Christmas

The Silver Emulsion Podcast: Ep. 15 – Twelve-Movie Super Show!

Episode 15! I missed last week so this episode is an almost three-hour super show! Test your patience with some talk about Christmas Evil, New Year’s Evil, Zombie Nightmare, a pair of Sammo Hung movies and a bunch of other dope Hong Kong films! Happy New Year!

Intro:

Theme to the 1974 Shaw Brothers Film Heroes Two
- Originally from the Japanese TV show “特別機動捜査隊” (which translates to Special Mobility Investigation Corps). English information on this show is nearly non-existent, but I found a YouTube video MIDI re-creation of the theme that lists it as the theme for the 1964 season. The show’s IMDB is here.

Outro:

Richard Pryor – Fire Exit
- Here and Now (iTunes, Amazon)
Juan Pablo Torres Y Algo Nuevo – Y Viva La Felicidad
- Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats Of Revolutionary Cuba (iTunes, Amazon)

If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below, or you can email it to me via the contact page, and I’ll include it in a future show!

The podcast is embedded directly below this, or you can go directly to Podbean (or use their app) to listen. If you want to subscribe, paste http://silveremulsion.podbean.com/feed/ into whatever reader you’re using, such as iTunes.

The Silver Emulsion Podcast: Ep. 14 – Silent Night, Deadly Night (and Part 2, too!)

Episode 14! Talkin’ about pinball, Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 & 2, kaiju and Woody Allen! Merry Christmas!

Intro:

Manilla Road – Necropolis
- Crystal Logic (iTunes, Amazon)

Outro:

Trevor Jones – The Pod Dance
- The Dark Crystal Original Soundtrack (Amazon)

If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below, or you can email it to me via the contact page, and I’ll include it in a future show!

Christmas in Connecticut (1992)

Starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, Tony Curtis, Kelly Cinnante, Gene Lythgow, Jimmy Workman, Richard Roundtree, Vivian Bonnell

Directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Expectations: Not much.

Right up front: I’ve never seen the 1945 original that this film is a remake of. I imagine this is probably the better way to see this most likely inferior version, as it allowed me to take it for what it is instead of what it isn’t.

Christmas in Connecticut is about Elizabeth Blane (Dyan Cannon), a TV cook in the vein of Martha Stewart. She’s got the perfect family and the perfect house and she makes perfect food. When Park Ranger Jefferson Jones’s (Kris Kristofferson) cabin burns down, the only thing that survives is a cookbook of Elizabeth’s. Never one to miss an opportunity, Elizabeth’s manager/director Alexander (Tony Curtis) finagles a live prime time special featuring Elizabeth at home for Christmas with her family, with special guest Jefferson Jones. It sounds really stupid to type it out, but it plays a little better than it sounds.

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, James Earl Jones, Harvey Korman, Art Carney, Bea Arthur, Diahann Carroll, Mickey Morton, Paul Gale, Patty Maloney, Jack Rader, Michael Potter, Claude Woolman, Don Francks

Directed by Steve Binder

Expectations: Super low.

The Star Wars Holiday Special was once the holy grail of nerd-dom, but the Internet has diminished its luster a bit by making the special readily available for anyone who wants to see it. Shall I let this modern age of access and information sully the legend of The Star Wars Holiday Special? No! For me, this special is still quite special, regardless of the fact that I didn’t have to buy a 5th-gen VHS from a shady guy in the corner of a convention hall. Y’see, despite being a supreme nerd and lover of Star Wars for my entire life, this was the first time I saw The Star Wars Holiday Special. And boy, let me tell you, it was an experience.

For those that don’t know, The Star Wars Holiday Special was a variety show produced by CBS because… well, I don’t know why! But I do know that George Lucas approved it because he thought it would be a good idea to stave fans off waiting for him to ~~desperately think up a story for a sequel that he never planned for~~ hone the Empire Strikes Back script gathering dust on his shelf. Anyway, I don’t know if it really worked to tide people over like he thought it would, but people did go see Empire Strikes Back and perhaps they might not have without the good ol’ Star Wars Holiday Special! Everything happens for a reason, doncha know.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Starring Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, Toni Nero, Robert Brian Wilson, Britt Leach, Nancy Borgenicht, H.E.D. Redford, Danny Wagner, Linnea Quigley, Leo Geter, Randy Stumpf, Will Hare

Directed by Charles E. Sellier Jr.

Expectations: High, I’ve heard good things.

Argh, this one is just shy of being absolutely phenomenal. The first half is full of incredibly well-done psychological horror, showing the fucked up childhood of Billy and how the damage is manifesting itself throughout his life. About halfway through the film devolves into the sadist slasher movie I expected the whole thing to be and it loses a lot of the steam it had built up. Oh well, even with this frustrating issue, Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fantastic slice of 80s horror and any fan of the genre should definitely check this one out.

The film opens with a family traveling to visit Grandpa in the nursing home. He’s silent and apparently trapped in his head, but when left alone with his grandson Billy, suddenly Grandpa comes to life. He tells Billy about how Santa doesn’t just bring presents to those children that are good, he also punishes kids that were naughty. And not just mostly good, you gotta be ALL good or else Santa will punish you! Billy trembles in fear, and later when they’re traveling home and they stop to help out a Santa with car trouble, Billy freaks out. When this Santa, who happens to be a criminal in disguise, attacks and kills Billy’s parents, the concept of a pleasant, jovial Santa is forever eradicated.

Jingle All the Way (1996)

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Robert Conrad, Martin Mull, Jake Lloyd, James Belushi, E.J. De La Pena, Laraine Newman, Justin Chapman, Harvey Korman, Richard Moll, Daniel Riordan

Directed by Brian Levant

Expectations: Low. This can’t be good. I’m just hoping for some good Arnold lines.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years it took to wear me down enough to accept the idea of watching this one. When Jingle All the Way was released in 1996 I was fifteen, and there was no way in hell I was going to watch my most favorite action star sliding around a department store in a battle with Sinbad for a stupid Power Rangers rip-off doll. No way, no how. These days I feel somewhat different about the whole thing. I don’t watch Arnold films hardly at all anymore and he’s been out of the Hollywood scene for several years so there hasn’t been anything new to entice me. Over these years I’ve slowly grown more and more desperate, willing to watch anything he was in, if only to hear him say stupid lines in that wonderful accent I love so well. During one of my more exuberant Arnold moments, I found myself watching as many Arnold quote compilation videos on YouTube as I could get my mouse on. One of these featured Arnold’s famous line from Jingle All the Way, “Put the cookie down! Now!” remixed into a techno song. This, coupled with a newfound enjoyment of Power Rangers, led me to say yes to Turbo Man and give Jingle All the Way a go.

Black Christmas (1974)

AKA “Silent Night, Evil Night”, “Stranger in the House”

Starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin, James Edmond Jr., Doug McGrath, Art Hindle, Lynne Griffin, Michael Rapport

Directed by Bob Clark

Expectations: Pretty high. This is a genre classic that I’ve heard nothing but good things about.

Like the ending of Black Christmas, my feelings about the film are ambiguous and require some thought. Usually I can assign a rating to a film within a few moments of finishing it, and some I can predict a rating while watching. With Black Christmas, I’m unsure whether I saw one of the best 70s horror films or one of the most boring and obvious. Watching Black Christmas, one of the earliest recognizable slasher films, for the first time in 2011 definitely isn’t doing the film any favors as its plot twists are pretty apparent to anyone who’s seen any major slasher film. Well fuck, let’s be real here, the plot twists would be obvious to anyone paying attention to the movie, even if they’ve never seen a slasher film.

The story is pretty basic: a sorority house receives strange, sexually aggressive phone calls while a weirdo murderer lurks about in their attic. That’s pretty much it. The film is built upon the premise that you identify with the girls of the sorority, most notably star Olivia Hussey, as she slowly confronts the evil that stalks her. For this to work, the audience must be able to place themselves in her shoes and in her mind; we must live within her fears. This is where Black Christmas fails because right from the first scene we’re also privy to the mind of the crazed killer. We follow him from outside the large sorority house as he climbs the trellis and slides his way into attic. As the film moves along we jump perspectives between the girls and the killer, further allowing the audience to know more than the characters they should be identifying with, and therefore many of the scenes that should be tense and full of scares are pointless and drawn-out because we know exactly where the guy is!