silent night deadly night Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Just like any other genre, the Christmas movie relies on a laundry list of tried and true formulas to get you into the theater, and some of them are becoming a bit tiresome. If you want to avoid getting suckered into watching the same old holiday schmalz-fest this year that you've seen the last ten years prior, and you're not sure how to go about it, take this list as my gift to you.

It Tries to Make the Nativity Dramatic

Movies that try to make a compelling drama out of the birth of Jesus Christ often hit a brick wall when they realize that there's really no story there. Sure, if you're a Christian the birth itself is a compelling moment -- key word being moment -- but there's nothing before or after that lends itself to the structure of modern drama. Witness the recent live-action drama, The Nativity Story, a horrid film that resorted to making Three Stooges of the Three Wise Men and creating entire absurd subplots about astrophysics in order to get around the fact that there's about five minutes worth of compelling material here to work with. Hopefully it will be a long, long time -- never, please -- before anyone makes this mistake again.

It's Called 'Jingle all the Way'

Seriously, let's all just agree on this one. There are many things that Arnold Schwarzenegger is suited for -- or was suited for around 1987 -- but one of them is not showering an audience with holiday merriment. The other day I was at Best Buy and the guy behind the counter actually tried to convince me that Jingle all the Way was a beloved classic that belonged in my DVD library. That's when I put on my glasses and took a closer look -- turns out the guy behind the counter was Sinbad. Enough said. Let's also point out that Turbo-Man seemed like just about the lamest toy since Tom Hanks trotted out that keyboard in Big that you had to play by dancing on the keys.

Now here's one we should have seen coming: Sony's Screen Gems division has decided to dust off the chintzy old indie known as Silent Night, Deadly Night and give the thing the ol' remake treatment. Aged horror fans will no doubt remember the swirl of controversy that met the arrival of the original SNDN advertisements back in 1984. (The moral of the story was this: Mommies don't like TV commercials in which someone dressed as Santa Claus hacks people up with garden tools.)

The guys behind the remake will be producer David Foster and writer/director Joe Harris, whose The Tripper is causing all sorts of bubbling geekdom at the various horror sites. The filmmaker recently shared the news with Moviehole.net, and here's what he had to say about this particular remake: It "will not be a remake of the original picture, but a total reimagining using the basic concept as a platform for a new franchise ... The intent is to create a dark and scary film that falls more in line (in terms of tone) with modern releases such as Saw and The Descent." The guys also take a quick swipe at the new Black Christmas remake, and that made me chuckle a little bit.

Oh, and I wonder if Sony will take the same marketing approach as the original flick. Nothing like free controversy to help sell your horror flick...

[Thanks to BD.com for the tip.]

Feeling just a little bit cynical about the Christmas season by now? Sick to death of sweet seasonal flicks like It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and, um, Bad Santa? Ready for a few choice chestnuts full of yuletide terror? Well unfortunately there are very few Christmas-based horror flicks that are actually, y'know, good movies. Most of 'em are low-rent horror knock-offs that are barely worthy of the celluloid they're stored upon, but hey, it's an amusing little sub-genre nonetheless. So let's get ready for a little late-night stocking stuffing and tons of creepy coal.

Silent Night, Deadly Night -- The first one is the flick that caused all that nasty controversy back in 1984, yet when you look at it today ... the thing's almost embarrassingly bad. But once you've seen a few of the sequels -- Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989), Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990) and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1992) -- the original doesn't seem quite so rotten anymore. (Actually, it is.)

Christmas Evil -- Also known as You Better Watch Out and Terror in Toyland, this 1980 cheese-fest benefits from an odd sense of humor (and the presence of longtime character actor Jeffrey DeMunn) but struggles to fill its overlong running time. It's basically another "looney in a Santa costume" schpiel desperately hoping to ape the success of Halloween, if not its attention to quality.

Silent Night, Bloody Night -- Just like the original Black Christmas was a forefather of Halloween and Friday the 13th, so too is this semi-starchy 1974 thriller a forefather of ... the original Black Christmas, kinda. It's about a guy who inherits an old mansion (one that used to be a lunatic asylum, natch) during the holiday season and must contend with, yep, a local psycho. Patrick O'Neal, Mary Woronov and John Carradine add a little color to the affair.