Schmollywood Babylon

A look back: the Antichristmas of 2013!

Sorry, I'm not gonna be so ambitious to watch another bunch of christmas-themed movies as I did last year, but for you who need some inspiration here's what I published on the blog a year ago! :)

Silent Night, Deadly Night (Charles E. Sellier Jr, 1984)

Sint (Dick Maas, 2010)

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (Lee Harry, 1987)

Santa Claus (René Cardona, 1959)

Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (Monte Hellman, 1989)

Christmas Evil (Lewis Jackson, 1980)

Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation (Brian Yuzna, 1990)

Silent Night (Steven C. Miller, 2012)

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991)

Black Christmas (Glen Morgan, 2006)

Antichristmas: Black Christmas (Glen Morgan, 2006)

I know Bob Clark’s original Black Christmas is considered a perfect, timeless classic - a pre-slasher that defined all the future slashers. And I guess those who say so are correct, at least in part. Because that side story with the cop, John Saxon, is terrible boring and just a filler to make the movie come up in a proper length. That might be why I like Glen Morgan’s colorful remake so much, it just ignores the boring things and goes directly for the jugular. Not saying it’s a masterpiece, but the gay man in me really appreciates the tackiness, the John Water-esque supporting characters, the gore and spectacular set-pieces. Okay, off to the story!

We first meet Billy at the asylum, sitting and preparing for his revenge. He once poked out the eye on his sister, killed his mother and stepfather and ate their flesh in the shape of gingerbread cookies. A nice guy, in every way possible. Did I mention he’s yellow also? Anyway, he escapes back to his old house that’s now a sorority house with a few girls who haven’t gone home to their vacations yet, but still ready to celebrate Christmas Eve! Let me tell you it will be a very bloody Christmas this year…

Alright, this is not a classic – but it’s so much fun! First of all, Morgan literary prays that awful thing called American Christmas (which is even worse than Christmas in Europe – not by much, but still…) with its hysterical contrived “cozy” atmosphere, colorful decorations, fucking Santas and saints in every damn corner and a constant snowing outside. It’s like a John Waters Christmas, right from the fifties – but with nudity, gore, sex and a lovely heretic attitude toward this overrated holiday!

Yeah, I know all of you love it and it’s a great way for you to meet up with your family and relatives, eat good food and get gifts. I respect that, as long you won’t force the Christmas spirit upon me! Back to the movie: the original is famous for its lack of explanations, but the remake delivers everything – and more – on this. This is what makes the original powerful and extra scary. We don’t know why or who. It’s just some crazy bastard killing people. But you couldn’t do that twice. I really enjoy the wonderful white trash back story, with Karin Konoval (brilliant!) as Billy’s psychotic and alcoholic mother. This story is intertwined with the modern story, as flashbacks and storytelling devices and it works great.  Andrea Martin, from the first Black Christmas, is fun and eccentric as the house mother Mrs Mac. It would have been fun to see Margot Kidder back in the saga, but hey, you can’t get everything!

The 2006 Black Christmas has everything except maybe that timeless quality some people crave. But the thing is that I think it’s better now than when I saw it the first time, eight years ago. It’s aged to the better, feeling quite fresh and tasteless in a cool way. The gore is good (but often very fast scenes of carnage), there are some very creative visual solutions and most of the actors seem to be in on what they’re doing. A macabre, twisted version of Christmas – the way I prefer it!

Antichristmas: Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991)

Finally the saga is over - at least for now - and wam bam thank you mam, here's Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, starring the one and only Mickey Rooney who years earlier bashed the first movie because it used a child-icon like Santa to kill grown-up's in sexual situations! Obviously he didn't hesitate to sign up to play Petto (which, when it's pronounced in the movie, sounds like Paedo!), the crazy toy maker inventing toys to kill little children on Christmas eve! This time Brian Yuzna took a step back and produced and wrote the story, but Screaming Mad George is back doing the "surrealistic visual design and effects". This one also tries, very weakly, to connect it to the other movies in the franchise, Neith Hunter is back as Kim and Conan Yuzna as Lonnie - and Clint Howard's Ricky is back and is now a successful Santa-actor at a shopping mall! Crazy. Damn crazy!

Derek (William Thorne - who also showed up in Charles Band's Demonic Toys, very fitting!) witnesses his father get killed by a bizarre toy on the night before Christmas. Two months later he and his mom Sarah (Jane Higginson) has moved to LA to start a new life. But a mysterious stalker is lurking around the neighborhood, and there's something very fishy with old toy maker Petto and his oddity of a son, Pino (I guess you can imagine why...). Soon people starts to die around them, all from very bizarre toys (including Larry the Larva!), bloodthirsty toys!

If part 4 jumped the shark, part 5 jumped a god damn Megalodon! But it also managed to make it more related to Christmas, compared to some of the earlier movies. Sure, the toy-theme could have been set during the whole year (or Halloween, just look at the masterpiece Halloween 3!), but the inclusion of the friendly, fat Mickey Rooney make it more Christmas than anything else. It also reminded me of Stephen King's 1972 short story Battleground, not the basic storyline, just some of the details and one or two scenes of carnage.

I actually once wrote a short story inspired by Battleground, but with conservative Christian pixies attacking a transgender person, wanting to celebrate Midsummer in his apartment. But that's a different story. 

This time Martin Kitrosser directs, and while the spirit of Yuzna sure is there - a lot of it - it's still a bit calmer and less spectacular than if Yuzna actually directed it. But it's still packed with some sex, a few very fun graphic kills and gore and a truly far-out final which could have generated a whole different franchise I was was the rights holder. But I'm not, so instead this became the last in the series (even if some people claim 2012's Silent Night to be a loose remake, but I doubt it!). 

Surprisingly enough, this one and part 4 is the funniest (except maybe the first one) in a trashy series of Christmas-themed horror movies. It's fun how such a franchise just gets more and more creative, and it's needed. That's why movies like Halloween 3, Jason X and Jason Goes to Hell is so much fun, they took the correct route instead of repeating themselves. 

I'll miss this series. They don't make crap like this nowadays.

Antichristmas: Silent Night (Steven C. Miller, 2012)

Director Steven C. Miller got his first big break with Automaton Transfusion, a zombie movie I never really enjoyed - even if it was quite ambitious for it's scale of budget. He later made the entertaining Scream of the Banshee which I liked a lot more (and it stars, among others, Lance Henriksen and mega-cutie Todd Haberkorn! - yeah, I'm very shallow!). I had no idea he directed Silent Night, last years killer santa film. I've heard somewhere it got a second release this year, in cinemas, which is an awesome idea. 

I've read in several places - and comments - that Silent Night should be a remake of some kind of the wonderfully twisted Silent Night, Deadly Night - but nothing could be further from the truth - it's actually more inspired by this real event! There's two references to the SNDN - including "Garbage Day" and "Psycho Grandpa" - but I think they're there just to have some winks to horror fans out there - like me.

Welcome to the town where nothing happens, a crimeless nothingness where the biggest year of the year is the annual Santa parade. This morning is special. Jordan, one of the cops has disappared - probably with a woman - and it's up to young widow Aubrey Bradimore (Jamie King) to do his job until they find a solution. But she ends up in the violent traces of a brutal serial killer, a serial killer dressed like good ol' Santa Clause! He impales, chops, shoots and burns his way through the Christmas spirit and nothing seems to be able to stop him! And it doesn't help that everyone in town is dressed like Santas this special day...

Silent Night is an awesome sight to behold, clearly the best Killer Santa film in many, many years. It's not perfect - the pre-production was very short what I've heard - but it looks great, with that terrible, perfect Christmas atmosphere I hate so much. No snow of coruse, because it's in some sunny town midwestern town in the US, but everything else is there: the ornaments, the lights, Christmas trees and songs. Even if it's very violent and graphic - there's some nifty practical gore effects on display here - it's the dark, dark, dark humor that caught my attention. Every actor is good, McDowell seems to have a lot of fun and Jamie King is a perfect lead, but it's Donal Logue as the extremely cyncial truth-telling Santa that really caught my attention. So much fun, so much hate in one little character. Brilliant writing, brilliant acting.

What I especially like about Silent Night is the totaly lack of defence for Christmas. It's just not there. Sure, it's terrible that he kills people - but in all honest, they all deserve it, even the kids! There's no message at all, that this should be the time of peace and friendship and all that bullshit. Everyone is actually a cynic, almost everyone at least, but most of them are also quite likable. It's like everyone accepts their destiny, they just have to live with this shitty commercialism and shallow happiness. 

So, as you can imagine, this movie fits me very like a glove! 

Antichristmas: Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation (Brian Yuzna, 1990)

Also known as Bugs, Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation finally jumps the shark so much it borders to insanity. Alright, if it wasn't for the title it would probably feel less crazy. Like the other movies it's set during Christmas, but it's not connected to the Billy/Ricky storyline from part 1 to 3, this is a completely different set-up and it's friggin' wonderful. I guess most people wouldn't agree with me on that last statement, but you see... this is a very typical Brian Yuzna movie, shamefully forgotten by the fan crowd, and probably among his best work outside The Progeny, Society and Amphibious 3D. 

Neith Hunter is Kim, an inspiring journalist who thinks she's found a scoop. One night a young woman jumps to hear death from a building in Los Angeles. She's also on fire and her legs are twisted and looks bizarre. Kim starts to investigate the case and befriends Fima (Maud Adams), a book store keeper in the same house. Around this Fima is a strange, disturbing homeless person, Ricky - but obviously no the same Ricky we've have learned to love in the earlier films - played by Clint Howard, who's acting very strange up on the roof. Soon Kim starts having visions, hallucinations... and she's in more danger than she ever could imagine from the beginning!

From the start is SNDN4 quite standard, a TV-like production with a couple of fun actors (Reggie Bannister makes a cameo also, which is nice - and the brilliant Allyce Beasley have a supporting part! ), but it won't take long until the twisted and very psychedelic effects of Screaming Mad George takes over, together with the creative and intensive visual eye of Yuzna, and it transforms from not special to really, really wild. I've never been a fan of the idea of hallucinations and if they're real or not, but it works here - probably because they're so extreme. Like in Yuzna's directional debut, Society, we see bodies melt, transform, body parts twisted into each other. There's some magnificent special effects work on display and the violence - while not overly gory - is very sadistic and energic. Screaming Mad George also created some disgusting bug-like creatures, or worms - hard to say what the hell is going on - who steals the show when they show up. 

After the terribly boring part 3 this is a welcome change of style and ambition in the franchise. If you even can call it a working franchise? I mean, it's just vaguely Christmas-themed horror movies with a number after the title! But don't expect genius writing here, this is all about what meets the eyes - and not the brain. Yuzna have a talent for slightly sexual horror who never goes too far in violence. Outside the sex he goes all the way, but when he goes erotic - there's some very strange things happening. Here you'll some absurd stuff, but it's so over-the-top it won't disturb you... I think! Maybe more disgust in a lovingly, entertaining way. Society does this almost all the time, this one not so much but probably enough to freak out one or two folks out there.

A pleasant surprise, gory, slimy and shark-jumping. That's my kind of jolly good Christmas flick!

Antichristmas: Christmas Evil (Lewis Jackson, 1980)

Christmas Evil sounds a lot like a simple horror movie, one of those Santa slashers who still haunts the world. The original title, You Better Watch Out, fits a lot better to this super-dark comedy. It's so dark it's rarely funny, but still - in the tragedy it presents in glorious detail - is hilarious. 

Brandon Maggart is Harry Stadling and Harry likes Christmas. No, he doesn't even like it. He loves it. He loves it like no other man. Probably to hide the fact that he saw Santa "cuddle up" with momma as a kid and now he wants to protect everything that's the American Christmas for him. He has a book for bad people and one for good people, and if you happens to end up in the first - then you're smoked! So Harry leaves his job at a toy factory and slowly lets himself transform into Santa... a highly irritated, but still good-hearted Santa. A combination that means a dangerous Santa....

If I make my stand-point clear here: if Phase IV is the 2001 of killer ant flicks, this is the 2001 of psycho Santa flicks. And that's a fact. It's also so much more than a psycho Santa flick, a lot more. It's actually more of a black drama telling us the story of a man that physically and mentally slowly transforms into the one thing he loves the most and then have a hard time dealing with how he's gonna live up to it. Only that is a brilliant set-up and with Brandon Maggart in the lead, it's also becomes of the best comedies ever.

It's a hard movie to describe. While there's a few deaths here and there, and come cheap and fun gore, Christmas Evil basically shows us Harry getting annoyed. Or more introvert. There's some fine details, like the awesome Jeffrey DeMunn as Harry's worried younger brother, who can't stand his brother, but loves him so much. Complex characters in something called genre cinema is always welcome. Because who cares about empty characters? I don't.

I can understan why John Waters calls it one of the best Christmas movies ever, with it's black comedy, disturbing characters (Harry's affectionate behaviour towards children, especially small girls, IS very ambigious - but I think its beause he cares about children, not something else - but you can read it in many ways!) and the best Christmas atmosphere since Christmas Vacation and maybe the remake of Black Christmas. 

I'm not gonna spoil it (of course), but the ending is magical. I'm not sure what to make of it, because it could be read two ways - and both of them are beautiful in their own ways. Somehow it's the only way the movie could have ended to keep up the great quality of the rest. 

This is one of my shorter reviews in a while, but sometimes you don't need to write more. It's perfect as it is. 

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Antichristmas: Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (Monte Hellman, 1989)

Finally the franchise jumps the shark, but still is slightly disappointing. This time Monte Hellman – of all people – took over the directing duties, threw out the first script and more or less wrote a new one together with his old pal Steven Gaydos – who didn’t receive any credit at all. I wonder what happen behind the scenes of Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out, because the end result is everything but exciting – even if it should have been a blast with Bill Moseley as the now brain-dead Ricky (who took over the killer-role in the second film), who somehow wakes up and tries to hunt down the girl having a psychic link with him!

Yes. That’s the story. Moseley walks around with a glass helmet on top of his skull, stumbling around like a zombie attacking people from time to time with an array of weapons. There’s a boring side story with Robert Culp and his partner driving around in their car looking for Ricky, quite similar to what Hugo Stiglitz did in one of those Mexican zombie-flicks he did in the 80’s. Driving around, doing nothing, looking out the windows, talking to other cops and drive around some more. That’s cool when Stiglitz does it, and it should be cool with Culp doing it – but no siree!

I think Hellman had bigger plans for this movie. He wanted to make a more serious sequel, darker and grittier – but just by putting that glass helmet (or what you would call it!) on the head of a pale and sleazy Bill Moseley everything fails. He looks like a humanoid Robot Monster wandering around staring at people. Not sure if I buy the transformation from the wacky, muscular Ricky-Terminator to the Lizardman-Ricky, even if Moseley always is good, but maybe a bit wrongly casted in the part.

At least they don’t change the story from the first two parts, as the first sequel did. For example, in that one, it wasn’t a priest being shot by mistake but a deaf janitor – which also explains why he doesn’t react to what the police scream at him from behind.

You know, Better Watch Out is such an empty, pointless movie. It desperately ties to be something it isn’t, a Halloween-clone. I can’t say it worth watching, but still have a few fun scenes here and there – for example during the final when Ricky (and indirectly his brother) gets their revenge to one person from the other two movies who is one of the few that deserves to be “punished”.

This movie is guilty to be “Naughty!” and deservers a whack in the head.

Antichristmas: Santa Claus (René Cardona, 1959)

From the mind behind Survive! and Wrestling Women versus the Murderous Robot comes the ultimate trip into Santaland, the acid-oozing Santa Vs. Satan adventure Santa Claus. You know, there's no point in even try to write down a synopsis for the story - it's actually so thin, so stupid, it's hard to even try. But let's say this: Santa gets in trouble when one of the Devil's minions, Mr Pitch, gets out and tries to sabotage Christmas Eve with his shennenigans! 

To be honest, it's a quite glossy looking cheapie. Cardona has always been a pro and uses wide, nice shots over sparkling, over-worked sets. José Elías Moreno as Santa does a good job, nothing to complain about there. He's big and jolly, silly and dangerously close to behave like a child molester. José Luis Aguirre 'Trotsky', yes, that's how he's credited, is fun as the little devil. Except when he's chewing the scenery like there's no tomorrow. And he does that all the time. 

Let me explain how this movie begins: close your eyes and see one hundred children, divided into groups of ethnicity. They all look terribly unhappy, like something is holding their parents at gunpoint behind the camera and they're also forced to sing silly stereotypical songs represantive for their country - except the "African" children who just dances around like the primitive natives everyone expects them to be. This goes on for at least 10 minutes, one group of children after the other. After that we're treated to a unique insight to Santa's observatory, which has a huge computer-like thingie with human parts and Merlin - the one and only - doing his magic in another room. 

This narration explains the place quite good: "This is Santa's Magic Observatory. What wonderful intstruments! The Ear Scope! The Teletalker, that knows everything! The Cosmic Telescope! The Master Eye! Nothing that happens on Earth is unknown to Santa Claus!" Alright? You got it? Good! Let's continue!

The kids are doing all the work, so we're basically talking about child labor here. Santa's a smart dude. He knows that midgets are more expensive than kids. But hey, someone need to make the toys for the millions of nice children out there - the bad ones goes to hell, so you know. What we from hell is something right out from Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World, just a little bit more creepy. In a scene only available in the Mexican version we see the doomed souls walk by, watched by a bunch of dancing devils. 

This spirit of Mexican Christmas, gotta love it!

Then Santa takes his gigantic toy reindeers and travels out in the world to give gifts to kids - including poor Lupina, who have a dream-vision surrounded by creepy, life-size dancing dolls. The stuff nightmares are made of. But somehow she survives this ordeal.

You know, it's hard to write about Santa Claus because it's so terribly stupid and empty. But it's also entertaining, but far from a psychotronic masterpiece. It would have needed more hell, more devils and more psychedelic imagery to satisfy those needs before the good old religous brainwash-message at the end!

Still... I like it. I can almost recommend it. I mean, it's out on Blu-ray! Come on! You need to own it!

Antichristmas: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (Lee Harry, 1987)

I had real problems starting this review, mostly because it's a movie that completely lacks depth or meaning - but still, somehow, fascinates me. So I had to go to IMDB and check out the official page. I found something very important in the trivia section: 

"When Eric Freeman played the role of Ricky, he had a strong eyebrow movement in his performance. His eyebrows moves up and down in total of 130 times."

And yes. That's true. Because I've never seen a human being (or animal) move their eyebrows as much as Eric Freeman does, and thanks to the wonderful world of the internet someone made a montage of it:

So, but if we let the eyebrows go I can state two things:

1. Eric Freeman is a terrible, terrible actor.

2. Silent Night, Deadly Night OPart 2 is actually not that bad.

It was made to recoup some of the money lost after the first movie got banned everywhere and Mickey Rooney threaten to "run the scums who made this movie out of town" - at least until he needed the money and starred in one of the sequels as well. The first idea was to shoot a couple of scenes with a mental patient imagining that he/she did the kills from the first movie, but the storyline evolved and suddenly it was Billy's little brother Ricky (who's featured in the first film) who's gone mad after his brothers murder spree and now himself have become a killer. He recalls the story of his life to his doctor - both what his brother did and later his own murders!

This means the first 35-40 minutes is footage from the first film, with a wrap-around-story starring Eric Freeman. This works better than it would. Then it goes over to his own life, which have a couple of fun kills - but is less gory than the first adventure and then it takes another turn. I know some people wouldn't agree with me, but it's not boring. Freeman's terrible acting is quite fun to watch and the flashbacks (which includes stuff neither he or his brother was involved in and stuff where he was only an infant, so he has a very good memory!) looks quite good.

SNDNP2 is actually an extremely stupid film with some very good ideas. If you see it as it is, silly, you will enjoy it. Pity the flashback footage from the first film is the from the R-rated, more or less bloodless version, which would had made it even more entertaining. The build-up from the interview with the doctor, the scenes from the first movie, the new flashbacks and the final scenes which haves Ricky on a rampage is interestingly enough very evenly put together. Like it was meant to be this from the beginning. Which it wasn't, but sometimes even filmmakers have some luck. 

I can find any other things to write, sorry. This is silliness extreme, with exploding eyes and flashback-nudity. I have seen better, I have seen worse... but it's still a quite logical and fun sequel to the sleazy original trasherpiece. For slasher-fans only. Or for those who's seen it all and looks for a final idiot trip before the eternal sleep. 

Antichristmas: Sint (Dick Maas, 2010)

A couple of years ago during our first visit to Weekend of Horrors in Bottrop we spent one evening watching a screener of Sint, the latest movie from Dutch director Dick Maas. I even think we saw it dubbed to English, terrible - I know, but that didn't stop us from enjoying this fucker to the max. I've only seen two other movies from Maas, The Lift (and yes, I also saw his own remake of that one, Down) and of course Amsterdamned - both highly original, quirky and original horror/thrillers with their own unique touch. And with my dislike for everything Christmas is always nice to see movies who bashes this silly holiday and does it with style. Sint delivers here.

Everytime year around Christmas in Netherlands Sinterklaas ( Saint Nicholas) and his small army of helpers - the Zwarte Piets. What's a big no-no to talk about is that 36 years ago Sinterklaas came, the 5th of December, and killed hundreds of hundreds of people. A government cover-up kept this a secret, but now it's time again... and the only survivor from the massacre is now an old, bitter, alcoholic cop who once a years becomes a nervous wreck! But this year he's the only one who knows how to defend himself when Sinterklaas comes back with his helpers, ready to slaughter everyone in sight!

There's actually a lot more story to it and I probably didn't even got the Sinterklaas thing right, but what I do know is that Sint (aka Saint) is one helluva fun movie. I really don't understand why Rare Exports (who I haven't seen) got all the buzz when I'm pretty sure Sint delivers a lot more gore, action, witty dialogue and a critical comment on the commercialism around this time of the year. Sint is a wonder of independent filmmaking, boasting a visual tour-de-force with sometimes cheap, but always impressive special effects - both digital and practical. There's enough gore and bloodshed to keep everyone happy (I'm thinking of giving my mother a copy!) and still feels fresh, lush and expensive.

Director Maas clearly understands the fine line between being silly and smart. What he does here - just like in his other movies - is to make something so absurd, so funny, but without taking aware the seriousness of the situation. People die. People suffer, there's nothing comedic (well, yeah, sometimes...) with death here. Another fine thing is the conspiracy feeling, the governement knows everything - they know that once every 36 years a horribly disfigured Sinterklaas comes back - from the sea - together with an army of demons to kill everyone. Only that premise makes it irresistible. 

Before it was released Maas and the PR team created a fake anti-Sint campaign, which still is considered to be the truth over at Wikipedia: "While children are not permitted to see the film, parental concern arose over the film's poster, seen in the streets and in the lobbies of movie theaters. It shows Sinterklaas with a mutilated face and a malevolent look. Some people were concerned that this could be confusing and frightening for little children that still believe in Sinterklaas. A legal complaint was filed in October 2010, requesting the removal of all posters. In the subsequent court case, director Dick Maas argued that if parents could make their children believe that Sinterklaas existed they could also inform their children that the man on the poster was not the real Sinterklaas. The court ruled in favor of Maas, noting that the mutilated face was not visible enough on the poster, and rejected the complaint." Brilliant!

This is one of those few super-creative films that actually lives up to its premise. I've seen several other very ambitious Christmas-themed genre movies recently, but this one still holds up as one of the best.

And don't be afraid, the R2UK DVD is the original language with English subs, just the way you must see it.