Black Christmas 1974 vs 2006

Today, a truly well-made classic horror film…and a forgettable abomination against taste.

Black Christmas (1974), directed by Bob Clark, is a Canadian horror movie and arguably the very first slasher. I say “arguably” because it 1.) came out pretty much exactly the same time as Texas Chain Saw Massacre and 2.) it’s kind of a bridge between Giallo horror and slasher. Here’s an article that sums that up, so I don’t spend a day babbling about it: https://www.ghoulsmagazine.com/articles/12-ghouls-christmas-blackchristmas-1974-giallo-to-slasher

I previously reviewed this film here: https://tlbodine.tumblr.com/tagged/black%20christmas

This is the second time I’ve seen this movie, and I really genuinely do love it. It’s tightly plotted, with all of its elements meticulously foreshadowed and paid off. Its resolution is legitimately chilling, and it succeeds because – despite its ambiguity – the plot’s logic has been so tight that we understand in an instant exactlywhat’s going on…unlike anyone on screen who could actually do something to stop it. Augh. It’s just so good.

Which cannot be said for…

Black Christmas (2006), often shorted as Black X-Mas, was so terrible that I almost felt compelled to apologize to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot by comparison.

The film is directed by Glen Morgan, who you’ll recognize as the guy who remade Willard in 2003. Sadly, despite Willardbeing a favorite film of mine, he just didn’t pull off the same magic with this. I guess part of that is due to executive meddling – Morgan had a lot of issues with the studio execs, Harvey Weinstein in particular (ugh) regarding the film’s tone and ending. There was also a ton of footage filmed for promotional material that was never part of the script or included in the movie.

Anyway. This movie takes the approach of delving deep into Billy’s backstory, so I guess we have to talk about that. Spoilers for a 50-year-old movie incoming.

In the original film, we hear the names “Billy” and “Agnes” come up in the menacing phone calls. It’s not superclear what’s going on with them, but it kind of sounds like the caller is maybe mimicking or re-enacting being yelled at as a child, or some sort of domestic strife in general. It’s mixed in with bits of dialogue and things the caller has overhead in the house itself – like someone will say something in the house, and the caller will reference it later in a creepy way like “Hey was that a coincidence or was he listening to us?”

We know, as the viewer, that the killer is in the sorority house. We see him, in a POV shot, enter in the beginning, and we catch glimpses of him lurking around in the attic. The people *in* the movie think that the killer is actually one of the boyfriends, who we’ve seen acting like a temperamental douche-nozzle.

But the original film never resolves the identity of the killer. You never once figure out who the hell this guy in the attic is, what’s up with those phone calls, why he’s killing people, none of that. Which is, in my mind, a great strength of the original film. It’s much scarier that way and, frankly, we don’t needto know why killers kill people.

Anyway. So with all of that…back to Black X-Mas.

Glen Morgan decided that the way to approach this remake is to center it on the Billy character, aka, the killer. We see him locked up in a high-security mental hospital/prison ward type facility (which also has a fucking stupid little side plot with a santa claus, ugh) and then we get spoon-fed his entire backstory through a series of flashbacks.

Billy’s backstory was apparently loosely inspired by the real-life killer Edmund Kemper. We see this kid abused and neglected by his parents, locked in an attic, then raped by his motherwhen he’s 12 years old in order to produce a daughter for her to spoil and lavish with attention. Yeah. Oh, and don’t worry, just to make things even more obnoxious, when little sister Agnes grows up to be a killer just like her brother-daddy, she’s also cast by a male actor, because what’s scarier than an ugly mannish girl am I right.

/screams into a pillow for several minutes/

ANYWAY.

Aside from that, the rest of the movie is pretty boring. I kept mixing up characters because all of the pretty white girls sound/act/look the same and have no defining personality traits between them. The plot gets tugged along without anyone having any agency or making any choices. A couple of the kills are kind of neat. But its’ overwhelmingly just dumb. We’re supposed to believe that these characters are snowed into the house and unable to escape when there’s like half an inch of snow on the ground!

Supreme stupidity. Do not watch. It’s gross and boring and you too will be unable to get the mental image of Billy’s mom out of your head.

Tune in next time when we watch the otherBlack Christmas remake from 2019, which I’ve heard is also terrible but surely cannot be as terrible as this!