How horror movies took over the holidays – SFGate

(left to right) Black Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins, Edward Scissorhands.

(left to right) Black Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins, Edward Scissorhands.

Photo: Universal Pictures, Getty, Kirsty Griffin/Universal Pictures

(left to right) Black Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins, Edward Scissorhands.

(left to right) Black Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins, Edward Scissorhands.

How horror movies took over the holidays

Almost 10 years before filmmaker Bob Clark directed one of the most iconic movies of the season A Christmas Story he would receive the draft of yet another holiday-centric screenplay with a plot much more sinister.

Released in 1974, Black Christmas was a low-budget horror film about a gaggle of college women in a sorority house receiving threatening phone calls from a deranged killer just prior to their winter break. One by one, the girls disappear in the frigid December night.

It soon became the unholy grail for seasonal slashers, an unlikely genre entertaining underground audiences for decades and continuing to fascinate mainstream viewers today. What makes the overlooked genre especially intriguing is its uncanny ability to acknowledge a long-sheltered, yet relatable truth:

The holidays can be a nightmare.

Remember those idyllic scenes out of your childhood? Crisp winter nights, sleigh bells, crackling yule logs. Remember those. Remember them well. After Black Christmas, they wont be the same again, the voiceover ominously murmurs in the original trailer.

45 years later, the film is an international cult hit, inspiring two remakes and spawning an admittedly campy, yet no less treasured genre.

For holiday horror, you really cant go past Black Christmas, Joel Meares, editor-in-chief of Rotten Tomatoes told SFGATE. Its terrifying those nasty phone calls, that famous the call is coming from inside the house! moment but what really makes it worth unwrapping year after year are the characters. Its a horror film populated by people you actually care about. Margot Kidder is particularly great as the all-smoking, all-drinking, definitely-gonna-die Barb.

At least 31 seasonal slashers followed the film in the 80s, beginning with the New Years Eve-set Terror Train (notably starring Jamie Lee Curtis), the heartless My Bloody Valentine, April Fools Day, and even Stephen Kings screenwriting debut, comedic horror anthology Creepshow, which begins with a short story about Fathers Day.

Its nice, in a box office sense, to have a holiday to peg a movie on. If you can release it around that time, it adds to the build up toward a holiday feeling even if its in a perverse way, Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle told SFGATE, adding, Theres always the possibility that you can come back on subsequent anniversaries with another installment.

Black Christmas was Clarks last foray into horror, but the movie directly inspired one of John Carpenters most memorable films. According to a 2005 On Screen! television documentary about the film, Carpenter reportedly told Clark that Black Christmas was one of his favorite horror movies, and asked him if he would ever make another one.

No, said Clark but if he had to, he would go for a sequel. The subsequent film would follow the killer, Billy, after hes captured by police, placed in an institution, and escapes.

The title? Halloween.

With Clarks blessing, Carpenter brought his vision to life, even utilizing the same POV camera style through the killers eyes.

Black Christmas became the second-highest grossing film in Canada the year of its release, but it didnt do as well in the U.S. box office, reportedly grossing just $4 million. Audiences were put off, and understandably so.

At the time, Clark attributed the mixed response to the fact that no mainstream horror film had revolved around Christmas so heavily before (lest we forget Ebenezer Scrooges ghostly encounters in A Christmas Carol.)

It was sacrilege, and viewers didnt know how they were supposed to react.

Its a bit of counter-programming, to appeal to people usually young people with an irreverent attitude toward being told what to feel and when, said LaSalle.

Gremlins might have achieved such mainstream popularity for this very reason. According to FandangoNOW, the 1984 film leads as the most-streamed movie in the genre on theiron-demand service. The wry critique on holiday consumerism with a deeply dark monologue from Phoebe Cates about why she hates Christmas was recently fashioned into a San Francisco drag show musical directed by Peaches Christ.

The holidays are tied to so much deep nostalgia, emotion and melodrama as well as glitz, glamour, lights and a spectacle, Peaches told SFGATE. Holiday horror is the perfect ironic combination of something so warm and fuzzy and familial mashed up into something horrific. How many of us have had Hallmark card-style Christmases? Its just not realistic.

The message of commercialization in Gremlins returns again this year with "In Fabric," a hypnotic, thriller set in a department store. The film stars a killer red dress haunting those who wear it during the winter season in a series of tumultuous vignettes. Its disturbing finale suggests viewers may want to second guess their perceptions of what a holiday movie can and should look like.

Peaches suspects theuptickin holiday horror stemmed from classics like Black Christmas and Halloween, but one of her own favorites is a more recent release: 2015s Krampus, starring Adam Scott, ToniColletteand some killer gingerbread men. She believes audiences want to see the underbelly of the holiday, and the industry caught onto that.

You know how Hollywood is: If something works, lets see if we can make it work again, she said.

Krampus also reigns as the best-selling holiday horror movie of all time for Fandango. Other ranking favorites include dystopian zombie thriller Anna and the Apocalypse, both Black Christmas remakes, as well as Better Watch Out, A Christmas Horror Story, and All the Creatures were Stirring.

Though it was all but forgotten, a slasher flick titled Silent Night, Bloody Night was released in 1972 just two years before Black Christmas and may have been influential for the film, offering a plot with similar themes of creepy old houses, murder and ominous phone calls. (Since its public domain, you can watch it for free on YouTube.)

Dont expect their plots to be neatly wrapped and tied up with a pretty bow, though. These tales of fright are expectedly unhinged, but thats what makes them work. For some audiences, holiday horror films taking place in December are much scarier than their usual Halloween counterparts because the fear isnt supposed to be there in the first place.

Iconic things we associate with Christmas, like Santa and candy canes, being turned into instruments of murder its wonderful to see. Also, I think it can be especially unnerving, said Rotten Tomatoes' Meares. The holidays are when we feel at our safest surrounded by family, in our warm homes, in our pajamas. Having that safety completely shattered is part of what makes holiday horror so interesting and scary.

Contrarily, this too-real fear created problems for television.

The prime time network debut of Black Christmas ran into some snags thanks to real-life serial killer Ted Bundy. In January of 1978, two young women at a Florida State University sorority house were attacked by Bundy, who broke in, murdered them, and injured three others. By local audience demand, NBC was reportedly forced to pull Black Christmas for its eerily-similar themes.

Even so, filmmakers continue to pay homage to the chilling classic. A remake of Black Christmas was released this year by Blumhouse, the production studio known for "Get Out," "Us," Paranormal Activity and The Purge. Instead of sticking to the mythology of the original, director Sophia Takal and co-screenwriter April Wolfe focused on real-world horrors faced by its female protagonists and audiences.

So much of the original film is about women feeling unsafe on campus and under attack from the men around them, Wolfe told SFGATE. We were looking at that and also seeing how we could reinvent that without a final girl. The common cinematic trope refers to the last girl alive to confront a horror films killer.

The modern Black Christmas delves into the evil escapades of an on-campus fraternity where supernatural hazing rituals ensue. Certain characters receive special powers from a black ooze that seeps out of a carved bust of the universitys dean (a nod to Wolfes favorite Carpenter film, apocalyptic horror Prince of Darkness.)

In that movie, there is this idea that for one side (good) to exist, its polar opposite (evil) must pop up. With Hallmark and Netflix doing all of these saccharine movies, the polar opposite didnt exist. I dont think people would be able to withstand only one side, she said. When Black Christmas came out, it was a response that said, this isnt a happy time for everyone.

For some, the holidays can feel isolating; cold as the brisk winter air. At the very least, they can be stress-inducing. But by cozying up to a horror film in lieu of a sugarcoated, predictable alternative, it doesnt have to feel that way.

Theres an extra level of joy, a little extra thrill, in seeing something as wholesome as the holidays become a setting for a blood bath its subversive in a way, said Meares.

And even if a film ends up being downright laughable, its something for families biological or chosen to bond over. Take the most popular review on Letterboxd of A Christmas Horror Story, for instance.

I let my dad choose a movie to watch and instead of paying attention to this I spent 99 minutes watching him laugh like a big dumb idiot and listening to my mom say YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO PICK EM over and over again, the review said. If your family is good please appreciate them.

Amanda Bartlett is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: amanda.bartlett@sfgate.com | Twitter: @byabartlett

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How horror movies took over the holidays - SFGate

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