"Black X-Mas" (2006) d/ Glen Morgan

If Bob Clark's 1974 cult classic were tantamount to the year that perfect Christmas present found it's way under a well-decorated tree (I dunno, 'matching buxom brunette boudoir bookends' comes to mind directly, for some unknown reason), then the 2004 remake would represent the year your old man fell off a ladder while hanging lights on the rain gutter and ate neck-snapped death a week before Christmas. Some of you already disagree with me, but I don't see how you can replace the real suspense and terror of the original with a handicapped backstory, replacing the engaging '74 subplots with more hot broads that already know what they have coming to them before they start dropping like flies, yet stick round any ol' way just to get whacked, and not see a total failure. This one doesn't just throw the kitchen sink at you in vainly trying to camouflage it's holes, the bathroom sink, the guest bedroom sink, the basement sink, and even the garden hose are all projectiles with your face written on them here. A body mechanic would have better chance of filling in the bullet holes in Bonnie and Clyde's deathmobile with a baby spoon full o' Bondo. Sure, it's a somewhat entertaining, splattery, incoherent mess, but I expected a little more out of something titled "Black X-Mas", and less is what I got, instead.


Remember the incestuous, jaundiced cannibal from the first movie? Me neither.
This time around, Billy has a surname (Lentz), a liver condition (jaundice), and a drunken, abusive mom so disgusted by the yellowy sight of him that she locks him in the attic until, years later, sexually unsatisfied by his blank-bustin' poppa, she naturally climbs up and socks it to him as only a hateful mother could, resulting in a sister-daughter named Agnes, who he jealously blinds in one eye when he escapes one legendary Christmas to snuff his mother's candle ...while she's in the cellar... trying to bury his father's corpse. Have you swallowed all of that so far? Yeah, then you'll eat anything. Meanwhile, the authorities find him eating his mother's baked back flesh after shaping it with a cookie cutter and abruptly throw him in the 'Clark' Sanitarium. Oh, you two-guys-that-shoulda-stuck-to-X-Files-and-Millenium-on-television, you're clever, really you are. Speaking of television, several familiar small screen faces turn up as sorority sisters at Lentz's former home, now the Delta Alpha Kappa house, as overseen by Mrs. Mack (Andrea Martin, from the original movie). Lacey Chabert, Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy, among others, all joke openly about the house's terrible past, even leaving Billy a yearly gift under the tree, so it should come as no surprise to any of them when they start getting bag-smothered and crystal unicorn-shanked one by one, but it somehow does, anyway, doesn't it.


Cheap over-the-top gore for dinner again?
While the sisters are getting eyeballed and asphyxiated , we see Billy cleverly orchestrate a dramatic and bloody escape from the sanitarium (especially clever, since the guard even remarks that the disturbed man attempts a break out every year at the same time just moments before he's added to the body count himself), meaning that his cyclopean sibling-offspring has been the one chopping the heads off of wallflowers back at the sorority house, leaving the obligatory one or two most resilient gals to square off against both murderers in a fiery false finale that naturally claims neither Lentz psycho, so they're able to be more dramatically wiped out at the hospital, with a defibrillator and Christmas tree impalement, respectively. Big deal...


I liked Margot's head gag considerably more than this gag head.
If you tried replicating the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel with a crayon on the back of a toilet lid using only your feet, you'd probably come closer than Wong and Morgan came to succeeding on any level here. It's too bad,  as I liked both of  their big tv shows just fine. Goofy self-aware nods to several, more effectively executed slasher flicks, shlocky gore, and terrible writing bereft of anything remotely resembling tension or a scare might be worth a good laugh with your buddies, but if you're on board to re-experience any of the original's potency, you're fucked outta luck, Chuck. Don't let Bob Clark's producer credit fool you here, either, as he had no problem attaching his name to crap towards the end of his career. See: Super Babies:Baby Geniuses 2 (2004). One wop, but just for laugh's sake.


Smother me with the bag when you're finished, would ya?

"Cannibal Girls"(1973)d/Ivan Reitman

This was an extremely hard movie for me to come by for years, having only the excellent one sheet and trailer as a gauge of its immense genre possibilities.With Ivan Reitman, whose late seventies/early eighties comedy output was second to none, at the helm, and with Eugene Levy, who I grew up laughing at on SCTV on a regular basis, and Andrea Martin, who's strangely dreamy and sexy here(it must be because she's in a horror-comedy)in the cast, how could it fail?I wouldn't know for sure until a bootleg VHS landed in my lap years later; only then did I know the disappointing truth.This was Reitman's second full length feature(he wouldn't take the chair again until his 1979 hit, Meatballs with Bill Murray), made painfully apparent by his choppy editing, pedestrian camerawork, and crypto-script(did one even exist?).Reitman plays the whole thing for laughs rather than screams, and achieves neither for the most part.The majority of gags within range from snickeringly silly to embarrassingly stupid, and Levy and Martin hadn't quite put it together themselves either, though Levy's wardrobe and hairstyle merit an honorable mention at the very least on the All-time Most Outrageous in Film category.There's some fairly satisfying exploitative-level splatter, though it comes with little suspense to compliment it.If the poverty cheese block budget didn't glare through in certain sequences along the way(along with an extremely photogenic boom mic), well, that might have helped a little, too.Blame Canada, I guess.

Hey Match-head, I hear if I pass three of you in the street in Poland, I'll win the state lottery...
A couple spreads out their best make out blanket on a comfy snowbank for to lie down n' make out upon.Only in Canada.A skirt-wearing ginger with a pickaxe moseys outta the woods and bloodily nullifies both of them.The local sheriff, who sounds more than a little like Flatface Frog from the Courageous Cat cartoons(or Edward G. Robinson, for you purists), acknowledges the latest deaths with a familiar apathy.Meanwhile, new couple, Cliff and Gloria(Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin), have an initial weekend of sin in the blustery snow-covered outskirts of nowhere planned, until the car breaks down outside of Farnhamville amidst some forced attempts at humor(Gloria hits the horn instead of turning over the engine, Cliff hits his head on the hood, you know the type).At a nearby motel, the antediluvian proprietor acquaints the young would-be lovers with the local mythos concerning three young girls who lived on the outskirts of town with their mute hunchback, and their unorthodox eating habits.After picking up wayward travellers at the tavern with the promise of good eats and fleshy treats, the girls, cannibals all, would slay the men and procure their meat, as we're about to see in a plebeian flashback involving three stereotypical meals:a parade organizer, a dork in horn-rimmed glasses, and an ice cream man(!).The first gets a good,sharp pair of scissors introduced to his neck, the second gets axed by a titular cannibal girl stripped down to her unmentionables, and the third, handcuffed to a bed and believing he's about to experience some memoir-quality group sex, gets special sauce administered to his body via gravy boat and is eaten alive, screaming, by all three girls like hogs at a trough/hogs at Old Country Buffet(take your pick).

Was the Gene Shalit look really popular in Canada in the early 70's?
Of course, the house still stands, and wouldn't you know it, serves as the town's only gourmet restaurant these days.You can't really blame Cliff and Gloria for wanting to check it out and groove off the anthropophagical vibes there.No, really, yeah you can.At the restaurant, we're introduced to Reverend St. John(Ronald Ulrich), a hippie decked out in a top hat and tails and red satin-lined cape with the subtlety of a Boris Karloff impersonator, who treats the guests to the house specialty(the only menu item,btw)as served by three young ladies(You know, I've got a hunch that those are probably the cannibal girls themselves...) and invites them to stay the evening.He shows them their room where the previous occupant, Aunt Priscilla, died("...poor thing, burned at the stake.Oh well.") then bids them a good night, and his Aunt Priscilla, too.It turns out that St. John is a practitioner of the black arts, who indoctrinated his stable of titular meat eating bitches(and eventually the whole town) into occultish ways, using the consumption of human flesh to obtain magical powers and immortality.Unsuspecting male tourists end up on the menu, while females who are easy on the eyes are given the opportunity to buy into the unholy meat-masticating circle.As you may have guessed(in like fifteen seconds or so), the reverend has ulterior plans for Cliff and Gloria.Will Gloria end up as a main course or as the newest member of St. John's oft nude harem?Will somebody explain how thunderstorms occur in the middle of winter?Could you possibly endure another sexual allusion about meat?All these questions will be answered when you screen "Cannibal Girls" for yourselves.

After a talk from Mr. Furley, Janet and Chrissy reduce their rent by a third.
A warning bell(more like a car horn in my estimation) sounded in the theaters just before a scene of eroticism or terror would begin; the gimmick has been restored to the print in the dvd release, though paying more than the price of a pack of smokes for it would just be dumb.Even dumber than the movie itself.Reitman, whose only other genre credits would comes as producer of both Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia(1977) and Death Weekend(1976), went on to enormous success directing comedy classics like Meatballs(1979), Stripes(1981), Ghost Busters(1984), and even Kindergarten Cop(1990).Andrea Martin would follow up her appearance here with a role in Bob Clark's slasher opus, Black Christmas, the following year, before going on to enjoy a rich career of comedic roles in television and movies,as did her co-star, Eugene Levy.This is simply a movie whose potential was never reached due to time and budgetary restrictions, and with the right director, could be re-envisioned to much greater success.A nominal cult classic worth a look for Reitman completists and 70's exploitation nostalgists only, anything more might leave the viewer with some serious indigestion.Two wops.

Whoever said "Good things come in threes" forgot about the other three good things on display here.

"Black Christmas"(1974)d/Benjamin "Bob" Clark

You're covering a Christmas movie in June?O Wop of Magnitude,have you finally descended into pure madness?You might be saying something like that right now if you were unfamiliar with tonight's entry,probably the prototype for all slasher films that followed,arguably the apex of the amalgamation,teeming with psychological terror,forever laying the disconcerting groundwork for the horror subgenre born out of it.We've covered a lot of "Bob" here at the Wop,but tonight,we'll scrutinize his finest piece of genre work,simplistic in its approach,effective in its delivery,and magnificent in its result.Cynics,take note:If you've never watched this movie before,and doubt the potentcy of its horrific brilliance,simply screen it all alone,late at night,in the dark.Chances are,a lot of what transpires will stay with you long after the lights have come back on,and possibly well into when you turn them off again.My tastes in film,though mostly unchanged since the lifelong love affair began all those years ago,have matured to a degree,and intuition tells me that the movie in front of us tonight,is the ultimate of its class.When you've seen this,like examining strands of horror dNa under a microscope,you instantly see the origins of what made something like Halloween(1978)so effective.In the director's chair,Clark plays a maddening game of cat and mouse with the viewer's deductive reasoning,clouding the film's simple,chilling truth until the bitter end with narrative worthy of a Hitchcockian whodunit,relentlessly applying layer upon layer of moody atmosphere to each frame like a master baker,with ample performances from his cast,which includes John Saxon,Olivia Hussey,Keir Dullea,Margot Kidder,and Nick Mancuso,who combined vocal talents with up to five other actors(including Clark himself)for the unforgettable crank calls from the killer.Due to differences in personal tastes,I can't say for sure whether or not you'll love the movie(probably the only one ever) pulled from prime-time network television for being "too scary" for network audiences,but it'll stay with you.Maybe longer even than you'd like.

Jess(Olivia Hussey),that's the wrong type of wreath,honey.Funeral wreaths...
Late one night,while a sorority house hosts a Christmas party,an unbalanced individual shows up outside,climbs up the trellis,and in through an open attic window.Inside,Jess(Hussey) receives another in a series of obscene phone calls,peppered with a strange mix of whines,groans,obscenities,impersonations,and multiple voices, from someone she's dubbed "the moaner".Meanwhile,Clare(Lynne Griffin)retires to her room to finish packing to go home for the holidays,and gets herself asphyxiated with a sheet of plastic from the closet.The homicidal stranger retreats back to the attic with the spoils of his hunt and props her up in a rocking chair with a window view,the plastic still wrapped around her head.The next morning,Clare's father(James Edmond) arrives to pick up his daughter,only she's nowhere to be found.At the same time,Jess visits her boyfriend,Peter(Dullea),a maladjusted schizoid with dreams of pounding piano keys with his ham fists for a living,with news of pregnancy.When she returns to the sorority she receives another crank call.Barb and Phyl(Kidder and Martin)accompany Mr. Harrison to the local constabulary to file a missing persons report,but when the desk sargeant(Doug "Porky's" McGrath)slags off their concerns with ideas of Clare shacking up with a secret boyfriend on the side,Barb gives the sorority phone number to the obtuse officer with the new exchange...fellatio.Nash is clueless,as the other cops derive great mirth from his ignorance.Jess informs Clare's boyfriend Chris(Art Hindle)of her disappearance,and when he becomes enfuriated at the police's indifference,he storms the station house,demanding the attention of Lt. Fuller(Saxon),whose hands are already full,searching for a missing schoolgirl,and enlisting the concerned collegiates as a search party.Back at the house,Mrs. Mac(Marian Waldman),the girls' binge drinking den mother, investigates noises in the attic she attributes to her cat,and instead finds her face on the wrong end of a crane hook.

The psychiatrists that told Billy(Albert J. Dunk)he was a little nuts,lied.He's a lot nuts.
The search party discovers the mutilated body of the young schoolgirl in the park,and Jess returns home in time for an even more disturbing phone call,after which Peter shows up to discuss plans for their lovechild,offering to give up his career in music to care for the expectant mother,who stuns him with plans to abort it instead.He storms out,in a blind,furious rage.Barb,stuck at the house for the holidays,drinks past the point of anebriation,and after retiring to her room to sleep it off,is stabbed to death with an ornate glass unicorn from her night table,while Jess listens to a group of door-to-door carolers.Jess decides to report the obscene calls to the police,with Lt. Fuller and a technician installing a bug tracer to the phone,directing the terrified girl to keep the caller on the line as long as possible so they can trace his whereabouts,and place an officer in a squad car outside to guard the house.When Phyl later goes up to check on Barb,her fate is all too similar.When Jess receives more calls,this time using Peter's direct quotes from their argument,Fuller is convinced Peter is behind the calls,further reinforced by the discovery of his thoroughly trashed piano in the work room.Finally the crank calls are long enough to be traced and the lawmen fall upon the horrible truth:the calls are coming from inside the sorority house.Nash informs the girl of this over the phone,telling her to retrieve her girlfriends and vacate the premises immediately,but Jess,armed with a fireplace poker,instead discovers her friends corpses upstairs and is attacked by the unknown killer,before barricading herself in the cellar.Peter arrives and breaks a window to gain entry and corner his girlfriend.When the police arrive on the scene,they find their officer slumped dead in his cruiser,with his throat cut,and in the basement,a hysterical Jess clutching the same fireplace poker,next to the lifeless body of Peter,who she beat like a redheaded stepchild.Believing the case is closed,the police and doctors leave the girl sedated and sleeping in her room,and go outside to deal with the media blitz.Up in the attic,Clare and Mrs. Mac's corpses remain undiscovered,and as the killer starts to let himself down from the attic,introducing himself with a whisper,"Agnes,it's me,Billy.",the phone begins to ring.

Always a stickler for freshness,Billy packs Clare's(Lynne Griffin)head in plastic.
Even the list of people who didn't make it into tonight's film for one reason or another reads like a who's who of Hollwood:Bette Davis,Edmund O'Brien,Gilda Radner,Malcolm McDowell.Also released as "Silent Night,Evil Night"(to avoid being mistaken as a blaxploitation flick...put yo weight on it,mothafuckas!),and "Stranger in the House" for television,the story was inspired by real-life murders that took place in Canada during the holiday season.Imagine Olivia Hussey's surprise when Steve Martin told her she was in one of his favorite films of all-time,and it wasn't Romeo and Juliet(1968),but tonight's review instead,which he claims to have seen 20 times(I've sat through it that many,easy).Studio execs approached Clark about changing the ending to have Jess wake up alone with Claire's boyfriend Chris revealing his true nature with the line "Agnes,don't tell them what we did." before killing her.Thank the gods he stood his ground on that one.Naturally,in 2006,the makers of Final Destination released their remake of tonight's entry,which was naturally depressingly awful on all levels,and bereaft of everything that makes the original a classic(Notice a pattern here,Hollywood?).Jaundiced cannibalistic siblings?Seriously,lay off the crystal meth,retards.We won't be covering that particular commode cake here anytime soon.At the moment,I honestly think this entry is the finest example of the slasher movie,to date,and as such deserves the highest scale rating possible,and the full recommendation of yours cruelly,to boot.

What lies within this eye signifies demise is nigh.