Black Christmas

Dir: Glen Morgan

2006

*

I’m not overly fond of remakes but as much as I liked the original 1974 Black Christmas, I was open to an updated version. Also, Bob Clark, director of the original film, gave it his blessing and acted as co-producer and Glen Morgan, who made the brilliant Willard remake in 2003, was announced as director. Christmas horrors are hardly ever great but I love them anyway, this film however looked as if it could be a serious contender. I thought Willard was one of the best films of 2003 but it was a box office failure. Glen Morgan stated that if Black Christmas were to bomb it would be the end of his directing career. This film would be a critical and financial failure unfortunately proving his fears correct because, as of 2018, he is yet to make another film. Morgan blamed the failure on studio interference. According to Morgan, he and James Wong had various disputes with Dimension Films executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein, specifically about the film's tone and the way it should end. Morgan's original script ended with Kelli and Leigh in the hospital receiving a phone call from Billy, whom they believed to be dead; this scene, which Morgan filmed, was intended to pay homage to the conclusion of the original film. This ending, however, was scrapped by Bob Weinstein, who requested Morgan write and shoot a different ending. This ultimately resulted in the more violent conclusion that appears in the theatrical cut, which has Billy being impaled on the hospital's Christmas tree-topper. After production concluded, Bob and Harvey Weinstein oversaw the shooting of additional footage in Los Angeles intended only for promotional materials. According to Morgan, he was contacted by the Weinsteins, who wanted to "pick up some shots for TV spots", to which he agreed. Among the footage shot was Lacey Chabert being dragged through the snow; footage of a woman falling from the roof, where there is a "weird lawnmower electric Christmas light thing", an unidentified woman (played by Jillian Murray) discovering a woman floating beneath a frozen lake; Michelle Trachtenberg aiming a shotgun and saying "Merry Christmas, motherfucker" into the camera; and additional shots of Trachtenberg in a hallway holding a shotgun while Billy levitates above her on the ceiling. While this footage never appeared in the finished film, the fact that it appeared in the official theatrical trailer as well as television spots was enough to make Morgan justifiably nervous. If I’m being honest though, I think everyone was responsible for it being a stinker. The original film is famous for being the first modern slasher and the first Christmas horror. It was dark but fiendishly entertaining. The 2006 remake is a piss-poor teen drama with the odd severed head here and there and while I think most teen dramas would be improved by the occasional beheading, this film sucked. I’m also amazed the studio actually interfered as they did considering they only spend $9 million on it. The story is completely different to the original with only a couple of elements in common. William Edward "Billy" Lenz, a boy born with severe jaundice, is constantly abused by his hateful mother, Constance Lenz. With the help of her lover; Constance murders Billy's father, Frank on Christmas Eve 1975 and buries his body in the house's crawlspace. To prevent Billy from talking, she imprisons him in the attic. Years later, Constance attempts to conceive another child, but realizes that her boyfriend is impotent. She goes to the attic and rapes twelve-year-old Billy. Nine months later, Constance gives birth to their daughter, Agnes. Constance uses the occasion of Agnes' birth to further reject Billy, and her boyfriend believes he fathered Agnes. On Christmas Day 1991, Billy escapes from the attic and disfigures eight-year-old Agnes by gouging out her eye. He then brutally murders his mother and her lover. He is caught by police eating cookies made out of his mother's flesh, and is sent to a mental asylum. Fifteen years later, on Christmas Eve, Billy, now 35, escapes from his cell and heads to his former home, now a sorority house for Delta Alpha Kappa at Clemson University outside Boston. At the house, Clair Crosby, one of the sorority girls, is murdered in her bedroom by an unknown figure. Meanwhile, Megan Helms begins to hear noises and goes up to the attic to investigate. Upon finding Clair's body in a rocking chair, Megan is attacked and killed by the same assailant. In the living room, the other sorority sisters, Kelli Presley, Melissa Kitt, Heather Fitzgerald, Dana Mathis and Lauren Hannon, along with their housemother Mrs. Mac, receive a threatening call from a stranger. Clair's half-sister Leigh Colvin soon arrives, searching for her. The withdrawn Eve Agnew presents Heather with a glass unicorn before leaving the sorority house to go home for the holidays. Meanwhile, Kelli's boyfriend, Kyle Autry, arrives but is kicked out when Kelli discovers a video of he and Megan having sex. When the lights suddenly go out, Dana goes to check the power under the house, but encounters the figure in the crawlspace and is dragged underneath and killed with a garden fork. The girls in the house subsequently receive an indecipherable call from Dana's cell phone. Outside while searching for Dana, they find Eve's severed head in her car. With the police are unable to arrive in time due to a snow storm, Kelli, Melissa and Leigh decide to stay inside the house whilst Heather and Mrs. Mac flee. In the car, Heather is murdered, and Mrs. Mac is impaled by a falling icicle. While Kelli and Leigh descend to the garage to investigate, Melissa is attacked and killed by an assailant with a pair of ice skates. Kelli and Leigh return upstairs and find Lauren's eyeless corpse in bed. Kyle returns to the house, and the three go to investigate the attic; while ascending the ladder, Kyle is dragged into the attic and stabbed to death. The killer is revealed to be Agnes, now an adult; Kelli and Leigh watch in horror as Billy appears in the attic as well. Agnes, along with Billy, attacks Kelli, knocking three of them into the empty space between the walls of the house. Kelli and Leigh manage to escape before starting a fire, and leave Billy and Agnes to burn to death. Later, Kelli and Leigh recover at the hospital. Billy, who is partially burned, kills the morgue assistant. While Kelli goes for an x-ray, Agnes (also survived from being burned to death) appears in her hospital room and kills Leigh. When Kelli returns to her room, Agnes appears through the ceiling and attacks her, but Kelli uses a defibrillator to kill Agnes. Moments later, Billy enters through the ceiling and chases Kelli to the stairwell. They briefly fight, ending with Kelli pushing Billy off the railing where he is subsequently impaled on the tip of a Christmas tree, killing him. I liked very little about it. I liked the Christmas tree with heads on it and I liked how Mrs. Mac was killed by an icicle because in the original the killer is repeatedly warned about this by his mother. Mrs Mac was also played by Andrea martin who was in the original – which was cool – but in an interview Morgan said he wanted either Martin or Margot Kidder to play the house mother – I just wish he’d included Kidder in some way. The rest was just mind-numbingly awful and I didn’t care who lived or died. The villains were rubbish and the twist was unimpressive. All nods to the original fell flat and became annoying but only because the original was so much better. It doesn’t deserve to share the same title as the 1974 classic. Pretty much every great horror film has endured an awful remake and in 2006 it was Black Christmas’s turn.