‘Late Nite Grindhouse’ film series, presented by Destroy the Brain continues this weekend! Head to the Marcus Des Peres Cinema (12701 Manchester Rd, Des Peres, MO 63131) this Friday and Saturday (December 6th and 7th) at 10pm for a double-bill of yuletide slasher essentials: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT and BLACK CHRISTMAS (the ’74 original!) Since this is a Marcus Theater, you may need to reserve your seats ahead of time HERE. There may (or may not be) tickets available the nights of the screenings, but it never hurts to get them in advance! Tickets are $13 (technically $13.12 w/ tax). One ticket will get you in to both films.A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984)
“You scared, ain’t ya? You should be! Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!”
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT tells the tale of Billy Chapmen, orphaned at five after witnessing the murder of his parents at the hands of a Santa suit-clad madman on Christmas Eve. Now eighteen and out of the brutal grip of orphanage nuns, Billy is forced to confront his greatest fear, sending him on a rampage, leaving a crimson trail in the snow behind him. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, the poster child for Holiday horror films, caused a huge stink when it was released back in 1984. Influential film critic Gene Siskel especially despised the film, going as far to list, on his syndicated TV show, the film’s producers by name and, wagging his finger like a sweater-vested church lady, wailed “shame, shame, shame” after each name. What got Siskel’s holiday hackles up was the distasteful idea to have a slasher film featuring Saint Nick as its bloodthirsty villain. It wasn’t even the first “killer Santa” movie – (CHRISTMAS EVIL from 1980 has that distinction) but SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is the most notorious because it had the balls to be released during the Christmas season and its holiday television ads attracted the ire of overly-sensitive parents, some of who actually went out and picketed various theaters in protest of it. Outraged moms and dads wrote letters to the film’s producers (“My little Billy is afraid to sit in Santa’s lap because of a TV commercial he saw for your disgusting film”). Consequently, the flick got pulled out of the cinemas and in some markets, including St. Louis, it was never shown theatrically at all. It eventually did find a big audience when it was released to video stores and several increasingly inferior sequels were spawned (though the great Monte Hellman directed part 3!). Lost in the controversy is that SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was actually a pretty solid and scary horror flick. Of course it was never meant for kids, who would likely have been scarred for life if they had seen the opening sequence where an escaped criminal in a Santa suit rapes and kills off a kids mom while the child looks on. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT has plenty of fun bloody death scenes and some great one-liners.
BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
“Filthy Billy, I know what you did nasty Billy!”
BLACK CHRISTMAS was one hell of a claustrophobic and bleak holiday gift that gave me the genuine willies when I saw it just down the road from the Hi-Pointe at the Esquire cinema back in 1974 (when the Esquire was still a single-screener). I was 12 years old. It’s not nearly as blood-soaked as some of the Late Night Grindhouse‘s past offerings but BLACK CHRISTMAS, generally acknowledged as the forerunner of the “slasher” genre, is so graphic in its imagination that you don’t even need to see any gore or murder. BLACK CHRISTMAS holds up spectacularly well and everyone should thank the Destroy the Brain guys and the Hi-Pointe theater staff for the opportunity to see this blood-curdler on the big screen. Basically BLACK CHRISTMAS tells the tale of a group of sorority sisters that are hounded and harassed by a mysterious obscene crank caller. Circumstances take a disturbing turn when one of the poor gals winds up missing (She’s the one up in the attic throughout the movie! With the plastic bag over her head!). Up next is an investigation and the appearance of a few more dead bodies, ultimately leading up to a finale that will forever be etched in your mind when you tuck under the covers and prepare for sleep (which may actually never come). BLACK CHRISTMAS was made before the thousands of cliches of the slasher genre became typical, and it set the tone & atmosphere for years to come. HALLOWEEN has the mystery of who the killer is nearly down pat; it was a holiday horror with a stalker and anonymous phone callers but it came out a full four years after BLACK CHRISTMAS. WHEN A STRANGER CALLS took the nerve-strumming concept from BLACK CHRISTMAS and used it for the opening act, where “the calls were coming from inside the house.” Many slashers to follow would use BLACK CHRISTMAS ‘ “Is that you?” line when a character would wonder who is lurking about. Today, the creepy caller often gets spoofed (SCARY MOVIE) or updated in the form of a less effective cell phone (SCREAM). The Canada-filmed terror of BLACK CHRISTMAS has influenced so many subsequent shockers that it feels like a crime that it is rarely seen as the powerhouse it deserves to be acknowledged as.
Upon initial release in the US the titled was changed to SILENT NIGHT EVIL NIGHT because the American distributor worried that the title BLACK CHRISTMAS might cause the film to be mistaken for a blaxploitation film (!). However the film didn’t do well under this new title and it was changed back to BLACK CHRISTMAS, and was a success. BLACK CHRISTMAS sports a stellar cast that includes Olivia Hussey (ROMEO AND JULIET), Margot Kidder (acting drunk and slutty), John Saxon (acting drunk and studly), Keir Dullea, and Andrea Martin (who would play the house mother in the forgettable 2006 BLACK CHRISTMAS remake). Add to the mix director Bob Clark, one of the most eclectic independent directors ever, and a born storyteller (the man was responsible for A CHRISTMAS STORY, PORKY’S, and CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS). No doubt, if Bob Clark could’ve copyrighted the slasher movie concepts and cliches that he created, he would’ve been just as famous as John Carpenter or Wes Craven, maybe even more. If you really want to spend a week hiding under your covers, track down Clark’s 1972 Monkey’s Paw/zombie riff DEATHDREAM (aka DEAD OF NIGHT)which is, believe it or not, even scarier than BLACK CHRISTMAS.
From Blumhouse, the producer of Get Out and Halloween check out the brand new trailer for BLACK CHRISTMAS.
Just in time for the holidays comes a timely take on a cult horror classic as a campus killer comes to face a formidable group of friends in sisterhood.
Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. But as Riley Stone (Imogen Poots, Green Room) and her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters—athlete Marty (Lily Donoghue, The CW’s Jane the Virgin), rebel Kris (Aleyse Shannon, The CW’s Charmed), and foodie Jesse (Brittany O’Grady, Fox’s Star)—prepare to deck the halls with a series of seasonal parties, a black-masked stalker begins killing sorority women one by one.
As the body count rises, Riley and her squad start to question whether they can trust any man, including Marty’s beta-male boyfriend, Nate (Simon Mead, Same But Different: A True New Zealand Love Story), Riley’s new crush Landon (Caleb Eberhardt, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle) or even esteemed classics instructor Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes).
Whoever the killer is, he’s about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t about to be anybody’s victims.
This December, on Friday the 13th, ring in the holidays by dreaming of a Black Christmas.
Imogen Poots as Riley in Black Christmas, co-written and directed by Sophia Takal.
From director Sophia Takal (Always Shine) from the script she wrote with April Wolfe (Widower), comes a bold new take on the 1974 slasher classic produced by Jason Blum (Halloween, Split) for his Blumhouse Productions, by Ben Cosgrove (The Good German, Rumor Has It) and by Adam Hendricks (Cam, Bloodline, Lucky) for Divide/Conquer. Blumhouse’s Couper Samuelson and Jeanette Volturno will executive produce with Divide/Conquer’s Greg Gilreath and Zac Locke.
Imogen Poots as Riley in Black Christmas, co-written and directed by Sophia Takal.Lindsay (Lucy Currey) in Black Christmas, co-written and directed by Sophia Takal.(from left) Riley (Imogen Poots) and a black-masked killer in Black Christmas, co-written and directed by Sophia Takal.
Blumhouse recently took Halloween to that franchise’s highest performance and now returns to another genre classic with an upgrade engineered for today: Black Christmas.
Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. One by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish.
This December, on Friday the 13th, ring in the holidays by dreaming of a Black Christmas.
From director Sophia Takal (Always Shine) from the script she wrote with April Wolfe (Widower), comes a bold new take on the 1974 horror classic starring Imogen Poots (Green Room, The Art of Defense), Aleyse Shannon (Charmed), Brittany O’Grady (Star), Lily Donoghue (The Goldbergs, Jane the Virgin) and Caleb Eberhardt (Broadway’s Choir Boy).
Black Christmas is produced by Jason Blum (Halloween, Split) for his Blumhouse Productions.
Blum is a three-time Academy Award®-nominated
and two-time Primetime Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning producer. His
multimedia company is known for pioneering a new model of studio filmmaking:
producing high-quality micro-budget films.
Blumhouse is widely regarded as a driving force in the current horror renaissance, with its recent hit Ma, the horror, thriller film starring Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silver, Luke Evans, McKaley Miller, Missi Pyle, Corey Fogelmanis, Gianni Paolo, and Dante Brown.
Blum’s 2019 film Glass from M. Night Shyamalan, the 2017 blockbuster Split from M. Night Shyamalan, and Get Out from Jordan Peele, with combined budgets of less than $35 million, went on to gross more than $730 million worldwide. Glass was also Blumhouse’s 11th film to open at No. 1. In addition, Get Out was nominated for four Academy Awards® in 2018—including Best Picture—and won the Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay. In October, the company’s Halloween posted the second-highest opening ($76 million) for a horror movie after IT.
Blumhouse has also produced the highly profitable The Purge, Insidious, Sinister and Paranormal Activity franchises, which together have grossed more than $1.6 billion at the global box office. Paranormal Activity, which was made for $15,000 and grossed close to $200 million worldwide, launched the Blumhouse model and became the most profitable film of all time. The company’s titles also include The Gift, Unfriended and The Visit. Blum, who was nominated for an Academy Award® for producing Whiplash, has appeared on Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment List” each year since 2015, has received the 2016 Producer of the Year Award at CinemaCon and was named to the TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people in 2017.
BLACK CHRISTMAS is also produced by Ben Cosgrove (The Good German, Rumor Has It) and by Adam Hendricks (Cam, Bloodline, Lucky) for Divide/Conquer. Hendricks’ partners in Divide/Conquer, Greg Gilreath (Cam, Bloodline) and Zac Locke (Adopt-A-Highway, Bloodline), will executive produce.
Now that you’ve had your fill of peppermint, presents, and multiple viewings of AMC’s WHITE CHRISTMAS and MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, how about a little snark to go along with that special Holiday movie – sans the warm and fuzzy. It’s time for some mistletoe carnage and crafty comedy Geek style. In our gift to you, WAMG presents our list of the 15 best non-traditional films. Lovers of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE can consider yourselves excused cuz Santa Claus is coming to town in these “More Naughty Than Nice” movies.
BLACK CHRISTMAS
BLACK CHRISTMAS (the 1974 version of course), generally acknowledged as the forerunner of the ‘slasher’ genre, is so graphic in its imagination that you don’t even need to see any gore or murder. BLACK CHRISTMAS, which holds up spectacularly well after almost 40 years, tells the tale of a group of sorority sisters that are hounded and harassed by a mysterious obscene crank caller. Circumstances take a disturbing turn when one of the poor gals winds up missing (She’s the one up in the attic throughout the movie! With the plastic bag over her head!). Up next is an investigation and the appearance of a few more dead bodies, ultimately leading up to a finale that will forever be etched in your mind when you tuck under the covers and prepare for sleep (which may actually never come). BLACK CHRISTMAS sports a stellar cast that includes Olivia Hussey (ROMEO AND JULIET), Margot Kidder (acting drunk and slutty), John Saxon (acting drunk and studly), Keir Dullea, and Andrea Martin (who would play the house mother in the forgettable 2006 BLACK CHRISTMAS remake). Add to the mix director Bob Clark, one of the most eclectic independent directors ever, and a born storyteller (the man was responsible for A CHRISTMAS STORY, PORKY’S, and CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS). No doubt, if Bob Clark could’ve copyrighted the slasher movie concepts and cliches that he created, he would’ve been just as famous as John Carpenter or Wes Craven, maybe even more.
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, the poster child for Holiday horror films, caused a huge stink when it was released back in 1984. Influential film critic Gene Siskel especially despised the film, going as far to list, on his syndicated TV show, the film’s producers by name and, wagging his finger like a sweater-vested church lady, wailed “shame, shame, shame” after each name. What got Siskel’s holiday hackles up was the distasteful idea to have a slasher film featuring Saint Nick as its bloodthirsty villain. It wasn’t even the first ‘killer Santa’ movie – CHRISTMAS EVIL from 1980 has that distinction) but SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is the most notorious because it had the balls to be released during the Christmas season and its holiday television ads attracted the ire of overly-sensitive parents, some of who actually went out and picketed various theaters in protest of it. Outraged moms and dads wrote letters to the film’s producers (“My little Billy is afraid to sit in Santa’s lap because of a TV commercial he saw for your disgusting film”). Consequently, the flick got pulled out of the cinemas and in some markets, including St. Louis, it was never shown theatrically at all. It eventually did find a big audience when it was released to video stores and several increasingly inferior sequels were spawned (though the great Monte Hellman directed part 3!). Lost in the controversy is that SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was actually a pretty solid and scary horror flick. Of course it was never meant for kids, who would likely have been scarred for life if they had seen the opening sequence where an escaped criminal in a Santa suit rapes and kills off a kids mom while the child looks on. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT has plenty of fun bloody death scenes and some great one-liners.
BAD SANTA
Here’s probably the raunchiest comedy to be set in the holiday season. Thorton’s the most, vile ill-tempered mall Santa ever. He and his “elf” Marcus (Tony Cox) are casing the place for a Christmas Eve robbery for goodness sake! Luckily one of the original “kings of comedy” Bernie Mac as the place’s security chief is on to him. BAD SANTA was the last live action feature film work from John Ritter (who hires the two cons) and the movie’s dedicated to his memory. Also memorable is TV “Gilmore Girl” Lauren Graham as a gal who really, really likes ole’ St. Nick! Really. This was the second fiction feature directed by acclaimed documentarian Terry Zwigoff (CRUMB).
THE GINGERDEAD MAN
Two words… Gary Busey. Need more? How’s this… Gary Busey as a convicted killer named Millard Findlemeyer sent to the electric chair, only to return as a gingerbread man cookie with a vengenace! Something as dreadfully awesome as this could only come from the mind of low-budget, genre-schlock-meister Charles Band. The writer and director also even wrote and performed an original song for this modern cult Christmas classic. Put on your PJs, grab a glass of milk and fill yourself with the holiday spirit as a questionably sane Gary Busey plays an insane homicidal gingerbread man hellbent on killing the woman who had him killed. Merry Christmas!
SUSAN SLEPT HERE
This 1954 holiday set romantic comedy is actually narrated by an Oscar statuette! A struggling veteran screenwriter, played by the former baby-faced tenor of 30’s musicals Dick Powell, is surprised to find a spunky juvenile delinquent under the Christmas tree. It’s Debbie Reynolds, Queen Organa herself (yup, Carrie Fisher’s Mom) just a couple of years after the classic SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. Also in the cast are future TV stars Anne Francis (“Honey West”) and Alvy Moore (Mr. Kimball on “Green Acres”). This is one of the early feature films directed by former Loony Tunes animator/director Frank Tashlin. Later he would guide the movie careers of Jayne Mansfield and Jerry Lewis.
DIE HARD
“All right, listen up guys. ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except… the four a**holes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation.” Warms the holiday heart, doesn’t it? NY cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is invited to his estranged wife’s Christmas Party “by mistake” and goes up against Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.” While not exactly your traditional holiday movie, this 1987 actioner will add a little spike to your glass of eggnog.
BETTER OFF DEAD
Sure, getting dumped for someone “more popular” doesn’t exactly set the mood for the holidays… But Lloyd doesn’t let that, or a crazed paperboy stop him from becoming a winner on the slopes! Well, except for the creative ways that he imagines killing himself… That slows him down a bit. There’s no better time for a dark John Cusack comedy than the holidays!
JACK FROST
A snowman might not be my first choice for reincarnation, but in Jack Frost, but that’s the card Jack, a father who is too occupied with his band than his family, is dealt after his untimely death in a car accident. As a snowman, he now has the opportunity to make things right with his son before returning to the afterlife. This snowman tale is sure to warm your heart this holiday season.
CHRISTMAS EVIL
John Water’s favorite Christmas movie is the 1980 oddity CHRISTMAS EVIL . After suffering a traumatic childhood experience involving his father in Santa Claus outfit, a disturbed toy factory worker fixates on Santa Claus in an unhealthy way. When Christmas cynicism pushes him over the edge, he takes on the role one Christmas eve to reward the good boys and girls – and to murder the cynics. So when he spies a little girl playing with her doll, that’s fine, she’s being nice – when he sees a little boy reading Penthouse, that’s a different matter. CHRISTMAS EVIL is a suitably surreal entry in the Christmas horror sub-genre and John Waters described it best: ”CHRISTMAS EVIL has a grubby look and mucky atmosphere, as if it were shot using the same crap film they used to shoot those 1970s drive-in concession-stand ads where the food came out looking wretched when its intention was to lure patrons to the snack bar!” CHRISTMAS EVIL is like a murky, clumsily violent dream an alcoholic stepfather is having during the holidays while passed out in his recliner, translated to shoddy film stock – and that isn’t an effect commonly or easily achieved by any movie. A masterpiece.
THE ICE HARVEST
THE ICE HARVEST a great example of modern film noir set, naturally, on Christmas Eve in Wichita, KS. Everybody in the film, including the people you’re supposed to be rooting for, shows an unsavory side. Billy Bob Thornton showed his with equal parts of passion and cunning. John Cusack, playing a mob lawyer involved in a plot to swindle his employer and the local mob out of some money, played his role with enough subtlety that he passes for an attorney, and with enough venom to let us know life has treated him wrong (and he has returned the favor). Everyone else runs the gamut from fawning to mischievous to I-can’t-believe-I’ve-gotta-spend-the-holiday- doing-this angry. It’s no spoiler to reveal that the plot had enough twists to keep any mystery lover happy, but THE ICE HARVEST, based on the novel by St. Louisan (and Wichita native) Scott Phillips, carried far more laughs than the usual December comedy and was a dark, dark way to spend Christmas in 2005.
SANTA CLAUS (1959)
Badly dubbed over in English, the madcap Mexican import SANTA CLAUS from 1959 is a peculiar pinata packed with pagan ritual, Arthurian legend and Western malarkey. SANTA CLAUS was one of those whacked out K. Gordon Murray hybrid specials that the famed showman would purchase from Mexico, redub, and unleash to kiddie matinees. As weird as the original version of this film probably was, what with the wind up reindeer, and Satan (called Pitch), and Merlin, and the Chucky doll wearing the cowboy hat, and the Rolling Stones giant lips on the wall and the radar dish with the human ear in the center…you can just lump that all into the category of ‘cultural differences’. I am pretty sure that the original version was a harmless, if somewhat trippy, kid’s film. But once the “English Version” editors got done with it, the results defied description. SANTA CLAUS is aMexican fever dream of a kid’s Christmas movie, made by people who obviously hate children,
REINDEER GAMES
Get ready for the jingle bells. After being imprisoned for six years on a grand theft auto charge, Rudy Duncan and his cellmate Nick are finally going to be paroled. After hearing endless stories during his incarceration of Nick’s romantic correspondence to a woman named Ashley he has never met, Rudy is looking forward to returning to his family. When Nick is killed during a prison riot, Rudy decides to assume Nick’s identity and meet up with the unknown woman. Burdened with knowledge of Nick’s Indian casino employment past, Rudy finds himself in too deep with Ashley’s brother Gabriel and is forced to cooperate with a casino robbery that Gabriel and his gang have been planning with Nick in mind. Hold tight to that mug of hot chocolate – it’s going to be a bumpy sleigh ride.
REMEMBER THE NIGHT
This little known 1940 Paramount gem is slowly becoming a Christmas perrenial on the TCM (Turner Classics Movies) cable channel. Four years later stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwick would team again for the landmark film noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY for director Billy Wilder. In this Preston Sturges story, Stanwick’s once again is on the wrong side of the law. She’s a shoplifter in the custody of criminal prosecutor MacMurray who ends ups taking her with him to his family home for Christmas. Both actors would have great success in television decades later, Stanwick with the western drama “The Big Valley” and MacMurray with the long-running family sitcom “My Three Sons”.
3 GODFATHERS
This Western take on the Nativity story was filmed previously as a silent in 1916 and an early black and white “talkie” in 1936. This color version directed by movie master John Ford and starring his frequent collaborator John Wayne in 1948 is perhaps the best remembered. Three outlaws on the run come across a woman dying in an abandoned wagon alongside her infant. After she passes they take her baby and vow to travel across the merciless desert and deliver the child to the nearest town (at the risk of being caught by the law). Wayne’s two cohorts are Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carrey,Jr. (Senior starred in the 1916 film). Also in the cast are Ford stalwarts ward Bond, Ben Johnson, and Mildred Natwick.
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
There is no wrong time to watch Edward Scissorhands! Tim Burton’s imagination combined with a score by Danny Elfman sets the tone for magic that is sure to brighten the holidays. Johnny Depp is wonderful as the sensitive, creative character of Edward… Who is just a bit misunderstood. Oh, and try not to smile with delight as Edward makes it snow for the first time in their small town. It’s nothing short of spectacular!
