BEST AND WORST REMAKES: WORST #2 – BLACK CHRISTMAS

Black Christmas is an ugly, ugly movie. It was directed by Glen Morgan, who I’ve met on a few occasions. Morgan is the man behind some of my favorite X-Files episodes (Tooms, Die Hand Die Verletzt, Home and Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man). He wrote and produced Final Destination, one of the best horror movies of the ’00s. I loved talking to him about the made-for-TV horror flicks of the ‘70s (Bad Ronald, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Trilogy of Terror), a genre he was clearly enamored with. If anyone should get what makes the original Black Christmas work, it should’ve been him. But the remake didn’t work.

Not even close.x

I can’t tell you if he was trying to do something new with the material, or (more likely) it was the usual fuck-a-roo antics perpetrated by faceless studio men (low men in yellow coats, Stephen King might write), The end result is an intolerable mash-up of repugnant characters, overcomplicated plot and cartoonish gore. It’s almost as if this was the original film in Superman’s Bizarro universe.

I don’t quite understand the need to shine a spotlight on the backstory of horror villains. The original Black Christmas gave us an enigmatic, barely visible psychopath who screams obscenities in different voices as he leaves a trail of death in his wake. Like Michael Myers, he’s omnipresent — a lurking fear in door frames, attics, and closets. The burden is on the viewer to find clues to his identity. His motives and backstory are hidden in his shrieking phone calls. And even then, like Heath Ledger’s Joker, you’re left to wonder if any of it’s real or just a schizophrenic’s jumbled fantasy. That’s the power of fear. Not the nonsense we’re shoveled about childhood incest, jaundiced babies and Christmas cookies pressed from human flesh.

It always seems to be a common statement in a remake’s PR campaign. “Yes,” the creatives always say, “We’re HUGE fans of the first one and it’s our duty as fans and filmmakers to remain faithful to the original.” It always strikes me as something a Westboro Baptist Church member might say about the Sermon on the Mount right before they picket some poor soul’s funeral.