okay. Whatever. After the credits finally rolled we hopped over to the bonus features as I always like to watch the theatrical trailer after I've seen a movie. I don't like to watch them beforehand, as trailers now tend to give away plot points. That wouldn't have been an issue here of course, but I enjoy seeing the trailers to see what key elements they decided would be the most useful in convincing folks to see the movie. I noticed in the bonus features that they included an "Alternate Ending". I didn't bother watching it but it made me wish they had included a link to an "Alternate Movie". A better one.

BC is precisely what the dumbed-down masses deserve. I have no idea what the original is like, but it can only be better than this incredibly uninvolving and dull garbage. A bunch of bickering females, realizing they're in danger, refuse to leave the house - even though it's a house in which mass-murder was committed - and instead decide to hang around so that they can be butchered one-by-one. (It's the old Eddie Murphy "if the house is haunted, get the f*** out!" line.) Everything that occurs in this typical slasher film, the worst of all horror genres, is cretinous and no amount of "spicing it up" with cannibalism and incest can change that. The supposedly major twist at the end is that the killer's sister/daughter is in the house, too; only a moron could not see that coming. Even worse, Agnes is played by a man, and rather large man. I have no idea what they were thinking. Agnes was shown to be an ugly girl at 12, but not MANLY. There is no explanation as to when or why this creature decided to have sex-change surgery, accompanied with massive, almost Mickeyrourkian (or Cheresque) facial surgery. Nothing makes sense, but even a silly little slasher film needs to have a semblance of logic. It isn't quite clear why Agnes decided to help Billy kill utter strangers, when she has every reason to avenge her lost eye by chopping off Billy's own head. So basically Agnes was grateful to her brother for having attacked her so viciously, is she?... However, if you think the makers of this crap-o-rama were satisfied with boring you only with cretinous house activities, think again. The movie decides to drag on by resurrecting the brother/sister-father/daughter couple in a hospital morgue, after which the two proceed to find the only remaining survivors with ease that even those who designed the building couldn't muster. Plus, I never quite understood why they'd so single-mindedly go for the blonde and the brunette, when they had a plethora of staff and other patients to kill. Did you know that an ice-cone falling from only a meter above you will pierce your flesh like soft butter? Apparently, the women all had very soft heads, which is something I can't disagree with... I also love the way Billy escaped the lunatic asylum. If all madhouse guards were this dumb then all such asylums would be empty all the time. Apparently, when a madhouse guard is killed, it takes about ten weeks for anyone to find the body and alert the police. If it was snowing that much and the roads were blocked, then how the hell did Agnes and Billy get to the house? Surely they never had the time to learn to drive. Or maybe they just took a bus. Or grew wings and flew. Or maybe both of them were locked up in hospitals that were conveniently close to the house. Mere meters away... Surely a candidate for one of the worst horror film of all time.

I had very high expectations for this film. I thought that this might be the one "Re-make" that is the exception because of the involvement of the original film maker, Bob Clark, serving as assistant producer. BOY was I wrong!!! There are some exceptional murder sequences in this flick but that is not enough. Once again, as is the case in so many "Re-makes" the storyline has been almost completely changed! The producers do not seem to realize the elements that made the original film scary in the first place which are now missing! Such as the fact that, in the original you were never quite sure who the killer was and they never revealed it. Now not only do they reveal it, but they add an entire background that is so laughably unbelievable that it dilutes the film's ability to frighten the viewer. The over-the-top gore sequences alone do not make for a frightening movie and the "twist" ending is quite laughable! What they add to the ending of this movie is utterly ridiculous and absolutely unnecessary! Aside from exceptional gore effects, the only other saving grace is the presence of Andrea Martin from the original film as Mrs. Mack but they should have really tried harder to make the characters from the original more like those in the original...and the phone calls, a crucial element to the terrifying experience of the original, are absolutely laughable! Skip this one and watch the original.

Well, call me old school, but to say that this movie was as good or better than the original is confounding and appalling. Scanning some of the comments, I find it interesting that some folks downgrade the original 1974 version because it leaves loose ends, and the new one explains things. I will say that the remake does provide a back story on the killer lacking in the original, but that doesn't make it any better. Quite the contrary. Another slash and gore bore. The subtle atmospheric dread and suspense BC 1974 in the old version, while not great, is vastly superior. It is hard to improve on one of the best of the genre, and the original Black Christmas certainly belongs near the top. It did influence Halloween, When A Stranger Calls, Friday the 13th I and other classics of a few years later and is as good or better than all of them. The 2006 version belongs near the back of the rental area at your local DVD store. Watch it on cable some night, but for those who have seen neither, ignore the new version and find a copy of the old one to buy or rent. You'll be better served for your DVD dollar. A final editorial comment: I have yet to see a 200X horror film remake that came close to the original in spite of all the FX technology.....e.g. The Haunting. No, the Thirteen Ghosts remake was better, but only because the old Castle version was so cheap and campy. One man's opinion is that the Black Christmas remake would have been better not made. Final Destination I (at least) was quite unusual and quality in this genre.