Blu-ray Review: Black Christmas (1974)

Sub-Genre- Slasher
In Attendance- Me, Eryn, The Vanilla Gorilla, Machine, and Nick.
Cast Members of Note- Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Kier Dullea and John Saxon!

Poor Billy is only tying to find someone who will listen to him; too bad he wasted his time on those snotty sorority girls... because they don't seem to care at all! Every time he calls and tries to pour his heart out to them, they laugh and hang up on him and just won't listen. That obviously means that they have to die.
 

Billy 'bout to kill some bitches.

You see, Billy lives in the attic, so it's easy for him to kill a girl, meow like a cat, hide her body, then wait for another one to kill. He really does like meowing like a cat. He also likes to ski, but nobody ever asks him about that. Not even Agnes, because she's a bitch. Sure, everyone eventually gets whats coming to them... just not Billy. He didn't even get as much as a card for the Holidays.

Far be it from me to spoil the what happens for you here, but suffice it to say that there's a dead bitch in the attic, and her cat is a total asshole.

See, this is why I hate cats... She's dead, asshole. Go feed yourself!

What a creepy classic this one is. Tense, dark, and unsettling, Bob Clark made a Horror movie that was years ahead of it's time with Black Christmas. His use of shadow, odd angles, and tension in place of buckets of blood were genius for its time, and it still holds up well, nearly 40 years later. Not bad for a little movie with a budget of under a million dollars.

This film is not only a Horror Classic, but it was also groundbreaking when it was released; it was one of the first slasher movies ever made; it used the "the calls are coming from inside the house" gag years before When a Strangers Calls did; and it was one of the first movies to show us the action from the killer's POV. This movie deserves to stand alongside Halloween as one of the best slasher films ever, although it tends to be a footnote when the two are discussed. Shame, that.

Merry last Christmas ever!

I may have had certain misconceptions about this movie before I saw it...

Turns out it's not that kind of Black Christmas, after all...

WTF was up with the Cops at the end? I mean do we seriously leave a girl all alone in a house where multiple murders were just committed and where the killer is still at large and we haven't even really searched the house all that well in an effort to find him? That sentence was a HUGE run-on, but it had to be said in exactly that manner.

Everyone is on the phone in this movie.

There were a few on-screen deaths, but they were very light on the blood. Creepy though. Very creepy. 

She must have died mid-Christmas Carol.

 Nope... This one was tame in that department.

"Darling, you can't rape a townie" or "I'm going to kill you."

"But... but I'm a townie!"

When someone tells you to get out of the house, you don't run upstairs with a fire poker.... you GTFO of the house!

"You want us to leave now? Alright, we're on our way upstairs!"

Black Christmas is an all-time classic that every Horror fan should have in their collection, especially those of us who love slashers. It's really interesting that between this movie and A Christmas Carol, that Bob Clark gave the world two seminal (although for completely different reasons) Christmas movies. Maybe he just really loved the Holiday Season?

A

Black Christmas is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Olivia "the" Hussey and Margot "crazy as fuck" Kidder are in this, and both are looking rather 70's hot.

Solo Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

An English couple decide to take a two week vacation on some crappy little Island, before their baby is born, only to find the idyllic paradise inhabited by evil, and possibly possessed, little kids who want to murder them and then rape their dead corpses.

Awww, how not cute.

These kids do fun, cute little things such as beating old men to death, using corpses as pinatas, molesting dead bodies, and playing naked hopscotch. Luckily for the couple, they don't catch on to this stuff to early in their trip, so they get a chance to walk around and see the sights. The perfect vacation doesn't come along every day, you know?

Far be it from me to spoil the ending for you here, but suffice it to say that at least one of the kids doesn't make it.

He isn't sleeping.

Who Can Kill a Child? is a creepy endeavor; from the footage of real life war atrocities suffered by children over the opening credits, to the idea that an entire town full of kids gets possessed and kill the adults like it was a game. This movie gets under your skin and stays there, and in my case, it had me rooting for the adults to kill the kids, which is creepy in its own right.

It's a pretty well-made film for something from the 70's, and were it not for the dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers main characters, I'd say that it's amongst the best from that era. I just can't buy anyone leaving their pregnant wife alone in an abandoned town where death is imminent, while they go around looking for a bunch of creepy, murderous kids. That aspect of things did greatly add to the tension though.

Yeah, you're trapped.

So let me get this straight... You and your pregnant wife are on an island which appears deserted except for a bunch of kids, when you start to notice a few things that seem "odd," such as a small girl caning an old man to death, so that she and her friends can play pinata with the body, using a sickle. You tell your wife nothing is wrong, then leave her alone to rummage around in the attic while you're off finding more dead bodies in your hotel. Even when you see a gang of kids attempting to strip and rape a woman's newly-dead body, it takes you forever to say "We need to leave."

Right.

Don't run or anything, just stand there and stare like idiots.

A baby killing it's mother from inside of the womb is pretty messed up. Sickle-pinata with Granddad isn't very sweet either.

Little creep!

Plenty of bloody corpses are laying about, an old man gets beat to death off-screen, a game of sickle-pinata, kids get mowed down by a machine gun.... there's plenty of age-inappropriate carnage to be had here, folks.

Some naked corpse boobs... nothing exciting.

Those creepy little corpse rapers!

"Fuck this shit, we need to go!" Oh wait, they never actually said that...

If horrific shit starts to happen and you don't get the hell out of dodge, you deserve death. Also, fuck the Spanish Police.

Maybe they want to play?

As an effective Horror movie, I give this one an A, as it's creepy as hell and the premise is genuinely terrifying. However, the absolutely moronic behavior by the lead actors in the face of danger brings the film down a few grades, because it insulted our intelligence. It's worth checking out for sure, but I guarantee you'll be yelling "leave already!" at the screen way before the characters get smart enough to realize it on their own.

C+

Who Can Kill a Child? is available now on DVD.

I would have ran every last fucking one of those little bastards over with the car.

Every. Last. One.

DVD Review: Beyond the Darkness (Buio Omega) (1979)

In Attendance- Me, Eryn, The Vanilla Gorilla
Cast Members of Note- A bunch of creepy Italians...

Oh look, folks, it's a love story! A boy and a girl, hopelessly and unconvincingly in love, decide to have sex. They need it real bad. She's so horny in fact, that she dies before Frank can hide his sausige in her gazpacho... but that doesn't stop him! Nope, he cold packs.

Death is no obstacle for Frank's disturbing, nasty love.

Frank injects his love's body with his semen (to preserve her, duh), digs her up after she's buried, takes her home, sloooooooowly embalms her, then eats her heart. The he proceeds to kill a bunch of random, slutty girls, and dispose of them in equally horrible ways.

His nanny (?!?) Iris doesn't like this, because she's a creepy bitch... and she would much rather have him all to herself. She loves to breastfeed him and give him the occasional hand-jibber, but he just won't love her the way he loves that damned corpse! Frank finally reaches his breaking point, and karate kicks Iris to the ground and calls her a slut. She tells him he'll be sorry, and then turns into a bat and flies off.

I won't spoil the ending for you here, but what comes next is a retarded battle royal of bat-shit craziness.

Watch your eyes/crotch/throat/cheek/heart!

If you love gore, then Buio Omega is a movie worth checking out. It's a typical Italian Horror flick; fairly non-nonsensical, slow moving, bizarre, unsettling, and nasty. Exploitation director extraordinaire, Joe D'Amato, delivers another disgusting gem here... And by gem I mean a far less pleasant film than his Ator or 120 Days of Anal ever were. I'm not making that title up either. Seriously, Google it.

Buio Omega is not for the average, weak-stomached Horror fan, or anyone who enjoys things that make any sort of sense, but there is some good to be found within for those who can stomach it.

"We will make love again."

 

My fingernails are still crying. Also, another "WTF?!?" freeze frame ending? Oh Italy... why you do this to me?

The Italian Robby Benson.

Sucking on Iris's tit? Seriously? Why does a grown man even have a nanny?!?

"Come, drink the bitter milk of Iris!"

This one is PLENTY gory and nasty. A guy embalms his girlfriend in slow,graphic fashion; a fat chick gets an acid bath; the fingernail-pulling scene is especially rough to get through; throats are bitten, cheeks are torn, eyeballs are destroyed, a nut-sack is ruined, and a human heart is eaten. And the craziest part of the whole affair? Real cadavers were rumored to be used during the filming. Ugh.

Creepy Fucker.

 

It's retro European Horror, of course we see some naked people doing sex stuff! A fat chick gets naked, a hot chick gets naked, a corpse is naked throughout, and Iris makes Frank breastfeed from her old-ass tit. Oh yeah, it's a sexy time! (or not.)

That is not how you do a threesome.

 

"Licky my milky!" (or something to that effect) or "Get out of here, you old slut!" This is wordsmith-level shit here, folks.

Do not eat spaghetti while watching this movie... or most Italian Horror movies for, that matter.
 

Not appetizing at all.

Buio Omega is a decent enough film. Though full of flaws typical of Italian Horror, the gore quotient of this movie should satisfy even the most ardent of Gorehounds. Give it a watch, if you dare.

C

Buio Omega is available now on DVD.

70's/80's Italian Horror staple Cinzia Monreale is in this... and she's still hot today!