Black Christmas Upsets Religious Groups
Filed under: Horror, New Releases, MGM, The Weinstein Co., Movie Marketing, Remakes and Sequels
This story should come as no surprise to anyone: religious groups are upset with the horror flick Black Christmas bloodying up their holiday. Matthew Staver of Liberty Council called the release "ill founded" and Jennifer Giroux of Operation Just Say Merry Christmas said the movie has "assualted" the most sacred of holy days. If I was head of Dimension, I'd use those quotes in an ad. Dimension has at least issued a statement in response to the complaints: "There is a long tradition of releasing horror movies during the holiday season," the company said, "as counter-programming to the more regular yuletide fare." That's the truth. A power search on the IMDb of Christmas and horror reveals 53 titles (sure not all of them really apply here).
What I want to know is, how many Christmas movies made these days do Staver and Giroux approve of? Certainly Black Christmas and other holiday horrors aren't as bad as some truly inappropriate and damaging Christmas movies. I'm not even referring to cynical flicks like Bad Santa and Christmas Vacation. I mean the badly written family films that center on the consumerist Christmas yet insincerely present a moral tale about how family is more important than presents. Or, worse, the awful slapstick Christmas comedies like Deck the Halls that have no redeeming association with Christmas whatsoever. C'mon, there are so many movies that are more sacreligious than Black Christmas. Care to name a few?
Related posts:
Guilty Pleasures: Silent Night, Bloody Night
12 Days of Cinematicalmas : The World's Most Obnoxious Xmas Comedies
John Waters Jingles for Christmas and Evil
Review: Deck the Halls
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-16-2006 @ 1:32AM
Gary Bourgeault (bizofshowbiz.com) said...
This is such an obvious tactic by Dimension to elicit this very response to get the movie talked about.
Most of these groups don't realize that if they simply didn't allow themselves to get "baited" by the studios, they wouldn't be some of the cause of the movie getting even further known than it ever would have been.
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12-16-2006 @ 7:49AM
GhostDoggy said...
I guess the concept of tolerance is foreign to them. How well did they tolerate Bad Santa?
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12-16-2006 @ 9:23AM
DiRT said...
The amazing thing to me is that I've never heard of this group before. They aren't the PTC or the AFA or the 700 Club, or the usual band of headline stealers (with a few good intentioned folks roped in). I wonder if this isn't a publicity ploy for a movie house that knows the movie will tank... (similar to the Sony "blog" for the PSP)
Beyond that.... this is a remake of a 70s film. I doubt that any of these protesters (if they are indeed genuine) bothered to do any research.
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12-17-2006 @ 1:49AM
Scott Weinberg said...
I don't feel like digging up the link this second, but didn't I predict this just a few weeks ago? :)
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12-24-2006 @ 10:46AM
mike zolk said...
this movie has completely ruined the christmas spirit in my 10 year old daughter. all she saw was one commercial about this ridiculous movie and no longer thinks that christmas is fun.
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