Cool News
Donnierobot Survives BLACK CHRISTMAS...Barely!! But, Lacy Chabert Is In It!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Merrick here...
Donnierobot sent in this look at BLACK CHRISTMAS, which is a remake of a 1974 movie called BLACK CHRISTMAS (shockingly enough). Here's a look at the fi;m's trailer:
Yowza. Someone needs to post a better resolution trailer for this thing...I couldn't find any. Although, I'm not sure it would make any difference.
The original was directed by Bob Clark, who later went on to PORKY’S and A CHRISTMAS STORY. It starred Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and Keir Dullea (David Bowman!). It’s about a psycho killer at a Sorority house during Christmas break. This time around, the carnage is helmed by Glen Morgan (THE X-FILES, MILLENNIUM, SPACE: ABOVE & BEYOND, and writer of FINAL DESTINATIONs 1 & 3).
Lacy Chabert is in it! Good God she’s hot! Alas, according to Donnierobot, even her intense desirability doesn’t make this film worthwhile – a notion which is almost inceonceivable.
Look for BLACK CHRISTMAS on December 22. Here’s Donnierobot….
So I just got back from seeing a screening of Black Christmas, I have a lot of love for the original , think it’s a really creepy movie that leaves a lot to your imagination, it features a great cast and well in my opinion is the father of the modern slasher movie but this remake well for me it sums up the dilemma of the modern horror film, although the genre doesn’t seem to be in crisis it is definitely at a crossroads with several paths being taken , you have the so called splat-pack (Eli Roth , Alexandra Aja & the Saw crew) who are trying to push for a new level of brutal gore, people like Lucky McGee who his travelling his own dark road of atmosphere over gore and new kids on the block Adam Green (Hatchet) & Steven C Miller (Automaton Transfusion) who are trying to get back the essence of 80’s splatter with little money but huge creativity and then this strain of studio horror which seems to be created in a board room for 17 year old kids, that want a quick easy thrill ride without engaging their minds I’d like to say that the remake of Black Christmas went for ANY of the first three, but unfortunately I can’t, I’d like to say that it at least enjoyable trash but again , I just cant.
I assume most of you know the plot, a mystery killer stalks sorority girls at Christmas? I really don’t want to talk about the story here so much, I want to talk about the crafting of the film, if the talk backers will cut me some slack? What the filmmakers have done is ! nothing short of a cinematic travesty , it fails on so many levels on all levels actually. The first question that sprang into my mind was ‘Are American youth so unimaginative they need everything spelling out for them?’ It’s seems they must be, its 84 minutes are so crammed with flashbacks and explanations that it leaves NOTHING to your imagination, everything is spelt out in big bloody letters, of all the flashback scenes the killers childhood is particularly badly handled the whole plot is played out in these flashbacks, it gives you the entire movie in 10minutes, the scenes in the sanatorium are so badly acted and stuffed full of cliches I was actually embarrassed watching them.
As for the dialogue and characters , it’s pitiful, it really is, there are more ‘Fuck Christmas ’ lines than Bad Santa,like none of the girls love Christmas or anything for that matter the dialogue is along the lines of ‘it’s snowing hard out there, the snowflakes are the size of ball sacks’ and more importantly none of the girls are really likable and there is no one you care about, I mean I wanted them all to die quickly to get this fucking thing over with. The murders are uninspired and although some of them are gory most are so badly edited that you have no idea what is going on, the sound design is shocking, the music is too loud , key dialogue is muddy and unheard, the editing of the final fight scene is so badly handled I couldn’t make out who was doing what to who and it features so many of those fucking annoying skewed MTV camera angles that I wanted to scream.
Add to this the fact that no one calls the police until they find a headless body despite several girls going missing and lots of obscene phone calls , cringworthy dialogue about sisterhood and convoluted characters that just pop out of nowhere to push the story where it needs to be without any real point and well it just adds up to a massive stinking turd of a movie, the! y could have filmed it in 3-D and it would have been flat. I hate to be so negative but it IS appalling , inept and unneeded . It’s a film full of missed opportunity the killer could have been a sexually twisted creature with a really dark fucked up undercurrent but it’s just a hulking monster, deaths could of included all manner of crazy Christmas paraphernalia but use the same plastic bag death repeated from the original movie over and over again I’m sorry but for me there were no positive points in it’s favour, we attended the screening with 7 people , 2 liked it and everyone else thought it was wretched.
I assume most of you know the plot, a mystery killer stalks sorority girls at Christmas? I really don’t want to talk about the story here so much, I want to talk about the crafting of the film, if the talk backers will cut me some slack? What the filmmakers have done is ! nothing short of a cinematic travesty , it fails on so many levels on all levels actually. The first question that sprang into my mind was ‘Are American youth so unimaginative they need everything spelling out for them?’ It’s seems they must be, its 84 minutes are so crammed with flashbacks and explanations that it leaves NOTHING to your imagination, everything is spelt out in big bloody letters, of all the flashback scenes the killers childhood is particularly badly handled the whole plot is played out in these flashbacks, it gives you the entire movie in 10minutes, the scenes in the sanatorium are so badly acted and stuffed full of cliches I was actually embarrassed watching them.
As for the dialogue and characters , it’s pitiful, it really is, there are more ‘Fuck Christmas ’ lines than Bad Santa,like none of the girls love Christmas or anything for that matter the dialogue is along the lines of ‘it’s snowing hard out there, the snowflakes are the size of ball sacks’ and more importantly none of the girls are really likable and there is no one you care about, I mean I wanted them all to die quickly to get this fucking thing over with. The murders are uninspired and although some of them are gory most are so badly edited that you have no idea what is going on, the sound design is shocking, the music is too loud , key dialogue is muddy and unheard, the editing of the final fight scene is so badly handled I couldn’t make out who was doing what to who and it features so many of those fucking annoying skewed MTV camera angles that I wanted to scream.
Add to this the fact that no one calls the police until they find a headless body despite several girls going missing and lots of obscene phone calls , cringworthy dialogue about sisterhood and convoluted characters that just pop out of nowhere to push the story where it needs to be without any real point and well it just adds up to a massive stinking turd of a movie, the! y could have filmed it in 3-D and it would have been flat. I hate to be so negative but it IS appalling , inept and unneeded . It’s a film full of missed opportunity the killer could have been a sexually twisted creature with a really dark fucked up undercurrent but it’s just a hulking monster, deaths could of included all manner of crazy Christmas paraphernalia but use the same plastic bag death repeated from the original movie over and over again I’m sorry but for me there were no positive points in it’s favour, we attended the screening with 7 people , 2 liked it and everyone else thought it was wretched.
-
+ Expand All
-
the hollyweird suits need to wake up and realize trying to cash in on luke warm remakes of crap that doesn't need to be remade just totally alienates the fans. Take chances and they will come
-
I can't remember the name, but Santa had an axe.
-
MCMLXXVI is a WANKER - Do you agree?
-
woo yeah
-
the original sucked, too.
-
God I loved the original Black Christmas. I think the atmosphere is awesome, and the creepy POV shots are much more creepy than any Halloween ones. Also, I love that you dont find out who the killer is. Is it the nutty piano smashing boyfriend? John Saxon should so have reprised his role.... nobody can do town police officer quite like him.
-
I much preferred Olivia Hussey.
-
or atleast I do...
-
"‘Are American youth so unimaginative they need everything spelling out for them?’"
Yes....and appearantly grammar for this guy. You cant say you hate chocolate while drinking chocolate milk! -
a comma is not a period.
-
I am so sick of these liberal reviewers attacking christmas under the guise of a review. It is obvious Donnierobot is probably a card carrying member of the ACLU who would like nothing better than to destroy Christmas. I bet if this was about Hannaka or whatever you call it he would have loved it. Admit it, Donnierobot. You hate all things christmas, you grinch son of a bitch. I encourage all Christmas loving patriots to see this movie not once, but twice.
-
Nov 15, 2006 12:28:18 PM CST
So...this is Saw 4: Christmas Sorority Party Massacre?
by stovetopstuffin'
We got Jigsaw's voice at the end, and a bunch of REALLY dark shots of what I assume are horror scenes, and it looks like Slumber Party Massacre with a Holiday setting. Those Hallmark ads for the dancing Snowmen singing Jinglebell Rock (or whatever they are this year) are scarier that this looks to be.
Lovely. I'll pass. -
learn to write. why should I trust the opinion of a person who writes run-on sentences like that for mass consumption.
-
much like the aforementioned The Thing.
-
is there any tit in it or what
-
Figure out how to use punctuation!! Reading this review (although nice and honest) hurt my eyes and my brain.
-
That's the first time I've ever heard of her...
-
What in this review shows that he hates Christmas?
-
Although it does have some actress-y yumminess as well.
-
You want to lighten up on the "learn to punctuate" comments? This isn't the New York Times review section. This poor guy sends in a review unsolicited, to a website that's known for not spell-checking its posts. Not to mention that the internet teams with this sort of thing. Get over it. I'd like to thank him for taking the time to write us a review. A well thought out and informative one. I'm sorry your eyes were all bleeding too much from the poor punctuation to read it. I reviewed for AICN once a while ago. Put a lot of effort in. Generally got favourable responses. Then one guy chewed me out for putting a single apostrophe in the wrong space. You're not worth the effort. Go get a life.
-
At least Lacy Chabert is stil hot. Nice photo.
-
Harry really fantasizes about himself having sex with hot female celebrities? Like, in the fantasy, does he still look like Harry?
-
This will be good movie. Lots of pretty girls and kick-ass action, like BloodRayne with snow.
-
Punctuation should only belong in newspapers like New York Times no one else should use punctuation
-
"...in big bloody letters." Except, of course, the correct spelling of "spelled." Sorry. That was just really funny to me for some reason.
-
I, along with Bill O'Reilly, officially declare war on your talkbacker war on Black Christmas. I mean, is this what this great nation has come too? Hating on Black Christmas? Whats next? A ban on White Christmas. Please, people, for the love of money, is NOTHING sacred anymore?
-
Yes punctuation is lovely. I'm very much in favour of it. When I pay money to read something like a newspaper, a book, etc. I expect to see it used properly. If I was marking a child's essay I would definitely take note of it. I try to use it well myself and don't particularly like to see it used poorly on the net or elsewhere. But I don't think it's nice to put other people down for it. When I'm reading something like an online review, submitted by a random person under unknown circumstances, I'm far more interested in the content of the review than how many commas were used and where. If the form is more important for you than the content, ruining your enjoyment of the piece and extinguishing any gratitude you might have had for the writer, then that's a shame for you I guess. My condolences. You'll find precious little here to meet your exacting standards. Might I suggest though that you at least stop bagging out the person who wrote it? Or did I miss the part where they owe you ingrates something?
-
I'm working on a screenplay for a serious Oscar-Nom type Art movie that I plan to shop to Lacey. It stars her as a hot semi-famous actress with few movie prospects and very low self-esteem. She meets a 30-something slightly fat dude (played to perfection by me), who introduces her to relax and enjoy the joys of prolonged, intense anal sex. There's pretty much no dialogue, and the running time will be as long as my two-fisted dose of Viagra lasts. Anyone know how I can get in touch with her to pitch the idea ? And if she wants me to write a role for either Michelle Trachtenberg, Neve Campbell or Jennifer Love Hewitt, let her know I can swing that. If nothing else, I should score a Godzilla-Esque rave review from Harry on this one.
-
Why does this website love Adam Green and his horrible move HATCHET???? This guy has about as much talent as Mike Love from the Beach Boys. Every chance this website gets to praise him....they do. Baffles the mind, he must blew someone good in Texas.
-
is in the season seven episode of Buffy, "Him", where she is grinding with this guy, and you can totally see her ass crack, and it is evident that she probably wasn't wearing underwear. A very attractive person, and was also great in the underrated Eurotrip. Also, "My Bloody Valentine" came out around the same time as "Black Christmas" and is a much better film in terms of genre and for how ridiculous it is. A killer is killing people because they're throwing a valentine's day dance on the anniversary of his "death". The town KNOWS that he'll stop if they cancel the dance, but "We can't cancel the Valentine's Day dance! It's tradition!" Such a good movie. That should be remade.
-
And by the way "spelt" is a perfectly acceptable past tense verb. According to Dictionary.com and several other sources I checked, "spelt" and "spelled" are interchangeable, with "spelt" being a more common British variant (but no less acceptable in US english). So before you split your sides with laughter maybe you should make sure you know what you're talking about.
-
Don't get me wrong, I think My Bloody Valentine is one of the top dozen or so slasher films ever made, a great little Canadian treasure, but first, it was made in 1981 while Black Christmas was made back in 73 or 74, which if you put it in the context of the first big slasher explosion are almost opposite ends of the cycle. Black Christmas was one of the first, and it isn't quite a slasher, owing a lot to the earlier cycle of proto-slashers that include movies like Dementia 13. And Black Christmas was just absolutely trailblazing. Probably the best and creepiest phone calling killer ever, still effective after all these years and when it came out absolutely shocking. And Margot Kidder is a force of nature in this movie. I started grinning just thinking about her scene with the little kids at the Santa Claus thing. Now on to the WHY? Hey, what was really good about Black Christmas? Maybe that the movie teased you with the killer all the way through and left you still not knowing who it was at the end? Yeah, that probably. Maybe the hint that getting killed was just one step in what happened to the victims, that the whole of what was happening was maybe even darker than just murder? Yeah, some of that, too. Oh, and maybe that the girls were pretty well drawn characters, the kind where you were invested in the survival of even the ones you didn't like very much? That too. And what does this Black Christmas seem to have dumped? Yeah, all of that stuff. I don't know what's worse, Omen style remakes where at the end you're wondering why they bothered, or this kind where they missed pretty much the whole damned point of the movie they're remaking. Damn, maybe Snyder is a genius. I wasn't that crazy about his Dawn of the Dead remake, but at least it was...you know...movie-like.
-
Nov 15, 2006 10:48:30 PM CST
Best horror remake: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers '78
by osmosis jones
Scariest final shot EVER.
-
I almost buy this movie, every time I see it at the store, just because of that last shot. The frozen expression and mixing on the scream is insane.
-
are out in force today!!!
oh no 3 exclamations...book me officer.Damn ya'll take a shot of cuervo or something.Why in the world do you guys care about grammar and punctuation so much? Are you all english teachers? Osmosis is correct btw Invasion 78 rocked! If anything above is mispelled or bdly punctuated,don't worry i asked jeebus for forgivness and i have it on good authority that he has granted it -
The teens in this type of film are often very unpleasant people, and I was wondering if anyone had ever made a horror film where the normal convention of 'fear the bad guy/empathise with the victims' had been intentionally reversed. You know, teens who are so awful you root for them to be killed, like the killer is performing a public service. This could be an interesting satire, maybe, what with the Paris Hilton/Lindsey Lohan phenomenon. If this has been done, please let me know so I can watch the film. If not, please credit me when you steal my idea. Name a character after me or something.
-
I wrote this review, i wrote it yesterday after a late night of watching this piece of crap, my macbook pro had crashed and was using the work PC trying not to get caught. So I made some spelling mistakes, sue me you fucking nerds. I write for several magazines and have submitted several reviews to AICN and am usually on the ball. get off my case.
-
http://tinyurl.com/udu6p
-
Writing your review and then sniffing around to see what the geeks will say is a bit like taking a big shit and then sitting up off the toilet to look at what you just made. And also, If your the dude who gets to post a review on a web site, you need to use your spellchecker. Period. I dont care if you write for the Magazine of Advanced Science and Technology, if your the 'Guy', then you have the responsibility to check your work, regardless of how damn late your up. Cry me a river. BTW: Expect talkbakers to give you a bad time. Its what they do, so your not being singled out. All posters get slammed.
-
With the following exceptions: "sitting up off the toilet" What the heck does that mean? Can one sit up OFF a toilet? "And also, If your " "I dont care if you write... how damn late your up . Lets see... hmm. I'd say that's a four-out-of-ten. Very poor work. Furthermore your criticism makes no sense. He doesn't "get to post a review", he submits one. He didn't accept his own work nor did he put it up. It would therefore be the final responsibility of whoever did put it up to check the spelling if they felt so inclined. Secondly, using his spellchecker would alert him only to bad spelling when in fact everyone was complaining about his grammar. Not his spelling. So in conclusion, I'm lowering your mark to zero-out-of-ten. Congratulations on being stupid as well as pedantic. Please don't take offense though. You're not being singled out. All posters get slammed. Isn't it awesome that we all get to be assholes and then excuse out behaviour as peergroup mentality?
-
Part of my post got deleted there. It cuts out on the part where I mention that you use the word "your" instead of "you're" four times and use a capital letter on "If" even though it's not at the beginning of a sentence. You also contract words without using apostrophes and refer to "Guy" as a definite article which makes little sense. All in all your post is significantly worse than the review you are complaining about. Thanks for trying though.
-
the internet TEEMS with this sort of thing, not TEAMS, unless you're suggesting the internet is in some kind of partnership.
It's Y'ALL, a contraction for "you all". The apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters in the word "you".
And one of the most misspelled words in the english language is...misspelled. Double "s".
Oh, yeah, I love Lacey Chabert, but this movie will suck balls. And I'm not referring to the round ornaments that hang on Christmas trees. I'm referring to testicles that hang in hairy sacks between male legs. -
but since I wasn't the one bitching in the first place about spelling etc. I can't say it bothers me. I've pointed out some of the mistakes that others have made here but not because it bothers me or is a habit. I'm just trying to illustrate how petty and annoying it is.
Readers Talkback
User Login
Top Talkbacks
- Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012 -- 383 total posts 380 posts
- New JUDGE DREDD post production footage pops up -- 111 total posts 111 posts
- WTF HOLLYWOOD: SOLARBABIES -- 75 total posts 73 posts
- HANNA's Saoirse Ronan to boss around seven little people -- 71 total posts 68 posts
- Does ‘SNL’ Rhyme With ‘Deschanel’?? Learn Which SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Vet Hosts After Sexy Zooey!! -- 77 total posts 55 posts
- If the Behind the Scenes Pics of the Day drops her pen, pick it up, but don’t look at her legs or else it will be on your record. -- 54 total posts 48 posts
- There's a STAR TREK video game that is going to lead into JJ's STAR TREK 2 apparently... -- 165 total posts 41 posts
- Herc’s Seen Tonight’s Return Of THE WALKING DEAD!! Discuss Also DOWNTON ABBEY, FEAR FACTOR, PAN AM, ONCE, SIMPSONS, DYNAMITE, LUCK, SHAMELESS, BAIT CAR, THE GRAMMYS And More!! Sunday Is Sweeps Day 11!! -- 41 total posts 41 posts
- To Commemorate The 3D Release Of STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas Wants You To Know...Greedo Shoots First!! -- 500 total posts 35 posts
- Avid Comic Reader Hercules Does Battle With Tedium During Kevin Smith’s COMIC BOOK MEN! -- 28 total posts 28 posts