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Black Christmas Full Production Notes
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Black Christmas
Starring: Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert, Andrea Martin, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jessica Harmon, Katie Cassidy
Directed by: Glen Morgan
Screenplay by: Glen Morgan
Release Date: December 25th, 2006
MPAA Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, sexuality, nudity and language.
Box Office: $16,273,581 (US total)
Studio: Dimension Films
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The remake of the 1974 film is about a killer who terrorizes a sorority house with phone calls before he begins to murder various sorority sisters during the holiday break.
Black Christmas tells the story of Billy Lenz, a young boy who was abused by his mother as a child. Billy's mother cheated on her husband and eventually killed him. She then permanently placed Billy in the attic while she started a new family with a new lover.
During the movie, Billy's mother is seen having sex with her new lover in the stairwell, with a snore from the lover; Billy's mother gets up and heads to the attic. Inside the attic she walks to the front of Billy's rocking chair and drops her robe.
Billy's mother then gives birth to a baby girl (whom she actually created with Billy) 9 months later and treats it with love and respect, which angers Billy. After several years, he brutally murdered his mother and her lover after pulling out his sisters/daughters eyeball.
The movie takes place in present day when a group of seven sorority sisters consisting of Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Kelli (Katie Cassidy), Dana (Lacey Chabert), Lauren (Crystal Lowe), Megan (Jessica Harmon), Claire (Leela Savasta), and Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg) and their house mother (Andrea Martin), live in Billy's childhood home.
They find themselves being harassed by threatening and intimidating anonymous phone-calls during Christmas Break. The girls are then murdered individually by Billy throughout the movie, and as a twist, his sister (who he plundged the right eye out) Agnes gets in the slasher action too.
The slaughter continues untill the last two victums are taken to the hospital. As it turnes out, Billy and Agnes, (who survived through a fire set by an accident) come back to finish things. And the terror ends up with Agnes being electrocuted by a heart shocker. Followed up by Billy being pushed off a balcany and gets impaled on the top of a Christmas Tree in the loby of the hospital. The movie ends immediantly after.
Trivia
Filming began January 2006 in Vancouver, Canada.
Andrea Martin also played "Phyllis" in the 1974 version of Black Christmas. Margot Kidder, who played Barb in the old version, was another choice for the role of Mrs. Mac.
Katie Cassidy, during an interview, said this will be her last horror film for a while.
Glen Morgan approached Mary Elizabeth Winstead in an airport at 4 AM for the role of Kelli, but she said she didn't want to get stereotyped as a horror heroine, so she accepted the role of Heather instead because she was a big fan of the original.
Reshoots began on August 29th in a mental facility in Vancouver.
The Film Opens on Christmas Day.
The characters are much like originals: Kelli Pressley(Katie Cassidy) is like Jess Bradford(Olivia Hussey). Lauren Hannon(Crystal Lowe) is like Barbie Coard(Margot Kidder), and Clair Crosby is like Clare Harrison(Lynne Griffin).
Review: Skip this slay ride
It just wouldn't be Christmas without certain familiar sights — evergreens strung with coloured lights, stockings hung over a fireplace, sorority sisters fleeing for their lives. The last has been a part of the season since 1974, when Black Christmas became one of Canadian cinema's most cherished gifts to the world.
Shot in Toronto, Bob Clark's nasty thriller about a sorority house terrorized by a deranged killer on Christmas Eve was both the first horror movie to undermine the holiday's reputation for goodwill and an archetypal slasher flick. Its sleazy innovations were repeatedly pilfered over the years, most notably in John Carpenter's tribute to a less jolly holiday, Halloween.
More evidence of Black Christmas's influence could be found in many more movies that used co-ed-filled houses as sites for misogynistic mayhem (think Sorority House Massacre). And though Clark neglected to put his killer in a Santa suit, his oversight would be corrected in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise of the eighties and nineties.
Ever since, children have awaited the arrival of Saint Nick with a greater sense of trepidation.
Given the Hollywood vogue for resurrecting cherished horror movies, a remake of Black Christmas was as inevitable as it was redundant. Lazy, perfunctory and free of tension, the new version will satisfy neither the admirers of the original nor anyone looking for a gory respite from seasonal good cheer. Director Glen Morgan — a former X-Files writer-producer who hatched the cheerfully vicious Final Destination franchise with partner James Wong — fails to reinvigorate the much-imitated material. Instead, he offers a feeble and incoherent array of idiotic slasher-pic clichés, the Christmas-fied carnage being oh-so-wittily set to the strains of The Nutcracker Suite.
The update's one innovation may be the jaundiced skin of the killer — perhaps victims of liver ailments will be inspired to protest against Black Christmas's callous equating of aberrant pigmentation with murderous impulses, much like albino groups did over The Da Vinci Code. Flashbacks reveal how young Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) slaughtered his abusive parents one Christmas Eve, going so far as to make Christmas cookies from his mother's flesh. Years later, the sorority girls now living in his house are plagued by a series of disappearances and creepy phone calls that — as every horror fan knows already — are coming from within the house.
A resolutely unremarkable bunch, the sisters are dispatched with little difficulty and less flair. Only the sole member of the original cast, Andrea Martin, makes much impression. (Another connection to the first film is that this also was shot in Canada, this time in Vancouver.) Gore-hounds will be mildly appeased by the shots of freshly excised eyeballs and icicle accidents, but even on that level, Morgan's remake is disappointingly timid. If only he had skipped the stale psycho-killer shtick and filled his version with man-eating reindeer, axe-toting elves and a mutant Mrs. Claus, this might have been a Black Christmas to remember. --- Jason Anderson The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Black Christmas Offends Religious Groups
Movie studio Dimension Films has remade a cult hit from 1974 about a group of female students being terrorized by a killer during Christmas and is releasing the film, Black Christmas, on December 25 -- tagging it as the "ultimate slay ride."
But religious groups have condemned the timing of the release of the R-rated slasher movie as tasteless and offensive, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"To have a movie that emphasizes murder and mayhem at Christmas, a time of celebration and joy around the world seems to be ill founded," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, an organization dedicated to upholding religious freedom and traditional family values.
Jennifer Giroux, who co-founded Operation Just Say Merry Christmas as a way to reclaim the season for Christians, said it was abominable to release this film on Christmas Day.
"The use of religious music -- 'Silent Night' -- and the nativity set on the front porch in one scene are insensitive to Christians," Giroux said after watching the trailer online.
"It's not enough to ignore and omit Christmas, but now it has to be offended, insulted and desecrated. Our most sacred holiday, actually a holy day, is being assaulted."
The Hollywood Reporter says that Dimension Films is not being swayed. In a statement, the company said, "There is a long tradition of releasing horror movies during the holiday season as counter-programming to the more regular yuletide fare. Black Christmas is a remake of a classic 1974 horror movie with a big cult following."
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