Remake Showdown #3 – Black Christmas
Remake Showdown #3:
Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) versus Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas (2006)
Benjamin Bussey
Readers, be warned – in comparing and contrasting the two movies, moderate spoilers for both versions of Black Christmas will inevitably follow.
Where a great many of us see just another remake, for those in the know the remaking of Black Christmas is as significant/sacrilegious as remaking Psycho or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (Might I also add from my stiff-upper-lipped British perspective how surprising yet relieving it is that no-one’s redone Peeping Tom – yet.) For, as those in the know will tell us, Bob Clark’s tale of seasonal slaughter in a sorority house is in many respects the first true slasher movie, released four years prior to Halloween and utilising many of the same tricks: setting the action on a holiday in a traditionally safe domestic environment, making extensive use of point-of-view photography, building suspense as one by one the characters are bumped off for no apparent reason. While it was John Carpenter’s film that got the ball rolling, it was Bob Clark’s film that… erm… inflated the ball to begin with. Ahem. Yeah, not a great analogy there, but you get my point.
I realise I’m coming off as dismissive of Black Christmas and its significance to the subgenre that has arguably dominated horror since its release, but the fact is I only saw it for the first time about a year ago, and wasn’t even aware of its existence at all until I heard about the new version. Naturally, as one who prides himself on knowledge of the genre, I’m thoroughly ashamed of my ignorance, but the practical upshot is that I can approach this Remake Showdown from a largely neutral, unbiased perspective, as opposed to the venom I have privately spat at the TCM and Halloween remakes in the past.
To summarise Clark’s film: it’s Christmas time at a sorority house. Into this setting sneaks someone or something with murderous intent; presumably the same someone or something who has been making phone calls to the house, calls which at first consist of relatively run-of-the-mill obscenities, but soon appear to be the products of a genuinely deranged mind, speaking in several different voices at once. The names “Billy” and “Agnes” come up repeatedly. It’s truly quite unsettling stuff to hear, and only more so once it becomes clear that whoever it is on the other end of the line (let’s call him Billy) is also sneaking in and killing the girls.
Credit where it’s due, the parts of the original that work are done very well. The use of POV seems to be its greatest legacy, the thing it has most in common with the slashers that followed (as well as, it should be said, the likes of The Evil Dead – and even Jaws). The POV in Clark’s film has a quality all of its own, however. When we see the perspective of Michael, Mrs Vorhees or Jason, it’s usually through pretty smooth tracking shots; there’s a cool, methodical, emotionless quality. But when we see Billy’s perspective, we’re seeing through the eyes of an outright maniac. The camerawork has a warped, rounded look; the movement is jerky, bumpy. Added to which, we hear Billy’s laboured breath, the voices constantly muttering incoherently in his head. Take the moments when he’s up in the attic surrounded by corpses, screaming and trashing the place; unnerving stuff indeed. And that is further cemented by our complete ignorance of who this guy is and what is motivating him. We never know his identity, his history; beyond one brilliantly creepy close-up of an eyeball, we never even get a look at him. Very smart, and very scary.
So – naturally – that’s the first thing the remake does away with. And they go and do that thing that almost every remake/sequel/prequel feels they need to do for validation: they add backstory.
In Glen Morgan’s movie, there’s no mystery about Billy’s identity. Everyone knows who he is long before he makes his presence felt. It’s even a sorority tradition to leave him a present under the tree. No time is wasted in showing us the guy; and I have to surmise that Morgan and James Wong’s time on The X-Files never quite left them, as this Billy is highly reminiscent in look and manner to that particularly odd episode involving a green slimy guy who lived in the walls – I’m sure die-hard X-Files fans will remember that one more vividly than I. The story behind the ramblings we hear over the phone is made clear (i.e., demystified); a sordid tale of neglect, incest and matricide. As if giving Billy green skin didn’t make things weird enough. But wait a minute – if that’s Billy breaking out of the mental hospital ten minutes in, then who killed the girl in the first scene…? There’s another place that Morgan’s film deviates significantly from Clark’s – this time around there’s not one but two psycho killers in the house. It’s an embellishment that is at first intriguing, but wears thin pretty fast. I get the impression that the identity of the second killer was meant to be a great surprise, but… it isn’t. At all. So while it may have been a well-intended attempt to make the remake stand apart, ultimately it leaves the viewer asking, “Why bother?”
This is not to say that all the remake’s changes were superfluous, though. One very wise move on the part of Morgan’s film is that, aside from the early madhouse sequence, a few brief car scenes and a rather pointless hospital-set denouement, the action is confined entirely to the house. Clark’s film is by far at its most effective within the sorority walls, but cuts with too much regularity to the outside world, killing the tension every time it does so. All credit to the ever-reliable John Saxon’s cop routine, but the police station scenes never feel more than perfunctory. And as for the moments in the telephone company – seriously, watching a guy wander around a bunch of whirring machines trying to trace a call isn’t interesting to watch once, never mind three or four times. By keeping the action indoors and having the story run its course over a single evening, Morgan’s film maintains a steadily tense atmosphere. As a side effect, however, the running time of the remake is significantly less, barely clocking in at seventy five minutes.
But while Morgan may keep a nice consistent creepiness, his film’s death scenes don’t have anywhere near the iconic impact as Clark’s: the first plastic bag suffocation, the carol singers intercut with death by crystal unicorn. And, in another trick that some might say Halloween copied, the original does it with very little bloodshed. By contrast the remake predictably ups the gore, but the numerous brutal murders get repetitive pretty quickly – particularly as the exact same MO is utilised more than once. Both films are fairly low on sexual content as slashers go, although when the remake has Michelle Trachtenberg advising Crystal Lowe to take a shower, at least 50% of the audience will most likely punch the air.
Unsurprisingly, where both films fall a little short is in crafting compelling or endearing characters. While in the original Olivia Hussey’s fraught romance with Keir Dullea is actually quite effective, and Margot Kidder makes for a convincing drunk, the other characters are a bit nondescript. The remake is even guiltier in this respect; except the rather uncharismatic blonde Kate Cassidy who somehow seems to be the lead, it’s a houseful of 5’5 brunettes, and even with familiar faces like Trachtenberg and Mary Elizabeth Winstead I had trouble remembering who was who.
So which comes up trumps? The movie that has peaks of fear but troughs of dullness, or the movie that’s reasonably eerie for the whole of its marginally decreased running time? Well – shock horror – it’s got to be the original. Morgan’s film is by no means bad, but it’s pretty forgettable by comparison with Clark’s. Ultimately though, I must admit I wasn’t especially enamoured with either film. By and large they’re both pretty workmanlike; and while Clark’s film may have provided the blueprint for Halloween, there’s no denying that Halloween did the job considerably better. Still, Clark pulled off a trick that few have managed in making Billy a truly scary and memorable movie maniac, without ever letting us know what he looked like.
BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) = B-
BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006) = C-
