Black Christmas (2006)

Episode 469, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Week three of our Christmas holiday extravaganza. Still lots of Christmas horror movies out there for us to do, and there are more coming out every year, so we just don’t think we’re ever gonna. Run out of ’em probably.

No. And this time Craig decided we would put to our patrons, uh, what horror movie we should do next. And he threw up a few. And the one that topped the list was the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, which was, uh, produced by. The original director, Bob Clark. Mm-hmm. And he apparently was a big fan of the movie.

He died not long after this movie was released, unfortunately, and due to the non-critical success of it, he thought that he would just go ahead and maybe try again, like do a sequel. To the original and you, some of the original people thought that might go over a little better. And sadly because of his death, uh, that didn’t, uh, end up happening and everything kind of fell by the wayside.

But we did get another movie. So don’t confuse this, what we’re about to do with 2019, I think Black Christmas. 

Craig: I think there are a couple of other ones. Oh, okay. I’m not, don’t quote me on that, but I think there are a couple of other remakes and I think I’ve seen them all. I think I’ve tried watching them all.

And the other ones feel a little bit like tenuous remakes, like, oh, they happen at Christmas and it’s pretty girls, and maybe they’re in a sorority or something. That’s about it. Yeah. It fe but, but that’s about it. This one at least, does. I’m, I’m really excited to hear how you feel about this one, because I know that the original is.

Near and dear special to you. Oh God, yeah. This, this, I think this is probably the first Christmas movie that we did on the podcast be because it really held a place in your heart and it didn’t for me. Before we talked about it, but beyond that point, since we’ve talked about it, I really appreciate and respect it in that regard too.

I felt like this was, at least, if nothing else, a fair. Sequel or you know, re, or excuse me, re remake. I’m sorry. A fair remake. I felt like they tried to honor the first one. Mm-hmm. While reaching out and doing some other stuff too, which I think a good remake should do. I’m not gonna suggest that this is a great movie because I don’t think that it.

Is, but I especially upon seeing it again now watching it for this, I have to be really honest, I put this in the poll hoping that it would win because I suggested it every year for so many years. Knowing that you probably didn’t want to. See it because Love you love the original so 

Todd: much. Well, it’s not like, and we’ve talked about this before, like when we did our sequel month, you know, it’s not like I have opposition to doing remakes and it’s not like I see a remake and I get pissed off because, oh, how dare they remake that old movie that I loved.

Oh, how dare they do that Now people could do whatever the hell they want. Sure. Fine. The original still exists and it’s out there. The only caveat I have, and I think I brought this up when we were doing the Nicholas Cage version of the Wickerman, another movie where the original one was such a near and dear movie to my heart, right?

And that is. It’s a shame if a person who’s never seen the original ends up seeing the remake first, the inferior remake first. Mm-hmm. And it kind of spoils their experience, I think, of seeing the original for the first time. That’s my only beef with that. I don’t think this movie is gonna fall in that, that.

Category? No, because this movie’s quite different in, in many ways from the original. It adds some things to it. It complicates it tremendously. It’s much more action packed. And actually what I like so much about the original is it’s not action packed. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: It’s quiet. Yeah, it’s quiet. I don’t even know if it has a score.

It feels like a. Cozy holiday movie. Mm-hmm. Where bad things happen to be happening. And if I remember correctly, nobody really knows that bad things are happening. Yeah. Until almost toward the end of the film. It’s one of those horror movies where people are dying left and right, but nobody’s really aware of it and so nobody’s concerned.

And that’s a big difference between that movie and this one. I mean, this one, oh, I think it was. 15, 20 minutes in, and there’s just a lot of stuff going on, and then people are aware and there’s chase scenes and there’s, there’s tons of action in this. There’s almost no action in the original. I think the action in the original is the detective character running up and down the aisles at the, at the telephone relay place trying to trace the phone call.

Very dated 1970s action. 

Craig: Yeah, I, I don’t remember. I wish that I had watched the original to prepare for this, but I didn’t. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: I just feel like this is a respectful remake. We can talk about quality, you know, like, I don’t know it, it’s, there are things. That are not great, but I feel like they tried to go for the original tone.

Like it opens on this house, this sorority house, all decorated for Christmas and Christmas music, and it looks cheery, but it, it’s even it’s shot from. Almost the identical angle from the first movie I, I think, if I remember correctly. Mm-hmm. And if I don’t remember correctly, it looks almost like a Christmas story, which Bob Clark also directed.

Yeah. So you are told from the beginning, this is a Christmas movie. Yeah. And then I thought that this. Remake did a good job. They, they did this ominous shots of like a wine opener and a snow globe and scissors. But like, not only is this gonna be a Christmas movie, but there are weapons around and somebody, somebody hears like noise and movement in a closet, and I assume the girl who heard that gets suffocated with a clear plastic bag and stabbed.

In the eye right away, right in the beginning, and that’s very, very reminiscent of the first movie. Now, I don’t remember exactly how the first movie went, but I do remember that there was somebody in a rocking chair, like in the attic. Yep. This felt like a tribute to that. It’s not the exact same thing, but it’s reminiscent and I feel like this movie does that a lot, and I do appreciate that.

I really appreciated the fact that they incorporated the giant glass unicorn. That was my favorite part. 

Todd: That’s right. Oh, oh my God. I, I think, you know, that was gonna happen because Bob Clark produced it. He was apparently a fan of it. Yeah. And I, I guess as executive producer, he was still on set a lot of the times and he threw his full support behind, uh, the director.

And the director is Glen Morgan. And Glen Morgan was heavily involved before this in the final destination franchise. He wrote a first final destination movie. Uh, I think he wrote the second May, maybe maybe the third as well. You know, he was an uncredited writer in that 1986 Trick or Treat movie. The one with the, like the rock musician that comes back from the dead.

Oh, that’s funny. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. And he wrote and directed the Willard remake, which we did, which also did not do well critically, but I liked it. Yeah, you really liked it. I was kinda. About it. I thought it was awfully action heavy in CGI, you know, for what, again? For what the original was. Yeah.

You know, I think he kind of did the same thing to that one that he did to this one. The originals has a very quiet, sleepy tone to it and it’s creepy that way. Yeah. And then, you know, he just kind of took it U upped the, for the modern audience, which, you know, it’s, is generally what people do and what people kind of expect, I guess, or at least that’s what studio execs seem to think people want.

Right, right. We hardly get anything different, so it’s hard to know for sure if that’s what really works. But yeah, he wrote Final Destination three and, and, uh, he’s done lots of TV writing and stuff and, uh, because Willard did not do so well, and when this movie was released, he said, look, if this movie doesn’t do well, my directing career is over.

And then that turned out to be pretty right. This movie was a failure box office. Critically, I think it’s got 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. Uh, that’s a bummer. And he didn’t end up really doing much else except directing. Well, he still is directing like, uh, TV shows and things like that, but nothing, no movies or anything big.

And I don’t think it deserves a 14%. I mean, come on, we’ve seen. Worse stuff. But if you wanna get down into the nitty gritty, and as we continue to talk about this beyond the first scene, I think there’s a lot of goofiness about this movie that maybe rubbed people the wrong way, I guess. But I can’t wait to talk about it.

Craig: It doesn’t bother me. Like the goofiness doesn’t bother me like we should get into it. I mean, I think that one of the big differences, and this comes up right. Away here in the beginning that we meet who, if you’ve seen the original, I can’t imagine really why you would be watching this movie if you hadn’t seen the original.

I guess unless you’re a kid who doesn’t know the original existed, but in the original, there’s not really a lot of exposition or explanation for who the killer is. I don’t think there’s any, right. Yeah, no. Yeah, and this movie tries to do that. No, I think it gives the killer a backstory. It’s half the movie.

I know, but I just, I feel like it’s a matter of taste, like Yeah, yeah. You’re either going to like it or you’re not going to like it. I think it’s stupid, but it doesn’t bother me. I actually kind of enjoy it, like it feels like an addendum to the original like, oh, oh, oh. Okay. I get why he’s a freak now, so we learn.

That Billy killed his family at Christmas. Mm-hmm. Because, because he, I don’t remember who his dad is. I don’t know if it matters, but when he was born, he was yellow and yeah, I guess that’s because of jaundice. And they apparently didn’t know how to treat jaundice at the time. I don’t know, but his mom didn’t like him.

Well, yeah, we just hear the story here. I don’t even remember who tells the story. Somebody tells the story. 

Todd: It’s Kyle, I think, who tells the story? Kyle’s a guy who just kind of pops in, and I was really confused as to who Kyle is at at first. I think that. There’s this creepiness they’re trying to create, like who?

Like people are stalking the house. Like there’s a lot of POV, you remember in the Bob Clark original, and Bob Clark just likes to do this in all his movies too. His heavy sort of wide angle, POV shots almost akin to. You know, it was said that, that John Carpenter kind of ripped him off for the Halloween, you know, when he was doing the POV in the beginning of, of going up to the house.

Oh, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And this movie does a little bit of that. I, I kind of was expecting this movie plays so much homage to the original. I was really expecting more of that. Mm-hmm. I was surprised why I didn’t see it. But there is a point in here where there’s a person approaching the house and we kind of think that it might be Billy, but I think it turns out to be this Kyle Guy.

And this Kyle Guy is, he says he lives in the house. 

Craig: No, he’s somebody’s boyfriend. He’s played by Oliver Hudson. Who is the son of Goldie? Ha and 

Todd: uh, Kurt Russell. 

Craig: Well, oh no, that’s who he considers his dad. 

Todd: Oh, 

Craig: his bio dad. He doesn’t consider his dad, but 

Todd: Oh, okay. 

Craig: Yeah. But he’s young in this and it’s crazy like he’s still working.

Alan and I watch the Christmas Chronicles on Netflix every year. Have you seen that? No, watch it. Really Watch it with Kenji this year. It’s so good. Oh, okay. Uh, yeah. Kurt Russell plays Santa Claus. Oh, it’s so cute. It’s so cute. But anyway, yeah, it’s Oliver Hudson. I don’t know. He’s somebody’s girlfriend.

Like there’s intrigue. One thing that the movie tries to do is it tries to throw in a bazillion red herring. And he is one of them. Yeah, 

Todd: no, he literally says at one point you guys just come here for a year or two. I stay here. I live here. Remember? He probably means in town, I would guess. Oh, maybe that was super confusing to me.

He, he was a confusing character and maybe intentionally so. There’s a girl here, and by the way, I cannot keep track of these girls. They’re all just like, I know. Oh. But they’re all famous actresses, you know? Especially at the time. Yeah. And we’re gonna have to 

Craig: run down the list. Well, this, I’m gonna just proclaim it right now.

This is officially our Michelle Trachtenberg tribute episode. 

Todd: You’re right. Yeah. It sure is 

Craig: because she is one of the main girls. She plays Melissa. I think that she’s meant to be. Oh man. Who’s the lady from the first movie? Who’s Barb? 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Like the real tough bitch one. 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. 

Craig: And what’s her name? Uh, Lois Lane.

Right? 

Todd: Not, uh, Andrea Martin. The other one. ’cause Andrea Martin’s, no. 

Craig: Yeah. Andrea Martin is in this. Not reprising her role, but she was one of the girls in the first movie and she placed the house mother in this brilliantly, and I love her. Now I’m looking it up. I’m looking it up now. Our Louis Lane. 

Todd: I’ll find it, I’ll find it.

I’ll find it. Actresses who played Louis Lane in Superman. This is most certainly some kind of bullshit. Oh, Margot Kidder. Margot Kidder. 

Craig: Margot Kidder, yeah. Who was my favorite part of the original movie. I just loved her. She was. Drunk and sassy, and I just thought she was fantastic. I feel like Melissa played by Michelle Trachtenberg is meant to be that.

Character. 

Todd: Yes, I think you’re right. 

Craig: She’s tough. She’s known nonsense. Michelle Trachtenberg. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: Michelle Trachtenberg was in a lot of things when she was a kid. She was hair at the spy. She did a lot of other stuff when she was a kid. I became familiar with her when she Buffy. Yeah. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. Mm. I knew you’d say 

Craig: that.

And she was also on Gossip Girl. A lot of people remember her from that. I don’t want to not mention it because I’m gonna about to talk about Buffy for three minutes. I’m gonna time you. Michelle Trachtenberg came on to Buffy in season five, I believe, and she just came on as Buffy’s teenage younger sister, who we had never met before.

And Joss Whedon, who it. Turns out isn’t a very good person, but he’s a really good writer, right? It turns out that he had had this planned out for a very long time, and if you go back. And look at it. There were suggestions from the earlier seasons that something like this might happen. It wasn’t unjustified.

He could justify it. He had planted the seeds for it, but I was not a dawn lover. Okay, I see. I, I didn’t care for her. I didn’t care that all of a sudden that after all of these characters who I’m invested in. Dawn showed up and there. One of my favorite lines that Alan and I quote all the time, in any context is Dawn’s in trouble.

Must be Tuesday because Buffy said that regularly. Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired on Tuesdays. Dawn’s in trouble. Must be Tuesday. And that’s what it felt like. She was just the, the antagonist or the, the, no, she wasn’t an, an, she was an annoyance. She was a, a, like there would still be the main antagonist.

But now all of a sudden, and soon after Dawn showed up, Buffy’s mother died in one of the most brilliant episodes of television I’ve ever seen. It was just beautiful. And amazing. And if you haven’t watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you are fucking missing out. It was one of the best TV shows to ever air on television.

It was so good. I think you’re over three minutes, Craig. Fine. Alright. Michelle Trachtenberg. Michelle Trachtenberg Tragically died. Yeah. This year of February. It was complications from diabetes. I, that’s what I heard. It’s a really shitty, and she, in the final months of her life, she didn’t look well and it was sad to see her not looking well.

And ultimately just to wrap up my buffy conversation. Ultimately I didn’t care for that whole arc, but everybody who worked on the show did and. In hindsight, I would. I have better feelings about it in the moment. Didn’t care for it. In hindsight, I feel bad that I didn’t give her more of a chance because it wasn’t about her.

It wasn’t about Michelle Trachtenberg, it was about the character and the writing, and I didn’t care for it. She actually did a very good job. She was a very talented young actress. Mm. And it’s tragic that she passed away. So RIP, Michelle Track, Michelle 

Todd: Trachtenberg. 

Craig: Yeah. And then there’s Dana. Fake.

Jennifer Love Hewitt. Lacey cha bear, right? And I say that, I say, I say that. I love the way you put that. Looks like 

Todd: she could be your sister. She’s 

Craig: very much, well, she played her sister, weren’t they? They were both in party of five, right? I guess so. I didn’t watch that. Like I’m, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t either, but I’m pretty sure that Lacey Shop Air was Jennifer Love Hewitt’s younger sister in that show.

And then in that spoof movie, not another teen movie or something like that. Oh, she played her, uh, her, she played Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character. Oh no. And it was perfect. Because That’s 

Todd: funny. 

Craig: She is like a fake version of her. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: Also adorable. And she’s been in other fun horror movies too. And spooky, fun horror movies.

She’s 

Todd: done a lot of voice work too. Tons of voice work. 

Craig: Yeah. Tons of voice work for animation. She’s very successful and she’s a lovely woman. She’s very beautiful. And you know, I don’t know, she may not be out there winning awards, but she’s working and good for, she’s working like crazy her. Yeah. Good for.

Todd: Her. She’s probably working more than Jennifer. Love Hewitt’s working. 

Craig: Thank 

Todd: God. These 

Craig: days. These days. Yeah. Jesus. That may be by choice. Jennifer, love Hewitt’s. Probably pretty set up. I think so. I think she’s a family gal now. She, yeah. And she was just in that I know what you did last summer. Yes. Reboot, which I told you about.

And I said, don’t read anything about it. Just watch it. Mm-hmm. It was great, but it was good. I liked it. Yeah. I just watched it. Did you watch it? 

Todd: I saw that on the airplane to here, to the US this trip. That’s awesome. That was one of the things I watched and I loved it. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was great too.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. People out there watch it. It was really good. I also watched the final destination’s bloodlines on the train. Yeah. And I don’t normally watch horror movies on the airplane because oftentimes they’re edited and you know that I don’t, I don’t like to watch edited version, but I managed to watch those two and I was happy with both of ’em.

I really liked how Final Destinations bloodlines kind of brought things around. That was really kind of cool. Yeah, it was fun. And Tony, Todd, you know. Ugh. 

Craig: Yeah. But anyway, yeah, we, we will probably get around to doing that at some point, so we can save that. But yeah, we should get back to this movie. Fake.

Jennifer. Love Hewlett. Lacey’s not 

Todd: there. What were you gonna say about her? 

Craig: Nothing. Just that she’s in it. She’s just that she’s one of the other girls. 

Todd: Well, she is, and like, and we, oh, we were talking about how all these girls, like, they just run together for me. Yeah. Couldn’t keep track of their names. I really, yeah, it’s hard.

Didn’t know. That’s another thing I think was a little different from the original. Yes. I felt the original had, well, number one, it had fewer characters and number two definitely like they were more distinct. 

Craig: Yes. And you knew who they were and you cared about them. Like, 

Todd: yeah, 

Craig: these. Girls. I mean they’re pretty, and they’re funny and sharp and like, it’s not like I don’t like them.

It’s not like I want them to die, but I just am not particularly invested in their stories. 

Todd: Exactly. One of them was Kristen Cloak, I think. Did she play the girls drunk all the time and she was in final destination? I feel like a couple of these girls were actually in final destination or, or the sequels, which makes a lot of sense compared to when you talk about who’s behind them.

And there’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead very 

Craig: famous, but I don’t know what from, 

Todd: yeah. Oh, well we did, uh, well, no, I guess we didn’t do it. Scott Pil Pilgrim versus the World 10 Cloverfield Lane. That might be one that people have done. 

Craig: Yeah, she’s very famous. 

Todd: There’s a remake of Hand That Rocks A Cradle that came out this year that she was in, and I’ve 

Craig: read interesting things about that.

Have you? Yeah. Oh, that’s kind of, that could qualify as horror, couldn’t it? That would be interesting to do. Maybe I’ve read that in the remake. It gets a little libi. Oh, really? Well, I’m down for that, by 

Todd: the way. We, we’ll, do 

Craig: I know. 

Todd: Me too. Yeah. You know, I like Hot Ladies. Uh, death Proof. Quent Tarantino.

Final Destination three. The, the Quentin. Yeah. She’s done quite a bit of horror actually. She was in the ring too. Well, the remake, you know, not the Japanese. Yeah, 

Craig: yeah. Her name is very familiar. 

Todd: Yeah. She’s been around. She’s famous. Katie Cassidy, daughter of David Cassidy, famous guy. She’s done a lot. Mm-hmm.

The Nightmare in Elm Street remake that I still haven’t seen. Yep. Don’t bother. 

Craig: Right. It’s awful. Oh God, 

Todd: no. Rose slaves. She’s 

Craig: beautiful in it. I think she gets killed pretty early on, but she’s, wow. I like her. She’s, she’s great. You know, like that’s the thing, like all these young women are beautiful.

Mm-hmm. They’re gorgeous to look at. It’s, and, and the movie is beautiful to look at. It’s very colorful. It’s, it’s Christmasy just like the original and it’s, it’s not. Uninteresting. Billy. It’s high. Praise Craig. It’s not uninteresting. I know, but I feel like we’re neglecting talking about it. And Billy is like in a mental institution, but he gets out now.

I think that it, he kills a guard or something. I don’t know. Mm-hmm. Stabs him with a candy cane. Yeah. He sucks a candy cane. Real sharp. Yes. Stab the guy with that. The, the most interesting thing about him, like I love the way that he’s shot. He’s, he’s pretty much only shot in close, like eye, like closeups on his eyes until he is not, well.

I mean, he’s shot from a far. Also, but you don’t get to see any like distinguishing features. Like you get to see his eyes and then you get to see him walking around in a Santa suit or whatever he’s in. Mm. The only really distinguishing thing about him is that he is Bert from Bert and Ernie Yellow. Like he is,

he is painted yellow. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s a little silly. It’s a choice. That’s one of the, that’s, it’s definitely a choice. It’s one of the sillier things. I liked what they were trying to do. If you remember the original, we, we never see this guy’s face. Never. All we see is his eye. We see his eye and I think it’s one of the most unsettling shots of the whole movie.

It’s brilliant. It’s so great. It’s like his eye. In the crack of a door, he’s kind of sitting behind. It’s like the, or a keyhole or whatever. Yeah. It’s so great and, and it just, it’s just such a great element of that movie now. It’s like the director was like, you know what? We should make eyes a running theme of this movie.

And so he decided that in every single scene possible he was going to insert. Eye shots, eye imagery, literal eyes. And then most of the movie is gonna be about how they gouge eyes out of people, how they stab people in the eyes. Mm-hmm. How this person’s missing an eye, how they eat eyes. I mean, yeah.

That’s where it goes off the rails for me. And again, I think it depends on your attitude and your mindset. Like you said earlier, how are you looking at this? What are you hoping to get out of it? Are you looking for a serious horror movie or are you looking for something that’s have a little bit of fun with itself?

And it’s really goofy. And I think if you’re looking for the latter, you’re gonna enjoy this movie a lot more. Mm-hmm. Than if you’re like, I’m looking for a serious remake of black Christmas. No. It’s tongue in cheek. I think it’s super tongue in cheek, and that’s funny. I liked it. I mean, I, I, once I realized this is where they’re going with it, I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna settle into this.

This is my expectation now. 

Craig: I know I texted you as I was like, have an open mind. Give it a chance because it’s. I know that you’re such a fan of the original, and if you’re looking for, gosh, I don’t know what you look for in a remake, but if you’re looking for just a modernized remake of the original, this isn’t really it.

I feel like, yeah, I feel like the makers of this movie love the original and wanted to just. Not just remake it shot by shot, but have some fun with it. Yeah. And expand upon it. And, and knowingly, tongue in cheek. I don’t think this movie takes itself too seriously, aside from the fact that you are going to get graphic, as you said, graphic violence and gore.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: More so than the original. And I think that they were, this, this came out sometime in the early aughts and, and that was typical. You know, I think this is very much an early aughts. Typical, oh 

Todd: yeah. Horror movie, beautiful girls, everything shot very cleanly. Mm-hmm. I will say though, that I liked, I, I mean, the cinematography is nice.

It’s not pedestrian. They’re going for interesting angles. They’re going for lots of camera movement and cool shots, and, and, and that really does deliver in that department. It’s a very beautiful movie to watch. The lighting is, mm-hmm. It’s, it, it maintains that warm Christmas feeling throughout, even in the creepy moments.

Yep. There’s this thing where these trees in the flashback sequences, it’s telling us it’s 1970 because the tree is made of tinsel. Those silvery trees that were really popular back then. Mm-hmm. In Billy’s house, and his tree is strung with Christmas lights, red and green, and all they do is slowly flash from red.

To green. Mm-hmm. From red to green. I’m like, okay, that’s a choice. And that makes this the creepiest Christmas tree in the world. And, and they take full advantage of that. And then every Christmas tree in the movie, practically after that, even up to modern Day, is doing some version of that. And so I thought it was an interesting way of even making the lighting.

Motivated yet still keeping it creepy even though it’s Christmas. I, I don’t know. It was kind of an interesting technique I hadn’t seen in some of the other Christmas movies that we’ve done. 

Craig: Yeah. I was actually really impressed how they, you know, like you, you talk about the holiday lights or whatever, and you think about it as being so festive, but when set in certain circumstances and framed in certain ways and, and the cinematography that.

The director, the cinematographer, whoever decide made these choices. You see some scenes are shot a sc. Mm-hmm. Like, it, it’s, it’s not level like, it’s, it’s shot a sc and the red and green lighting in particular doesn’t make it feel festive. It make it. It makes it feel ominous and Yeah, because 

Todd: it’s only either one or the other.

Yeah. And red and green on its own are both pretty creepy colors, you know? Yeah, 

Craig: yeah, yeah. And, and when shined upon horrible. Scenarios. Again, we’re halfway through. We’re more than halfway through our time, and we haven’t talked about a lot, but the most disturbing scene of the movie, and I apologize if I’m jumping forward, but I don’t know if it really matters.

Yeah. The most disturbing scene of the movie to me was shot in this way and that it was the red and green flashing lights and Billy observing it. From somewhere dark through a crack or, or a hole or something. First of all, his mother has an abusive boyfriend who murdered his father in front of him. Yep.

That’s something that we get to see, but then later the mom is the boyfriend. It, but the boyfriend passes out and she gets all upset about it, and we’re seeing this from his perspective, and I feel like it’s those kind of flashing red and green lights. It’s, it’s disorienting and it’s upsetting. And then she gets up and goes up to the attic that she’s had him locked in since he fled to there when he saw his father being murdered.

And fortunately we don’t really see it, but it’s clearly implied. That she rapes him. Well, yeah. And then it’s not implied. Well, we don’t see it. Right. But we’re told it. We’re told it. Yeah. I, I’m just saying, thank goodness we don’t see it because it’s disturbing enough as it is. 

Todd: Yeah. When that was going down, I was like, oh, is this really where we’re gonna go?

Yeah. Okay. 

Craig: And then it, and then it turns out that from that encounter, she became pregnant and had a daughter named. Agnes.

So this is something, one of the things that I love about the first movie is that the creepy collar on the other end of the line keeps talking about Agnes, but you have no idea what the fuck’s talking about. Yeah. Who the fuck is Agnes? Uh, what are you talking about? Yep. And this movie, this movie explains it.

Or makes an attempt to explain it and it over 

Todd: explains it. And that’s the thing about this movie, like I said, I’m not kidding, the movie is half backstory. And so as it goes on, you’re like, oh, okay, now I see. So now it’s either, ’cause I was confused obviously in the beginning because we’re, we get that first kill and after the first kill we start to get Billy in the mental institution breaking out.

I’m like, so if Billy. Was breaking out of the mental institution after that first kill happens that it can’t be Billy who’s the killer in the house. And I thought, well, is the movie just playing with me? Are they just doing some time jumping that I’m not aware of yet? You know, is this really flashback?

But you know, it kind of shows its cards early in that way, I think. And I’m not sure that’s a great thing because it is really within the first 10 minutes of the movie that you realize Billy can’t be the killer. Or at least he’s not the only one. Right. So that might be a, one of the biggest knocks against the movie, I think is it’s not so much, it’s not so much creating mystery as creating confusion.

Like you said, there’s a lot of red herrings thrown at you, but they’re like obviously red herrings. And from the very beginning we know that Billy is not in the house killing people because he’s breaking out of a mental institution. So then he’s coming there. So it’s like, what is Billy gonna be doing here?

Okay, so he’s going to be a killer, but we still know who this other one is. And then as soon as this whole bit about Agnes gets revealed, I’m like, oh, okay. So his sister, you know, and so halfway through the movie, I pretty much already knew what was going on in that regard. Yet I still feel like, you know, some ways the movie was still trying to treat this as a mystery I haven’t solved yet.

You know what I mean? 

Craig: I guess I, I dunno, in the moments I didn’t feel that way, it, it, it just didn’t really occur to me. I think that when I was seeing those Billy in the institution bits, I thought, oh, this happened a few days ago. And Yeah. Yeah. Now he’s here. Hmm. I don’t know. And, and I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t a, a, maybe I was just influenced by the first movie.

Billy’s the killer, right? So these murders are happening and we’re getting the exposition. I mean, obviously this. You know, what happened when he was a child isn’t happening concurrently with, with what we’re seeing. So maybe him escaping the institution isn’t happening concurrently with what we’re seeing.

Yeah. Well, maybe it happened last week or whatever. 

Todd: The thought occurred to me, but then when they were so careful about labeling all the flashbacks and making it pretty, obviously flashback, so I thought, well, maybe that’s not the case. Yeah. But fair. But you’re right. That’s pretty much the, the gist of the backstory.

All, well, all of all of that 

Craig: backstory is. Horrible. Like that Mother in the backstory is the real villain of this movie. Oh yeah. Like she is horrible. Yeah, just awful like abusive and nasty and disgusting and 

Todd: she’s gotta look for it too. Karin Carnival, she’s been in a lot of the new Planet of the Apes movies and, uh, very, a very busy actress for a very, very long time.

Tons of credits and I love her look. Oh yeah. She’s one of those ladies, I think gets cast on her look. You know, she just has a great look for a lot of things. And one of those I think would be this evil mother. Oh yeah. Scenario. 

Craig: She’s smoking and she’s in this guy’s face and oh, she’s gross and she’s got too much makeup on and they’ve got her hair teased out.

Like she’s a crazy person. Yeah. Mm-hmm. She’s, she’s crazy when she eventually, I know I’m skipping a lot. There are No, that’s fine. Like a, there are a lot of. Like sorority house. Deaths and immediately after they introduced the character of Agnes, like Agnes was born and she exists, they introduced us to this sorority sister who is mousy and awkward and like, oh, this must be Agnes.

Yeah. But it’s just a, it is just a total red herring and eventually she gets killed and there are lots of callbacks to the original, lots of people getting stabbed with. Pointy things and stabbed through plastic bags and there’s somebody in the attic. I, I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah. It, you know, again, I think this is probably something that drove people crazy, is that it’s a lot of the same.

Mm-hmm. And it starts to feel a little goofy because of it, especially the plastic bag thing. I mean, the plastic bag was not like an mo of the killer in the first movie. It was just what he did to that first girl. Right. And that wasn’t really even a plastic bag. It was like one of those. It was a garment bag, wasn’t it?

Yeah, exactly. She went to her 

Craig: closet. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. So I mean, you know, in this movie it’s like, Hey, let’s make that their mo, just like, let’s make eyeballs a thing. And so you see the plastic bag in almost every death, and it does feel a little silly after a while until, like I said, unless you think, yeah, maybe this is just the goofiness they’re going for.

I mean, at one point Kyle dies because he’s going, going up into the attic because they’re going to investigate a sound when they’re, when they’ve, many of them have been picked off. The killer reaches down with a plastic bag, puts it over his head and pulls him up by it. They all end up, end up getting stabbed in the plastic bags anyway.

And I thought, well, I guess if you were really into neatness, you know, if you’re a killer who likes to keep things like neat and tidy and not have a lot of blood spray, that would actually be a good. Method. Don’t just, you know, suffocate them. You, you gotta get your stab in ’cause that’s who you are. Sure.

You know? Sure. Just put the bag over their head first. Stab through the bag and it’s probably gonna keep things less messy. That’s funny. It happens a lot. Yeah. 

Craig: A lot. It does. It does. There and there. Tons and tons of callbacks. It’s not like this movie is straying from the original plot. Significantly. It’s just expanding upon it.

So you’re still getting the, the, the calls, the strange calls. Mm-hmm. And God, I, I don’t know what all the, who is Agnes? I don’t like weird stuff. And it’s, he’s my, he’s my family now. Santa. Like Yeah. Like just weird stuff. And. And, and that’s all great. And I also, I know that you’ve mentioned her name before, but I don’t want to let it go.

Andrea Martin in this movie is hilarious. Yeah. Like, she’s so funny. She’s great. She was in the original, she was in the original. She and she’s great in the original. Mm-hmm. I loved her in the original. Mm-hmm. She was one of the girls. I don’t think she gets killed, does she? You know the movie Better Than Me.

I don’t think she gets, I don’t remember original when they were writing the movie, they wanted to get somebody from the original back to play the House mother, and they thought about her and they thought about Lois Lane. Whose name? I still can’t remember. Margot Kidder. Margot Kidder. I don’t even know if they reached out to Margot Kidder.

Margot Kidder has struggled in her life with her mental health and has gone through rough spots. I, I don’t know if, and I think, I think she’s okay and I hope she’s okay ’cause she’s great. But they were smart to go to Andrea Martin because she’s so. Funny. And she doesn’t even do a ton. She doesn’t even do a lot.

And ultimately when they finally figure, I, I think that they find a body or bodies or something, so they know something crazy is going on and she and another girl decide to try to go for help. I think that the other girl ends up getting killed by the killer, and Andrea Martin just gets killed by standing under a, like a 

Todd: on the icicle at the wrong time.

Yeah. And looking up at the wrong time. Oh my God. I was rolling my eyes at that. Oh, I thought it was funny. It was the goofiest thing you could imagine. The girl gets killed in the, in the car and she steps back all aghast and looks up and it just so happens there’s an icicle that’s falling off of the house at that very moment.

Right through her eye. Right through her eye. It’s not the first time there’s some crazy, like ridiculous. This movie also takes the idea of the killer and the attic. The whole time and tries to expand it into a sort of people under the stairs situation, so Yeah. Yeah. Now they, they can even as adults, scurry through the walls, down under the floorboards and so you Yeah.

Yeah. Under the house, you know, and again, it takes that single eye shot that was so iconic from the original. And makes about 15 to 20 different eye shots in this, where everywhere you look a little hole, a tiny hole or something gets uncovered in the wall that an eye can look through. When the one girl’s puking in the bathroom, she with her toe kicks up a loose subway tile, and it turns out there’s an eye looking up through it.

Just waiting for that to happen. It makes no sense. And then, and then when she’s taking a shower, you see the other one, poco P. You know, he pokes the other one out and he’s staring at her improbably from the floor through this tiny thing. There’s even a moment where a thumb tack, like a push bin that’s holding up a poster in the wall suddenly gets pushed out.

And imagine how tiny that hole is, yet the killer pokes that push pin out so he can somehow look through this miniature hole on people. And that was when I was like, okay, yeah, this movie’s just having fun with this. They’re just goofing. On this whole notion, but I can see how that would. People go, come on.

Seriously. It’s very similar with what, how, how the one other girl dies, right? When she goes out to take, to take a smoke. She’s out there smoking and it just so happens that a drip from an icicle above her hits the tip of her cigarette to put it out, which frustrates her. So she just looks down and drops for cigarette.

She happens to be standing right over a tiny hole. Outside on the porch, and she happened to drop her cigarette down through the hole. So she notices the hole. And that’s like, that’s interesting. And then when she hears a sound down there, she decides to go investigate the crawlspace under, and that’s when she gets pulled in and, and killed.

Like, come on. This whole sequence of events is so final destination level. It 

Craig: is one of, one of the. Fun things about this movie is that if you watch the trailers for this movie, there are even more ridiculous scenes and deaths that were not in the movie. They were Oh, really? Shot. Yes. They were shot solely for the trailer, and what a great idea.

I think it’s great, especially for a horror movie like this, where the whole payoff is like the kills or whatever, like Uhhuh, don’t spoil them, put fake ones in the trailer. I think it’s hilarious. Some people were pissed off that they had been promised certain things. I think, gosh, this is off the top of my head, but I, I feel like there was something with a lawnmower in Michelle Trachtenberg.

I don’t remember, but yeah, I know that they, they. Intentionally shot a lot of fake scenes for the trailer. That’s funny. And we haven’t, I, I feel like I haven’t done a good job. I, I try to recap the movie, but honestly, like, I just don’t remember the specific details because it’s just people well, kinda getting killed.

There are even characters that we haven’t even talked about. Like one of the girl’s older sisters shows up and 

Todd: yeah, that’s a bit suspicious. 

Craig: She’s in it for a, like from the middle to the end, and I don’t even remember why she’s there. Like, I think she was there to pick up her sister or something, or her couldn’t show up.

I, I don’t even know. Oliver Hudson, as you said, is kind of a big part of it. Eventually they hear the phone in the attic and they know somebody is out there. Ah. And Oliver Hudson gets pulled up into the attic and stabbed in the eye killer. He gets his eyes gouged out and the killer’s like, he’s my family now, and he eats his eyeballs.

Like we didn’t even talk about like, oh God, so the mom and the creepy gross stepdad love Agnes and just shower all of this attention on her. But then when she’s around like. Seven, eight at Christmas time. Billy kidnaps her and takes her up to the attic and eats one of her eyeballs. 

Todd: Oh my gosh. 

Craig: She’s my family now.

Todd: And then he comes down and he kills his mother, eventually kills his mother, and he. Oh, I was just like, I couldn’t believe this. Right? Like he kills his mother, he stabs her in the eye. He does the whole thing with a plastic bag and everything, but oh no, he strangles her with Christmas lights, is what he does.

Then he drags her into the kitchen and where she had been baking Christmas cookies or whatever, picks up a rolling pin, bashes her head in a whole bunch of times. It’s really quite brutal. Yes. And then. Picks up some cookie cutters and starts to make Christmas cookies out of her skin and puts them in the oven.

And when the police come over to investigate the disturbance, they find him sitting calmly at the table munching on these Christmas cookies. And I was like, oh my God, this movie is crazy. 

Craig: I, I read that that was the producers. The producers wanted more gore. They wanted more gore, so they shot those scenes and the cookie cutter scenes, and they are crazy and they’re gross and they’re outrageous, and it’s disgusting and stupid.

Yeah, but why not? I mean, like 

Todd: it’s not, no, I mean the rest of it’s 

Craig: quite stupid anyway. Not, yeah, 

Todd: it’s fine. Oh God. Well, the movie was, the movie finished long after I was ready for it to be done, to be honest. That’s another thing I really like about the original. By the way, if you haven’t seen the original, don’t let me spoil it for you, but like the way the original ends is so creepy, they think they’ve got.

The guy, but they don’t. Right? And so they leave the one girl, the the one who survived the whole thing, ends up left in the house, uh, kind of unconscious as she’s sleeping and sort of just sort of all through audio, all just from overhearing what everybody is saying. Random people, you know, as, as the cops are kind of pulling out and somebody’s like, oh, did you get the lights here?

Did you do this? Whatever. You realize everybody is slowly leaving and that girl is being left alone in the house. That guy’s still in there and all this is through this, this shot that just slowly, slowly starts to pull out. Yeah. And it’s just so great. It’s one of the best endings of a 

Craig: horror movie ever.

It’s really good. It’s really good. 

Todd: And then this one, the original 

Craig: black Christmas is a classic. This is not, 

Todd: it could never be. You know, it’s, again, it’s this deal where they think they got the two, you know, they killed Billy and her and her sister, and so like here we are in the hospital, in the morgue and there’s one the girls and the girl and arriving.

Yeah, they’re in the bed. Hospital bed. Meanwhile, there’s a guy in the improbably dark morgue, you know, just as it always is in these movies, all these hospital scenes or like dimly lit, like they turn off the lights at the hospital. I don’t know if the, the lights at any hospital are ever turned off.

They’re usually bright all the time. I know. Anyway. Yeah, he’s like, um, poured himself some eggnog and a beaker. I thought that was kind of funny. And then of course when he goes, he hears noises from the body bags, and it turns out both Billy and his sister were not dead. 

Craig: I really liked the scene. I, I feel like the girl is in her hospital room or something and somebody comes out of the ceiling.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Billy goes into the ceiling and comes down from it. I think. 

Craig: Well, I, it, it, it’s. It’s revealed that the main killer. Is really Agnes, right now’s where it deviates mostly from the first movie. 

Todd: She’s the one who’s basically been living in the house the whole time. 

Craig: Yes. Right. Billy 

Todd: just goes to join her this Christmas after he breaks out of the mental institution.

Right? I don’t know. Yeah, 

Craig: it’s, 

Todd: it’s goofy. They have a big fight scene in the hospital and this was 15 minutes that I just didn’t need, you know? I really just didn’t care at that point, 

Craig: to be honest with you. I don’t know. I kinda liked it. As silly as it was, I kind of liked it, like I. I, I don’t know this for certain, but I would because I didn’t look, but I would be willing to bet that Agnes is played by a man because she’s big.

Yeah. Like she’s like a hulking. Mike Meyers kind of, she is character. 

Todd: Yeah, you’re right. Let me look. 

Craig: I don’t know. There’s, you know, the final girl, like, I feel like maybe Billy and Agnes both chase her around. Yeah. In the hospital. Very Halloween, two style. I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know how Agnes gets.

Killed, but, oh God, I don’t know. Agnes comes out of the ceiling. Kelly gets her with Shocker. Did I mean the like defibrillators? Is that what I was talking about? That 

Todd: was one of the goofiest parts. I made a note of that too, like where here she is in a hospital room full of potential things that she could probably quickly grab to defend herself with, and she decides to grab the defibrillators, which she has to wait to charge.

They just wanted to get a defibrillator kill in here. Come on. Yeah. And she does it to her face. That would be, that would be something. Oh, right, right. Mm-hmm. And, and 

Craig: kills her. But then Billy immediately comes out. Yep. And she beats him with a crutch and says, Merry Christmas motherfucker. And she throws him out a window.

Oh. Where he is then impaled on a Christmas tree. 

Todd: Well, it was down the staircase. Yeah. Okay. I guess it was a window to the staircase and yeah, he gets impaled on that Christmas tree, which, I mean, you might as well. I, I, everybody’s getting impaled, very improbably by things that shouldn’t be able to impale people, but they are.

And Sure. It’s fine. This tree would’ve just collapsed under him before it would’ve impaled anything. But you know, that’s the image we left. 

Craig: I was texting you while I was watching this. I actually had a really fun time with it. You know, the original movie again, is a movie that everybody should put on their list of movies to watch every Christmas because it is just a really good.

Movie and it’s Christmasy is like, it’s so Christmasy and it’s just fantastic. And, and this, in terms of creative quality, pales in comparison. But I really had a fun time watching it. I, I don’t know. And, and I don’t know that I would’ve had so much fun watching it because it’s relatively typical. Of these types of movies from the early aughts.

You know, there were all of these slasher type movies and I’m not disregarding them in any way. I enjoy many of them and scream and many of those films that followed them really letter resurgence in popular horror and I respect them and appreciate them for that. But this is kind of a mid one kind of a.

Urban legends. Not that I don’t like that movie either, but you know, one of the more mid range of them in terms of quality. But I still had a really fun time watching it and, and I think that our listeners might too, don’t go in with super high expectations, but if you’re just in it for a silly good time, I think there’s fun to be at here.

Todd: Yeah, I think tonally and kind of like structurally, it’s a very typical horror movie of this time period, and I think that’s why it didn’t really impress me that much and why I did lose patients for it. After a while, I knew we were just gonna have a lot of action scenes. I knew that, you know, that, like I said, that ending just kinda like, Ugh.

Now I’m gonna have to watch them battle it out in the hospital, but I kind of already know how it’s gonna end. And it was maybe the goofiness of it, which. Is only possible to forgive because you know, they’re referencing the material. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: The old material. It’s, it’s like parody in a way. Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s like homage as parody, and that’s for me what made the goofiness fun.

And I could imagine that. A young audience in the early aughts who hasn’t bothered to or hasn’t seen a 1970s horror movie called Black Christmas, coming to see a movie in the theater, just can’t really get, they’re not gonna appreciate that. They’re not gonna see what that is. They’re not gonna see this as parody.

They’re gonna be like, yeah, this is dumb. You know? Yeah. And that I imagine is why it failed. Now again, if you’re willing to just be like, okay, this is just a goofy movie, and that’s fine. You know, it’s gonna be fine for you too. I’m not really into that so much. I know. I mean, you know, I like the goofy movies.

But yeah, in general, for this one, uh, yeah, I, I enjoyed it because I’m a fan of the original. I could see what they were doing, and so I, I don’t think it deserves 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s, that’s awfully harsh. For what is ultimately a well shot, well acted, yeah. Clever movie. That’s having a good time and it’s very typical of horror movies at this time, and maybe even a little bit better than a lot of them that we’ve seen.

So 

Craig: I, I’m sincerely glad that you could enjoy it because it, I thought that it could have gone either way, and I thought that it would’ve been interesting for us to talk about either way. I, I thought that there was a strong chance that you might have really disliked it. And I didn’t, I didn’t want to pick it just to torture you, but I, I also thought if that’s the case, that could be a really fun discussion, right, right.

Of you telling me why you didn’t like it and me defending it. I’m ultimately glad that it didn’t go that way. I’m glad that you enjoyed it. 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, 

Craig: I enjoyed it. 

Todd: It’s fine. You know, like I said, I’m not, obviously I, I clearly prefer the original as a standalone film, but I can appreciate what they were trying to do and yeah, if you’re into this kind of movie, I think it would be pretty fun.

We’ve certainly seen so much worse. We’ve seen better, but I mean, absolutely. It’s got a goofiness that is a little charming. Yeah. Well, guys, thank you so much for listening. Thank you, uh, so much for, uh, being with us for all these years. Here we are on our 10th year now, wrapping it up. It’s pretty crazy. I mean, we’re over 10 years now and we’re in the holiday season, and so we consider you guys our family, you know, and we get together for the holidays and enjoy our time with family.

I, I have to say, when we record these Christmas episodes, I also sort of feel like. We’re talking to our family out there. You know, it’s just a little, it’s like a little cozier than normal, I suppose. Yeah. You know, uh, and, uh, and so, uh, thank you for joining us for this. Please reach out to us. You can be the long lost relatives that, you know, don’t reach out every now and then.

The, the aunt that doesn’t call so often, that suddenly surprises us. By going to our website, chainsaw horror.com. Clicking talk to us, send us a little voice message there, or just send us an email or drop us a message to let us know what you think. Or even indirectly write a positive review of our podcast on one of your podcasting platforms such as Apple Podcasts.

Uh, and we love to read and hear and respond to those when we can. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. The Two Guys and a Chainsaw.