For those hording toilet paper

Black X-Mas (2006)

I admittedly gave the remake of Black Christmas a lot of attention in 2012 on the blog. It has kind of grown on me over the years, although I still find it a bit far-fetched regarding how Billy gets out of the institution, and the depraved back story is a more than a little skin-crawling.

I’d like to bury the hatchet with my sister…right in her head.

Look they put Billy in the cell so the screenplay had to get him out, so why not have the prison guard just open up the door, walk in without back up, and get a candy cane broken off right in his throat. If the idiot is willing to walk into the lion’s den without a game plan, then he’s deserved of his fate.

Right out of the chute, a chick gets a pen stabbed in her eye after the bag is stuffed over her head. Not long after, another girl goes into the attic and has the bag suffocating her before Agnes jerks out her eye. Yikes. Then even Santa, visiting the asylum for Lord knows why, is bled like a stuck pig, and so Billy will join Agnes, his sister/daughter (again, the incest back story that is created in detail much to many of our disapproval).

I’m not going on a rant. Just not. The film hands us a bill of goods regarding how Billy and Agnes come to be. The horrible mother who killed Billy’s father and used her son to give her a child. It’s disgusting and further provides us with the chilling murder of the mother and how he used her body for meat cookies. Yes, meat cookies. Tastes like chicken.

You get a lot of eye candy. They loaded the cast with attractive women. Give the film that candy colored visual style of the holiday season to accompany the cast and the movie benefits from that..to a point.

The use of all things Christmas to kill is on display. Snow globe, ice sickle, and candy cane. Even a ski shoe blade does the damage.

Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. You get a lot of it in the dialogue. If you want to see “spoiled bitches” die, here’s to a festive viewing experience. When they aren’t swearing or arguing, or bitching and pissing each other off, there’s green, red, and yellow lighting and upward camera angles shooting low from the ground.

We get a lot of syrupy blood and blood splatter, so you should be satiated. That and I enjoyed how the weather conditions leave the girls in a bad place, without much of a chance to just escape (“Just get out!” isn’t so easy to scream at the screen when there’s a storm a brewing). We watch as the girls split up instead of staying together and when this happens they die quick-like. Before you know it, two are left. It happens rather like dominoes falling.

This isn’t a full on review, but I have to say that not having to focus so much of my energies on putting together an essay on this film made it a bit more easy to digest. This isn’t any great shakes. It has graphic violence and bloodletting, bad taste and repulsive scenes galore (eyeball eating anyone?), including the obligatory “gather the “family” of victims together” scene (around the Christmas tree, no less). For whatever reason, this film seem to go by rather quickly; I chalk it up to the mood I was in and less extreme focus on the film itself. This has been one of those Saturday movies in December over the past few years, but I wanted to scratch another Christmas horror off the list early because I have plans for the Silent Night, Deadly Night films while on an upcoming couple days off during the middle of this week. 

I decided to watch the version that doesn't feature the additional ending. The film does feel as if it is missing something, so perhaps Billy's inability to go away and attacking the two last girls in the hospital (even if overkill) was necessary. That's up to the audience, I guess.