Black X-Mas – Unrated (aka Black
Christmas/2006 Remake/Dimension/Genius/Weinstein)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: D Film: D
2006 was
another bad year for filmmaking, with one of the many unfortunate continuing
cycles being unnecessary remakes and sequels to older and sometimes classic
Horror films. Among the many awful,
terrible films that have ruined the industry was Glen Morgan’s Final Destination 3, an excuse to
mutilate young teens in a way only rapists and pedophiles could compete with. Recently separated in his personal life from
his longtime wife, is that a source of the hostility and obsession with
mutilation and persecution? The
possibility is yes after seeing his rewritten remake of Bob Clark’s 1974 classic
Black Christmas, labeled Black X-Mas here as a sign of how cut
down (pun intended) this remake is.
Just
coming out under the wire for Christmas 2006, Morgan almost tops (or bottoms)
himself with what is a close second as the worst film of the year. Where are The Razzies when you need them
most?
Andrea
Martin is the not-as-drunk guardian of the sorority house that is about to
become ground zero as a killer named Billy escapes a mental institute for the
criminally insane and goes on a rampage.
Unfortunately for us, this remake imitates every film from John
Carpenter’s Halloween onward that
the original Black Christmas made
possible. Michelle Trachtenberg and
Lacey Chabert are among the homogenized look-alikes set up for death (versus
the variety of natural, more interesting women in the first film) and soon, you
hope Martin will find a submachine gun, and shoot up the camera, sets and
characters just to end this mess. The
attempts at background and flashback are half the laughable problem.
Morgan’s
decline from his glory days on The
X-Files seems to have happened during Millennium
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) and it got much worse afterwards. If he does not change his ways, his final
destination will be to become one of the biggest hacks in cinema history. This is almost the nadir of some of the most
embarrassing work we’ve seen in years.
Luckily, both films bombed at the box office and for good reason.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image looks very good at first, then the
editing kicks in and anything good Director Of Photography Robert McLachlan,
A.S.C., C.S.C., goes right down the drain.
Not that it had the clever, groundbreaking form of the original, but it
could have worked. The original film was
soft matte 1.33 for projection up to 1.85 X 1 and this film cannot touch it in
any worthy way. The Dolby Digital 5.1
mix is also not bad, but eventually leans on jumpy noises instead of real
suspense to work. Even monophonic, the
original film has better character in its mix and limits its used of holiday
music instead of using an album’s worth of them.
It also
has a new score by composer Shirley Walker, who sadly passed away. Instead of a simple dignified dedication, the
film slaps on to the end credits a “Goodbye,
Shirley” in the upper right hand corner that is maybe the sickest thing the
film offers outside of pointless gore.
This led the few who paid to see this who she was. Laverne’s partner? A gag from Airplane? A friend of Billy’s also about to be
killed? It typifies the ignorance
involved in this production.
Extras
include three lame alternate endings, lame deleted scenes and two lame
featurettes that make this one of the worst remakes in the genre since Gus Van
Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho,
but this is actually worse!
Skip this
one and see the original film instead. Read
more about the original at the following links:
Black Christmas
25th
Anniversary Edition DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1836/Black+Christmas+(25th+Anniversary
Critical
Mass Widescreen Special Edition DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4621/Black+Christmas+–+Special+Edition
- Nicholas Sheffo
