I skipped BLACK X-MAS for six years ’cause everybody told me it was bottom-of-the-barrel, but after I heard Brian Collins and some guys discuss it on some podcast about their favorite horror remakes I decided to try it out this year. Of course it’s a disgrace to the pioneering original Bob Clark BLACK CHRISTMAS from 1974. But it’s a fun disgrace.
Like the original it’s about some sorority sisters (and one sorority den mother, or whatever it’s called) staying in the house on Christmas break, being harassed on the phone by some weirdo named Billy who stalks them and suffocates one or more of them with a plastic bag and leaves her in the attic in a rocking chair and nobody finds her for a while. It skips the original’s thread about a father going around trying to find his daughter, preferring to keep the cast mostly male-free and most of the running time isolated to the one location. But the biggest and boldest change was to give the killer a backstory.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Finally the truth can be told. Because you know what? We have the right to know.
SILENT NIGHT is the latest killer Santa movie, directed by Steven C. Miller (AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION, THE AGGRESSION SCALE) and written by Jayson Rothwell (Van Damme’s SECOND IN COMMAND). I hear it’s supposed to be a remake of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, although I didn’t notice it in the credits. There are only two things I spotted that identify it as such:
Why do we gotta prequelize everything? We already know the backstory in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, does it really gotta be spelled out for us who the guy’s mom was and what the tax rate was when he was born and all that shit? I mean come on.
RARE EXPORTS is this year’s hottest Christmas horror movie. It’s a killer Santa movie but not in the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT sense – in this one Santa is a monster. It’s kind of like THE THING – an American team finds him frozen in a block of ice under a small mountain. They say it’s actually a burial mound. They dig him up and this might cause some repercussions that could put a damper on the season.
Part 4 director Brian Yuzna returns as co-writer for part 5, but hands over the directing reins to first-timer Martin Kitrosser. I never heard of the guy but I should’ve because he wrote a movie I love, FRIDAY THE 13TH 3D, plus the story for FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING. He started as a script supervisor on the first two FRIDAY THE 13THs and has also worked in that capacity on all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. So maybe that’s how that one thing happened where Tarantino came in for a meeting about doing a FRIDAY THE 13TH even though he wasn’t serious about it but the rumor got our hopes up. I’m discovering alot of Tarantino-SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT franchise connections here.
I’ve enjoyed the sleazy, creepy original SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT several times over the years, and the hilariously awful half sequel/half recap PART 2 almost as many times, and tried to convince myself that Monte Hellman’s PART 3 was kinda interesting two or three times. But I never got around to the straight to video parts 4 and 5. UNTIL NOW.
I thought BLACK SANTA’S REVENGE was gonna be a real (but super low budget I’m sure) movie. Turns out it’s a 20 minute short (“mini epic” the credits say) shot by some dudes in Portland, Oregon. The writer/director David Walker is the guy that started the zine-turned-websight 
SANTA’S SLAY is an enjoyably dumb killer Santa movie. It’s from 2005 but it’s in the ’80s b-horror tradition of cheesy acting and dialogue and sort of pretending to be serious but with an intentionally asinine premise. Not quite as campy as KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE or RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES, but less serious than the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHTs. Actually the movie it reminded me of most is from the year before, Jeff Lieberman’s SATAN’S LITTLE HELPER. That was a Halloween movie, though. 
IN BRUGES is an intimate crime story about two hitmen – I know, but hear me out – forced to stay in the titular Belgian town while things cool down after a job gone wrong. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is the veteran who’s happy to take advantage of the down time to relax and look at tourist spots, Ray (Colin Farrell) is his young partner who has no interest and pouts like a kid dragged along on the wrong vacation. He’s also the one that fucked up the job and is racked with guilt and depression.
