Monday, September 18, 2006

Black Christmas remake. There is no God.

The picture above is terrifying, isn't it? It's from the upcoming Black Christmas remake, and I’m not too happy about it. Well Lacey Chabert is never bad to look at, so I'm happy about that, I mean I'm not happy about the remake. It’s not gonna ruin my day, or affect me really in any way, but still. The real Black Christmas is one of my favorite movies, one of the only that I actually find scary. I was thinking about this earlier today after seeing a commercial for some new Fox show, Black Christmas is the only movie I've seen that had a "threatening caller" whose voice was actually frightening. Listen to the guy in the Scream movies, he sounds like some cheesy DJ, one of the really sleazy sounding ones that come on late at night. The voice is Black Christmas is genuinely scary. It sounds like the caller is just absolutely fucking nuts, like he has multiple personalities, and they all want to wear coats made out of human flesh and eat dogs. It’s demonic almost. No way they can top that.

I'm not totally against remakes. The Thing, The Fly and The Blob are among my favorite movies, but those movies had balls. Aside from The Hills Have Eyes or maybe Texas Chainsaw Massacre, horror remakes these days are almost like family films. They’ve all been kinda "blah" lately as far as I'm concerned. What was the point of When a Stranger Calls? All I got from that one is that while Camilla Belle is really hot dry, she's even hotter when she's wet. That and that track stars get winded running 100 feet from a house to a guest house. Aside from a slightly brutal (like Lifetime network brutal) bit of ass kicking at the very end there was not a whole lot going on. I personally got more of a kick out of yelling “Roy!” at the screen when the guy from The Office appeared than I did from the movie. It wasn’t completely terrible, it was just sorta there. That’s how all of these remakes are, just sorta there.

The main thing that pisses me off about a remake of a movie I like is I have to refer to it as "the original" when I talk about it. Instead of saying Black Christmas is one of my favorite movies, I now have to say "The original Black Christmas, not the shitty remake." Or "The original Dawn of the Dead." Then you have to read high school kids on message boards talk about how lame the “old one” is, when most of these kids don’t even pay attention and actually watch the damn movies they pay to see anymore anyway. They show up, talk to each other, goof off, use their phones, absolutely anything else they can do to not pay attention to the movie they’re seeing.

Who knows, it might be good. The director is Glen Morgan, whose only other feature was Willard, which I thought was actually pretty good. But not great. It was like Tim Burton’s remake of Mousehunt set in the Addams Family house or something. Andrea Martin is in the cast, who was in, here I go already "the original" Black Christmas, so that's something. I don’t know, I don’t hold high hopes for this one. By the way, John Saxon is still alive, why in the holy hell couldn’t they find him a part? He better at least have a small uncredited cameo or something or I’m gonna be pissed. Anyway it comes out this Christmas, so instead of spending the day with your family, go see some sorority girls get iced instead.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pardon my language, but remakes sucks c*ck!

They should've done a follow up instead starring John Saxon, and whoever of the original Black Christmas cast who would be with it, were they could've solved the mystery of who the killer was, etc..That would've been way more entertaing, or better yet, just leave the classic alone.

Anonymous said...

Remakes don't bother me much as they do nothing to tarnish the originals. They'll always be classics while the remakes will always be rerred to as "the remake of..."

I think kids with A.D.H.D. prefer them to the originals and if these remakes lead more young, impressionable minds into the horror culture...then good on them.

Anonymous said...

Big F#(*ing Kudos, 100% bullseye, Right on the Mark, Redundant gratification here, on that post my friend! Man you've articulated my feelings on remakes to a T. And may i add what a great addition your site has been to my list of favorites!

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