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I should probably get round to watching Black Christmas
like I said I would two and a a half....huh how fitting given the meme....weeks ago, before we straight up reach Christmas and I have to find excuses not to follow up on my christmas horror marathon
Ok nipping this shit in the bud now and finally finishing my slasher marathon before we roll around to actual fuckin christmas.
Premise: As christmas rolls around, a bunch of sorority sisters start getting creeper calls from an unknown person and are slowly picked off one by one in their sorority house. I still have no idea how this turned into "Jordan Peterson uses evil science to control a gamergate fraternity to subjugate strong and stunningly bravely diverse women" in the re-remake.
Execution: Cold open on the exterior of a big house lit up with christmas lights while we get silent night sung as the soundtrack.....ok this is unironically christmassy. I probably should have delayed this till christmas but anyway. Random girl walks in as we follow a slasher perspective cam with heavy breathing in a pretty decently atmospheric shot as the soundtrack becomes spoopier. Mystery creeper guy skulks around the house before climbing up to the roof while those inside HOLY SHIT FUCK THAT 70S HAIR....sorry, got double barrel 70s jew-fros and it unsettled me. Creeper creeps into the creepy attic and makes his way into the upper floor. Its well done, especially given how early this movie came in the slasher game but it kinda seems like they are blowing this particular load a little early as these shots feel like they could be a hell of a lot more effective in the midpoint or after.
Anyway a kinda canadian sounding chick gets a call and declares its "the moaner" again which grabs the sorority sisters' attention as they all rush to listen to him....well.....yeah thats straight up coom gurgling there. Plus what sounds like a duck being molested. They try to laugh it off but are obviously freaked out by it until seeming main character chick...think her name is Barb shittalks him back until he hangs up. Ya know that was actually a kind of effective scene. Barb casually proceeds to drop a rape joke, upsetting the other girls including one who goes away to pack. Cue middle aged Housemother they all love arriving and we cut to the girl who went to pack who is busy playing with her big hairy pussy.
Unfortunately she is not alone in the room, as there is something lurking in her closet behind what I think is a plastic dress cover, causing her big hairy pussy to start freaking out. We get a classic "asking who's there while slowly walking towards the killer" scene which considering its probably one of the OGs was done surprisingly well, and the killer jumps her and begins strangling her with the plastic. Back downstairs and Housemother is being fawned over by the other girls while the killer takes Victim #1's body to the attic. The structure is really quite strange for a slasher given how it hits the ground killing so fast and so well.
Kinda Canadian sounding chick gets a call from hilariously suspicious sounding boyfriend....ok I gotta google what the hell species this chick is, this accent is all over the atlantic....huh. British/Argentine. Also she's called Jess which is easier to type than Kinda Canadian sounding chick. Housemother is ripshit drunk and brushing her teeth, casually fishes another bottle of boose out the toilet tank and I am starting to see why the chicks in the movie love her so much. Jess goes to find dead chick and we abruptly cut to said dead chick's face still mummified in plastic as her corpse is sat in a rocking chair while "the moaner" sings a creepy song and we cut to the next day. For a first act/preamble that was surprisingly good.
Dead Chick's dad is waiting for her outside some church/college building and is pointed to the sorority house by a refugee from the mid 60s. Housemother tries to help him only to get him whine at her for a poster of an old lady flipping him the bird and how sinful everything looks in a diabolically canadian accent while Housemother tries to cover up a nude poster to prevent another whineout and....huh its night outside again. While she rants to herself and drinks she hears the big hairy pussy from earlier, and while calling for him manages to again mortify Dead Chick's dad by calling the cat a prick. As they leave the killer watches them from next to dead chick's chair.
Jess now declares she is preggo to equally mid atlantic accented boyfriend who looks kinda like Malcolm MacDowell. She wants to abort it which her red herring boyfriend does not approve but the two agree to talk later. At a nearby frat house Barb is busy seducing a 9 year old boy and getting him drunk while Dead Chick's Daddy finishes talking to his wife on the phone. Jess gets another call from the moaner and starts babbling about "agnes" and "billy", while at the police station Barb has momentarily paused in her casual act of child grooming to help Dead Chick's Daddy file a report, the officer taking the time to tell him she is probably getting deep dicked in a cabin, and eventually Barb begins sexually harassing him too. Jess stops by a hockey rink to find Dead Chick's Boyfriend who says he hasnt seen her either, and cut to Red Herring who is fucking torturing a piano while sobbing like a crazy person.
Half an hour in and shit is going pretty well so far. At the police station a middle school kid's mom is filing a report as he kids gone missing now and the cop could not give less of a shit. Back at the house and Dead Chick's Daddy is being waited on by Housemother while barb drunkenly babbles about sex addict turtles to him. Gotta be honest here, the awkward comedy isnt exactly badly done here but it feels like the movie is almost trying too hard. Eventually she snaps and starts freaking out, and is told to go to bed. Red Herring is now physically destroying his piano with a giant lump of metal. Jess and Dead Chick's boyfriend arrive home and team up with Dead Chick's Daddy and Jew-Fro chick to assist with a search for dead chick/middle schooler. Back at the house and someones creepin outside....again.
Meanwhile Housemother is drunk again and packing, while upstairs her big hairy pussy has found the corpse which is being a little overshown if i'm honest, but it kinda gets away with it because the lighting and positioning are freaky as hell. Hearing her big hairy fish smelling pussy Housemother slowly heads up to the attic, and upon seeing the corpse the killer uses a convinient crane hook to impale her head...which she is a little vocal about given the whole "spike through brain" thing. Upon seeing the taxi Housemother called leave the killer begins straight up chimping out like CWC which kinda takes some of the menace away. Back with the search party they eventually find the now ex-middle schooler whose body is apparently pretty badly mangled or she was just hilariously ugly in life enough to make the searchers freak out on seeing her.
Returning home Jess gets another call from the killer who loudly cooms and babbles on the phone at her while she says "stop this" in the tenor of an english nanny finding little timmy shitting in the kettle again. While she calls the cops to report the creeper calls, Red Herring ambushes her from behind, having been upstairs for unspecified yet implicitly suspicious reasons. Cue a mix of her bitching at the retarded cop and her relationship melodrama. Red Herring declares to jess they are getting married and they engage in further relationship melodrama until thankfully we cut to the cops. Retard cop is being called out by his boss for being a retard as the others head home, while Red Herring is throwing a tantrum because his gal pal is breaking up with him and still wants to deletus the fetus. I would feel more pity were he not a creepy autist wearing the worst turtle neck of the 70s. After unsubtly threatening her he leaves, running into jew-fro who brought two of the cops with her to investimagate.
Cops tap the phoneline and leave a guy outside to keep watch, while red herring skulks outside. Jew-fro chick is starting to realise what kind of movie she is in and breaks down in tears before heading off to bed. We hit the 1 hour mark and the cops are setting up their phone tapping system on their side aaaaaand cut back to dead chick in plastic who is still being rocked in the chair by the killer. I get its a good kill and all but they are getting a lil fixated on it. The killer now creeps down to....huh I forgot that barb chick was in bed. She's having an asthma attack in her sleep and babbles to jess about having a nightmare about a stranger in her room before Jess leaves to have carols inflicted on her by canadian children, allowing the killer the chance to ice barb with a unicorn figurine while babbling to himself.
After the annoying kids leave Jess gets another call, and we get a kinda cool scene of the cop in the phone company operating centre trying to physically find the connection during the call, however the killer hangs up before they can find it. The cop immidiately suspects red herring but is then distracted by a canadian redneck being brought in for shooting a cop in the ass. Back home and Jess suspects Red Herring too because the killer repeated something in the call that he said. Red Herring then gives her a call to whine about their relationship again before hanging up, thus causing the cop to call back in and voice his suspicions while the killer skulks in the background.
While the cop chases the red herring lead, Jess and Jew-Fro chick are alone in the house. Jew-Fro goes to Barb's room to check if she's ok and the door closes shut behind her so....yeah she ded. I am also noticing that all the door opening/closing sounds are the same stock sounds from video games. The phone rings again and it seems the killer has, much like myself, been reading the fatrick thread because he immidiately starts babbling about "you pig, you bitch pig" while the cop once again goes through the operating centre and finally finds the connection and....
*drumroll*.......THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!
Head cop tries to call the cop watching the house as the camera pans over the now very very murdered cop and tells retard cop to call Jess and get her out the house without telling her the killer is there.....which naturally he fucks up. Not wanting to abandon her already dead friends Jess begins freaking out and arms herself with a fire poker before heading upstairs. Huh only 13 minutes left....gone pretty quickly all things considered. Upstairs she finds Barb's room locked, but using her 40lb weight she manages to knock through the door and sees the corpses of her friends. Hearing a whisper she looks round and we get a pretty spooky shot of the killer's bugged out eye staring at her through the keyhole of the now open door. Slamming it back she legs it and we unfortunately get more of the killer's tard wailing which sadly deflates the tension as he straight up sounds like this
Instead of running out the front door she instead runs down to the basement locking herself in, and after pounding on the door for a while the killer seems to go outside. Cue red herring creeping round to the basement windows calling for Jess before eventually just smashing through....ok sure he may be a red herring for the murders in general but he sure as shit was planning something nasty for Jess given him breaking in and overtly trying to jump her when she is clearly terrified of him, so its not exactly unpleasant when the cops roll up and we find she has smashed his skull in. Because the cops are just that fucking retarded they decide to dose her up on some sedatives and tuck her into bed....her own bed because instead of taking her to the hospital or whatnot they just decided to leave her in the murder house and all fuck off without even searching the place properly. Up in the unsearched attic, still containing the corpses of first dead chick and housemother, the killer starts singing his creepy creeper song again, and as the camera pans out the window we hear the phone start to ring again as the movie ends.
Characters: Aggressive canadianism aside, the characters were perfectly workable though not exactly outstanding in any way. Lead character was a decent prototype for the boilerplate slasher protagonist, and the killer's schtick was memorable though it did occasionally become a lil goofy, although I will qualify this as being due in part to my repeat exposure to loud screaming tards thanks to being here on the farms. Best Character was housemother
Scares: Atmosphere was pretty great the whole while, and the underlying tension was maintained well throughout. The calls wound up spoopier than they had any right to be and the scenes of the killer stalking through the house set, itself a very good set, were executed well. Spoopiest scene was probably the first time we saw dead chick wrapped in plastic, which is probably why its what was used on all the marketing.
Kills: Effective enough but kinda lacking in execution, though this can be forgiven for being uncharted ground to a large extent. Best was probably the first kill too.
Final Verdict: I can easily see why this movie inspired so many others. Even if it is a somewhat uneven movie with a questionable structure and some unpolished kills/scares, this is still an extremely effective horror movie in general and slasher movie in particular. All the ingredients are here, albeit scrambled, and the atmosphere was extremely well executed throughout.
Would I Watch Again?: Yeah I would. Its an unironically good slasher movie and an exceptional christmas horror movie
EDIT: after much consideration and having realised that between this belated finale to slasher week and my Friday 13th marathon I am pretty much spent on slashers for the time being, my next marathon will be of the Zombi "series" given I already dun reviewed Zombi 7: Monster Hunter/Absurd. However because I am both autistic and want to cap off this fucking slog with something I know I will enjoy, it will be done in reverse.
As some may be aware, this schizophrenic fucking mess of an alleged series has a solid dozen different entries that dont even have fucking zombies in them and many if not most of them were never actually released under the "Zombi" name but were retroactively declared to have been released as such in fucking bulgaria or the peoples republic of tuva by annoying internet retards. Thus I will take a rather liberal approach and just treat any wop/largely wop movie
on the big wiki list for the series that has zombies or near enough zombies in it as "part" of the series and was filmed after Zombi 2, even if only to allow me to check out some vaguely obscure wop schlock horror I aint seen before.
Zombi 6: Dawn of the Mummy - actually kinda wanted to check this one out for a longass while but never got round to it
Zombi 6: Oasis of the Zombies - dithered on whether to hold off on this and just watch with the other late 70s/early 80s nazi zombie flicks but that shit can wait
Zombi 5: Hell of the Living Dead - im gonna have to swallow my disinterest in mattei and soldier through this. If memory serves its kinda short which is a plus
Zombi 5: Killing Birds - I vaguely remember hearing there is only like one or two zombies in this one
Zombi 4: After Death - yeah I have no clue of anything about this one
Zombi 4: Panic - a """zombie""" movie about freaky mutants, poster looks kinda cool
Zombi 3: Nightmare City - have actually watched this a couple times and it is not terrible although it is severely hampered by the makeup on the zombies
Zombi 3: Burial Ground - oh...fuck im gonna be drinking heavily during this one
Zombi 3: Zombie Holocaust - I want that Juicy Shaq Meat
Zombi 3: The Actual Zombi 3 - I aint seen this in like 13 years, i suspect it will be goofy
Zombi 2: The Actual Zombi 2 - The light at the end of what will likely be a very underwhelming tunnel