Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Stars Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert,
Kristen Cloke, Crystal Lowe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead,
Oliver Hudson, Andrea Martin, Jessica Harmon
Written by Glen Morgan & Roy Moore
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99
DVD Region 2 | Runtime 80 minutes
Directed by Glen Morgan
Way back in the dim, dark 1980s — and after John Carpenter set the scene with his seminal Halloween — horror film makers got hooked on titles with a holiday theme. So we had films called Christmas Evil (aka Terror in Toyland or You Better Watch Out), Mother's Day, Happy Birthday to Me, Don't Open Till Christmas, April Fool's Day, My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night and Bloody New Year — just to name a few. But the king of them all was 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night, which spawned four sequels: Silent Night, Deadly Night II, Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation and Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker.
So there you have it — proof that Hollywood's barrel-scraping behaviour is not a recent development. And part of that barrel-scraping is, of course, the remake. Which brings us to this version of Black Christmas, which is a remake of the Bob "Porky's" Clark original from 1974. Now I haven't seen the orginal, but reckon it might be worth a look — it stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder and John Saxon. Which is a pretty decent cast, by anyone's standards. The 2006 remake? Well, apart from some young Hollywood hotties of note (Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Lacey Chabert), there's not much else to see here. Like the original, it's set at Christmas time in an American college sorority house (although, like many American films and TV shows these days, it's filmed in Canada). One by one, the girls start to go missing, slain by a serial killer named Billy who used to live in the house and has escaped from the insane asylum (as an aside, why the hell are these asylums so easy to get out of?). Billy (or his sister, I still can't quite work out who the killer really was) puts garbage bags over the girls' heads and pulls out their eyeballs and eats them. Yep, it's that sort of film. So lots of blood and gore, and a splash of nudity (it's a shower scene), sees all the usual horror conventions covered. Missing are a decent plot, storyline and a modicum of suspense. Do yourself a favour and give this one a wide berth. It only gets the one-and-a-half stars because the girls are cute, and they did all their own stunts. And I have a soft spot for Michelle (I was a huge Buffy fan). But if you really feel that this is a film you HAVE to own, then don't buy this UK version — it's a whole 14 minutes shorter than the Region 1 US version. So buy that one — you'll get much more movie for your money.
EXTRAS *** A pretty decent collection for such a crap film. There's a making-of featurette, a featurette about why Black Christmas was remade, an awful lot of deleted scenes, alternate endings and the option to play the film with the US ending (which is quite different to the UK ending).
• COMPETITION: Win a copy of the Black Christmas DVD, plus a T-Shirt