The episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? covering Black Christmas (2006) was Written and Narrated by Adam Walton, Edited by Juan Jimenez, Produced by Andrew Hatfield and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
The weather has turned, all of your local stores will now be well stocked up with Christmas tat, and parents will be frantically searching for new and inventive naughty shenanigans for that fucking elf to get up to, and for kids to jump out of bed and probably forget they had a ‘magic’ elf that’s probably riding around on the pet cat. That’s right gore-hounds, Christmas is upon us, so you know what that means? Christmas carnage! Yes, there’s nothing we like more here in the haunted JoBlo dungeons than revisiting some classic festive bloodshed. Of course, this time of year always brings us repeats of the usual Christmas staples like It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and Die Hard, which is of course THE greatest Christmas movie of all time. Bar none. However, what we really need to watch while roasting our nuts next to the fire and supping on some festive ale, is horror carnage. So, what better way to kick off the holiday season by looking at the sequel to one of the original Christmas staples, Black Christmas. The 1974 movie was a delicious slice of yuletide cheer but could the 2006 remake take the premise to greater, more brutal heights? Well, grab your sorority sisters and try not to answer the phone to any nuisance callers as we discover just exactly what the fuck happened to Black Christmas 2006 (watch it HERE).
The original Black Christmas movie from 1974 was met with a mixed response from critics with some claiming it was a “bloodless, senseless kill-for-kicks feature” and “is notable only for indicating the kind of junk roles that talented actresses are forced to play in the movies”, while others called it “smart”, “stylish” and “completely diverting”. It’s since gone on to achieve a significant cult status, is credited as being one of the original slasher movies while also apparently inspiring classics such as 1978’s, Halloween. The plot of the movie follows the character of Jess Bradford as she and her sorority sisters begin receiving threatening phone calls from an unknown stalker and while the 2006 film is loosely based upon the events of the original, it delves more into the background and motivation of the killer and his family.
However, unlike the 2006 remake which had a mythology and an existing fanbase to please, the original had the challenge of standing out from a crowded horror landscape that featured classic titles like the groundbreaking The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To be fair, the movie succeeded on its own merits and although critics were lukewarm upon release, audiences lapped up the re-invention of everybody’s favorite holiday, primarily because it had a decent plot and some great performances from its sorority sisters, most notably the superb Margot Kidder and Olivia Hussey, who play polarizing characters with an equally mesmerizing quality.
Back in the early noughties, writer / director Glen Morgan was approached by Dimension Films to write and direct a remake of Black Christmas 1974, despite his debut movie, Willard, failing to perform well at the box-office. Morgan was a huge fan of the 1974 original and approached the remake with a mindset to take it to the next level, while also keeping many of the same great attributes from the first movie. He even sought the help of the original movie’s director, Bob Clark, during the scriptwriting process and, as well as giving his blessing to Morgan for the sequel, Clark also signed on to serve as an executive producer on the movie. This led to one of the most notable additions for the 2006 remake, with director Morgan creating a subplot for the movies’ antagonist, Billy, by introducing his kid sister / daughter Agnes, with their backstories being explored in a very sinister fashion. Also, in order to fully flesh out the character of Billy, Morgan took inspiration from the life of Edmund Kemper, a real-life American serial killer who murdered eight people, including his own mother. Kemper was recently played with amazing grace and menace by Cameron Britton in Mindhunter and his grisly story seems like the perfect fit to inspire the character of Billy in Black Christmas.
When it came to casting the movie, the most important roles for the production team to perfectly nail, would be the sorority sisters. Morgan didn’t want the film to fall into any of the more predictable tropes of the genre, such as the final girl, so he cast actresses who were all of the same caliber. In the lead role of Kelli Presley we get Katie Cassidy, fresh from a smaller role in When A Stranger Calls. Another more well-known name attached to the project was Michelle Trachtenberg as Melissa, whose star was on the rise thanks to her part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer who, despite initially being reluctant to appear in the movie unless she got to die a grisly death onscreen, changed her mind when the script suitably freaked her out late at night. Joining Cassidy and Trachtenberg as fellow sorority sisters were Crystal Lowe as Lauren Hannon, Party of Fives’ Lacey Chabert as Dana, plus Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Heather Fitzgerald. Rounding out the cast was Robert Mann as Billy, Dean Friss as Agnes, Oliver Hudson as Kyle plus Andrea Martin, who played Phyllis in the 1974 original and returned to play the sorority housemother Mrs Mac.
Black Christmas 2006 attempted to revive the story for a more modern audience, but could it deliver more bloodshed and a meatier narrative than the first movie could muster? Well, despite an alarmingly lukewarm response from critics, which we’ll dive into shortly, it’s better than you may have remembered if you caught it back in 2006. However, when I say better, it’s worth putting the movie’s merits into context next to its competition at the time. The diminishing returns of the Saw franchise had seen Jigsaw and company get up to the booby-trap horror of part three in 2006 while other franchises, such as Paranormal Activity were on the downturn, at least in terms of quality. We also got a reboot of The Omen in 2006 as well as the continued desperate attempt to milk some dollars out of Leatherface and co in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Therefore, Black Christmas wasn’t necessarily being dropped into a market saturated with quality horror, so audiences were ready for something a little different, yet familiar.
The resulting movie is a gaudy, gory and sometimes comical slasher that benefits from a nastier tone than the original and a disturbing backstory for its villain, which is ultimately let down by some questionable plotting and annoying acting. Main villain Billy is given a backstory in which he’s locked up by his mother in the attic, and is subjected to sexual abuse, rape, incest and yep, some tasty cannibalism to boot. This molestation results in Billy having a daughter / sister, the aforementioned Agnes, who somewhat nonsensically decides to become murder BFFs with her dad / brother, despite his brutal assault on her not long before. This killer concept could, and perhaps should, have seen the remake actually be a sequel with the two-killer concept ripe for a mean and nasty follow-up, rather than a loose retread of the original.
However, what we all pay our hard earned money for when it comes to horror movies, the blood-shed, is decent, plus the cinematography is very Christmassy, for want of a better word. Not a lot is left to the imagination in the film, which is perhaps a direct result of being released in an era dominated by the Saw franchise and other torture porn flicks. Plus, the gore is pretty good. It’s not the top draw horror that all of us gore-hounds long for but it’s not bad either. We get eyeballs being removed, blood being sprayed all over the place, impaling, burning, plus a nice scene in which a cookie cutter is used to make angel shapes out of human flesh. Nice.
Unfortunately, despite the movie being a visual treat at times, especially when it comes to spilling the claret, it lacks the suspenseful dread of the original movie. That film had suspense and tension from beginning to end, but while it’s undoubtedly fun to see Billy torment the sorority girls in the remake, it shoots for shock value rather than well written scares and dread. Billy’s threats to the girls in the original carried more menace via what he was saying he’d do to them, which made it a more unsettling watch. The cast in the first movie also do a better job of delivering realistic emotional reactions to Billy and the very descriptive ways in which he is either going to kill or sexually assault them. What we get in the remake is a bunch of mostly annoying b-list actors who deliver lines such as, “it’s ‘like’ Christmas time”. Yeah, no shit Sherlock!
Black Christmas 2006 opened at 1,278 theaters in the US and grossed $3.3 million over its opening weekend, from December 22nd to 25th. It went on to earn a total of $16.3 million in North America and $21.5 million worldwide. Critically, the movie holds a 14% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the site’s critical consensus saying that the movie is, “A gratuitous remake of the 1974 slasher, Black Christmas pumps out the gore and blood with zero creativity, humor, or visual flair”. Also scathing in their appraisal of the movie was The New York Times, saying that, “with a peephole-riddled set and a flashback-heavy screenplay, Black Christmas smothers terror beneath a blanket of unnecessary information, revealing too much and teasing too little. And despite some nifty camerawork—a shot of an asylum inmate gobbling Christmas dinner cuts seamlessly to a couple snogging in a car—the movie is a dismal Christmas card to its predecessor”. Not everyone hated the movie though, with some critics praising it for being an undemanding and fun multiplex filler that shouldn’t be compared to the 1974 original, as it works fine as a standalone horror flick.
Ultimately then, Black Christmas from 2006 is a decent enough remake of a cult classic, and while it delivers some effectively gruesome kills, it could have been improved with a smarter cast and increased tension in the narrative. More importantly though, what’s YOUR take on the remake? Are we being too critical of the movie’s flaws or should people stick with the cult classic original from 1974. As usual, let us know in the comments and we’ll see you wonderful gore-hounds next time. Thanks for watching!
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!