Calling Home for the Holidays: BLACK CHRISTMAS

Well, kids, it’s time for my favorite annual media stunt.  Yes, every December 25^th, TBS plays a 24 hour loop of the Bob Clark holiday classic, BLACK CHRISTMAS.  I don’t tune in, I have the movie on Blu Ray, and who watches cable anymore, but I appreciate the gesture.  So, if they can devote an entire day to the groundbreaking 1974 film, I can at least devote a blog post to it.

The Capsule:

It’s Christmas break at a small town Canadian university, and the sorority house is empty aside from a few stragglers, like frumpy housemother, Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), acerbic tongued lush, Barb (Margo Kidder), drowsy Phyllis (Andrea Martin), and no-nonsense Jess (Olivia Hussey).  Oh, and Billy, the psychotic prank phone caller who has moved into the attic, unbeknownst to anyone except the cat.  While Jess is busy ending her relationship with her remarkably incompatible boyfriend, Peter (Keir Dullea), and everyone else is distracted by a missing girl, Billy slowly makes additions to the corpses decorating his hiding spot.  By the time dogged cop Lt. Fuller (John Saxon) puts things together, will there be anyone left to warn that the calls are coming from inside the house?

Even though BLACK CHRISTMAS is not as well known as the big franchise names of the ‘80s it's largely thought of as the first slasher. It predates HALLOWEEN by four years. Yes, PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM both came before it, but though they share several elements, neither film fully embraces the kind of disreputable fun that the subgenre is known for.   

Like the other horror milestone released the same year, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, BLACK CHRISTMAS is surprisingly light on the red stuff, but can be incredibly disturbing none the less.  This is mostly thanks to the shadowy killer, Billy, or more specifically, his voice.  Billy’s giggling, horrendously obscene phone calls contain some of the most unsettling dialogue ever written, but the delivery seals the deal.  I don’t think I have ever heard a voice that sounds as authentically insane as his (or theirs, as the vocal work was a mix of actor Nick Mancuso, Ann Sweeny, and Clark himself). 

The other element that makes Billy such an effective villain is his mystery.  Unlike most horror movies prior or since, Billy just shows up with zero fanfare.  There are no news reports of an escaped mental patient, no desperate doctor warning the police to be on the lookout, no forewarning whatsoever.  If he had anything to do with the dead girl found in the park halfway through the movie, no one makes the connection.  The only backstory we get comes from Billy himself, a ghastly bit of family drama revealed in fragments—and through separate personas—during his calls.  Billy is not what we’d call a reliable narrator, so there is no telling how much, if any, of it is true.  Masks would become a prominent feature of slashers to come, but Billy takes it a step farther.  We are shown no face, disguised, disfigured, or otherwise, only an eye through a crack in the door.  He could be anyone.  He might be lurking in the shadow of your house right now. 

All the terror and gloom can’t cover up Clark’s impish sense of humor, though.  From a cussing Jewish Santa, to Barb getting a grade-schooler sloshed on champagne, to the constantly ridiculed simpleton cop, Nash (Doug McGrath). Clark uses a few moments of inappropriate levity to keep the story from becoming relentlessly bleak.   Marian Waldman’s performance is the most outlandish.  Her boozy housemother, Mrs. Mac, is straight out of a vaudeville routine.  She’s the kind of loving but crusty broad who keeps little bottles of hooch stashed throughout the sorority house, like hidden in a cutout book or bobbing in the toilet tank (a drastic hiding place, in my opinion).  I’m not sure why she couldn’t just keep them in her private room.  Perhaps she just had a compulsive need to be within five feet of booze at all times.   In addition to humor, she also provides the horror movie staple of the wandering cat.  Rather than being used for jump scares, Claude the cat’s primary function is luring people to their deaths.  Pretty sure he’s an relative of Jonesy from ALIEN.  

Clark is backed up by a solid cast.  John Saxon is great as always playing Lt. Fuller, perhaps the only competent cop in town. I wonder if this is the case that made him settle down for a quiet life on Elm Street?  Margo Kidder steals every scene as the foul mouthed, socially inappropriate lush, Barb.  She meanders seamlessly between being hilarious, sad, feisty, and cruel.  I’m pretty sure Barb could have kicked Billy’s ass if she hadn’t been passed out drunk at the time.  Special mention must be given to Art Hindle as a hockey-playing hunk who takes no shit and has enough swagger to casually rock a full length fur coat.  

Olivia Hussey may have played the genre’s first “final girl”, but she isn’t a typical one.  Jess is reserved, resolute, and analytical.  She certainly doesn’t fit the mold of a scream queen.  She is, however, the worst girlfriend ever.  At least, she is the worst girlfriend for a hyper-sensitive, emotionally needy artist like Peter.  I’m not sure if she’s supposed to represent an overly harsh version of the liberated woman, or if she just doesn’t suffer fools (human empathy) lightly.  In any case, Jess does need to work on her sense of timing.  Did she have to have a heart to heart with Peter an hour before his career defining piano audition for the music department heads?  “Peter, I’m pregnant with your child, and I’ve decided to get an abortion.  And no, I’m not going to marry you, because I don’t love you.  Anyway, good luck at your recital!”

My favorite bit with Jess is when she is on the phone with the cops after they learn that “the calls are coming from inside the house” (suck it WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, BLACK CHRISTMAS said it first).  The long suffering Officer Nash, who has thus far failed to do a single thing right in the entire movie, literally pleads with Jess  to leave the house immediately.  Jess promises to… as soon as she goes upstairs to get her friends.  Maybe grab a few essentials, pack an overnight bag, then she’ll totally leave the house.  It’s a common horror trope for the target of a killer to run upstairs instead of out the front door, but it’s usually due to stupidity, not stubbornness.  

BLACK CHRISTMAS has another notable departure from most slashers in that the movie ends on a wickedly ambiguous note.  One could view the resolution as Jess surviving the night of terrors and getting a well deserved rest, or that she is still in danger and in a far worse position than when she started.  Clark leaves the answer up to us, but I have the strong suspicion that the holiday season is not going to end well for Jess.

 In addition to birthing the entire slasher genre, BLACK CHRISTMAS has spawned two remakes itself, one in 2006 and another just this year.  I haven’t seen either, since I highly doubt they have any fur coat wearing hockey players badgering the police.  For the sake of mixing things up , though, I am willing to break from my annual tradition slightly and watch the original on the TBS all day marathon.  Let me just check the schedule to make sure it starts at midnight…

Oh, fudge.

C Chaka

Big Bad Voodoo Mamma - SUGAR HILL

Since February is both Black History month and Women In Horror month, two themes I wholeheartedly endorse, I always feel obliged to talk about movies that intersect each.  Unfortunately, there aren’t as many great representations as there should be.  I tackled one of the best, DEMON KNIGHT (I <3 Jeryline), in the early days of Schizocinema, so I settled into a Blaxploitation horror vibe for my official February picks.  First came BLACULA, which I had seen and loved, so the next year I hit up the sequel, SCREAM,BLACULA, SCREAM (not quite as good).  While BLACULA is an excellent and surprisingly romantic film, William Marshall is such a powerful presence that Vonetta McGee’s character gets overshadowed.  Even the mighty Pam Grier plays it a little subdued in the sequel.  Both characters were well drawn and fitting to the tragic romance of BLACULA, but they weren’t the feisty asskickers I had hoped for.  So I wasn’t feeling overly optimistic about giving another Blaxploitation horror flick, Paul Maslansky’s SUGAR HILL, a first time spin.  I'm happy to say that this time, it's the leading lady that casts the biggest shadow.

The Capsule:

Diana “Sugar” Hill (Marki Bey) has a good thing going running a voodoo themed lounge with her boyfriend, Langston (Robert Quarry).  The good times end when Morgan (Richard Lawson), the local racist mob boss, gets designs for the club.  When Langston refuses to sell, Morgan’s goons beat him to death and leave him for Sugar to find.  Bad move, chumps, because Sugar uses her voodoo connections to summon Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), the Lord of the Dead, in order make the gangsters pay.  Soon, Morgan’s goons are dropping like chess pieces as Sugar maneuvers the top man right where she wants him.  Will Sugar’s ex lover cop, Valentine (Richard Lawson) figure things out before Sugar gets her ultimate vengeance?

SUGAR HILL is most famous for its silver, bug eyed zombies, but what it really should be known for is its star, Marki Bey.  The fact that Bey didn’t go one to the same success as Pam Grier is more criminal than anything committed in this movie.  She’d only appeared in a handful of movies before this, and after a few years in television (Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch, and the like), she left acting altogether.  This makes me weep, because Bey is absolutely badass as Sugar Hill.  

Sugar is a force of nature right from the start.  She’s the kind of character who gets it all done with attitude, confidence, and cunning.  Plus an army of zombies, but they are only a means to an end. She is sexy without being objectified, and doesn't rely on seduction to get what she wants, a trope that was highly leaned on in Blaxplotation/Exploitation cinema at the time.  Every major character, including Barron Samedi, underestimates her, which she ruthlessly uses to her advantage.  The scenes were she boldly negotiates business with Morgan, brushing off his heavy handed intimidation and shutting him down when he extends himself too far, are delicious.  If that crew wasn’t a bunch of racist dirtbags, you would feel sorry for them.  They have no idea what they are getting into.

Sugar is a fascinating, unconventional lead.  Brimming with righteous satisfaction at every turn of the screw, she is driven less by vengeance than by a brutal social justice.  Langston's death may have set her down this path, but it feels more like an excuse than an ultimate motivation.  She certainly isn't so broken up about the loss of her lover that she can’t flirt with her ex, Valentine.  Like BLACULA’s Prince Mamuwalde, Sugar is technically the villain, making a deal with the devil to punish those who wronged her, but she always has our sympathy.  Her fury only extends to those who deserve it.  When Valentine’s investigation gets too close to the truth, Baron Samedi wants to kill him, but Sugar insists on arranging a painless “accident” to keep him out of the action.  Sugar isn't power mad, she's just pissed off.

A big part of the fun of Blaxploitation is seeing over the top bigoted villains get what’s coming to them, and SUGAR HILL does not disappoint.  The deaths of Morgan’s henchmen aren’t especially gory, but they are inventive.  Goons are hacked up with machetes, sliced up via voodoo doll, compelled to stab themselves, massaged to death by zombies, and stuffed in a casket full of snakes.  When one poor sap gets fed alive to a pack of pigs, Sugar shouts to the hungry beasts, “I hope you like white trash.”  Zing!    

Marki Bey isn't the only one with a juicy role.  Don Pedro Colley gets to sink his gold capped teeth in as the flamboyant Lord of the Dead, Baron Samedi.  He gets a surprising amount of screen time, too.  When Sugar first summons Samedi, I expected him to just hand out a few zombies and only return at the end of the movie to collect his debt (noteworthy, he prefers to be paid in hoochie rather than souls).  Samedi, however, is not about to be sidelined to the netherworld and miss all the fun.  He inserts himself front and center at each of Sugar’s traps, either as a disguised bystander smiling on, or as an active participant in the vengeance.  My favorite is when he pulls up in a cab to drive one of the hoods to his impending fate, making foreboding chitchat with the unsuspecting dope the whole way.  Samedi is a hands-on boogyman.

We all know where this kind of story is going.  You can’t make a deal with the devil without eventually having to pay your due.  Karma always comes around, even to the  most justified (again, see BLACULA).  Well, surprise suckers, because Sugar skates out scot-free at the end of this one.  Once the last slimeball is crossed off Sugar’s list, the Baron does demand payment for his service.  However, instead of giving her hand to Samedi, she instead offers up Morgan’s deplorable girlfriend, Celeste (Betty Anne Rees), to be his zombie bride.   Samedi happily accepts, hauling the screaming hussy down to the underworld.  Yes, it does play into the old stereotype of the lusty black stud with an eye for the white woman, but I got the feeling Samedi was so impressed with Sugar that he was happy to let her off the hook.  I kept expecting the director to sneak in some moralistic consequence, but nope, Sugar makes it out without an ounce of comeuppance.  She even gets to keep Samedi's voodoo daddy cane.  I’d like to think she went on to be the venerated voodoo queen who wronged women seek out to balance the scales, giving the Baron a little wink whenever she summons him up for a job.

Like all Blaxploitation, especially one directed by the white dude who made the POLICE ACADEMY movies, SUGAR HILL has its share of problematic issues.  It is certainly not a realistic look at Haitian religion, but what movie was in those--or even these--days?  It is also cheap and hokey as hell (lightning and thunder effects during broad daylight was a bold choice).  However, Bey’s fierce and uncompromising leading woman and the movie’s consistently fun tone balance things out.  And sometimes, you just want to see a badass woman toss a creep’s money in his face and bury him in a coffin full of snakes. 

C Chaka

The Mad King – DREAMCATCHER

I’ll be the first to admit it, I can be a bad movie snob.   When I hear people in the general public exclaim “That was the worst movie ever made!” I chuckle, clean my monocle, and reply, “You, sir, have no idea.”  The average moviegoer’s mind cannot even conceive the depths of the cinematic atrocities I’ve seen.  Even when they throw out famously terrible examples like TROLL 2 or THE ROOM, I still have to shake my head.  Philistines.  Talk to me when you’ve seen a Lazar Rockwood double feature.

So when people began speaking in awe of how batshit crazy 2003’s DREAMCATCHER was, I just rolled my eyes.  Please.  First of all, its adapted from a Stephen King story, and no Stephen King movie is going to be as absurdly sublime as MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, directed by the master himself while in a white out of cocaine.  Second, it was a big budget studio production directed by Lawrence Kasdan, the guy who made THE BIG CHILL and SILVERADO.  Third, it starred Morgan Freeman, for god’s sake.  Credibility in human form.  

Consequently, I had avoided the movie for over a decade, knowing I would be let down by whatever pedestrian level of oddness it had to offer.  Even after picking up the Blu Ray for super cheap, I kept passing it by week after week.  It wasn’t until the last few days of 2018 that I finally decided on a whim to give it a spin.  

To everyone else in the world, I’m sorry.  You were right, I was wrong.  DREAMCATCHER is fucking nuts.

The Capsule:

Four friends—Henry the psychologist (Thomas Jane), Pete the car salesman (Timothy Olyphant), Jonesy the college professor (Damian Lewis), and Beaver the, um, barfly (Jason Lee)—meet up for their annual retreat to a snowbound hunting cabin to reminisce about the good old days.  Unfortunately, their revelry is interrupted by an alien contagion that causes the infected to shit out toothy, penis-shaped monsters.  Just when it seems they will all be overcome by ass lampreys, an alien hunting army unit lead by Colonel Abe Curtis (Morgan Freeman) rolls in to contain the infection.  Unfortunately, Curtis’ idea of containment  involves the liberal application of bullets on anyone within the quarantine zone.  Extra unfortunately, the leader of the dick monsters, known as Mr. Grey (or Ister Gay, depending on who you ask), has possessed Jonesy and is high tailing it towards the reservoir with the intent of spreading the ass born invasion across the entire population.  The only thing standing in the way of global infestation are the friends’ psychic powers (did I not mention they were psychic?) and their connection to a Scooby Doo obsessed special needs kid named Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg).

DREAMCATCHER is a grower, not a shower.  It does not unload all of its mad majesty on you at once.  This isn’t to say it starts off conventionally.  We are pelted with psychic phenomenon, unexplained suicide attempts, and spontaneous resurrections within the first fifteen minutes.  Even after people start having explosive bouts of alien ass lampreys, though, I remained skeptical.  It was weird, but still not up to my high standards.  Then, halfway through and wholly without explanation, Jonesy, possessed by the alien leader, starts speaking with a British accent.  And I’m talking a full on “Pip, pip, cheerio old chap,” Rex Harrison in MY FAIR LADY level British accent.  From that point on, resistance was futile.  DREAMCATCHER had me in its certifiable clutches.

Most of the truly bonkers movies I'm familiar with have the same limitations that a tiny budget and no experience bring, so I'm adjusted to the stilted acting, laughable effects, and excessive padding.  With its huge budget and professional production, DREAMCATCHER (mostly) avoids those issues.  It's cast with honest to god good actors (again, Morgan Freakin’ Freeman), so there are no embarrassing bad performances.  Jane is nowhere near as fun as he is in DEEP BLUE SEA (itself a movie that is no slouch when it comes to bonkers), but he does a solid job.  Jason Lee does his Jason Lee shtick, complete with some aggressively Stephen King-isms like “fuckarow” and “criminettlies,” but he never descends into MALLRATS levels of obnoxious.  While still a few years away from his charismatic stride (THE CRAZIES), Timothy Olyphant has a certain whinny charm.  The CGI effects are wince inducing at times, but what can you expect from 2003?.  I don’t really hold that against it.  Kasdan's direction is solid, and John Seale's cinematography is quite lovely.  The real lunacy comes from the script, though not having read the novel, I'm not sure if the blame (or genius) is more from King or screenwriter William Goldman.  Since King wrote the book during his recovery from a near fatal car accident, and possibly in a haze of pain meds, I lean towards him.  Whoever was responsible, I am grateful.

The film has too many “wait, what?” moments to document in the space of a blog post, so I’ll pick a few choice highlights.  The first is a oddly reoccurring theme in horror/sci-fi: the person with astonishing gifts who utterly fails to take advantage of them.  Hmm, what should I do with my psychic powers?  Negotiate peace deals between warring nations?  Unravel long hidden crimes?  Locate missing people?  I know, I’ll become a car salesman!  Seriously, the only thing Pete uses his preternatural tracking power for is literally to find lost keys.  It can't even find him a date.  All four friends treat their superpowers like an embarrassing party trick.  You would think mind reading would be a helpful skill for a psychiatrist, but Henry actually drives his patients to suicide.  Beaver seems to be the most emotionally fulfilled member of the group, and he’s a barfly who picks up women on Bingo night.  Their high school guidance counselor really failed these kids.

This next one is a minor, but astonishingly baffling, plot point.  Jonesy finds a despondent, wickedly flatulent hunter lost in the woods, and even though he is clearly infected with something awful, he and Beaver let Patient Zero take a nap in their cabin.  Once again, huge psychic fail.  Later, they find him covered in blood, sitting on the toilet, having just dropped a load that not only killed him, but is thumping angrily in the bowl.  Beaver traps it by sitting on the lid while Jones runs to the tool shed looking for tape.  This is not the crazy part.  The crazy part comes when the justifiably anxious Beaver wants a stress-relieving chew on a toothpick, but the toilet horror bumps the lid and his picks go flying.  The scene becomes a tense balancing act as Beaver tries to reach one of the toothpicks without letting the ass-born menace escape.  Now, I’m all for suspension of disbelieve, but who the fuck would even consider putting a toothpick from the bathroom floor in their mouth???  Not to mention that the floor is covered in blood leaked from a diseased man’s rectum.  I know people have weird compulsions, but goddamn.  Sorry Beav, you deserve an ass lamprey to the face for even harboring such an impulse.

Then there are parts that seem reasonable, even clever, but are absolutely insane when you think about it.  Early on, Joney mentions his “memory warehouse,” the place in his head where he files away all his experiences.  Nothing super weird there, a lot of people use that sort of mental organization.  The thing is, it's a METAPHOR.  No one literally envisions a sprawling, elaborately detailed, multi-story building where they cart around bankers boxes labeled “60's Folk Lyrics” or “Bathroom Obsessions.” Yet, not only are we given a tour of Jonesy’s mental warehouse, a significant portion of the movie depicts his detached psyche hiding from Mr. Grey inside the office, or racing to secure secret memory boxes with a monster slithering in pursuit.  

The peak of absurdity comes when Henry is wondering out loud where Jonesy could be.  “Come on Jonesy, just call 1-800-HENRY.”  Cut to Jonesy, who, sure enough, picks up an actual goddamn phone from his imaginary desk.  Regrettably, we don’t see him physically dial 1-800-43679 (that’s not even a valid US extension).  We do get to see Henry hear the ringing, hold a pistol to his head like it was a phone receiver, and earnestly have a conversation through it.  

This movie kicks restraint right in the balls.

It is a bold choice to take the phallic inspired Xenomorph design from ALIEN and carry it to its farthest extreme by having the Earth invaded by a race of telepathic space wangs.  Sure, the ass lamprey's shape is blatantly suggestive as it slithers menacingly towards the camera, but the adult aliens leave nothing to the imagination.  They are giant cocks with legs, like something escaped from the porn version of JURASSIC PARK.  The mighty E-Rex, if you will.  Some might say this is just an unfortunate oversight by the creature design team, but the alien life cycle shows the truth.  You see, ass lampreys are capable of laying multiple eggs outside of a host, which quickly hatch into tadpole versions of itself.  This means there is no biological reason the aliens need to gestate inside a mammal until bursting forth from the anus, they are just into that sort of thing.  Not coincidentally, adult dick monsters disguise themselves to their human victims by mentally projecting the image of the classic big eyed “visitor” aliens, and we all know what kind of probing those guys are known for. This species is not colonizing the planet for resources or expanding its territory, it's just pursuing its twisted ass fetish.

Incidentally, it turns out the aliens have been unsuccessfully trying to take over the planet for 25 years(!), making them even worse invasion planners than those water-allergic dumbasses from SIGNS.    

Paradoxically, the movie does have a single moment of restraint, in the [Spoiler] death of Col. Curtis.  Freeman never shies away from pushing his paranoid alien hunter to 11, whether he’s shooting the finger off a disobedient soldier in an office meeting or mowing down a pleading herd of dick monsters from his gunship, so his ultimate fate feels like a letdown.  Curtis, in a commandeered helicopter, hunts down Henry and his own turncoat second –in-command, Otis (you know your movie is nuts when Tom Sizemore is the rational one).  Otis returns fire (with a pistol!) and disables the helicopter, which crashes in a fireball just beyond the treeline.  Bor-ing.  

However, if you look in the deleted scenes, you are rewarded with the following.  After Otis shoots up the helicopter, Curtis screams “Son of a bitch” and JUMPS out of the helicopter, firing a machine gun at Otis as he plummets hundreds of feet.   He is then impaled through the chest on a tree top, which snaps off, sending Curtis’ body smashing into every branch on the way down to the ground.  And then the helicopter falls on him.  Why Kasdan chose to trim this sequence of pure brilliance is the biggest head scratcher in the film.

Trust me, I’m only scratching the surface here (I haven't even mentioned Donnie Wahlberg playing the Leukemia suffering, Down Syndrome psychic mentor, Duddits) .  There is so much crazy packed into this deranged gem that it will take me multiple watches to completely wrap my head around it.  Maybe King’s novel explains some of the more ponderous elements, but I prefer to make my own theories (pervy dick monsters).  This experience has convinced me not to be such a snob, though.  Gloriously batshit movies can be found from even the shiniest of big studio productions.  

C Chaka