THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR Door 16: Not Reindeer Games, Deadly Games

Now the inept brilliance of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 wasn't the only helping of Yuletide horror served by 1987. For, our next sighting of Christmas terrors would come later in the summer. And it too was in the form of a terrible sequel. For seasonal scares would surface again at Amity Island, for our next stop in the history of Christmas horror is a mercifully brief layover in Jaws: The Revenge. 

Released on 17th July 1987, Jaws: The Revenge is the belated third and unnecessary sequel to the Spielberg classic. Now what most people forget, and who can blame them, as some folks try to forget as much of this movie as possible, is that the film opens just before Christmas. We learn that Martin Brody has passed away, mainly because Roy Scheider refused to have anything to do with this movie. Wise man! Anyhow his wife Ellen, still played by Lorraine Gary, is living with their now adult son Sean, who has followed in his father’s footsteps, and become a police officer. And as the movie starts it’s just before Christmas and there’s a big outdoor carol concert in Amity. But Deputy Sean is called out to a disturbance in the bay, and while investigating a shipping buoy is attacked by a great white shark and killed. After the funeral, Ellen goes to stay with her eldest son Michael, who is now working in the Bahamas. However the very same shark follows them there… No, I swear I’m not making this up. 

After meeting new characters Jake McCay (played by Mario van Peebles) and Hoagie Newcombe (played by Michael Caine), the Brody family, or what’s left of it, celebrates Christmas and New Year in the sun. And so, with the festive season done with in this movie, we can thankfully now ignore the rest of its nonsense with a clean conscience! 

1988 was perhaps a mercifully quiet year for Christmas horror, although people of a certain age may remember being traumatised by a ludicrously violent TV movie shown on IBC on Christmas Eve that year. Vastly inappropriately scheduled at 7 PM, The Night The Reindeer Died, which saw criminal psychopaths invade the North Pole only to be thwarted by Lee Majors and a machine gun toting Santa. Thousands of bullets and buckets of blood ensued. TV executive Frank Cross famously ended up on the naughty list for this one…

However the following year, we had a far more entertaining helping of Christmas horror in the shape of a French movie called 3615 Code Père Noël. More commonly known in the English speaking world as Deadly Games, although this movie has also appeared under the titles of Dial Code Santa Claus, Game Over, and Hide and Freak. 

Written and directed by René Manzor, this movie introduces us to Thomas, an unusually intelligent child, who lives in a big mansion house with his mother, who runs a swanky Paris department store, and his near blind diabetic grandad. Thomas is obsessed with action movies, and enjoys re-enacting favourite scenes and having adventures in his capacious home while dressed like a pint-sized Rambo. 

However on Christmas Eve, while trying to contact Pere Noel, as Santa is known in France, on the Mintel service - France’s advanced teletext system that was a precursor to the internet -  he accidentally contacts a random stranger who turns out to be, you guessed it, a dangerous psycho.

But before Thomas realises that this Santa he is chatting to is bogus, the crazy guy has learned where his mother works. And after Thomas cuts off the conversation, he goes to the store, gets a temporary job there, and dressed in a Santa outfit, manages to stowaway in a van-load of Christmas goodies bound for Thomas's house. So then, on this snowy Christmas Eve, with his mother very busy at the store and working late, Thomas and his grandad will be stalked by a killer Santa. However young Thomas, being a gifted child with gadgets and technical knowledge galore, will have a few surprises to spring on this bad Santa… 

Now if you are thinking that this sounds like a horror version of Home Alone, you‘re not the only one. And rather suspiciously, Deadly Games was first screened in March 1989, while Home Alone didn’t come out until 10th November 1990. Naturally writer/director René Manzor was convinced John Hughes had plagiarised his movie, although Hughes has claimed he never saw this very similar French precursor to Kevin McCallister’s seasonal antics. Which might be true, or it may not. One wonders if Hughes got coal in his stocking that year…  

Anyhow, what of the movie itself? Well, in many respects, the plot of Deadly Games is not unlike many juvenile adventure tales i.e. kids encounter a criminal, and using their own know-how, best the baddie. However, here this young adventure plot is blended with a grown-up slasher movie. So on one hand, you have lots of funny moments and heart-warming family scenes, and the big old house at Christmas in the snow looks magical. But you also have some very dark thrills and frights, and when the deranged Santa is stalking the vast benighted house, and make no mistake, the movie’s gloves are most definitely off. And not everyone is going to get to the end in one piece.

 

Now this mix of two different styles of movie could have been a terrible mess but director Manzor boldly blends them together, with the result that you are constantly being wrongfooted by the movie and you can’t predict exactly where it is going to go next. Deadly Games is a marvellous fun Christmas horror, mixing childhood magic with a very sinister stalking Santa, and it really deserves to be far better known than it is. 

However, while 1989 had given us this wonderful inventive and original French Christmas horror movie, over in the US, something equally offbeat, but in a not so entertaining way, was stirring… For the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise would return again. But we will learn about this third movie and its frightful siblings behind the next door… 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 16: Not Reindeer Games, Deadly Games

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 15: You've Been Very, Very Naughty!

As we heard behind the last door yesterday, Silent Night, Deadly Night caused such a furore that it seems like no one would dare make another Christmas horror movie ever again. But you can’t keep the darkness out of Christmas forever, even in the neon-drenched 1980s! And on April 10th 1987, arguably nine days too late, unto us was given a sequel - Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. 

After pulling the first film from theatres in the face of a furious backlash, Tri-Star didn’t bother trying to re-release it. They even shelved plans to distribute it around the world, hence most countries would not see the original Silent Night, Deadly Night until it was released on home media often many years later.  However that didn’t stop them from trying to make a bit more money out of it, for they sold the movie to a third party, Lawrence Appelbaum Productions. And in league with the just created Silent Night Releasing Corporation, a cunning plan was hatched.

Producer Lawrence Appelbaum reckoned the movie could escape the controversy around it if it could be released in a slightly different form. And so, he hired editors Lee Harry and Joseph H. Earle to recut the movie. Appelbaum’s big idea was to film a couple of extra scenes of someone in a mental hospital supposedly retelling the story of the film and splice these scenes in. 

Lee Harry, who took the lead on this project, was not particularly enamoured with this plan. So he shot a lot more footage, squeezing every dime he could out of the producer, and attempted to make a proper sequel. As it was, there just wasn't enough cash, and Harry still had to use a good deal of the first movie, over half an hour in fact. Also he had to extend the credits sequence to over five minutes in order to get the picture to minimum feature length. 

Now all of this is obviously the recipe for a terrible movie. And Silent Night Deadly Part 2 is incredibly bad, and unsurprisingly, did terribly at the box office. Released on the massively unseasonal 10th April 1987, the movie managed to scrape a meagre $154,323, which was something of a disaster as the budget had been $250,000. 

Now usually such a flop would then vanish without trace. But in this case, something magical happened - the movie gained a cult following. And why? Well, let's have a plot summary and find out!

It's four years after the events of the first movie, and Billy's little brother Ricky, played by Eric Freeman, is now an adult and incarcerated in a mental asylum. He is being interviewed by psychiatrist Dr Bloom, and he tells the story of how he ended up there. Now this involves going through his troubled family history; and by the magic of flashbacks; we effectively get a rerun of the first movie in a condensed form. No, seriously; we get a forty minute version of the first film with occasional asides and voiceovers from Ricky. 

Then we get Ricky's story proper, in which he is adopted, grows up with a nice family. But unfortunately has inherited Billy's insanity and ends up committing a string of murders. At first he is punishing the naughty, but then just anyone he sees. This culminates with him being captured by the cops and hence his current incarceration in the asylum.

But we are not done yet, for Ricky kills Dr Bloom, and escapes. He slays a Salvation Army Santa and steals his costume, and now dressed as Santa, Ricky goes after Mother Superior, now played by Jean Miller, for a final showdown to avenge Billy…

Now all of this is very clearly shot on a shoestring, and the script is functional at best. It was made as a cynical cash-grab and should be one of the worst movies ever made. I mean’ rerunning the first movie in its own sequel does beggar belief. But, despite all the multiple issues this movie has, somehow, this is one of the best sequels ever made. A Christmas miracle? Well, maybe!

Firstly the business of reshowing the first film - in fact, this edited down version is actually an improvement! All the meandering pointless scenes are gone and you're left with all the good bits effectively. Plus shearing the first film of its pretensions to explore the making of a killer and boiling it down to just the tale of a killer Santa removes all the tonal inconsistencies, and trims down some of the more distasteful elements.

Secondly the film manages to up the ante once we get to Ricky's story, becoming even more ridiculous and serving up hilarious kills, such as death by car jumper cables and even death by umbrella. And the final climax of Ricky battling a now wheelchair-bound Mother Superior is comedy gold.

However what makes all of this insanity so entertaining is the incredible performance by Eric Freeman as Ricky. Now some will say he gives one of the worst performances ever captured on film, but I for one would disagree. Rather Freeman goes so far over the top, he reaches escape velocity, and now travelling at the scenery chewing equivalent of warp speed, going where no actor has gone before, ends up with the gravitational mass of a black hole, forcing the entire movie to orbit his performance. And it is both incredible and hilarious to behold. 

But credit must also be given to director Lee Harry, who pushed to make this a movie in the first place. And considering the severe limitations he was working with, there are some fantastic sequences. Yes, the interview scenes with Ricky and the shrink looks like they were filmed in a store room, but once we get outside the hospital, there are some wonderfully shot and staged sequences where Harry clearly was having a lot of fun. Highlights to watch out for include young Ricky being menaced by nuns in the street, the picnic scene kill, and best of all Ricky’s suburban shooting spree. Now this is the sequence that gave us the famous “garbage day” meme, but it also includes a genuinely amazing car stunt where a flipping vehicle misses our hero, or rather a stunt man, by literally inches. 

And so,  Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, despite all the odds, becomes not just a good sequel, but a superior film to the original. In fact, thanks to the reused footage, this is a sequel which gives you the luxury of not having to bother to watch the first. The original might be a notorious slasher flick, but the second is the stuff of cinema legend. 

It is easily the best movie in the franchise, for yes, there would be further sequels, but that's a story for another day and another door… But if you want to hear more about Silent Night, Deadly Part 2, last Christmas we covered it in Commentary Club 86, where you can hear our live reaction to this incredible festive nonsense! 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 15: You've Been Very, Very Naughty!

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 12: Toyland Terrors and the Chimes of Midnight

After Black Christmas (1974) had come Halloween (1978), and as John Carpenter’s movie was a massive box office juggernaut, many other film-makers were looking to try and replicate his success. Therefore the 1980s slasher boom began. And in the early days of this subgenre, writers and directors seeking to emulate Carpenter’s success, also looked to the calendar for inspiration. And so in 1980 we got not one, but two horror movies set on New Year’s Eve. 

The first was Terror Train, released 3rd October 1980. This movie was the brainchild of producer Daniel Grodnik, who was inspired by both Michael Myers’ first rampage, and somewhat oddly, the  Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy The Silver Streak, to make a movie that was essentially Halloween on a train. Now in fairness, Grodnik was not just a cynical bandwagon jumper, he was actually friends with Carpenter and Debra Hill, and asked for their blessing before setting about making Terror Train. And with the duo graciously giving him the green light, he pitched the film to producer Sandy Howard, who loved the idea. 

Filmed in and around Montreal, Canada and mostly on a genuine Canadian Pacific Railway steam locomotive, Grodnik also managed to secure the services of Jamie Lee Curtis, who at  that time was the leading scream queen of the day thanks to Halloween. Also appearing, seemingly largely  because producer Sandy Howard liked magicians, was a young David Copperfield. Furthermore in the director’s chair was a young chap named Roger Spottiswood, and Terror Train was indeed the very first movie he directed. 

Now although not technically a Christmas movie, there is plenty of seasonal ambience to Terror Train, and the movie itself is fairly decent too. With a good plot and capable cast, Terror Train actually turned out to be not just Halloween set on a train, and stands up as an intriguing and fun slasher movie in its own right. Again, like so many of these early slashers, while there are the expected set-piece kills, the main focus of the story is on the mystery of who is doing them, and after years of later slashers being about the murderous villain, early entries in the genre come across as surprisingly fresh rather than derivative. And if you want to hear more about Terror Train, we watched this movie for our 2022 New Years Special over on Commentary Club, and indeed a surprisingly good time was had by all.  

However Terror Train wasn’t the only end-of-year slasher outing, for we also got New Year’s Evil, released 19th December 1980. Written and directed by Emmett Alston, unfortunately this is very much the lesser of the two movies, although  its premise does have a lot of  potential. The plot of this flick is as follows - DJ Diane Sullivan is hosting a televised punk rock and new wave show on New Year’s Eve. However she receives a series of phone calls in which a mystery man threatens to commit a new murder as the clock strikes twelve in each time zone.

Now in its favour, we must give massive credit to writer/director Alston for simply not making a movie with a masked and/or deformed psycho killer at a New Year’s Eve party and offs various young nubile characters to the strains of Auld Lang Syne. Indeed with the master criminal-style plot to make a kill as the new year rings in across different time zones, I do wonder whether this was originally written before the slasher boom kicked in. 

But despite having an inventive concept, New Year’s Evil is a fairly run-of-the-mill outing. It isn’t an entirely terrible film, but it’s nothing remarkable either. It’s true it has gained something of a cult following over the years, however that is more to do with the rock music from Made in Japan and Shadow than its prowess as a horror movie, and indeed the theme song New Year’s Evil has very much developed a cult of its own. 

But we aren’t really here for horrors committed on Old Father Time’s watch! We are tracing Yuletide terrors, and thankfully 1980, the gift that keeps on giving, had another Christmas fright flick to offer us, and it's a little cracker! 

Unleashed on 7th November 1980, was Christmas Evil, which has also been released as You Better Watch Out and Terror in Toyland. Written and directed by Lewis Jackson, it was filmed in late 1979 and early 1980 in New Jersey, and originally had the working title of simply Santa. So then, what is the plot of Christmas Evil? 

In a flashback to 1947 we see a young boy, Harry,  sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve, only to see Santa Claus… how can I put this delicately… canoodling with his mom. Of course, it is just his father, but young Harry does not realise that. And needless to say this experience will have some long reaching effects on him.

Back in the present day we catch up with the now adult Harry. He’s grown up to be a nice guy, perhaps too nice. He has a job working in a factory that makes toys, and is kind to his neighbours and is friendly with all the neighbourhood kids. However Harry’s sanity is hanging by a thread, for he goes to sleep in a Santa outfit and is keeping a ledger of who is naughty and who is nice. Anyhow not to give away any plot spoilers for this highly unusual movie, a series of events angers Harry, and he is so disturbed by the lack of true Christmas spirit, he believes that he has become the true Santa Claus and sets out setting things right, giving gifts to the good, but also ruthlessly punishing the wicked…

Now Christmas Evil is often lumped in with all the other killer Santa movies, and is often described as a slasher movie. Now it is true that the movie does feature some violent kills, so much so that it did end up on the lower tiers of the video nasties list when in its uncut form. However Christmas Evil is far more than just another by-the-number slasher. And anyone tuning in expecting the usual mix of stupid teens, gratuitous nudity and some gore every ten minutes or so will be sorely disappointed by this movie. 

Rather with its focus on the gradual collapse of Harry’s sanity, and with the social realism of its New Jersey setting, this movie actually has far more in common with Taxi Driver (1976) than your typical Friday 13th clone. And it is so much better for it. For while there is horror in the shape of Harry’s crumbling mental state and the violence he commits while being the true Santa, this movie is very much about Christmas, the ideals it represents and how so often we fail to uphold them in the real world. And somehow despite the gritty realism, mental health issues and murders, somehow Christmas Evil ends up being a strangely heart-warming film, with an ending that is both ambiguous and magical.  

Christmas Evil is a movie full of contradictions, and on paper, it really shouldn’t work at all. But somehow it does - a Christmas miracle perhaps? Now for quite a while it languished in obscurity, but thanks to cinema legend John Waters proclaiming it his favourite Yuletide movie, Christmas Evil has garnered a great deal of praise in recent years. And rightly so, for it is a very unusual film that manages to make its horrors heart-warming, rather contrasting the festive with frightening. And if you’ve not seen it, ask Santa nicely for a copy… 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 12: Toyland Terrors and the Chimes of Midnight

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 10: May All Your Christmases be Black

So then, behind this door we have the story of perhaps the most important Yuletide horror movie of them all -  Bob Clark's Black Christmas. With a poster bearing the memorable tagline “if this movie doesn't make your skin crawl, it's on too tight,”. Black Christmas was released on October 11th in Canada, with a US release on the 20th December, and hitting UK and European screens the following year. Made for a tiny budget of $686,000, the movie would take over $5 million on its initial release alone. And in addition to its huge profitability, it is perhaps an understatement to say that this movie has been massively influential. 

Now the film has its genesis in two concepts colliding in the imagination of Canadian screenwriter Roy Moore. On one hand he was inspired by the old urban myth of the babysitter and the phone. In this tale, often told around campfires and at sleepovers, a babysitter is menaced by a maniac calling her up on the phone, with the twist being that when the police trace the disturbing calls, it is discovered that they are coming from inside the house. 

Moore felt there was potential here for a movie, and drew further inspiration from a real life murder case that occurred many years before in Montreal. Basically at Christmas 1943, a kid went crazy and killed his family. And so Moore came up with a script called Stop Me which featured a multiple murderer on the loose during the Christmas holidays.

The script was picked up by film producers Harvey Sherman and Richard Schouten, who have a rewrite done by Timothy Bond (who go on to be a writer and director in his own right, working on episodes of a huge number of cult TV shows such Star Trek The Next Generation, Due South, Sliders, Hercules and the Friday 13th TV series). Now aside from general polishing, Bond made a major alteration by relocating the action to a university sorority house.

When director Bob Clark came on board, he made further changes to the script as he was tired of college kids being portrayed in movies in a very unrealistic manner. And so he reworked the script to flesh out the characters, and also added some touches of humour too, notably in the creation of the character of the sorority house mother, Mrs Mac, played by Marian Waldman.

Thanks to this improved script Clark was able to attract a very talented cast to this little Canadian horror movie, netting Olivia Hussey riding high after Romeo and Juliet, and Keir Dullea still sparkling after his starring role in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Rising star Margot Kidder signed on because she liked how wild and unconventional her character Barb was. Finally the movie gods smiled on Clark, and he was able to get his dream casting at the last minute, with the late great John Saxon coming onboard for the role of Lieutenant Kenneth Fuller. 

So then if you don’t know, here’s a quick spoiler-free plot outline… It is the end of term and at a sorority house, the students are preparing for the festivities and to travel home for the holidays. The girls in the house have been bothered by a series of obscene phone calls which so far they have laughed off. When a local girl is murdered in a nearby park, the disturbing phone calls are no longer so funny.  And the girls become increasingly concerned when one of their house mates misses a meeting with her father and appears to have vanished. And what they don’t know is that an unidentified man has climbed into the sorority house and is now hiding in the attic. And of course he will kill again…

Black Christmas is often cited as the movie that kickstarted the slasher genre, and indeed we have many key elements present and correct here - set piece kills, killer point-of-view shots, and a final girl. However there are key differences too. To begin with rather than the usual isolated setting, the sorority house is in the heart of town and the police, in the shape of John Saxon’s detective, are investigating from the outset. And hence the movie’s plot is more focused on the murder mystery elements, than on cat-and-mouse sequences between killer and victim.   

And the killer in Black Christmas is not your usual slasher villain either. Presumed to be called “Billy” from hints dropped in the phone calls, this killer is not out for revenge or simply just evil, as is the case in virtually every other slasher. For Billy's motives are shrouded by his own insanity. As I mentioned we get a series of hints in the phone calls to his backstory, but how much of this verbal jigsaw is truth and how much is just the ravings of a highly demented individual is open to question. Likewise Billy doesn’t have a signature look, no facial deformity or iconic mask. Rather he is just a shape, a silhouette glimpsed before he strikes.

Director Bob Clark masterfully tells this creepy Christmas tale, the characters come across as real people, and often he shoots in an almost documentary fashion, heightening the realism of the situation. The kill scenes are often very sudden and imaginatively staged, heighted by the experimental score created by Carl Zittrer, which relied on discordant sounds rather than actual music. And very much borrowing from Freddie Francis and All Through the House, the majority of the real music we hear in the movie are Christmas favourites and carols being played or sung in the world of the film. Likewise the snowy setting and seasonal decorations are brilliantly used to counterpoint the dark and bleak events playing out, often under the glow of twinkling Christmas lights. 

On its initial release Black Christmas received what can at best be described as mixed reviews, with many critics claiming it was just pointless and unpleasant. But while undoubtedly Black Christmas is bleak and dark, it was more than just an exercise in nastiness. To begin with, it is because it is so brilliantly crafted that it does deliver a distinct chill.  But also Bob Clark masterfully uses humour to both undercut and raise the suspense, and his script rewrites have been greatly appreciated in later years, with many modern reviewers praising the social subtext and realistic portrayals of the young students. 

And so, while it got short shrift from reviewers back in the day, over the years, the film gained a cult following, and now has been positively reassessed as a classic movie.  Also like many of our festive milestones, the movie has been hugely influential. It was a chat about Black Christmas between Bob Clark and a young film-maker named John Carpenter that planted the seed of an idea that would become the classic horror movie Halloween. And Halloween in turn would inspire Friday 13th, and thus the slasher movie genre was born, with dozens of movies featuring murderous maniacs stalking young people appearing in the 1980s.  

Now thankfully, Black Christmas, unlike many of its slasher offspring, has been spared the indignity of endless sequels. However, it has been remade twice, firstly in 2006 and a second time in 2016. Now interestingly both these movies, quite wisely I think, decided not to simply retell the events of the first movie, and instead crafted alternative horror tales drawing on elements of Black Christmas. However both films ended up missing their marks. 

The first remake came with a good deal of talent both before and behind the camera. Starring was  a bevy of hip young actors - Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Lacey Chabert. Meanwhile helming the movie was Glen Morgan, who with long-time collaborator James Wong, worked extensively on The X Files and Millennium, created the scifi series Space Above and Beyond, and then masterminded the Final Destination movie franchise. Quite the pedigree. 

2006’s Black Christmas very much piles on the festive trimmings, with decorations everywhere, a bold palette of seasonal colours, and Yuletide themed kills with deaths being  delivered by candy cane, icicle, tree topper and ice skates. However despite aiming to be a fun, colourful over-the-top slasher, tonally the film is all over the place. Unwisely this movie gives Billy an extensive backstory which is both ludicrous and distasteful. For example,  he has severe jaundice and is therefore bright yellow like a Simpson. But the depicted abuse both physical and sexual from his mother is less than amusing. And hence it ended up being too silly to be disturbing, but too nasty to be fun. Apparently while making the movie, director Glen Morgan had numerous run-ins with the Weinsteins and Dimension Films over the direction and content of the remake, and this I think probably explains why Black Christmas (2006) turned out like it did. 

Now the 2016 remake from Blumhouse Productions very much goes in the opposite direction. Well at least at first. Director and co-writer Sophia Takal attempts to pick up the social realism angle from Bob Clark’s original, and sets her movie very firmly on a university campus, tackling modern themes, and working with a gifted cast playing everything straight that included Imogen Poots, Brittany O'Grady, and Cary Elwes. 

And in the first couple of acts, this approach reaps decent rewards, with contemporary social commentary blended well with a mystery maniac loose on campus. However unfortunately too, this movie suffers for being tonally uneven, with the film becoming increasingly daft as it goes along, and ending up in a truly ludicrous place by the end. So sadly both remakes, despite their good intentions, have ended up on the naughty list. 

However we still have the original to revisit every year, and for Yuletide horror, Black Christmas still sets the standard to aspire to. For, despite being fifty years old this year, Bob Clark’s little movie still packs a huge punch and remains the quintessential creepy Christmas chiller. 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 10: May All Your Christmases be Black

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 9: All is Neither Calm nor Bright

Now the All Through the House segment of the Tales From the Crypt movie is obviously a massively important landmark in Christmas horror, but 1972 would give us another often overlooked addition to the festive chiller canon. 

Released November 17, 1972 was a movie called Silent Night Bloody Night - which sometimes has been seen under the titles of Death House and Night of the Full Dark Moon. Made for less than $300,000, this movie was actually produced by a very young Lloyd Kaufman, who would found cult favourite Troma Productions in the 1980s. It was directed by Theodore Gershuny, who Kaufman had previously worked with on another low budget movie Sugar Cookies, a lesbian thriller which was produced with a young Oliver Stone, who at the time was running a small independent production company with Kaufman! From small acorns and all that! 

However Silent Night Bloody Night was something of a different proposition, very firmly in the horror genre, and as we’ll hear, going into some rather dark territory. The plot of the movie is as follows.

In the opening sequence, we learn that on Christmas Eve 1950 a rich old fellow called Wilfred Butler dies in a fire, leaving his lavish Massachusetts mansion to his infant son Jeffrey. Twenty years later just before Christmas, and a lawyer, played by Patrick O’Neale, is sent by the now grown-up Jeff, played to sell the property. A consortium of important local folks in the little town of East Willard, agree to.come together to buy the place for its historical value. But before the deal is struck the lawyer and his girlfriend are brutally murdered by a mystery assailant. Further murders will follow, and the town telephonist Dianne, played by the great Mary Woronov, and Jeffrey, played by James Patterson, join forces to solve the mystery of the bloody slayings.

Often hailed a proto slasher, this movie was little seen on its first theatrical release, but later would find a cult following when it began to be shown on television over the festive period in late night shows just Elvira's Movie Macabre and WWOR-TV's Fright Night. 

Now Silent Night Bloody Night is not a perfect movie by any measure, and movie fans coming back to it, particularly those attracted by its place in early slasher history, often find it a bit meandering and unfocused. However in fairness, while it is indeed a movie that lays the groundwork for later slasher movies, Silent Night Bloody Night is more of a horror mystery, with the plot being as much about uncovering the sinister history of the house as it is about the kills. Likewise Mary Woronov’s Dianne is portrayed as a real character rather than the sort of bimbo that we find in abundance in later slasher movies. 

And while often there is no disguising its low budget nature, and the direction isn't always highly polished, there are still some effective sequences and the overall mystery is intriguing enough. The film has a very wintry vibe, and rather than going for camp splatter, the story is told in a gritty and down to earth manner, and goes to some rather dark places. In many ways with its bleak realism and dark psychological themes contrasting with the festive setting, the movie very much prefigures the later and much better known Black Christmas. And hence while it might not be the best movie in this advent calendar it certainly deserved its place in Christmas horror history. 

I will briefly note that thanks to the film entering the public domain there was a loose remake in 2013, Silent Night Bloody Night: the Homecoming. And in 2015, a highly belated sequel - Silent Night Bloody NIght 2: Revival - that shamelessly recycled a good deal of footage from the original to pad out its running time. However the less said about this pair of no budget straight to DVD affairs the better. Yes, this pair are on the naughty list! But on the upside, around the same time as these two cheap cash-ins oozed out, the original film did get a much needed remaster, allowing us to see this interesting addition to Christmas horror as it was originally shot. 

Now the following year we were treated to another Christmas horror movie that is regarded as something of a classic, although its connection to the festive period is often overlooked. Featuring a script by the great Richard Matheson, Legend of Hell House brought his 1971 novel, just called Hell House, to the big screen in 1973. Starring Roddy McDowell, Pamela Franklin, Clive Revill and Gayle Hunnicutt, this was in fact one of the last movies produced by James H Nicholson, the man who had co-founded AIP with Samuel Z. Arkoff.

Revill plays a physicist hired by an extremely rich old man to find proof of life after death. And to earn the highly attractive £100,000, he has a week to investigate the notorious Belasco House, along with a young medium, allegedly the best in her field, Florence Tanner (played by Pamela Franklin) and the only survivor of the last investigation there, another psychic Ben Fisher played by Roddy McDowell. Yes, you did hear that correctly, only survivor - for indeed the Belasco House is not just extremely haunted, but often proves to be fatal to anyone staying within its walls...

Of course, Christmas is the traditional time for ghostly tales, and that was something that Matheson was well aware of, and hence the investigation of the so-called Hell House begins on the 17th of December, with the eerie events reaching their shocking climax on Christmas Eve. However, as the entire film, excluding the opening scene, takes place at the Belasco House, which has been sealed up for years, there’s not really a trace of Christmas to be seen. Indeed giving the house’s dark history, which includes torture, murder and all manner of sexual perversions, it’s perhaps no surprise that the current investigators didn’t bring any tinsel or Christmas trees with them! And there is only the date captions, which announce each passing day of the investigation, to indicate we are in the festive season. 

However, as I said, ghost stories have always been closely tied to Christmas, and this cinematic tale certainly fits in nicely with a whole subgenre of ghost stories where folks go to an old isolated house for Christmas. And while there’s no sign of Yuletide visible in the film, the movie has a superbly wintery vibe, with lots of the shots of the titular Hell House wreathed in freezing fog.

The cast give it their all, and the cinematography is both inventing and unsettling. The haunting electronic score by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radio Radiophonic Workshop only adds to the eerie vibes. All in all, Matheson and director John Hough deliver one of the best haunted house stories ever filmed, one that is as chilling as it is thought-provoking. And while there’s no seasonal symbols or December décor on show, Legend of Hell House will certainly bring a chill to your Christmas! 

Now it would seem that by the early 1970s, the Yuletide horror film was really hitting its stride. For there would be another helping of festive frights the following year in 1974… And indeed another massive milestone in the history of Christmas horror! 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 9: All is Neither Calm nor Bright

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN 

THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR - Door 8: All Through The House

At the close of the 1960s,  a young American writer and producer who was working in England, named Milton Subotsky teamed up with fellow American Max J Rosenberg to form Vulcan Productions and make a horror movie. The script has been a pilot for a a proposed television series starring Boris Karloff, but the show never got made. However the script found it’s way to Subotsky who expanded into a feature length production. The resulting film starred Christopher Lee and was the classic black and white chiller City of the Dead (1960), known over the pond as Horror Hotel.

Subotsky and Rosenberg then formed a more permanent business partnership, Amicus Productions and started out making teen musical movies such It's Trad Dad and Just for Fun. Now Rosenberg was very much all about the business, he thrived on raising finance and doing deals, but Subotsky was a dyed-in the-wool fan of fantastic fiction, with a huge collection of books, magazines and comics. 

One of his favourite films was Ealing’s Dead of Night and as far back as 1948 he had been working on a script for a television series inspired by it. Now when Amicus found its feet in the early 1960s, Subotsky resurrected the stories he has written and crafted them into an anthology horror of his own, and the resulting movie Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965), starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and a young Donald Sutherland, was a smash hit.

Amicus followed this up with more anthology horror movies , as well other single story films in a variety of genres. However Subotsky has another burning ambition. Back in the 1950s, he had been hugely impressed by the horrors conjured up by the short-lived but legendary EC Comics, relishing the ghoulish fun found in the pages of Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. Hence he pestered Rosenberg to set up a deal with EC owner Bill Gaines. 

Now there had been offers for the film rights for the EC horror comics before, but Gaines had turned them down as he didn't care about the money, he just wanted a good film made that would do the comics justice. Now of course Amicus by this stage had a proven track record in delivering quality horror. And so Subotsky got the rights and set about selecting tales for a movie version of Tales From The Crypt. 

The production was helmed by veteran cinematographer and director Freddie Francis, and has an all star cast featuring Peter Cushing, Ian Henry, Joan Collins and Sir Ralph Richardson as the Cryptkeeper! Also featured was another star from Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, young Chloe Franks. Bringing five classic EC stories to the big screen, the film was a huge hit, incredibly even giving The Godfather a run for its money at the box office. However it also contains a hugely important milestone for Christmas horror in the shape of the very first story.

This segment brings to the screen the tale All Through the House written and drawn by Johnny Craig from The Vault of Horror #35 published back in February 1954. We open in a pleasant well to do home, decorated for Yuletide. It's a snowy evening, carols playing on the radio, and Father is just settling down to read his paper. Mother, played by Joan Collins, has other ideas, and promptly murders him…

However this is not the time of year to be naughty, and indeed Santa is watching. However this Santa is a dangerous lunatic who has escaped from a local asylum, and has found a Father Christmas costume…

Co-starring Chloe Franks as the couple's innocent daughter, All Through the House is a brilliant shocker, effectively told in about a dozen minutes. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, with Francis conducting a masterclass in show-not-tell film-making. And this dialogue-light approach is enhanced by the choice to have  the only music in the segment as traditional Christmas carols playing on the radio. Using bold colours and dynamic cinematography, Freddie Francis really captures the feel of a comic book come to life, and the cosy home and Christmas ambience contrasts brilliantly with the dark events unfolding on this particular snowy Christmas night. 

Indeed this opening segment is very much the blueprint for countless Christmas horrors to come. It's the first appearance of a proper cinematic killer Santa, something that would become a staple in this festive subgenre. But also there a generous helping of jet black humour served up alongside the festive frights, something else that would be a key component in many Yuletide horror movies. 

This little story in this movie has been hugely influential too. And  the influence All Through the House is clearly visible in many Christmas horrors down the years, from the original Black Christmas that came a couple of years later, right up to this year’s Yuletide mega-slasher Terrifier 3. And what’s more it’s still a hugely effective slice of Christmas horror. Rarely has a dozen minutes of film been so influential. 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 8: All Through The House 

Find more writing and  podcasts on the weird and wonderful here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN