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49 out of 73 people found the following review useful: What an insult to the original!, 16 December 2006 Author: Rents (Renty_Misses_Christmas) from London, England
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Let me just say that the original Black Christmas (1974) has always been my favorite horror film. It is an amazing piece of work all around and it has deservedly become a cult classic among horror aficionados. I knew that there would be no hope for this remake. It's absolutely offensive.The acting is horrendous. Katie Cassidy (who lacks talent completely, unlike her famous relatives, including Oscar-winner Shirley Jones of Elmer Gantry [1960] and The Music Man [1962] fame) is horrible. Two bad films in the same year, the remake of When a Stranger Calls (2006) being her first. The others are just cookie-cutter characters and they bring nothing to elevate the picture. The only good thing about this film is Andrea Martin, who played Phyllis in the original, making an appearance in a recreation of Mrs. MacHenry, the housemother, played so wonderfully by Marian Waldman.The original and its acting were great. Olivia Hussey as Jessica was fantastic, and this helped cement her fame, having made waves by playing Juliet in Romeo & Juliet (1968). Margot Kidder played Barb, the hilarious drunk, and to think that this wonderful performance came at the BEGINNING of her celebrated career, with such parts as Lois Lane in the Superman series (1978-1987) alongside Christopher Reeve, the maniacal killer in Brian DePalma's Sisters (1973) and Kathy Lutz in The Amityville Horror (1979). Another cast member of the original was Keir Dullea, who played Dave Bowman of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). You will notice that all of those actors were quite established and knew how to make a film worthwhile. This film is just atrocious. Changing the names of all the characters will not help it.Neither will adding a back-story to Billy, I'm afraid. In the original, what made Billy so frightening was the fact that we didn't know anything about him. He was killing because he was just CRAZY—he didn't NEED a motive! The fact that someone is stalking you just because they feel like it is much more unsettling than to know WHY they're doing it.The adding of so much blood, gore and violence is irrelevant as well. The original didn't need all of that. There was hardly any blood, gore, violence, or sexual content at all and it still made for a great film. Please. Some of the scenes in this film are absolutely comical! I swear; it's bordering between an idiotic gore-fest and a parody.One final point—in the original, you actually CARE about the characters. All of their portrayals made you want to reach out and pluck them from their situation, particularly Hussey's and Kidder's performances.Go pop the original into your DVD player—this is definitely not worth the time.
64 out of 111 people found the following review useful: enjoy, but don't take seriously!, 18 December 2006 Author: kevin_crighton (kevincrighton@btinternet.com) from Scotland
Earlier this year, I tore the re-make of When A Stranger Calls apart, and said at the time, that if Hollywood won't bother making new horror movies, but instead simply re-make old or foreign ones, then just stop. I stand by that.However...Black Christmas actually surprised me. First, it was actually a lot more brutal and violent than I was expecting, considering it's 15 rating (UK). The other, was the way it re-worked the original.The original, which I haven't seen for awhile was as much a whodunit as anything else. Here we're spared that. We know pretty much from the start who is killing here.What the makers have done, is simply turn the story into a stalk and slash movie, which as I said is quite brutal in areas. For me a movie of this type stands or falls not on the killer or how they kill, but on the potential victims in the story. If you care about them, then you feel bad they are killed. If you don't, then give me an axe, I'll do it myself!! Black Christmas does enough to make you care about each character, by making each one a little different, but yet, having enough in character to make you believe they could get along normally. So when the killing starts, you do care about them, and begin to wonder who, or how many will make it to the end alive.The death scenes are well set up and done, which isn't surprising considering the makers also did Final Destination 1 & 3. If I have a problem with them is that the film is maybe a little over-edited so at times, you aren't sure if certain characters have been killed or not.This movie has been getting a critical mauling in certain areas. But I found on watching it, that it's fun, enjoyable, with a black(!) sense of humour, some very nice looking actresses in it!, and for it's (admittedly short) running time very entertaining. And when I go to see a movie like this, that's what I want.Enjoyable late-night fun.
17 out of 18 people found the following review useful: We needed one more "Alternate" in the Bonus Features, 16 April 2007 Author: CMUltra (collectormanultra@yahoo.com) from US and Japan
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.
24 out of 32 people found the following review useful: A Modestly Flawed Remake of the Bob Clark Classic, 7 April 2007 Author: Gavin Schmitt (gavin6942@yahoo.com) from Kaukauna, Wisconsin
Many years ago, a mistreated boy named Billy Lenz slaughtered his family in a one-house killing spree. Not surprisingly, this had him committed to an asylum. Since then, his house has been converted into a sorority house. And this Christmas, Billy wants to be home with his family to celebrate.Let me say a few nice things before I start venting. First, I have to say I must have been a very good boy this year because I can't recall such an attractive cast in the recent past. Three of my all-time favorite young ladies show up here: Michelle Trachtenberg ("Eurotrip"), Lacey Chabert ("Pleasure Drivers"), and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (numerous recent horror films, including "Final Destination 3"). It was quite the visual feast!I also enjoyed the inclusion of Andrea Martin as Ms. MacHenry, the house mother. Martin was one of the college girls from the original film and I think it's important to pay some sort of tribute like this (as well as the use of "Clark Sanitarium"). She was a good pick, better than Margot Kidder.And the use of incest and cannibalism is always a plus (both of which were absent in the original)... and the gore was decent (though not great) with the constant eye-gouging thanks to a glass unicorn. I do love unicorns, as my embroidered unicorn pillow might suggest. While I do not think it was intentional, I appreciate how the unicorn reminded me of another great classic, "The Abominable Dr. Phibes".But let's start the ripping: Glen Morgan was probably the wrong guy to direct this. He brought along cast members from his prior films (again, such as "Final Destination 3") which was fine, but seemed to put very little thought into any of this. And his films have more of a teenager quality to them, making even the gore, incest and cannibalism seem very youth-oriented, if that makes any sense. R-Rated or not, this was meant for teens to watch. He could have really stepped it up a dozen notches.The girls get little or no personalities. I don't think I learned half of their names and had difficulty keeping them straight. Maybe reduce the number by one or two so we could at least see them for ten minutes? On the flip side, the film focused almost entirely on Billy Lenz, providing his entire back story. The original never touched on this at all, which made him creepier and more mysterious. Here, there's nothing strange about him (besides the yellow skin and eyes, which play no importance). Obviously, Morgan never learned the secret of good horror: don't show the killer.Furthermore, they wasted the character of the boyfriend Kyle (who was named Peter in the original). Here, he is briefly thought by the girls to be the killer, but the audience knows the whole time that he's not. In the original, you never know whether or not Peter is the killer (in fact, many people who watched all the way to the end still aren't sure). If Kyle isn't a red herring, and his only purpose is to bring up some sex tape which was not important to the story (despite being shown again and again), then what the hell was he doing in the movie at all?Other great elements from the original were toned down: the police station scenes, the drunk girl (who now passes out right away). And a shower scene was added, but no explicit nudity, making it almost a complete waste of time.I'll stop before I start frothing at the mouth. Because, seriously, I was let down. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this movie, but it was clearly the teen remake (not unlike the newer "When A Stranger Calls"). If you need a fix of girls getting strangled with a plastic bag and stabbed in the eye (and that's really all you'll see), check this out. Otherwise, you'll find plenty of great slashers out there on the video shelf. And, of course, you simply cannot beat the original "Black Christmas", one of the best horror films ever made.
33 out of 54 people found the following review useful: Scooby Doo has more compelling believable story lines, 8 February 2007 Author: (lee.wilson@gmail.com) from United Kingdom
I am a fan of all sorts of horror films including stalker / slasher type movies and this is perhaps the worst modern example of one of these I have ever sat through. None of the characters are likable so you do not care if they are murdered, in fact there is so little character development that they are all interchangeable. Despite some reasonable gore there is so little tension that it drags on for what seems like hours.In the end it simply does not work because of so many unbelievable situations. They are stalked around a sorority house that is miles from anywhere (are you not supposed to share these to live NEAR a campus ?). Even when dead bodies start to pile up they still go off into the dark on their own to check out noises !!! Every situation is ridiculous, how the killer fools the guard at the asylum for example. No one would ever act in the way the guard does and this theme follows the whole film through. You do wonder how the inept script was ever green lighted. One to avoid, even for fans of the genre.
14 out of 17 people found the following review useful: The most mind numbingly retarded movie I've ever seen..., 5 January 2007 Author: theshadow908 from London, Ontario
Black Christmas is the remake of the 1974 horror classic about a group of sorority girls who are menaced by a killer on Christmas Eve. However, where the original had a simple plot that involved a killer in the attic making creepy phone calls to the girls before the killing starts. Well, I guess the makers of this version decided that wasn't hip enough. That wasn't "2006 generic slasher movie" enough, so they added a bogus back story and some twisted elements, and we got worthless, mindless dreck.Everything that made the original good was gone in this movie. The first movie had everything. Point of view shots for the killer so we never actually see him. In the original we know nothing about the killer or his motives. We have to piece together our own back story through his phone calls. There are suspects throughout the movie who we think the killer could be. There's a detective investigating the calls. All of the girls are likable. In this version we are treated to a handful of unlikeable characters. We know who the killer is right away, and a ridiculous back story is spoon fed to us. It involves Billy (the killer in the original) witnessing his mother kill his father. His mother remarries and keeps him locked in the attic until one night she decides to have sex with him. Billy fathers his little sister, and then when she's six he stabs her eye out and kills his mother and step father. Agnes ends up in the sorority house and ends up committing most of the murders, and Billy, who is SUPPOSED to be the main killer, plays second fiddle and does basically nothing. Even the "calls are coming from in the house" twist is gone.The writing is just god awful, and it shows what the writers think teenagers are like nowadays. It's wonderful seeing such brilliantly thought out dialogue as "Guys, it's, like, Christmas Eve". The acting isn't any better. The only remotely okay acting comes from Andrea Martin who is in here to pay respect to the original, but it's useless. This is the worst acting I've seen in a horror movie since the Saw trilogy.Stay far away from this mess. It's complete disrespect to a classic horror film.1/10
14 out of 18 people found the following review useful: By slasher standards, this was pretty average and forgettable, 16 January 2007 Author: christian123
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
39 out of 68 people found the following review useful: It won't win awards but great fun anyway., 16 December 2006 Author: Sky_Rider from United Kingdom
There's been a lot of negativity about this film, I never saw the original but i did think this film looked interesting after watching the trailer.Basically, this film is pure fun, it won't win any awards but it is enjoyable. It isn't scary but the over the top kills and gore make this film enjoyable to watch with friends.The acting is pretty good and the film tries it's best to establish each character before the main bloodshed begins. I'd say my favourite characters were Melissa and Lauren, I like Melissa because of her loyalty and i liked Lauren because she had cracking lines.One of the bad things about this film is the slightly repetitive kills, OKAY! we get you like eyeballs!!!!! but i won't go to much detail here. One of the things the film did well was making you grow somewhat attached to the characters (apart from Kelli, she was just bland).Overall I'd say, go to this film if you like slasher films but don't go expecting a masterpiece. But for what it is, i thought it was a blast to watch, especially with a group of friends.
11 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Making a slasher film isn't an excuse to write/direct like an utter imbecile., 17 March 2008 Author: fedor8 (fedor8@yahoo.com) from Serbia
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.
12 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Disappointing remake - see the original, 16 December 2006 Author: i-dunning from Chester, England
It was not a bad idea to attempt a remake of Black Christmas. The original, with all its scurrying around in a pre-historic telephone exchange, was ripe for updating. The new version, however, brings the technology up to date and keeps the creepy chocolate box setting, but loses just about everything else that was decent about the original. The storyline for the first film was slow, but successfully built up suspense as Billy picked off each of the girls one by one, while the police gradually tracked down his whereabouts. In the remake, the police are irrelevant - they can't help because there's too much snow - and so the whole thing after the first twenty minutes is focused on establishing a dreary line-up of red herrings while Billy, or whoever it is, quickly takes out each of the girls. One of the genuinely creepy things about the original was the way Billy's identity and motivation were never explained. Who was he? What was his connection to the house. Who is Agnes who he keeps groaning on about? The end of the film left the audience unsettled as Billy remained undetected and we still didn't know anything about him. For the new film the writers make the mistake of going all out to tell us everything and more about Billy and his uninteresting backstory. The flashbacks take us away from the tense situation in the house and are ultimately only confusing. Given their screwed up childhood, shouldn't we feel sorry for Billy and Agnes? Yes - but no, they want to eat your eyeballs.It's not only Billy and Agnes who are one dimensional. None of the girls is given anything more than the most obvious of personality traits. Most of them even look the same, so except for the blonde "final girl," I couldn't tell you anything about what distinguishes each of them from one another. Again, this is in stark contrast with the original film in which the main characters are interesting and memorable. Margot Kidder in particular was striking as the loudmouth proto-feminist who drinks too much and suffers a memorable asthma attack. And then Olivia Hussey brought real credibility as well as a strange kind of Virgin Mary sexuality to the central role. Remarkably her arguments with her boyfriend focused on her wanting to have an abortion while he wanted to get married and start a family. Unthinkable in modern Hollywood - so this has to be turned into arguments about her boyfriend cheating on her with one of the girls. Depressingly unimaginative.The endings of the two films are again worth comparing. The original ends with a striking but subtle twist. The ringing of the phone as the camera slowly zooms away from the attic window provided a genuinely "black" ending, signifying the death of everyone in the house even as we see a policeman guarding the front door. The new film has the predictable - "s/he's not really dead - look behind you" - moment. And then it all just ends, as if the film-makers knew that by this time no one in the audience would really care anyway.For a movie that sends you to bed over Christmas locking your doors and shivering at the creaky sounds coming from upstairs, settle down with some sherry and mince pies with the DVD of the original Black Christmas.
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