TPB: Black Christmas (1974)

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Oh Jear's books. It's should timepeople paid good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas for the
pop popcorn, and no monsters inthe projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't
boring off Black Christmas. There wasa little girl murdered over in the park

(00:49):
tonight. Yes, I heard ofthe high school girl has been murdered.
Mister Harrison's daughter is missing, andnow if the house where she lives,
the other girls are getting obscene phonecalls. Hell, remember those idyllic scenes
out of your childhood chrisp Winter nights, sleigh bells, crackling new lugs,

(01:10):
Remember those? Remember them well afterBlack Christmas They'll never be the same again.
For Black Christmas. Starring Olivia Hussey, kid Julet, Margot Kidder,
and starring John Saxon as Lieutenant Fuller. If this movie doesn't make your skin
crawl, it's on two tight.Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your

(01:33):
host. Mike White joined me onceagain. Is miss Maitland McDonough always a
pleasure? Also back in the boothis mister Mark Begley. Ho ho ho
shit, it's the reason for theseason as we talk about Bob Clark's nineteen
seventy four film Black Christmas. It'sthe story of a sorority house in the
United States where a killer has snuckinto the attic and slowly picks off several

(01:59):
of the sisters, in between harassingthem with wild phone calls. We will
be spoiling the film as we goalong, so if you haven't seen Black
Christmas, please watch it and comeback. We will still be here.
So, Maitland, when was thefirst time you saw Black Christmas? And
what did you think? You know? I don't remember exactly when I saw
Black Christmas, although I know thatI did not see it in a theater,

(02:20):
so that means it was either videoor DVD. All I remember is
thinking, well, God, damn, that's a Christmas movie for me.
Because honestly, I'm not a hugeChristmas fan. I don't hate Christmas.
I'm not the total Grinch, butthere is something about the forced gaiety of
Christmas and the length of time thatthat forced gaiety exists. I mean,

(02:42):
it starts right after Thanksgiving and itjust does not stop has always rubbed me
a little bit the wrong way.I love your Christmas trees. I have
some nice Christmas decorations that I liketo bring out. I enjoy seeing my
family and friends, but the relentlessho ho ho tis the season to be

(03:05):
jolly wears on me a little bit. And Mark, how about yourself.
I finally got to see this sometimeearly twenty sixteen because I broke down and
bought the Blue Ray. Bought aBlu Ray the day after Christmas in twenty
fifteen, and I bought the BluRay because I was having trouble finding it

(03:29):
streaming anywhere at that time and hadbeen looking for it on streaming for a
good two or three years. OnceI had gotten back into diving into horror
and trying to see a lot ofthings that I had never seen. And
as I've mentioned on the other BobClark allen Ormsby episodes, it was one

(03:49):
of those movies. It's not onmy secontronic Encyclopedia list, but I became
aware of it around the same timeas those and searched for it along with
those couldn't find it back then.Figured these days i'd have much more luck.
Had a handful of streaming services atthat time, and it would just

(04:09):
never come around and I thought,Okay, I need to see this when
I had seen Death Dream a littlewhile before, and probably Deranged or Children
one of the two, and soI ordered it. Must have watched it
fairly quickly after I got it andwas a like death Dream, underwhelmed by

(04:31):
the film. And again, it'snot a fault of the film. That
was just different than what I expected, even though I had read about it
for years and I had all theseglorious write ups for it, and it's
you know, everybody would say,oh, Halloween is the first slasher.
Oh, but actually there's Black Christmas. And being a huge fan of Halloween,

(04:55):
being a fan of Clark's other films, including A Christmas Story, I
thought it would hit me. Ihad more of an impact than it did.
But I kept returning to it andreturning to it and was like,
oh, okay, I get itnow. This is a me problem.
I'm catching on here a little bit. The pace is a little more languid
than modern slashers, or well whatI call modern eighties slashers, or even

(05:20):
modern remikes of those slashers, Andokay, I can appreciate this for what
it is, and I have tosay it's probably within one of my top
ten horror films. This was afirst time watch for me. I had
never seen Black Christmas in any ofits forms. I remember a few years

(05:41):
ago when the twenty nineteen version cameout, people were kind of tripping all
over themselves on Twitter to talk abouthow great or awful it was. I
don't really remember when the two thousandand six movie came out, which is
interesting because I think that was rightaround the time that there were a lot
of horror remakes that we're going on, like what my Bloody Valentine or prom

(06:02):
Night. I did go see TexasChain Saw remake. I even saw that
horrible name Aaron elm Street remake,but did not see Black Christmas. And
then kind of your point, whenI was watching it for the first time
and I've seen it several times since. For the show, I was,

(06:24):
yeah, kind of also underwhelmed,and then it really took a minute for
me to realize, oh, thiswas nineteen seventy four. This is way
earlier than other things like when andI'm glad I said spoilers when they say,
oh, the calls coming from insidethe house, I'm like, Okay,
well, I've heard that line beforewe've traced the call it's coming from

(06:45):
inside the house, but this wasone of the first times the call was
coming from inside the house. I'mlike, oh, Okay, now I
realize why this movie is so groundbreaking. Now I realize when we're seeing POV
shots from the Killer, when we'regetting these killings in this sorority house.
And then I'm thinking even more asfar as well, I really kind of

(07:06):
like this too, that we don'tever see the Killer, that we don't
really get his backstory. And thenyou watch and I know we'll talk more
about three makes later, but youwatch the two thousand and six version,
and it's that same rob Zombie Halloweenproblem where it's like, Hey, here's
everything about the Killer that you everwanted to know. Here's their entire childhood.

(07:28):
No, I don't need to knowthat much, and thank you for
not telling me. Thank you formaking Billy the Killer be completely a cipher,
and that you never really get hisentire backstory. You can try to
piece things together, but he's justbasically a malevolent force living up in the
attic. And I'm like, Okay, I'm here for it. I like

(07:49):
this the thing that made Black Christmasstick in my head was that it was
something I must have seen very earlyin the period of my life, and
I really discovered that I absolutely lovedhorror movies, that I loved everything about
slasher movies, jolly old school horrorfilms. You know, I had always

(08:11):
liked them. I liked them asa kid, although what I liked was
limited to what you could see ontelevision when I was a kid. I
was a kid in the sixties andearly seventies, so that was not the
kind of thing you can see ontelevision now. But those were movies that
always stuck in my head and formed, I guess my psychic landscape. And
Black Christmas played into both that andthe fact that, to be absolutely honest,

(08:37):
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas. Christmas in my family was always
fraught in one way or another,mostly in ways when you're a kid and
it's most part of your life.You don't even know how to put your
finger on what it is. It'stroubly new about it. But there was
a lot of family conflict and alot of things that were went on said,
and Black Christmas clearly tapped in tothat. For me. It tapped

(09:01):
into all those anxieties about holidays thatyou're supposed to love, that are supposed
to be a time when everybody's unitedin enjoying this holiday, and yet there's
a whole bunch of stuff that alot of people aren't enjoying that makes them
anxious, that puts them on edge, that makes them wish that this holiday
were over so we could get backto normal life. And I think that

(09:24):
that's the root of why Black Christmasreally spoke to me in a very powerful
way. And even looking at itnow, when I have all kinds of
knowledge that I didn't have them,it strikes a real note for me.
Well, and you get that alot from the characters, and we don't
have a huge group of characters,but they're all experiencing problems during this time.

(09:48):
We have Claire, who is dispatchedfirst and doesn't have much screen time,
but she's concerned about introducing her boyfriendto her family, and we got
understand why that is once we're introducedto her father, and then Barbe is
abandoned by her mom and they obviouslyhave a strained relationship, and we get

(10:11):
all these nuggets of their backgrounds soquickly in the film, and I think
that's stuff I didn't catch first,And like these characters are so well rounded
with just the minimal amount of effortfrom the script to the direction to the
acting. It's there, but youhave to be thinking about it. And

(10:31):
of course Jess with her unwanted pregnancy, and this is all going around when
you know it's Christmas break and we'regoing to go skiing and we're supposed to
visit our families and be having fun, and really, none of these girls
are having fun right now except maybePhil Right the Andrea Martin character. And
I was so glad to see AndreaMartins show up in this because I was

(10:54):
I was a huge fan of ofSETV when I was growing up, so
to see her in any sort ofother role, I was very happy.
And that she's pretty serious and prettydown to earth quite a bit, and
here it feels like she's the onlyone who really kind has or shit together.
She seems like the intuitive one.She's picking up on what's going on

(11:16):
with all the other girls and isfinally the one that says and breaks down
and says, oh, you know, I think that Claire is dead,
and how sorry she feels for herfather, and that struck me these few
times I watched it this week withhaving that father figure there the whole time.

(11:37):
His main concern is his daughter drinkingand paling around with boys, and
it's just so much worse than that. It's every parent's worst nightmare. And
when I start thinking about that,the reality of what that situation would be,
it just kind of heartbreaking. Andone of the things that's nice about
seeing Andrea Martin in this film isthat of them. When you see people

(12:00):
who became well known for something else, it's really hard to divorce them from
it. And yet she is completelyand utterly invested in this film. You
completely buy her as a character.You never think of her as oh right,
SCTV. She is just the personshe is, and as you said,

(12:20):
very grounded and very empathetic and sympathetic. She's a really, really great
character who is never overplayed, nevertakes you out of the story. She's
just somebody that you really you wouldhave liked to have known her had you
been in that house with those girlsat that time, or in any similar

(12:41):
situation in your life. And toyour point, Mark, I never got
until maybe the third or fourth timethat I watched the film, I never
heard Margot Kidder talking to her mother, Like I knew that she was talking
to her mom, but I alwaysmissed that lyne about something thing like gold
plated horror or something. I'm like, if you're a real gold plated horror?

(13:03):
Yeah, and it's like, ohokay. It took me a while
before I ever caught that. I'mlike, oh, all right, because
I didn't realize that there was tensionat home and that's why she is probably
the way that she is because MarcoKidder is playing basically the bad girl.
She swears, she drinks, andshe has every reason too and every right

(13:26):
too as well. But it wasjust amazing to realize, oh, okay,
there's problems here. I went awayto school when it comes to college
and stuff, and there was alwaysthat weird time around Christmas or around Thanksgiving,
Who's going to go home? Youknow? I had people living with
us that were from out of state, and so when Thanksgiving comes around,

(13:48):
it's like, okay, you guysjust sticking around or your folks coming up?
Are you going to Chicago or whereveryou're from? And then around Christmas,
it was always that who's going tobe the last person in the house,
and for whatever reason, I usuallywas, so I kind of liked
having the entire house to myself.Luckily, we didn't have any serial killers
in the attic that I know of, you know, it's funny. One

(14:11):
of the things to me that wasexotic about this movie is I was born
and raised in New York City.When I went to college as an undergraduate,
I was living with my parents forthe first couple of years, and
then I moved in with a friendof mine in a loft down on twentieth
Street, and there were a bunchof us living there. So I was

(14:31):
never isolated from the place I wasfrom. Even when I was not living
at home, I was still livingin the city in which I was raised.
So that entire idea of going away, not only going away to college,
but living in a sorority house ora fraternity house or in some other
kind of on campus housing was completelyalien to me, and it was fascinating

(14:52):
to me in this movie. Ilooked at this movie in other movies obviously
that I saw at the same timethat took place in Nelio's like that that
weren't horror films, and felt Isaid, Wow, this is completely a
fascinating situation for me that, ohmy god, all these girls and their
house mother with her little liquor inher book, and all of these little

(15:16):
eccentricities. You see, I couldhardly imagine what it would be like to
be in that situation period, letalone in that situation when lots of people
have gone away for the holidays alreadyand there is something very very scary going
on, namely that there's a killerin your house who's targeting you and your
friends. And they set that upreally well in the film where it works

(15:39):
as a plot point where you don'tknow who is supposed to be there or
not. It's again a credit toClark and to Roy Moore with the original
script, but that idea of okay, we're tipped off Declaire not being where
she's supposed to be because of herdad. If her dad hadn't been the
one to come and pick her up, if she was going to leave Missus

(16:00):
Mac does, they would have hadno reason to realize that she hadn't left.
But with the Missus Mack thing,we get that simple line. As
Phil and Jess and Chris the boyfriendare going to go to the search party,
she says I may not be backwhen you get home, and it's
like, okay, easy, andit's a simple thing and it's done in

(16:22):
movies before, but it just worksso perfectly in this And when they get
back, they just assume that she'scaught that taxi and left to her sisters,
and they're under that impression the wholeway through the film. I really
thought that I was going to dislikethe Missus Mac character, because at first,
when she comes in, she justcomes in like, Hey, i

(16:45):
am channeling Shelley Winters and I'm goingto be super loud and obnoxious, and
then you kind of get to knowher and even though yeah, she's a
raging alcoholic, she still really caresabout the girls that she's watching over and
I kind of fell in love withthe character. I really like her.
And then especially I like that awkwardmoment where she's calling for her cat,

(17:07):
calling for Claude and starts calling Claudea bunch of names, which you do
when you are calling for your catand your cat's not coming, only to
have mister Harrison behind the door orwhatever, like basically catch her. When
she's calling Claude a little prick,It's like, oh, Okay, that
was a good moment. And Ilike that there are all of these laugh

(17:29):
moments in this film and it reallykeeps you off balance as far as is
this going to be a funny sceneor is this going to be a horror
scene? And of course we knowthat the two you know, the scream
and the laughter are very closely related, but this movie there's a great job
to keep you off your feet,especially at the beginning, and not to
focus on a detail. But yes, I absolutely have to say that the

(17:52):
Claude moments are so dear to myheart because I have two cats and I
can't tell you how often I havecalled one or the other of them little
fuck, And that, to meis such a human moment in this movie.
I can completely identify with it.You love your cat, but you
really want to smack your cat andsay, Jesus fucking Christ, why are
you doing that. We just gota new kitten a couple of weeks ago,

(18:15):
so I'm really feeling that right now. Yeah, you little fuck is
part of every cat owner's every hatcompanions vocabulary. You were talking about Phil
and Jess, and I'm just like, oh, there's there's a lot of
male names for female characters in here. I think they played it up in
the twenty nineteen version a lot more. But it's always interesting to me when
you have these kind of generic namesthat could be male or female. Even

(18:41):
to the artendal character of Chris.It's like, oh, okay, so
you never know when you're talking aboutthese characters. I'm almost tempted to call
them by the actor or actress's name, just because it's tough keeping the gender
straight sometimes. Yeah, they reallyplayed that up in the most recent remake,
all the four leads of unisex names, and I guess that goes to

(19:04):
this too, And I always forgetwhen I first saw the movie, I
was so confused by the name Philand it was short ful phillis dub but
I didn't care, like, whyare they calling her Phil? But the
characters in this are just so Ikeep going back to that because every time
I watch it, I pick upon something else. And Mikey mentioned that

(19:25):
phone call and I had to watchwith subtitles because more for the phone calls
themselves, because I was trying toparse out some of what the caller was
saying in them and that phone callscene between Barb and her mom is a
little bit. There's a lot ofstuff going on, and we're hearing it

(19:45):
even where we're not on her.The camera's not on her, so it's
easy to miss a lot of thatstuff. But again, this is one
of those films where I think thefilmmaker really gave his audience credit and didn't
dumb everything down for you know,the matten a crowd or whatever. The

(20:06):
everyday filmgoer. It's like, yeah, you might have to watch this a
couple of times to catch everything.I know I certainly did and probably miss
that whole thing at the beginning.I feel like at the beginning, I'm
not sure exactly when it happens,but it's early on and Jess and Phil
are kind of close to each otherand they both look very concerned, and
there is no real indication of itthat I feel like, this is Jess

(20:30):
telling Phil I'm pregnant, and reallythere's no context to that other than they
seem concerned and there's nothing going onat that moment that is concerning. I
don't know how early Jess knows,if she knows before the movie proper has
started, or if this is allnews to her that day, and maybe

(20:52):
that's why she's coming in to thesorority house and to the party late at
the opening of the film. Butjust yeah, their interactions. It's just
kind of one of those lightning intobottle things where they got the right people
for these parts, and you cannot pay attention to any of the character

(21:12):
dynamics and still have a great horrorfilm, or if you watch them multiple
times and you start picking up onthat, just think, wow, this
is you know, Barb is maskingall these feelings of inferiority by being that
quote unquote bad girl and raising hacklesby telling off color stories, or you
know, or just ignore all thatand think that she's just the jokey character,

(21:37):
like as well as Missus Mack.So what you're saying about Barbe in
particular is absolutely true. And it'salso something that I think you see in
horror films of this particular time thatyou don't see even five or six years
later, which is that because thesemovies were still very much underrated, nobody

(21:59):
really cared about that, nobody wastalking in any serious way about well what
these stock and slash movies were about, other than there are movies from people
who just want to see a lotof people get killed in a lot of
girls, particularly killed in a goryway on screen. I think they were
afforded of freedom to play with characters, to play with subtext, and to

(22:21):
talk about, particularly things involving women, the way in which women are affected
by being vulnerable, the way inwhich women are targets, the way in
which women are frightened of things thatmen aren't frightened of. You know,
if you put five guys alone ina fraternity house, the dynamic probably isn't

(22:42):
going to include we're scared when wehear that noise outside the door, we're
alarmed when we see that shadow outsidethe window. Because they're guys, they
don't have, specifically that fear ofsexual violence, or that fear of just
being targeted by a masculine hostility againstwomen. And I don't want to turn

(23:03):
this all into a discussion about misogyny, but misogyny is something that looms large
in horror movies. Generally in amovie like Black Christmas, which on its
surface looks as though it might bea misogynistic movie about a bunch of women,
pretty young girls in an isolated placebeing victimized, Actually isn't it.

(23:26):
In a lot of ways is adiscussion about that fear of violence and how
individual women in this context react toit. There's Billy, the killer that's
in the house. Oh Billy,But I don't think that Billy is involved
with the killing of the little girl. So I think that there's that external

(23:47):
threat of violence as well, becausethat's another plot point that we have going
on, is that there was alittle girl murdered in the neighborhood. Now
I could be wrong. He couldhave murdered her on the way to the
sorority house, but it feels likethat might be a whole separate case unto
itself, which is just another Yes, violence happens against women, be they

(24:07):
Missus Max's age or all the waydown to a little girl who is going
to school. I'm completely with youon that, and that is something I
hadn't thought about until I watched thismovie in preparation for this discussion. I
had completely forgotten that little girl whowas killed in the park, and I
had also frankly forgotten Missus Mack.The fact that this violence against women completely

(24:30):
covers the age spectrum. The littlegirl. It's an older woman who is
a matronly figure, is not particularlysexualized, and it's all these pretty girls
living in the sorority house. Itis very striking. And not only do
you have to worry about violence comingfrom outside, from these unknown forces,
but that they use Peter the careDelay character as this red herring throughout it.

(24:56):
I mean, he gets unusually angry, especially when he starts smashing the
piano. Oh, I'll never getit, never at all. I mean,
I know he's got a lot ofpressure from the conservatory that he's enrolled
in, but then he now hasthe quote unquote pressure of Jess wanting to
abort their baby, and he seemslike a loose cannon. I mean,

(25:21):
there's a reason why he's a greatred herring because you don't know where he's
coming from. And caire Delay,he's got that calm demeanor. So when
he starts being threatening, when heis calling her crying and all these things,
or there's a reason why he makesthis perfect red herring because you don't
know where this guy's coming from.There is a moment where it's like,

(25:45):
is he going to possibly hit Jess? Is he that upset that he's going
to smack her around? Is hethat much of a loose cannon. Is
he that much of a loose cannonthat he could be murdering all the girls
in the house. Possibly, Heobviously isn't at the in the movie,
and even throughout the movie, itjust doesn't add up. But there's a
good reason why they put him inthat position. I also like the fact

(26:07):
that it's ker Delay who is incrediblypretty, and that just plays into that
gender role thing that's going on throughoutthis film. He's not the big,
butch boyfriend. He's not the footballteam boyfriend who's upset about this. He's
not androgynous, I would say,but he is definitely not your big,

(26:29):
tough boyfriend. And yet his hypersensitivity about this whole issue of pregnancy and
whose agency counts for more in thissituation is made kind of ambiguous by the
fact that he is as pretty ashe is, and he has the seventies
long hair and a very slight bill. He's tall, but he has us

(26:51):
very slight frame. Back to thatmurder of the young girl in the park,
it took me a long time tokind of match up the timeline there
as to when things happen and thekiller gets into the house that first night,
and I could never remember when thatmom is at the police station what

(27:14):
the timeline was for her. It'sthe next day, and the girl goes
missing that day, and that alwayskind of makes me think, Yeah,
it's probably not him. It's verypossible that he could sneak out of the
house, but it's daylight at thispoint, so I don't know. I
like the idea that, yeah,this is not him. And to your

(27:34):
point, Mike, there's violence allaround, and we were just starting to
get into that. In that timeperiod of the early to mid seventies,
there were serial killers active. Wemay not have had a name for it,
or it may not have been widelyreported like it is today, or
even just a few years later withTed Bundy, who would kind of play

(27:57):
a factor in the airing of thisfilm at one point. But it's scarier
to me, and I kind oflike that idea of having it be a
little bit scarier that it's completely somebodyelse. That also made me think when
they get that first phone call fromBilly or the first phone call in the

(28:18):
film proper and just says it's himagain, the moner, and I'm like,
well, is it the same guythat's been calling before? It may
or may not be. There's noreal way to know from the context of
the film. But I kind oflike to think, though, they've just
been getting of scene phone calls,because that was definitely a thing in the
seventies. I received of scene phonecalls in the seventies. A lot of

(28:41):
people mistook me for my mom whenI answered the phone, so I think
they thought they were talking to agirl and I would just hang up.
But that was a thing. Alot of people got their kicks that way
in the seventies, So they weretalking to your mom. Yet that's really
awes right, So you know,I don't know, it's I kind of
like to think these are all separateevents, and that's just another whether it

(29:04):
was intended or not. It's anotherangle that makes me appreciate the script and
the film itself so much more.This film does capture something that was very
much of the seventies, which isthat there was a shaking up of gender
and sexual norms that made a lotof people very uncomfortable, and it fueled

(29:25):
a lot of anger on a lotof front. It made a lot of
men angry that women were not askingfor rights but taking those rights and assuming
that they deserved them, They hadevery right to them. There were also
a lot of women who resented theidea that the roles that they had grown
up with were suddenly not acceptable.There was a very serious anti feminist backlash

(29:48):
at that time. All of thatwas very much in the air, and
there was also a lot of gayliberation stuff going on at the time,
so there was a lot of challengeing of traditional social and sexual norms that
made a lot of people uneasy.And I think that you can feel that
in this film. I don't knowhow deliberate it was, but it very

(30:11):
much reflects the time in which thisfilm was made. These uppity broads are
going to college and think that theycan get some sort of education and a
job afterwards, when they should beat home cooking and cleaning and taking care
of babies. I mean, thatjust shows a right there that they're all
out to get men because they're allgoing to this college. They're all selfish

(30:34):
bitches. Mike, and this isone year past row v Wade, And
I'm not sure what the situation waslike in Canada, though this is supposed
to be set in the United States. I would like to think that Canada
is much better when it comes towomen's rights. I really hope so,
because I don't think you can getmuch worse than the US at this point,

(30:56):
or even at this point in twentytwenty one as we're recording this,
But there's definitely something there that theseare college girls, and yeah, this
does play. This is like closerto Bundy than to dis Salvo, and
way closer to Bundy than Richard Ramirez. But just this whole idea of having

(31:17):
sororities or groups of students or nursesbeing terrorized by serial killers. It's an
awful thing. And it was toofrequent of a thing that it could name
three people a terrorized young women's students, three too many. The agency that
Jess is given in this film,it's I'm hard pressed to think of another

(31:38):
film, especially of that time,and even more so in the eighties films
where she is allowed that throughout anddoesn't cow tew at any point. And
it's just always about her plans thatshe had that they talked about, and

(31:59):
that's where they're talking in the sortof house by the Christmas Tree, and
she said, remember those plans.I still have those plans. Yours may
have changed because you think you didbad at your recital, but mine haven't.
And she never says, oh,well, we'll keep talking about it,
or yeah, I think about it. When he leaves in a huff,

(32:22):
she is still determined to terminate herpregnancy, and there's not a moment
in the film where she reverses that. And I really appreciate that I tweeted
and I think you saw it yesterdaythat when I was watching it with my
daughter and she's kind of half payingattention to the film and playing a game

(32:42):
on her computer, and I wascurious to see what her reaction would be
during that scene in the recital hall, and Peter says something to the effect
of Jess, I want us tohave the baby, and my daughter just
chimed in it's not your decision,though, and I was like, I
just just sat there and didn't sayanything, and was like, give her

(33:05):
my thumbs up. You know you'rereason or right? Mark, Yeah,
I don't know, she's picking itup somehow, you said, especially at
this time. But falso, especiallyin this genre, because horrors are not
and especially stalk and slash movies arenot known for empowering their female characters,

(33:27):
and yet in Black Christmas these femalecharacters really are very much in charge of
themselves. They're very together. They'renot like the kind of silly girls that
you see in a lot of laterhorror movies of this kind, whom you
look at, or I look at, I should say to own it and
say, oh, dodn't mind it, you're so effing stupid. I really

(33:52):
don't care if the secret stalk orwhoever he is, picks you off.
All the young women in this movieare very together. Sure they have their
problems, sure they have the stuffthat they're dealing with. But they're not
silly. They're not backed. That'sthe thing that I think struck me most.
They're fully realized characters. They haveideas, they have things they want

(34:13):
to do, they have things they'redealing with, they have friendships, they
have relationships. They are very muchyoung women who have everything ahead of them
and who are shaping their own futuresin a very real way. And you
see this sketched very quickly in thismovie. I mean, it doesn't have
a lot of time to waste ontelling you who these girls are, what

(34:37):
they want to do, what theirfutures might hold. Because this is a
horror movie, we have to getto some stalking and slashing. But unlike
a lot of lesser movies of thiskind, you really do know who all
these characters are, and you reallydon't want awful things to happen to them
because they don't deserve it. They'renot dumb girls, not silly twits.

(35:00):
Yeah, you genuinely care for thesepeople five minutes after you meet them.
And I think Clark is very smartto have the murder of Claire so early
and so brutally and be the iconfor the film. But then also he
spaces out the killing so it's alwaysa threat there, but then to even

(35:23):
turn up the heat a little bitmore with the phone calls, so you
don't necessarily need to see as manymurders as long as there are the phone
calls. And I like how thephone calls start to increase as the movie
goes on. He knows pacing sowell and knows when to inject those phone
calls and just really ratchet it up. And you don't get five phone calls

(35:45):
in the first twenty minutes, No, they're spaced out throughout, and then
they just get wilder and wilder,and all of the different voices that Billy
is doing, and sometimes it neverreally makes a whole lot of sense.
But then you get that moment wherehe starts to repeat things that Peter had
said, so you're really, youknow, just is very much questioning that,

(36:08):
like, is this Peter or andshe doesn't really make that connection.
Is this someone who heard my conversation. Knowing a little bit about some of
the spoilers of the film before Iwatched it, I didn't really pay attention
to Peter so much because I knewthat he wasn't going to be the killer.

(36:29):
So you do miss some of thatbait with the red herring. If
you're like me and go into thefilm that way, then I think,
well, this is kind of acheat. That lasts all the way to
the penultimate scene of the film whereJess has ended up killing Peter, and

(36:49):
you're still thinking, oh, well, it was probably him. He was
in the house that one time duringa phone call. We know that the
phone calls are coming from in thehouse, although we don't really see him
make a phone call until after that. But again, if you've read about
it, you know that that's oneof the lines. It's always using reviews.
The callers are the calls are comingfrom in the house. I try

(37:13):
to remember, you know that thisis we are set up to believe it's
Peter, and that Clark's intent wasto have us question whether it was Peter.
And then you start thinking, well, does can this work out?
Can he be in the house andbe here? And he mentions in I
think the audio commentary it was importantfor him not to show Peter when he

(37:37):
does call, because there are multiplecalls from other people as well, that
every time the phone rings, you'relike, oh, am, I going
to hear this creep again and it'sPeter or it's Barb's mom or whoever.
All the cops start calling as well. But he didn't show Peter at his
location like we so often do infilms, and then you're going, oh,

(37:59):
well, where is still At thispoint if you're watching the move for
the first time, maybe don't realizethe calls are coming from the house.
But to not show him where heis is smart because then you can think,
at least at that point when hecomes down the steps after a call,
oh maybe it was him that wholething with the phone. Not to

(38:19):
get into the sequels too much,but I kind of like, how they
approached that with the current technology,because you think about something like that,
how would you do that today whenwe're not stuck on land lines or possibly
having a house that has two linesor maybe three, Because that's kind of
a confusing point for me. Whenwe do finally see Billy or the caller

(38:42):
make a call, he is inmissus max room. But he couldn't have
been making the calls from her roomthe whole time. They would have heard.
I mean, he's so manic andso loud and so weird, you
would think that somebody would hear thatcoming from her room. And he also
risks her going to her room untilshe is dispatched. But I don't like

(39:06):
kind of trying to break down thingslike that. Oh does this make sense?
Could he have been the killer?Could he not have been? It
would have been nice maybe for adefinitive Oh he was here at this time,
It could not have been him.You never really get that moment because
you see him lurking around the house, you know, disembodied voice on the
phone, so on and so on. But I love that at the end,

(39:30):
the cups think the crime is solved. Oh well, Peter's dead,
Okay. I guess everything's fine,and then everybody leaves and then the phone
starts to ring again. I mean, that's one of the best endings.
It is so great when the phonestarts to ring one more time. This
is going to keep going forever.I'd love it. As far as the

(39:50):
logic goes, I was like,well, how does he know the phone
number of the phone downstairs or whatthe line is? And I was just
like, yeah, forget it.Don't try to even into that stuff because
it's just gonna fall apart. Butwho cares. It works, It really
works. But you know, interestingly, when we talk about the logic and
the mechanics of things, I lovehow much time and I had completely forgotten

(40:15):
this until I watched it again.This film dedicates to the police trying to
trace those calls and those amazing shotsshowing you what it took to trace a
call back in the seventies, thoseenormous shots in those trunk line where houses
or whatever those things are. Iwonder whether people who are in their twenties
and thirties looking at those shots eventhough what the hell is going on there?

(40:38):
Plus you get less Carlson so asour lineman Bill Graham, who I
just love, And yeah, Ithink that's one of the things that I
really enjoyed from the get go ofseeing this. Oh there's less and oh
we get to see him run aroundand do this fun stuff. It's not
like what we get in when astranger calls, where it's just all in

(41:00):
the house and the police and thetracing is all done, you know,
completely separate. I mean, it'sbasically the same story taken from the same
urban legend. But I love seeingthe mechanics of things like that happen.
And it's a great point to thatyou bring up about the police and how

(41:21):
different that is from so many horrormovies where they're not just completely dismissive.
And we get that with the Nashcharacter, the bumbling idiot who gets the
fallacio lines thrown at him and allthis other stuff and doesn't make the connection
that we've got this girl missing fromthe sorority where these calls are happening,

(41:45):
we've had a girl murdered in thepark. Come on, buddy, let's
take this seriously. And Lieutenant Fullerdoes, and it's such a great perform
one of my favorite performances from JohnSaxon because he is so low he and
so genuine and seems legitimately concerned andcaring about what's happening to these girls,

(42:09):
and you don't often get that.He does ask the probing questions about Claire,
or like, what she's seeing otherpeople? Could she be checking up
somewhere? Does she have emotional problems, which cops are going to ask.
I think that's part of their dutyas well. But he's serious about taking

(42:30):
this seriously, and his only realgoof is dismissing the fact that there is
a second line in the house.Now, I completely agree, and I
love John Saxon in this movie.John Saxon is one of those actors.
Frankly, he's done some really greatstuff. He's done some very bad stuff,
and he's done a lot of stuffin the middle. But I think

(42:52):
this is a movie in which heacquits himself really, really well. He
is a voice of reason. Heis the guy in a position of authority
who in a lot of horror filmsis the guy who says, ah,
man, those kids, they're justfooling around. Who cares this is nothing?
He's the voice authority who says,we need to look into this,

(43:15):
we need to investigate I don't knowwhat's going on, but we can't dismiss
it out of hand. And hedoes it in a really low key and
really effective way. You know,I look at him here and I look
at him in Tanna Bray frankly,and this is a really wonderful moment for
John Saxon in his career where hereally does acquit himself extremely well in a

(43:37):
genre film. And I like toothat he listens to the phone call between
Jess and Peter and then it doesn'tfeel like there's judgment in his voice afterwards.
It feels like he's genuinely concerned abouther more than oh, well,
young lady, you really need tomake your boyfriend happy kind of thing.
There's just none of that. Thathe is genuinely. It's kind of the

(44:00):
even though we do have a literalfather figure in the film, he's the
closest to a real father figure thatwe have throughout the movie. That he
is so caring and protective for me. That also plays into all of those
scenes in which you see the policereally trying, with all the technology that
they have at their command at thistime in history, really really working to

(44:25):
figure out what is going on.There is none of that dismissiveness that you've
see in a lot of horror filmswhere the cops to say, oh man,
it's those crazy kids, Oh man, it's those girls. Yeah,
yeah, Yeah, they're always complainingabout something that's always so frustrating in films.
I just find another way around it. And they do it so well

(44:45):
in this well, even though youhave Sergeant Nash who's kind of an income
poop, which is fucking hilarious,and especially when the one cop is laughing
at him, I absolutely love thatthat guy's great. These cops are actually
affect that they find the little girl'sbody, that they can have a search
party and you don't get shots ofI don't know, a couple of yahoo's

(45:08):
with shotguns that accidentally shoot each otheror something, some sort of comic relief
part in that. I mean,it's a very serious scene and they pull
it off very seriously, and thatthey actually find the little girl's body.
And the screams in that scene aresome of the best screams in the film
because they feel very genuine. Itfeels like this what you would do if

(45:30):
you came across the girl's mutilated bodyin the park. Yeah, and the
inner cutting of those scenes that inparticular is great, and it happens a
lot throughout the film where we switchlocations, and the cuts and the sound
design are so great. And Ithink we go from up in the attic
either right around the time missus Macis getting murdered, and then we get

(45:53):
screams and it's the girls in thepark discovering the body, and then the
mom up after mister Harrison, whois of course falsely relieved that it's not
Claire, and the mom comes upand she opens her mouth to scream,
and then the phone rings, soit's the phone ring versus her instead of
her screaming, and he does ata number of times. And having watched

(46:16):
this after watching those other three BobClark and or Alan Ormsby films, you
can just see the progression of histechnique and style and grasp of the language
of film so much more in this. And this is again right around the
same time as Death Dream and Deranged, only a couple of years after Children

(46:38):
Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, andI mean really right on the heels of
at least the release of Death Dreamthat had been filmed a little bit before.
But we get a lot of movingroving camera just in that little staircase
landing even and it becomes a littledisorienting after a while. I'm trying to

(47:00):
figure out the layout of this space, and he'll do a one eighty or
a three sixty around that landing upto show the attic door again, and
you're like, wow, you knowthis is it's great. There's some split
diopter shots in there, and itjust seems like his style and technique was
really ratcheting up at this point.I listened to the audio commentary, the

(47:23):
one with While I listened to bothcommentaries, but there's one that has Clark
and then there's one that has Saxonand Delay that are kind of cut together
obviously two different interviews or two differentsessions, and when they aren't talking,
you can hear the audio of themovie and listening to it, and I

(47:44):
know I said the exact same thingwhen I talked about Lady from Shanghai.
It sounds like a radio drama,you know, the music, the sound
effects, the dialogue. It isalso rich and so layered. And I
love with this one too. Youalways have like Christmas Carol's low in the
background, or the amazing score.I love that Peter the piano player really

(48:07):
kind of informs how the score goesbecause there's so much piano and so much
deconstruction of piano sounds to this.I think it's probably one of the best
scores for these Clark films, andso far we keep saying like, oh,
the score is amazing for these Also, the use of Christmas music in
this film is exceptional. It's veryeasy to do a cheap use of almost

(48:31):
any Christmas song you can think of, but in this film, those songs
are so thoroughly integrated into the flowof the film that they never jump out
at you. They never jump outand make you say, oh, man,
God bless you marry gentlemen. Wow, that's a cliche. It never
works that way because it is soseamlessly blended into the visuals, into the

(48:57):
camera movement, into the way thatthis film is together. It's it's really
remarkable. And they tend to beinherently creepy if you tweak them just enough,
or even just have them playing low, and I think it's it's another
one of those aspects of the filmthat just ends up working so well as
a plot point to have just pulledaway at just the right time by these

(49:22):
carollers, whose rendition of that thatcarol is just amazing. For one thing,
and at the opening with the SilentNight, which I believe he uses
again in a Christmas story. Ithink a Silent Night as used there as
well, and kind of a similarnighttime scene. I noticed when I played
this with subtitles, it's it's likea second or third verse of that song,

(49:45):
which you know, usually if yougo to church on Christmas, which
I did for years, you don'tnecessarily do the second, third, and
fourth verses. But I was kindof struck by the lyrics and that part
of the song and wrote it down. It says shy where the mother mild
watches over the Holy Child, andit may again be completely just by happenstance,

(50:07):
but it goes to Billy's calls,and it goes to Jess's situation,
and obviously Christmas songs are about thebirth of Jesus, but having that mother
child lyric in there just struck methis time, as we're dealing with that
throughout the film, and what isthe deal with quote unquote Billy and Agnes

(50:30):
and the baby and what happened andthat I like that It's still kind of
a mystery to me, even nowhaving watched it multiple times in the past
and three times this week. Whatis he talking about having happened? Like
you said, Mike earlier, weget way too much of that in the

(50:50):
two thousand and six remake, andI like that. I'm still thinking,
well, did he kill the babyor is this a sexual assault like it
appears at one point, or whatexactly is going on? Or is it
just the ravings of a madman?He does say at one point, it's
used a couple of times the linedon't tell them what we did, Agnes.

(51:14):
That's the thing that kind of makesme go, oh, this might
be something else. This might notbe an accidental or even purposeful killing of
a baby out of jealousy. Thismaybe ikey stuff. And I have to
say, the icky stuff that Ialways think about his incest, right,
That's That's what I'm kind of beatingaround the bush about. And I don't
know. I'm like, is thatwhat we're talking about, or again,

(51:37):
is it just ravings? Is whathe's relating a story? Is it a
story about him? Or is thisjust weird stuff that he's throwing out there
to freak these girls out because theyare freaky calls. I think the use
of the multiple voices is probably reallythe freakiest part. I don't know if

(51:58):
it's the content or the full thatis stranger. I think it might be
a mix of both, and Ithink they do a really good job of
playing with that and having the voiceschanged so that it feels like and I
know for a fact that they didn'thave just one person doing the voices that
you could switch over to another voiceand layer things on top of each other,

(52:19):
because it is you know, Iwas talking about radio play. Those
phone calls themselves are just like littlemini movies or little audio dramas throughout the
entire movie that you've just put inthere, and it feels like it is
telling a story. It feels likewe are getting a linear narrative through there.
But yeah, it's not very clear. And yeah, I was thinking

(52:40):
incests as well, even before Isaw the two thousand and six movie.
I was like, Okay, itfeels like Billy and as maybe a little
sister Agnes and maybe they had ababy or I'm not exactly sure, or
maybe there was an abortion with that, or I don't know, physical skitter
in the closet making babies, andI saw one of the babies and the

(53:01):
baby look at me. But itdefinitely felt like Billy had a relationship with
Agnes and it was not a goodthing to have happened. I'm completely there
with you because to me, andI haven't seen either of the other films,
I've only seen this one, thereis something deeply family oriented, and

(53:24):
I see incest all the way throughit. Frankly, it's extremely insular and
extremely close, and all those shotsof the attic emphasize that. To me,
it's that we're all trapped in heretogether and it's a repeating cycle of
some kind. I suspect that probablyis the thing that I found disturbing when

(53:47):
I first saw this movie all thoseyears ago, but didn't parse and articulate
for myself. But I think thatthat is what made it stick with me
the way did And unlike some thingsthat I saw a long time ago that
stuck in my brain, this isa movie that is as disturbing to me

(54:08):
now as it was to me.Then. I did an episode on this
for my show a while back,and I believe that one of the viewings
that I did for that I watchedit real late at night. My wife
and daughter were asleep, all thelights were off, and I just put
it on as a lark. Imay not even been preparing for the episode.

(54:30):
I think I just did it towatch it. I really felt those
phone calls that time and ended uphaving a nightmare that night in my sleep,
and that is really unusual for me. I never really even had nightmares
as a kid. It wasn't relatedto the movie, but I woke up.
I had to wake myself up outof this dream. It was so

(54:52):
disturbing, and I thought, yeah, maybe I shouldn't watch Black Christmas in
the dark of night by myself.And I was surprised because I could really
feel it digging in and even thinking, Okay, there's there's a couple of
rooms behind the living room where theTV is that are in pitch black,
and I just kind of peek overmy shoulder and have that that irrational fear

(55:15):
that someone was in the house.And like I said, it rarely happens.
So with the right setting, thisis a movie that can dig in.
And again nineteen seventy four, there'snot a lot of gore. There's
most of the kills are off screenor off you skated in some way.

(55:36):
It's mainly those phone calls. They'rejust so they dig in so well and
are so disorienting. Again, likethe camera work, and with that layering
of voices. Now again we're goingto do the fifteen things wrong about Black
Christmas. I don't know how somebodycan manipulate their voice that way and overlap,
but it works for what they're goingfor, which is the effect and

(55:59):
that overall feel of the disturbing phonecalls. I will say that on a
personal level, and this is reallypersonal, I'm asthmatic, and all that
wrapped in plastic part of this moviereally, if I were prone to anxiety
attacks, watching Black Christmas again reallywould have triggered one in me, because

(56:22):
those sequences where you have that suffocationin plastic and that inhalation with plastic wrap
really really anxiety producing. Clearly,you know that's not a thing that is
going to trigger everybody, but Ialso think that a lot of people can
identify with it. The idea ofhaving a plastic bag over your head is

(56:45):
something that is extremely anxiety producing formost people, and that was the ad
image that sold this movie. Thenyou have barb having and asthma attack as
well, so you've got it doublyin there. I was years to see
what my daughter would think because shehas pretty pad asthma too, so she
didn't. I think she was playingher game at that point. So there

(57:07):
is a lot of breathing trauma inthis film. And yeah, to your
point, it isn't that kind ofslasher porn where it's like, oh,
how can this girl get it?And oh can we see I don't know,
an arrow go through the back ofsomebody's head and come out the front,
or just any of those which yousee. I mean, it's almost
to the point of parody now whenyou watch something like I don't know,

(57:29):
like a Your Next or something andit's just like, Okay, we're gonna
do this, or all the finaldestination movies where it's like, Okay,
well, how is this guy gonnaget it? And what kind of weird
Rube Goldberg mechinations are going to causemore head trauma or the person's chest to
explode or something like that, Likewhat is going to happen to this?

(57:51):
And in this movie, it's veryvery simple, and Guests leaves a lot
more to the imagination which I'm finewith. I really kind of like that.
Yeah, I love that. Ithink it's clear's death where they go
from her dying. You're talking aboutthose shot cuts of audio where they go
from that to the rest of thegroup laughing and screaming at something in the

(58:15):
in the main room. It's like, that's really nice and that, Yeah,
to your point, just happens againand again. It is really well
done, and again obvious skates thesound for the rest of them, and
so you get why no one ishearing any of this stuff. And also
to speak to that, that's thehorror of suffocation. It's quiet, and

(58:35):
it's also something that I think almosteverybody has experienced in one way or another
at one time or another. Youknow, whether you were faced down on
the bed and woke up feeling likeyou couldn't breathe, or you were in
a pool and you were underwater fora moment more than you wanted to be
suffocation And I think I'm not surewhether you can hear it. I'm in

(59:00):
the middle of a very bad asthmaepisode right now, so I am wheezing
kind of badly, which makes thisextremely relevant to me. I think a
lot of us have experienced that feelingof oh, I can't breathe in one
way or another, and that isreally primal. And I can tell you

(59:21):
every time I look at the adthat was the main ad for this movie,
it brings it right back to me. That face wrapped in plastic with
that little indent, you know,where she's trying to breathe in. That
is a really disturbing thing. AndI'm guessing that probably people who never even
saw this movie saw that ad andin some way experience the anxiety that that

(59:46):
image produces the idea of somebody puttinga plastic bag over your head and you
not being able to breathe. Idefinitely know I saw it decades ago in
video stores on the wall, neverfound the video, but I know I
I was familiar with that poster andit is and I had an experience as
a kid. I was in asleeping bag and these are those old nylon

(01:00:07):
sleeping bags that aren't very breathable,and a couple of these kids were had
wrapped kind of wrapped me in itand really panicked because I could not get
a breath. And so when Isee that kind of stuff, that's the
thought that I go back to andit's, yeah, it is, it's
horrifying. It's it's a scary thoughtwell, and it's so much more effective

(01:00:30):
to have that that's called pain,the pain that you know versus the unknown
of like I've jumped into water thatis too deep and I've gone too far
and have had panicked trying to getback up to the service to breathe.
I've never had my throat slit.I've never had an arrow shot through my
head, so I can definitely appreciatethat first death and realize, like,

(01:00:54):
oh yeah, that's really fucking scary. That image is very terrifying, much
more so then getting a unicorn shovethrough your head. And it's an image
you come back to in the film. You see it more than once,
oh yeah, lots of times,and as we said, it was the
image that was in the ad.I like that they go back to it,
not for that reason, but youget that overwhelming sense of dread and

(01:01:17):
doom that she is still undiscovered.Missus Mack is undiscovered. When is anybody
going to find them? Is it? I don't like to extrapolate beyond the
movie, but I kind of can'thelp it with this one. What happens
to Jess, And if Jess iskilled, somebody's going to come back and

(01:01:39):
find that, And then are theygoing to search the house? And then
are they going to find Claire andmissus Mack and will Billy be gone by
then? And so on and soon, And I have seen it's kind
of like the end of the thingwhere people have used these clues through the
film to say whether one of themis infected. And there's a line of

(01:02:01):
dialogue and I think it's Saxon.I think it's Lieutenant Fuller that says,
because he's still thinking that Peter didit, oh, he must have made
a phone call after each killing.And I think people have taken that as
gospel and relate every call that Billymakes in the film to a death or

(01:02:22):
to a killing that he's just made. And I'm like, well, that
doesn't really work. It doesn't reallymatter. You could say they're coming before
and after because he breaks into thehouse, kills Claire, makes a call
or makes a call and kills Claire. What difference sys in Mclaire is still
alive when the first call is made. I think the thing that I had
read was putting the death of thatGirl in the Park a day before,

(01:02:45):
which I don't believe is correct.The point was that, Okay, he's
making a call here at the endof the film. Again that means that
Jess is already dead, and Idon't read it that way because we have
just seen him in the attic andwe're doing that crane shot coming out of
there and then he makes a phonecall. I don't think enough time has

(01:03:08):
passed for him to come down andgone in the room, killed her,
etc. Etc. But again,it doesn't it doesn't matter. You know
that it's highly likely that something isgoing to happen to Jus at this point,
but they could get out of iteasily if they were to ever do
a sequels. So since it's notshown, all right, we are going
to take a break and play atrio of interviews. First up, we'll

(01:03:30):
hear from Simon fitz John, authorof Bob Clark, I'm Going to Kill
You, And then we'll hear fromactor Art Hindle, and last but not
least, we will hear from DavidHastings and Paul Downey, authors of It's
Me Billy Black Christmas Revisited. Andwe'll be back with all of those right
after these brief messages. Hello,this is Mark Bagley, the host of

(01:03:53):
Wake Up Heavy, and I'd liketo invite you to listen to my show
over on weir Newwaymedia dot com.Wake Up Heavy as a show about my
horror movie obsessions from childhood as wellas new to me discoveries from the past
and present. My guests have includedfellow Weirdingway Media hosts Mike White from the
Projection Booth podcast, christash You fromthe Culture Cast, Heather Drained from Noise

(01:04:16):
Chunkies, as well as Sam Deagan, Sam Panico, and Simon fitz John.
Every once in a while, mydaughter Cleo even joins me, Hey,
that's me. Find Wake Up Heavyand my other show Cambridge and was
sewn on Weirdingwaymedia dot com or whereveryou listen to podcasts and don't forget anything
can happen when you Wake Up Heavy. Welcome to the interview portion of the

(01:04:51):
show. First up, we're goingto hear from Simon fitz John, the
author of Bob Clark. I'm goingto Kill You. Simon FitzJohn, tell
me more about you and especially howyou go into film writing. Well,
it's I mean, it's always beena passion of mine, like film has
always been a passion, And Ithink the passion for horror came from my
parents without a shadow of a doubt. I suppose that may be the case

(01:05:13):
with a lot of horror fans thatthey're they're sort of reared on it,
if you like, from quite ayoung age. But yeah, I mean
the pivotal film moments for me whenI was a youngster was of you know,
I had a younger brother and weused to sleep in bunk beds.
My sort of mum was a hugehorror fan, more than my dad was.
But they used to go to horrorfilms together when they were dating,

(01:05:33):
you know, as as you do. But my mum always kept that passion
for horror going. But as Isaid, she never really she wasn't a
fan of the genre in terms ofI must go and see the latest John
Carpenter movie, or I must goand see all the latest agenda. You
know. She wouldn't know the namesof directors, she wouldn't even remember the
names of films sometimes, but shewould just absorb these horror films and remember

(01:05:57):
moments and bits and you know,and that's what she would feed off to
me. But yeah, like Isay, my earliest memories was she would
come up, like on a Fridaynight, nine ten o'clock at night when
I was nine ten and sort ofsay, you know, tap me on
the shoulder to see if I wasstill awake, and that my younger brother
below me was asleep, and itwas like, right, put your dressing
gown on, you can come downstairs, you know. And it would be

(01:06:19):
things like the thing being shown onTV or Halloween and you know Jaws Alien,
you know, these like seventies eightiesfilms that were getting like a TV
screening over here in the UK.And I remember the only thing I was
told, you know, she justkept talking to me and saying, you
know this isn't real, right,you know, this isn't real. And
again a very British thing that shewas more worried about, say Halloween,

(01:06:42):
for example, no problem with MichaelMyers putting a knife in poor you know
Bob and hanging him on the wall. When some boobs gets shown, suddenly
it's close your eyes, close youreyes, you know, sort of,
which is a very British thing,I suppose, But but that was it.
I mean, I was hooked.I remember just watching It was probably
Halloween actually that I remember just watchingand thinking, I've never seen anything like

(01:07:03):
this before, because my film experienceup to that point was like Disney,
you know, and and and suddenlyyou go from Disney Disney to Haddenfield is
quite a quite a swerve. Andthat was it. I was. I
was then hooked, you know.I was absolutely hooked on horror and have
been my whole life. Really,you know, I was never able to
go down the film route as Imade a film at university purely for fun,

(01:07:28):
as because I did a degree totallyunrelated to film. But a friend
of mine, he was a hugefilm fan, and we just said,
well, why don't we just makea film. Let's just make a bloody
slasher movie, you know, settingour whole of our campus, you know,
with a mass killer going around killingas many people as we possibly can.
And we did, and you knowhe actual Funnily enough, the guy
I made the film with went tofilm school after because he enjoyed it so

(01:07:53):
much. And now he is aneditor in Hollywood and editing the Mission Impossible
movies and Top Gun and and everythingelse. While here I am sat in
my bedroom talking to you about thatabout films. But it's funny our life
goes, isn't it. But yeah, that was it. I've just never
got rid of that passion. Andalthough I was, my career took me
down different pathways into teaching. Youknow, I work at a university.

(01:08:15):
Now you've got that option of likeyou have with podcasting, you can keep
that passion alive. And so withme, it was less right about films
I enjoy. And so that originallystarted with setting up person a website at
a newspaper I was working at,where we did some podcasting and bits and
pieces, and then that just expandedto writing for magazines and I've written three

(01:08:39):
books and I continue to write forThe dark Side magazine, which is obviously
a British magazine, but I knowit's got a fairly decent following in the
States, you know, a sortof the retro horror sort of thing,
which is which is what I enjoyedwriting about most, because you know,
my real passion is like researching thestuff really, Mike, you know,
not necessarily reviewing like modern releases,although I watch as much modern stuff as

(01:09:01):
I can. It's more finding outhow this happened, you know, how
did this get made. Whose ideawas this, you know, this game
changer? Where did that? Howdid that come about? And that was
what led me to Black Christmas really, you know, and writing a book
on Bob Clark. I'm not sureanybody ever else has written a book on
Bob Cards, so I might bethe only one that that sort of has.

(01:09:21):
And yeah, here I am nowtalking to you. Was Black Christmas?
Was that your first Bob Clark?No? But interestingly it was the
first one I heard about, because, as I sort of referenced earlier,
my mum would always be throwing methese clips and moments from films that she
would remember. And this was preinternet obviously, so you couldn't just google

(01:09:45):
search, right, and so shewould always talk about there was this film
I went to see, you know, and it was amazing, and it's
about a set of college kids andthere's phone calls and it turns out the
guy is in the house, youknow, in the attic, making the
phone calls. And she said,but I can't remember what it's called.
And so at that time, thiswas probably mid nineties, and so I

(01:10:06):
was talking to friends I knew,people I knew, you know, going
into reference by poking around in books, couldn't really find anybody that knew what
I was talking about, until oneperson came along in a sort of I
used to work originally when I leftcollege. I worked in like a DVD
sort of store, you know,DVD and CD store. And yeah,
one of the people I worked withsaid, I don't know that film.

(01:10:28):
It's called Black Christmas. So therewas my lead, but it was unavailable,
It wasn't available, It wasn't availableon VHS in the UK, it
wasn't available on DVD, totally unavailable. And so then a sort of VHS
label sort of started up are comingthe name Redemption possibly that started releasing you
know, retro stuff and rereleasing things, and that they released children Shouldn't Play

(01:10:50):
with Dead Things, which was thefirst Bob Clark I actually saw. But
still I'd never seen Black Christmas atthis point. And then lo and behold,
I think it was I still remember, but it was Christmas Eve nineteen
ninety seven. That's how pivotal amoment it was to me, Mike.
I can remember the date it gotshown on TV in the UK on one
of the lesser channels over here,and I remember the colleague who told me

(01:11:13):
about the film, faxing me again. So this is dating the story,
faxing me to say, you're notgoing to believe this. Black Christmas is
on Channel four at like eleven thirtyfive on Christmas Eve, and I thought,
wow, this is it. Thisis the seven or moment. But
I thought I was prepared to belet down, you know, because so
often when when you build things upin your mind, certainly with films,

(01:11:33):
I think if you're if you missedthe hype train, as it were,
and you come to a film late, very often you're like, you build
it up into something it can't possiblybe in terms of its quality. But
Black Christmas it was the opposite.I thought, crikey, if anything,
my mum has undersold how good thisis, and and watching it with the
like, how come more people don'ttalk about this film? You know,

(01:11:54):
when it's it's sort of like youthink of all the films it came before
that have sort of copied elements ofit, and you think, well,
I've got to do something about this, and so you know, and so
from that point on, anytime anybodysaid we've got any films to recommend,
you know, any horror films torecommend. It didn't matter if it was
in the heat of summer, it'dbe like, yeah, Black Christmas,
you know that, that's one towatch. That's one to watch and then

(01:12:15):
learn the whold years later. Thatthen leads me down the path of writing
a book on Bob Clark. Yeah, how did the book come about?
Because it's one thing to be afear of the films, but to take
out a whole book project as somethingcompletely different. Well, it was partly
down to the publisher that I workedfor. So there's there's a company over
in the UK called Hemlock Books andthey'll be absolutely delighted. I'm giving him

(01:12:35):
a shout out there as well.So, but it's run by a guy
called Dennis Nicole, who's like areal old school horror guy, like he
would be on He was on setwhen the Hammer films were made, you
know. So he's interviewed Cushing Lee, you know, all all the greats.
And so he has a horror companywhich they import horror mags and sell
them, but they also published theirown stuff as well, and so he

(01:12:58):
was involved with dark Side Magazine,which I started writing for, and then
they said they were coming up withthese ideas of a new series of what
they called horror companions, where thefocus would either be a specific director or
a specific genre, a subgenre ofsort of horror. And so I originally
went to him and said, canI write a book just on Black Christmas,

(01:13:19):
purely on Black Christmas? To whichthe response was no, because they
didn't think there was a market forit to do a book just on Black
Christmas. But I said, well, okay, then we'll considering Bob Clark
did Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Thingsand death dream and murdered by decree,
you know, and there was theBlack Christmas remake you know, had been
around at that time, and thenthere was lots of other offshoot bits of

(01:13:42):
these deranged There was a bit ofpopcorn you could work in, you know,
that the nineties film. And Iwent back and said, well,
how about a book on Bob Clarkthen? And they sort of relented on
that, so, you know,I didn't get I got a pitiful amount
of money for it, Mike,I don't mind admitting that pitiful, but
it was allowed. I mean towrite about something I was passionate about,
and you know, and you know, whether it be I think and This

(01:14:03):
is the thing that it's the passionof the people that keeps this stuff going,
whether it be writing for magazines orpodcasting or whatever it is. You
know, so often people are doingstuff for free because they love it,
because they love the genre. Andsuddenly I'm I'm talking to Olivia Hussey,
you know, about Black Christmas,and you're like, well, you know,
i'd a paid to do that,not not be paid, you know,

(01:14:25):
not had not actually be paid todo it. You know, I'm
happily going to do this because Iactually love it and being able to big
up a director that I think sortof got the recognition but too late.
You got the recognition too late.You know, he basically got the recognition
and then he died, you know, when people started appreciating what he'd done
in the sort of seventies. Youknow, it's just a shame, which
is what I wanted my book tobe to say. If you look at

(01:14:46):
that run of movies he did,from Children to Death Dream to Black Christmas
Deranged, you know, it's likethat that's a hell of a run when
when you're not working with much money, you know, which he wasn't doing.
It wasn't the for Black Christmas likesix hundred and forty thousand dollars.
So it's just such a small amountit is. But interestingly, Bob Clark

(01:15:08):
said that was quote a monumental amountof money because you know, when you
think the previous films he'd done,Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things was done
for about one hundred grand, onehundred thousand, and then Death Dream and
Deranged were both around the two hundredthousand to two fifty. So suddenly you've
gone from two hundred thousand to triplethat for Black Christmas. You know,

(01:15:31):
and as he said, what itallowed him to do was get people on
board involved in the film, certainlythe casting of it that if he was
making a two hundred thousand dollars filmprobably wouldn't have happened. So and you
know, and you know from watchingthe films, you know they get every
last penny out of it because alot of it is so enclosed. You
know, they looked out or notlooked out that because they found it.

(01:15:55):
But the house sells the film.You know, if you find a house
like that and they and dress itup like they did and put sort of
track camera tracks all around and justhave that camera moving around. You don't
need expensive effects, you don't needmillions of dollars because it's it's it's it's
gritty, you know, it stillhas that grittiness about it. I literally

(01:16:15):
watched it again last night for thegod knows how many times I've watched it,
and I was still watching it,thrilled by it. You know.
I remember I mentioned it last nightagain saying I'm just shaking my head time
saying that this film is so excuseme, so bloody good, you know,
so good. It's so good.It's like it's still gives me the
chills now when those you know,when the phone calls start and the you

(01:16:36):
know, the calls it to apiano scraping sounds come in. I think,
like, this film absolutely nails.It absolutely nails creepiness totally. It's
an amazing cast in there, anda lot of faces I wouldn't necessarily expect.
That's very happy to see Henry Martinand there, Yeah, exactly,
and that that was one of Ithink either a first or second film.

(01:16:59):
I think she certainly hadn't done muchand she only stepped in as a late
replacement actually, because I think itwas Gilda Radner was going to originally play
that part. And then there wasa couple of examples of that with people
being drafted in last minute. JohnSaxon, for example, he got drafted
in literally two days before filming startedbecause the original Lieutenant Fuller. They had

(01:17:24):
an actor called Edmund O'Brien who wasOscar winner, you know, veteran veteran
actor, and they cast him.He was agreed. They met him at
Toronto Airport, took him for dinnerand realized he had the early on set
dementia. And so it was likethey said, he didn't when they when
they met him at the airport,he didn't seem to know where he was,
you know what. He didn't knowat the lines, and it was

(01:17:46):
like, oh my goodness, youknow, we can't. We can't have
this guy, you know, wecan't have it, have him. And
now, luckily for them, JohnSaxon had originally tried out for the role
and been turned down, so theywent back to John because he was friends
with Karl Zitro. Actually John Saxonand basically said, look, if you
want the part, it's yours,but it means you've literally got to get

(01:18:06):
on a flight to Toronto like now, and he said that he arrived,
went straight into makeup, and thentwo o'clock in the morning he's doing the
scene in the park where they havethe search party, and he's got the
megaphones saying there's gonna be sets ofdogs and there's going to be you know,
that's literally five minutes after he landed. He's doing that. But you
wouldn't know, would you, fromhis party. He's so good at it.

(01:18:27):
He's so good in it as well. When you talked about how this
movie precede so many other horror films, and as I'm watching it now and
twenty twenty one, and I'm justlike, oh, which came first?
Him in that role or him inthe same role in what was the Nate
Marion elm Street exactly. I mean, he's just a just a great actor.
And I think it's yeah, it'sit's it's a I think I wrote

(01:18:49):
in the you know, the chapterthat I wrote on the book, I
said, it's it's rare to seea horror film where the acting is so
strong across the board. You know, there isn't really a dud form and
stare you know, you've got OliviaHussey who's phenomenal. Then you've got that,
you've got Margo Kidder, who's notthe comedy character, but she certainly

(01:19:10):
gets a lot of laughs out ofher character. And you've got Keia Delay,
you know, and and yeah,it's it's it's it's just an incredible
cart you know. It's it's youknow. They like to use that phrase
ensemble and throw it around a lot, don't they. But that's very much
what it was. And I thinkwhat helped with the film, and certainly
from Bob Clark's perspective when you speakto the cast, is there weren't any

(01:19:31):
real egos on the set, youknow, certainly not from Bob, you
know, basically, you know.And then Margot Kidder said that with you
know, with Barber character, itwas basically Bob would say to her,
look, as long as you saythese lines roughly, I don't care what
you add to it. You know, you can put it, you can
swear, you can, you cando whatever you want, you know,

(01:19:53):
just make the character your own aslong as you hit these points, these
plot points that need to be explainedin the in the script. But apart
from that, just do what youwant. She loved that she said she
absolutely loved it, you know,having that freedom, especially with like the
scenes on the phone and sort ofyou know, it said just great stuff.
Bob was always keen to cut modestI suppose is the word I'm looking

(01:20:16):
for. He was. He wasa modest director. You know, he
was very quiet, He was veryeasy going. You know everybody on the
set of Black Christmas, you knowthe people. I suppose he said it
was all you know, not necessarilyrelaxed, but there wasn't stress. There
wasn't stress, and he was keento give people credit. So even you
look at the script for the film, for example, so if you look
on the credits of the film,it's it's credited has been written by Roy

(01:20:41):
Moore. His creditor is right inthe film now Roy Moore. He originally
he came up with what was theoriginal version of the film, which had
been knocking around the studios about threeyears without anybody taking it and biting on
it. But originally it was writtenvery differently. It was original written as
a film called The Babysitter, andthen it was about a psychotic who was

(01:21:05):
stalking people at the house of hisformer doctor or his doctor. That's so
it's a similar sort of idea,but the characters and the and the the
concept was sort of different, ifyou like. And it was Bob that
stepped in and said, no,what we're going to do is we're going
to make this college kids you knowor you know, and it's going to
be a sort of sorority house andit's this and there's there's gonna be no

(01:21:28):
doctors involved. And he rewrote it, you know, and added the Missus
Max scenes. That was all writtenby Bob, but he's not credited on
the film as having anything to dowith the script, you know, Elis
let Roymore take the whole credit,you know, which again is you've got
to be comfortable within yourself, Ithink, to be able to just sort
of say, well, look Idon't need the credit for this, you

(01:21:49):
take the credit for it. Italways felt like Clark liked to work with
the same people and just kind ofevolved like his regular cast of characters behind
this the scenes and even in frontof the camera. I know, Missus
Mack was the same actress who wasin Deranged Were There are other people that
kind of held over from previous filmsinto Black Christmas, not so much into

(01:22:11):
Black Christmas. I mean, obviouslyyou've got Carl Zitro did the who did
the score, you know, didthe score for for all of Bob's well,
all of those early films, butnot really you mean, you didn't
like Alan Ormsby. Wasn't there inany shape or form. I think it
was because partly because he'd full blownmoved to Canada for this, you know,
as opposed to you know, Childrenand Death and they were filmed in

(01:22:33):
Florida, and then obviously Derange wasfilmed near Toronto, but even that started
sort of moving away from the thesort of Bob Clark pack, if you
like. But I think it wasmore just that, you know, with
with more money opens up more optionsof who you can bring in. So
I think, you know, withthe early films certainly was something like Children

(01:22:54):
and Death dream it was like callingin favors, you know, Oh,
and you've got a haven't you right? Well, can we borrow that yacht
and then you can be a zombiein Children Shouldn't Play with Dead things if
we can borrow your yacht for oneof the scenes, you know, and
that sort of thing. And youknow, you had the whole crew that
had been doing drama and theater inthe Florida area, which is how Bob

(01:23:15):
and Alan Rms be and that's atJeff Gill and that gang all got together.
But when it moved to Black Christmas, suddenly there was a lot of
money involved, and there was companiesinvolved, and there were bigger names involved,
and I think it was just agradual not necessarily getting better, but
he had more options, I suppose, is the sort of best way to
describe it. But couldn't get anybodybetter than cars It for music, because

(01:23:39):
the score for Black Christmas, asI'm sure you'll agree, is is again
one of the one of the mostmemorable aspects of the film. One.
I like how he uses the pianoand there and it really ties to that
Delay character and especially has mental instability, absolutely absolutely, and it's actually cars
It. You know, the scenewhere Key Delay is doing is examination recital

(01:24:01):
for the sort of well examiners Ibecause that's actually cars It to playing the
piano in that it's only the sortof wide shots that they actually had keya
Delay. When it's the you seethe hands furiously hammering away at the keys,
that's actually Carlsitra playing that. Soyou know, there's a few bits
and pieces like that, Like thefirst time we technically see Billy it is

(01:24:23):
when his silhouette appears at the window, doesn't it, Right at the opening
scene of the film, before heclimbs the trellis up into the attics.
So the silhouette that appears at thewindow is Bob Clark, you know that
that was him, And then itbecame the camera operator, who in effect
was a bird dunk, who wasin effect Billy quote unquote for the rest

(01:24:43):
of the film because they were ableto set up this rig where they put
the camera on his shoulders, sohe was able to actually move because I
maybe jumping ahead he might But youknow, the whole POV sort of thing
again, is not necessarily the firsttime a killer's point of view have been
shown in a film, because youI'd argue there's like peeping tom or sort
of stuff like that. But interms of how effective it is and how

(01:25:06):
we come to know the killer's hands, the classic slasher point of view,
that probably was the first time becauseyou know, steadycam hadn't been invented,
and they somehow came up with thisrig where the camera's on his shoulders.
You can see his hands, youcan see, you know, everything he's
doing. And again, it's justanother one of those things where I think

(01:25:26):
every time I watch it or tellpeople to watch the film, I sort
of say, look, remember thisis nineteen seventy four. Halloween doesn't come
out for four years. When aStranger Calls doesn't come out for five years.
You know, remember that. Notsit there and say, oh,
that's cliche. That's cliche. Andit's like it wasn't cliche when it came
out because nobody had done this before. But Christmas was that part of what

(01:25:48):
they would call the Canadian tax shelterfilms. I don't think so. I
don't think there was any There wereCanadian companies obviously involved in the funding.
I mean it was multiple companies putlike one hundred two hundred grand in each.
I maybe proved wrong there, butI don't think it was. No,
I'm not aware of that, Mike, I'll be proved. You're honest

(01:26:08):
with you. Well, it's nicetoo, and I know you point this
out in your book, how heremoves violence that could be there, that
he cuts around the violence as reallyas it's necessarily a bloodless film, but
it's pretty close to it. Yeah, absolutely, And it's very similar to
Halloween, really, isn't it.You know when you when you think about
it, and and again it's likeI was thinking about this, thinking back

(01:26:30):
to when I saw you know,Halloween Kills recently and thinking like, you
look at the amount of violence inthat compared to say seventy eight Halloween and
seventy four Black Christmas and you know, Halloween Kills. I'll have you know,
I shrugged the shoulders when I watchedit. You don't need it,
you know, the story is alwaysthe thing, and yeah, it's bizarre.
I think with Black Christmas, what'sbizarre. As a couple of there

(01:26:54):
was a couple of the reviews whenit came out with which were which were
negative reviews? I think it wasriety and they sort of said it was
you know, they said, thisis like a blood bath, you know,
a necessary kid, and it's likeblood bath. Did you actually watch
the film? You know what,at what point apart from apart from a
little bit of blood on a unicornglass unicorn, you know and streaming on

(01:27:15):
key face, where's where's the bloodin the film? You know, where
is it? And I think thatto me was testament to the mood the
film had created, similar to Iwould argue it similar to like Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, you know, the firstone, Mike, where people think of
that as being this absolute carnage bloodbath and it isn't. How much blood

(01:27:38):
is there in Texas Chainsaw Massacre,you know, there really isn't is there.
But it's such an intense film,and I think people have distorts people's
minds and they think of it asbeing so much more graphic and full on
than it actually was, purely becausethey were they were sort of caught up

(01:27:59):
in the moment, if you like, when when they were watching it or
even upset, even upset by it, certainly scared by it, but yeah,
you don't need it. I don'tthink it were And that was the
same. That's what disappointed me withthe with you know, the Black Christmas
remake in you know, which youknow, I understand trying to do something
different with a film rather than justrehashing it, but I don't know what

(01:28:21):
you think might but I just wasn'ta fan of the remake at all.
It was like, right, let'stake everything that worked in seventy four,
so we don't know who the killeris. There's just lots of hints and
there's no real blood, But it'sall about the tension and building and building
this claustrophobic sense of that they're trappedin the house. Let's throw all that

(01:28:42):
out the window and let's have loadsof door and let's show exactly who the
person is, you know, Andit was just like, right, okay,
I don't know what's going on here. You know, you've you've lost
me, You've lost me. Whatwere some of the most surprising things you
found when you were doing in research? What's a rise? Me? Was?
How again? And this happens sooften with horror films, doesn't it?

(01:29:04):
How how so few people liked itwhen it came out. You know,
That's what always surprises me with thesethings. And it's not Black Christmas
is by no means a one offin this. You know, you look
at you know, I was amazed. You know, I had to do
a book chat. Well. Oneof the other books I read I wrote
was a book on the Psycho franchise, and you know, and the character

(01:29:26):
of Norman bates from ed Geen toRobert Block's book to the Psycho books right
up to Bates Motality TV series.And again you look at the reviews when
Psycho came out, and they wereabsolutely vicious. You know, the reviews
were vicious. You know, youthink of the reception the thing got when
it came out, you know,absolutely slaughtered. And now these films are

(01:29:47):
held up as like top one hundredfilms of all time, not horror film,
all any genre. And it wasthe same with Black Christmas. You
know, nobody had a good wordto say about the film until it turned
up a year later on its Americanrun. Then it got us at a
few nice reviews. But what Yeah, I was just amazed at how how

(01:30:08):
really, how really negative the reviewswere when it came out, to the
extent that you know, I readarticles in like the Toronto newspapers at the
time where you suddenly had the producersbacktracking, you know, in terms of
oh, you know, it wasn'tintended to you know, and all this
sort of stuff, and it's like, we'll hang on, you know,
it's it's not your fault that thesepeople haven't appreciate, appreciated what they got

(01:30:30):
in front of them. And theaudience, did you know, it was
a huge It was a huge hitin Canada. Aside from that, nobody
else seemed to know what to dowith it. And I think that's the
thing. I think it's just ayou could argue this is because was this
because it was a game changer,you know, So it wasn't like,
right, well that film has beena success, therefore we just need as
many imitators as we can and we'llback them to the hilt. People didn't

(01:30:54):
really know what to do with this, and like certainly when it went to
America, because Warner Brothers took iton for the American release like a year
later, and they tried to geteverything changed. So they went back,
they went to Bob Clark and said, right, we're going to release this.
It's a big studio. There's moremoney behind it, you know.
So the first time Bob had everworked with the studio before. And they

(01:31:17):
said, the only thing is wewant you to change the ending, and
like, what do you mean changethe ending? And it's like, well,
we can't have this ending where youdon't know who the killer is,
so you're going to have to goback and shoot something where you get shown
who the killer is. And theysuggested Art Hindle's character that's who Warner Brothers
wanted Claire's boyfriend, Chris, becausehe's at the house at the end.

(01:31:40):
If you remember when when Olivia Hussey'shas been sedated and he's there and he
says, oh, I has anybodycontacted this parent and I'll contact them,
And they wanted him to sort ofstay in the room and then sort of
shut the door and sort of say, you know, oh, it's me
billy sort of thing, and it'sand Bob was like, you must be
joking, you know, you mustbe joking, and that just ruins the
entire point of the film if you'redoing that, And so they said,

(01:32:04):
okay, fine, they changed thetitle from Black Christmas to Silent you know
that the sort of silent night,evil night. And because this was this
this was my the funniest moment whenI was doing my research, because they
changed the title because they thought audienceswould think it was a black exploitation film.

(01:32:25):
So they said, we can't havethis film called Black Christmas because white
audiences will think it's a black exploitationfilm. And it's like, what,
despite the fact it's been shown,it was the biggest hit in Canada last
year, you know, right,okay, so Silent Night, Evil Night.
They then said, oh, tohell with it, we just don't
really have We aren't fussed about thisfilm at all. So they released it
in August, August seventy five,you know, which is obviously when everybody

(01:32:46):
wants to go and see a Christmashorror movie, isn't it in August.
What that did mean, though,as I saw some fantastic promo shots of
people in Santa costumes going around LaBeaches handing out badges saying, you know,
black Christmas is coming sort of thing, but it's sort of pretty much
died a death everywhere else, youknow, other than Canada, until this

(01:33:08):
whole DVD resurrection and suddenly, youknow, Bob Clark gets reappraised in like
the nineties, and suddenly then everybody'ssort of clamoring for get his opinion on
things. But no, I thinkthat was what surprised me the most was
how how again, how negatively receivedit was when when it was first released,
And what was the most surprising thingyou found out about Clark while you

(01:33:30):
were researching the fact that nobody hadthis sounds bad to say it was a
surprise, but the fact that nobodyhad a bad word to say about it.
It was refreshing for me to thinkthat somebody could get to the position
he had and make the films hedid without being an asshole, you know.
But it was this camaraderie, everybodyhaving fun, you know. I
think Olivia Hussey, I said whatwas you know, I said, what
was your biggest memory? And shesaid, the biggest memory of making Black

(01:33:53):
Christmas was how much fun she hadand how Bob Clark would take her to
a Chinese restaurant every weekend, youknow, and and you know, and
it was just little stories like thiswhere people were with him, wanted to
with him again, you know.The and I think that was what surprised
me the most. And the shameis that because he didn't get appreciated for

(01:34:15):
what he was, suddenly his careerwent all over the place. I mean,
you know, we're talking about aguy that made baby Geniuses for God's
sakes, you know, and likeKarate Dog, you know. And it
was just when I was going throughhis filmography for the book, it was
just mind boggling the straight to DVDnonsense that was that was coming out later
in his career. And then suddenly, as I said, the Black Christmas

(01:34:39):
gets reappraised, then there's the remake, and then suddenly it's all Bob Clark.
Bob Clark. Let's let's Fangoria aregoing to do a retrospective on it,
you know, and then he's ina car crash, you know,
and suddenly he's dead, you know, killed by a drink driver. That's,
for me, is the shame.When you look at the films he
did in the seventies, you think, if there'd have been enough awareness of

(01:34:59):
what he was doing and what hewas capable of, we could have been
talking about Bob Clark as you know, like I said in you say the
names Carpenter, Hooper, Craven,you say all these guys, and everybody
knows who you're talking about, youknow when I say, well, actually
one of my favorite horror directors isthis guy called Bob Clark. Who you
know, who you know? Andit's like that's that's That was the shame

(01:35:20):
for me, which was another oneof the prompts to write the book,
you know, really just sort ofto right the wrong as it were.
Was there a moment in his careerwhere things suddenly took that turn? I
mean, because obviously Porky's was ahuge hit, a Christmas story, you
know, I remember seeing that atthe theater. I don't know if it

(01:35:41):
was as popular then as it asnow. I remember Ryan Stone when it
came out Turk one eighty two,loose Cannons, I was a little fuzzy
ann and then it just kind ofafter that, it seems to kind of
dip down. Yeah, I meanit was. It was all over the
place. I mean, yeah,I mean, to be fair to Bob,
he never set out to be ahorror director. You know, he
never said out to be a horrordirector. You know, he didn't start

(01:36:03):
in horror. He made these absolutelybizarre exploitation films in the sixties which very
few people have seen, you know, you know, totally off the wall
films like she Man, Shanty Tramp, you know, you know absolutely Now
this was before children shouldn't play withdead things, you know, this was
this was you know, he wasmaking films where the studio was part of

(01:36:26):
a funeral parlor, you know,where he started making films in Florida,
and so he he saw horror asthe means to an end. You know,
it was like, I want tobe a film director. I haven't
got much money to play with.What type of films can I make?
So I can either make In hiswords, he said it was either horror
or pawn, and he said,I had no interest in pawn. Therefore

(01:36:47):
horror it was. And so that'swhere he started. And then after Black
Christmas he went straight into I thinkit was a film called Breaking Point,
which was like an action sort ofone of these vigilante type he was involved
in, like this forerunner to TheDukes of Hazard, bizarrely called I think
it was the moon Runners or theMoonshine or something like that, but like

(01:37:08):
that what became the Dukes of Hazard. Then he sort of dips back into
it a bit with Murder by Decree. But then after that, like you
said, Porky's and suddenly the wholelandscape changed for him. You know,
Goodness knows how profitable that film was, you know, like crazily profitable,
and that became an industry in itsown right, the Porky's films, didn't
it. And you know, therewas even a Porky's computer game, which

(01:37:30):
I didn't realize, you know,for the Atari. You know, I
think a Porky's you know, themind boggles on, that really, doesn't
it. He seems to have workedwith some incredible people, but just in
very poor films. So yeah,and there was even a bizarre Dolly parton
Sylvester Stallone, you know, youknow, I think it's like that was
that was the thing for me thatwas staggering when I was researching him was

(01:37:53):
just the hot footing around the genresand types of films he was making.
It was crazy. But yeah,Cannons, that's the gene Hackman sort of
dan Ackroyde and I think what wasa great story on that. I don't
know if you're aware of this,but because the film was such a bomb,
they had cans of the film thatthey're just buried in landfill. Yeah,

(01:38:15):
because they just because no, nocinema wanted to show it. You
know, it was a complete boxoffice dud. So they just said,
well, like literally just bury thisfilm, literally bury it. And then
like years later there was this newstory where some guy working at a waste
disposal site came across one of thefilms, came across some of the celluloid
and sort of found the bitter stripof the celluloid, which was a scene

(01:38:39):
where one of the characters was beingtortured or killed in the film, and
so then went to the police sayinghe'd found a snuff movie, and there
was this whole news investigation and theyeven had Dan Akroyd involved. Said no,
no, no, no, no, no, this is it's not
a snuff movie. It's this filmLoose Cannons. But it says, you
know, it belongs in the trashor something in derogatory sort of said,

(01:39:00):
you know, but you know,my goodness, you know, the unbelievable
stuff. I spoke with Rannie Cooxhere as a go and I was asking
him about some of his best andleast favorite times and films and he was
telling me, oh, yeah,there's one movie I don't want to say
the title, and he was justtalking about how awful it was, and
it just was like, was itLoose Cannons. He's like, yeah,

(01:39:21):
yeah it was. You just sitand what you sit and watch some films
and you do just wonder, don'tyou like? How did this get made?
Who green litt it? Did nobodyrealize this wasn't good a good idea,
you know? And I think Ithink what happens is so far they
just get so far into these thingswhen you think, well, we've spent

(01:39:42):
this much money on it, We'vejust got to finish it, you know,
and then maybe it'll make something backsomehow. But yeah, and I
think I always have to remind myselfthat for the vast majority on these films,
it is just their job. Itis just work. It is not
something they are necessarily passionate about outand you know, it's we're passionate about
it, and we're emotionally involved init. The people making it aren't necessarily

(01:40:05):
emotionally involved in it. For them, it's just a paycheck. And where
do I go? What do youwant me? What lines do I say?
I'm not even going to watch thisfilm when it's made, you know.
And so I think, you know, it's we just need to keep
reminding ourselves sometimes that that's it's anindustry, you know, at the end
of the day, it's a business. As someone who has seen so many
about Clerk films, and we've talkedabout how all over the map he was

(01:40:29):
with the films that he chose todo or ended up doing, did you
find certain themes? Were there thingsthat interested him that he would explore throughout
his films, not really I didn'treally find much in the way of theme.
I think there was certainly an elementin his films of you know,
he had a very troubled upbringing,so I think, you know, childhood

(01:40:50):
was something that or you know,pre adulthood was something that interested him.
How young people, young people interestedin full stop, you know. Yeah,
because he had quite a trouble,don't thing. He didn't really have
much time with his dad, hismom. You know, they moved around
the country a lot when he wasyoung, bounced around. And then because
I think he was you know,he ended up in Florida, but he

(01:41:12):
wasn't born there, you know,he ended up in Fort Lauderdale, and
that's when he suddenly became a bitof a film fan. But so I
think that's what he wanted to dowith Black Christmas, actually, because he
said, you know, that's whyhe rewrote it. So it wasn't adults,
like full blown adults. It wascollege or we can't world in college
kids as such company, but youknow, students, students, you know,

(01:41:32):
because he said that, that allowedhim to sort of open the film
up a bit because they're more playful, they're more fun. The characters,
you know, they've got their livesahead of them. You know, it's
more tragic, you know, whenthey're in peril can be so so not
so much films, but I thinkit's themes might but I think more because
his childhood had been so turbulent thatI think that's suddenly paid. I'm certain.

(01:41:58):
I don't think I could possibly workbaby geniuses into this argument about it.
You know, you never know yourbook came out and what twenty fourteen,
I think it was. It's beenout of print as long as I
remember. I've been trying to getit for years. And that's going for
almost a thousand dollars on Amazon,which is which is preposterous. It's congratulations,

(01:42:19):
yeah, which is totally preposterous.Yeah, I don't I don't know
how that happened, to be perfectlyhonest with you, but yeah, it's
a nice calling card, isn't it. Somebody else pointed that out to me
once, and I was like,what what are you? What are you
talking about? You know, youknow I can scan and send you a
copy if you want, you know, there's sort of a you know,

(01:42:39):
it's ridiculous, but no, Iwas just glad that. I was just
glad to do my bit really,you know, for Bob, because yeah,
it's he's somebody that does need toget talked about more. And certainly
Black Christmas, you know Black Christmas. It's it stands up so well.
Now you know, you can watchit. Like I said, I I
literally watched it last night because Ithought, let's give it another spin,

(01:43:00):
you know, before talking to you. And it's still fresh, it's not
dated. You know, it's stillhits in the right places. You know,
it still creeps me out, youknow, and the phone called start.
The thing that has changed to meover the years of watching it is
the first time I watched it,the Missus Mac character annoyed me. Okay,

(01:43:21):
that was the thing that and theregular little droplets of humor that a
sort of dropped it, you know, Sergeant Nash for example. It is
sort of like the bumbling cop withhis you know fillat show, you know,
except scene etc. You know,all those bits. And I thought,
I thought the first time I watchedit, because I was younger.
I think when I first saw it, I was like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, get on withthat. I don't care. Abouctually

(01:43:42):
stashed a bottle of whiskey or somethingin the toilet, you know, just
get to the next person being killed. But then again, over time,
as I've watched it again, I'vematured as an audience, if if that
makes sense, Mike, and Ithink now I appreciate the pacing of the
film more, you know, AndI know the comedy stuff stuff to Bob
put in to the film when herewrote it, and you know, and
he said, well that's real life. Real life has comedy and horror and

(01:44:09):
scares and people just goofing around andseeing. He said, you know,
I'm going to I wanted to putscenes in the film that didn't necessarily advance
the plot, but just built thecharacters. You know. So so these
are these are proper characters, youknow, you think of the you know,
the Olivia Hussey, the Margaret Kid, and Andrew and Mark. These
are real characters in that film.You care about them, you know,

(01:44:31):
they're they're they're not knife fodder asyou see so often in slashes where it's
like I couldn't even tell you anythingabout that character, what they couldn't even
remember what their name was, youknow, if you say Phil and Bob
and yes, you know you rememberthose characters because the time was taken to
sort of develop them and let thembreathe, and then you start picking people

(01:44:54):
off. You know, the bodycounts not great, is it? I
mean we have like what three fourpeople being killed and yeah, and then
you have the ending, of course, you know, which which we all
love. Yeah, And so Ithink that was one thing that definitely changed
my appreciation of the film. Ifit's the right phrase to say it's a
very adult horror film, I thinkreally, you know, it's not a

(01:45:14):
it's not a like a teen slasher. You know, it gets lumped in
with that a little bit at times. You know, it's being like the
grandfather of it all, but it'snot really. Well the Clark book ever
come back out and print Oh,you'd have to ask Hemlock. I think.
I think the books were done ona bit of a Clark esque shoestring
budget. They basically printed as manyas they hoped to sell. I think

(01:45:36):
was what I got told. Soif you see any of the books still
on the website available, technically thatmeans it's underperformed, if that, if
that makes sense, because there's stillsome there's still some available to buy.
So the fact that my Bob plotone isn't available. Gave me a little
bit of a kick because you know, I never I was never told there

(01:45:57):
was no commission basis. There wasno royalties for me. It was just
one one poultry upfront fee and thatwas it. And so the fact that
it isn't available, I thought,oh, well, actually then that can't
have done that badly. They allwent so you know, it was there.
It was it was worth it doingfor them as much as it was
for me. But now, Imean, if anybody wants to get in
touch with me, you know they'reby all means. I've got all the

(01:46:19):
chapters and everything on my laptop,and you know, people have got in
touch. There's you know, peopleI'm good friends with, you know,
like Mark Begley, I know,you know, for example, and you
know, every so often somebody says, can he send me the chapter on
this? Can he send me thechapter on that? And I'm I'm more
than happy to you know. It'slike if it's getting the word out there,
you know, then that's that's that'sfine by me. What are you

(01:46:41):
working on now? Do you remembermany It was a good few years ago
now, Mike, when you dida one are your podcasts on Full Circle.
Do you remember that? Yeah,you had Keiler on, didn't you?
And you I have been working ontrying to get Full Circle released now
four just over five years, fiveyears, and that's working with Richard long

(01:47:06):
Crane the director, Peter Fetterman,the producer, And yeah, that has
proved a logistical nightmare, an absolutelogistical nightmare, because we've we've found the
negative that we are unable to restoreit and rerelease it until we prove who
owns it. And that has beenfive years of lawyers, legal mumbo jumbo,

(01:47:31):
red tape, bureaucracy, people shuttingdoors in my face because everybody who
originally bankrolled the film, or thepeople who originally bankrolled the film are all
dead. And so suddenly you've gotthis situation where technicolo who have the negative
are saying, well, according toour records, the owner of the film

(01:47:51):
is this person, and it's like, yeah, that person died in twenty
sixteen. You know their their companywas liquidated in nineteen ninety nine. And
they're like, yes, but weneed we need a chain of ownership.
Who did he sell it to?And it's like, he didn't sell it
to anybody you know, he justdied, He just died, His company

(01:48:13):
was extinct. Therefore, why can'twe have it. Nobody's going to come
forward and say you can't rerelease thisbecause that's my film. Technical have just
dug their heels in, you know, and just said, unless we can
provide some paperwork that says this isthe person that now owns this film,
they're not going to give it tous. And it's infuriating, absolutely infuriating,

(01:48:38):
because, as I've said to them, how am I ever going to
be able to find that paperwork?You know what paperwork? And I said,
does somebody even have to file paperworkif they hand over the rights to
a film? And they're like,no, they don't. It can just
be word of mouth. And it'slike, well, well then, how
on earth am I going to Howon earth am I going to provide you
with some sort of document that saysJulian Elzac gave the rights to Full Circle

(01:49:01):
to this person on his deathbed.And so it's desperately frustrating because that is
a film, you know, FullCircle or Haunting of Julia, you know,
is a film that I hold justas dearly as Black Christmas. And
yeah, and I've written magazine articleson it. I've got, you know,
the separate Twitter feed and Instagram accountjust for full Circle, because I've

(01:49:23):
I've like interviewed apart from me andPharaoh, I've interviewed absolutely everybody else that
was involved in that film, fromTom Conti to literally the script advisor to
the wardrobe person. You know,so yeaherhaps madness. It's madness. Mike
is like that, don't be impressedbecause it's madness. You know, it's
it's absolutely insanity that I'm doing that. I could that, I could you

(01:49:45):
know that I get excited because Ispoke to somebody who designed one of the
coats that me and Pharaoh wore inthe film, and it's like, who
else is going to be excited aboutthat? You know, it's just madness?
And this is the thing, isn'tit? And it was the same
with Bob Clark, you know itwas you know, when I was writing
about Bob, I tracked down Idon't know how it happened, but I
tracked down that you can't even callan actress because she wasn't an actress.

(01:50:10):
But the woman who played the zombiebride in Children shouldn't play with dead things.
She's there's literally a zombie that comesout in a wedding dress. If
you remember in the film, Isomehow tracked her down that she works in
an art gallery in New Orleans.And I remember phoning her and saying,
you know this bizarre you have thisbizarre nervous weight while you say, you

(01:50:30):
know you are Joe Blogg Sue Smith. You know, would you happen to
be the same person who is azombie bride? It's a zombie bride and
children shouldn't play with dead things?And there was this there was this pause
on the phone, and then shejust went, oh my god. She
said, you're the first person thathas ever asked me about that that film.

(01:50:53):
And that was you know what,forty years later. And then I
said, well, you know,what do you remember about it? And
she said, well, give mea few days and I'll put some stuff
down in writing five thousand words.She sent me five thousand words of everything
from how she got on with thepeople to how she was buried in the
ground, you know, but youknow, and it was just insane,

(01:51:15):
you know, to the to thethe the like the premier quote unquote that
they did that she went to wherethey had people dressed up on chains,
zombies on chains, you know,outside the driving you know it was.
And again that's when I get thebuzz might you know, when you think
this woman's and she was so excitedto talk to me about it, because
she's like, you know, nobody'sever heard of the film, let alone
talk to me about it. Andthere's me like getting like a kid in

(01:51:39):
a candy store, you know,sort of a because I'm talking to this
woman who was in the film abouttwenty seconds, you know, and you
know, in a in a sortof horror in a cheapass horror film,
you know, in nineteen seventy one, you know. But but that's why
we do it, isn't it?That is that is why we do it
because we're so passionate about it.So in three years from now, when

(01:52:00):
all of this legal stuff just goesaway, something happens and suddenly all the
Domino's fall and you can release fullCircle, get a restored, beautiful four
K. If they're even doing fourK, it mightbe I don't know,
eight K. By then, areyou going to also put together like a
companion book with all of these interviewsand things that you've done for research.
I'm toying with the idea I mighthave to go down like the self publishing

(01:52:21):
route, right, has to behonest, and this is no word of
a line. Now. I actuallyhave at the house what is referred to
as the full Circle couverard because thereis so much stuff in there. I
mean, my wife loves it becauseI'll be just trawling the internet for oh
my god, I found the Argentinianone sheet for it, but it's one
hundred and forty dollars or something,and she'll be like, right, that's

(01:52:43):
your Christmas present, you know,And she absolutely loves it, you know.
And I've I mean, I've gotI've got more stuff on that film
than, as I say, anyyou know, I could open a probably
art gallery, you know, forthe for the amount of stills and lobby
cards and stuff I've sort of gotten. And they're not easy to come by
because the feel I had such asmall release. But but yeah, I
mean I've got French posters, Italianposters, Mexican posters, Argentinian posters,

(01:53:08):
the American one, you know,the British one, the French one,
you know, and it's and andyeah, I would love to put a
book together. Funnily enough, Iwent to the company, you know,
Hemrock, and said what about abook on black on Full Circle? And
I got the same response when Ioriginally pitched my Black Christmas book idea Mike.
But interesting enough, there is somebodyelse. I think he was currently

(01:53:30):
working on a book about Black Christmas. I think sort of somebody I know,
which is going to come out atsome stage in the future. Possibly,
But yeah, I don't know.I mean, I'm almost I'm almost
bunkering down and saying, right,this film is going to get released,
and then all this stuff is goingto be special features, you know,
on on the Blu ray, youknow, whether it's be scanning this stuff

(01:53:51):
in as a gallery or just goingback to these people and saying, well,
you were kind enough to talk tome before, can we do something
on camera? Now? You know, nearly a nearly everybody has said yes,
you know, because you know whenI when I speak to the people,
I always tell them why, youknow, why am I doing this?
You know, it's because I wantto rerelease it. And the BFI,

(01:54:11):
which is the British Film Institute overhere, which is like the government
film body if you like, they'vesaid, you know, if it gets
sorted, they want to show it, they want to screen it, you
know. And yeah, so Iyou know, I remember joking to somebody
I think it was, I can'tremember who I was talking about. I
joked somebody once I said, youknow, if I ever had managed to

(01:54:32):
pull this off, then this isgoing on my headstone. You know that.
It's like so he Eli Simon fitzJohn, you know, a very
sad horror fan, but this wasthe guy that got Full Circle rereleased,
you know, and then people cancome and pay their respects in years to
come, because yeah, you know, it's it's it's just crazy how films
can get forgotten like that, youknow. And thankfully Black Christmas didn't happen.

(01:54:53):
It didn't happen because it did getpicked up, It did get DVDD,
it did get Blue Raid. Youknow, even the soundtrack came out.
Vinyl rereleased one of these like DeathWaltz Records, whoever it was that
was released it. And so thatgets the appreciation it deserves. And you
know, I've yeah, I've alwaysthat's I've always seen I've never really been
interested in talking and writing about newfilms, you know, it's always how

(01:55:15):
obscure a film? Can I getaway with that? The magazine will say,
yeah, you can write about that. Simon fitz Chan, thank you
so much for your time. Thiswas great talking with you. Yeah,
no pleasure. I enjoy your podcast, Mike, and it's great, you
know, real thrill to be partof it, to be honest, So
yeah, thanks for inviting me.Next up, let's hear from the actor

(01:55:50):
that played Chris, mister art Hendel. How did you decide that you wanted
to be an actor? I haveto give some credit to my mom,
who always when I was a teenager, she always told me that I should
be an actor. I guess Iused to tell her stories and I used
to I used. She loved movies. That's how I became full fell in

(01:56:12):
love with movies. But she usedto take me to the movies all the
time. And she had asthma,so she didn't do well in theaters anymore,
so she couldn't really go to themovies anymore. But I would go
and then I would come home andtell her what happened in the movie,
and and she would laugh until shehad an asthma attack. But she'd always
tell me that she thought I shouldbe an actor because I portrayed the character

(01:56:36):
so well and all that kind ofstuff. And the other reason was that
I had an uncle who was anactor, who was a Canadian actor who
had some success in the States,worked with Kirk Douglass and in a film
called Lonely or the Brave that wasone of Kurt Douglas's actually favorite movies that

(01:56:56):
he did that, And although hewas of no help to me, there
was no nepotism involved. It's niceto know that you know somebody fairly close
to you succeeded, and you knowit can be encouraging, you know.
One year I was getting an awardfor something in Canadian television and a young
man came up to me who waspart of a comedy group called the Kids

(01:57:20):
in the Hall, Dave Folly,if you know who that is. Dave
came up to me. I didn'tknow who he was. Actually, I'd
been living in la for a longlong time at that point and didn't even
know the Kids in the Hall oranything like that. But anyway, they
won an award that night, andhe came up to me afterwards and with
the award and he said he owedit to me, and I was taken

(01:57:43):
aback, I, you know,didn't even know him. And I said,
how how do you figure that?And he said, well, when
I was a kid, I wantedto be in show business and and thought
it was so far away and soremote, he said, but your kids
and I had for them at thetime, and they lived in a small
town in Ontario. When I hadmoved to la I was separated from their

(01:58:06):
mother and them, and I wasworried about them living in the big city.
And they had responded so well whenI lived in a small town for
a summer doing Stratford and doing shakesStratford Festival. We decided that they might
do well in a small town.So they lived in a small town.
I used to visit them quite oftenand get them all together and head over

(01:58:29):
to the local park, and there'dbe other kids there, and I'd organized
little baseball games and sports and thingslike that and fun stuff. And Dave
Foley was one of those little kids. And he said he realized then that,
gee, show business isn't that faraway. I can almost reach out
and touch it. So he saysthat that encouraged him to think that he

(01:58:53):
could do it. So so Iguess that's how I got started in it.
You know, I kind of wentthrough trying to figure out the way
to do it. It was inToronto back in those days, and this
was late sixties sixty eight to beexact. I was a stockbroker. I
was a very successful stockbroker, avery unhappy stockbroker. And one day I

(01:59:15):
saw one night, I saw aplay and just decided, if I don't
do it now, or don't tryit now, and I'll never try it.
So I went back to that sametheater company and told them I said
I want to be an actor.I'm willing to do anything. And they
said anything. I said anything,and they said, well go here,
go to this address next week andyou can get going. The guy there

(01:59:36):
will tell you what to do.So I thought, oh, that's easy.
So I went back to the officethe next day and told everybody I
was leaving. I was going tobe an actor. And I showed up
at this place and basically the guyssaid, oh, you're the guy wants
to be an actor. I saidyeah, Well, he says, I
said, you tell me, You'regoing to tell me what to do?
He says, yeah, grab ashovel, and what we were going to

(01:59:58):
do was clean out an old buildingthat had been closed for a few years
and they had bought it and theywere going to turn it into a theater.
So we had to go in thereand clean out all the whatever has
been in the building for about afew years it's been closed in, including
a lot of residue from animals andthings like that. So that's kind of
how I started. But you haveto start somewhere, and that was it,

(02:00:18):
And unfortunately I got involved with aterrific acting teacher who had worked at
the Actors Studio in New York buthad emigrated to Canada because he'd fallen in
love with a Canadian girl, andhe set up class and I got involved
in that, and then he setup a professional class and invited me to

(02:00:43):
be a part of that, andso that really kickstarted my career in terms
of developing my talent and being ableto go out and get what few parts
that were in Toronto in those days. There weren't many films or television roles
going on. There was a lotof theater, which I did, but

(02:01:04):
that was about it. Well,it seems like the early seventies is when
you really started to make your mark, things like The Proud Rider and Foxy
Lady and Face Off all coming outin seventy one. I mean, what
was that like for you to justsuddenly break onto the scene. It didn't
involve a lot of money, Mike, that's for sure. You know,

(02:01:25):
you didn't get paid a lot.The Proud Rider was turned out to be
a Union film, which I didn'tknow, and I didn't I didn't even
know about my union, which appearis called the Actor. I didn't know
that they actually even oversaw movies becausetheir acronym stood for the Association of Canadian
Television and Radio Artists, and theydidn't mention movies they now do. It

(02:01:48):
stands for the Association of Canadian Cinema, Television Radio Arts. So I ended
up I did the film and thenI sort of ended up getting suspended for
three months from from my union fordoing that. It was an opuntive film,
it was a chance to do something. It was actually working with a
real motorcycle gang. It was avery tough shoot, and think I forget

(02:02:12):
I think I only got like afew hundred dollars a week, And then
Foxy Lady was really only a coupleof days work, as I remember,
that was Ivan Rayman, one ofIvan Rayman's first films. And then Face
Off was really I think I gotjust paid scale for that or you know,
minimum. But I did work forabout two and a half months on

(02:02:32):
that one, so that was abit better. And but then basically it
was the odd television show, veryodd television show, and mostly theater commercials.
We were doing a lot of commercialsin those days, industrial movies,
you know. I did one forUniroyal where I was the young man who

(02:02:55):
didn't put rain tires on his carand eventually I have an accident and killed
my girlfriend, you know, thatkind of thing. I wish I could
find that film if I think it'sabout fifteen minutes long. But I haven't
had no success, you know,So that's about it. That's that was
kind of it. In fact,if you look at my my IMDb page,

(02:03:16):
I think it, you know,it's very telling. I think the
first few years of my work,say from seventy one to seventy four,
I think there's one, two three, I think it's six, six or
seven credits in that time. Andthen when I moved to California in seventh

(02:03:40):
late seventy four. So starting withpolice story, I think I matched everything
in two years down there, everythingI had done the previous six years and
actually connected to Black Black Christmas.Margot Kidder, who I met on Black
Christmas Doctor Me one time and shethought I was from the States and I

(02:04:02):
told her from Toronto. She said, do you work here? Off?
And I said, there's not muchwork, Margo, and she said you
should, you should move to laShe said you you would work all the
time. So she was right,and I thought I'd try it. Can
you tell me how did you getthe role for Black Christmas? Auditioned for
Bob Clark, I actually there wasn'tfor the part of Chris Hayden. There

(02:04:24):
wasn't any sort of bunch of linesand a theme where I could audition for
him. So I actually read thepart of Peter played by kier Delay and
Bob kind of flattered me. AfterI finished reading the scene, he kind
of shook his head and I said, I can do it better. I

(02:04:45):
can do it better, you know, And he said no, no,
He said you did it great.He said, I kind of wish you
were doing it. He says,but we've had to hire an American for
to get some publicity and stuff likethat, and so we hired a very
good actor and kier delay so buthe did. Olivia Hussey was coming back
from not having worked for a coupleof years done any acting, and she

(02:05:06):
was nervous, so she asked Bobif she could rehearse quite a bit ahead
of time. So Keire couldn't makeit up to Toronto, so Olivia had
me rehearse with her so she feelmore comfortable. What was that experience like
for you being in Black Christmas?You know, it was like going to

(02:05:27):
school really. First of all,we had the house, it seems to
me, for a week or twobefore we actually started filming in it,
and that's where we started rehearsing.Olivia and I with Bob, and every
so often somebody would come to beinterviewed by Bob for job on the film.

(02:05:47):
Found guy or whoever you know,camera guy or whatever, so I
Bob was hilarious. Would he wouldhave him come in and do the meat
and Olivia and I would just sitthere or see. Sometimes Olivia excused herself
to go off and do something,but Bob would let me just sit there

(02:06:08):
and listen to the conversation. SoI learned hell a lot. And one
of the things I did learn veryclearly was Bob Clark could probably play at
any craft on a film set,from sound to camera, to lighting to
a craft service whatever. He coulddo it all. And in fact,

(02:06:29):
there was sometimes remember talking with hewas talking to the sound guy and if
you remember in Black Christmas, there'sa there's a scene where there's a choir
singing at the front door, andhe wanted a kind of a sound special
effect there, and he was talkingto the sound guy about him. The
sound guy wasn't sure how it coulddo what Bob wanted, and Bob gave

(02:06:50):
him a suggestion. I don't Idon't remember that you know technically what it
was, but he said something aboutit. You could put the rewire the
re estate into disease on and thenfeed it back into the goo Bob,
you know, and the sound guysat there for about half a minute kind
of picturing that, and he said, you know, you're right, we
could do it that way. Youknow. It was It was amazing,

(02:07:12):
and Bob was very open and veryopen with me. And you know,
sometimes after somebody'd leave, he'd talkedto me about that stuff, so you
know, it really encouraged me,and I always said some day, you
know, I want I wanted todo with Bob Clark does, which is
direct, and eventually I did geta chance to do that, but that
was many years later. So Itake it you two got along since you

(02:07:36):
would go on to work with himand at least one other film, if
not more. Yeah, I did. I did a few films with him.
I did his biggest film, Fourties, and also we did one down
at Tino de Laurentis's studio in NorthCarolina. It was called from the Hip.

(02:07:57):
And he was always trying to getme into his films, and yeah,
eventually, Bob for a while theredidn't work at all. He couldn't
get any of his films off theground. You know, he was trying.
He wanted me for the dad inChristmas Story. The powers that be
wanted Darren McGavin, and that wasI think that was actually a great idea.

(02:08:20):
I think Darren proudly did a betterjob than I probably would have done.
I think he was great in it. Even if there wasn't a role
for me. He would have medo screen tests with the actresses who were
up for parts and things like thatin it, you know, in different
films that he did. So wegot along quite well. We were good
friends, and it was tragic forthose of us who knew Bob that we

(02:08:43):
lost him and his son, thatthat terrible accident. I have to ask
you about the coat. The coat, Okay, it's actually my coat.
I think my mom gave it tome as a matter of fact, because
I don't suffer winter very well.I'm not a winter guy. I never
stated, which was ironic because Idid one of Canada's great hockey films,

(02:09:05):
playing the best hockey player in theworld, the number one draft choice,
so that took a lot of acting. But she gave me that coat because
I always suffered in the winter,and and so I used it in that
in Black Christmas, their wardrobe budgetwas small. And also I used it
in the Hockey movie too as well. I wore it in the Hockey movie,

(02:09:28):
so it got a lot of useand still sitting around someplace in my
house here. Would never wear itbecause you know, because of Peta,
you know, their labor to attackme with it. Yeah, you don't
want red paints all over you.No, But it came in Andy,
especially that the scene where we werein the park searching for my girlfriend was

(02:09:52):
missing. That was actually John Saxon'sfirst night. As you might might know
from some of the stories that hadbeen told. He replaced Edvan O'Brien in
the role of the detective and didit kind of last minute and he flew
in from la and arrived and wentdirectly to the set and did that that

(02:10:15):
scene in the park where Olivia andI and I think Andre and Martin I
think she's there too, were kindof gathered around a barrel that's kind of
got burning, some burning some stuff, so we're keeping warm. And it
was in the there's a big parkhere, it's kind of like Central Park
in New York. It's called HighPark, and we were filming there and

(02:10:35):
it was an incredibly bitter cold night, so that coat came in handy.
Olivia wasn't used to the temperature either, and I was able to open it
up and put to put my armsaround her and put the coat around her.
Super warm. Yeah, I wascurious how much of that was acting
and how much of that was it'sbitterly cold out here. It's wonderful acting

(02:10:56):
pretending to it. Looked like wewere really cold. That we were.
It was. It was terrible.Now, well, funny enough that that
window there wasn't much snow that winter, and so any snow you see around
the house is some kind of weirdfoam that they they hired somebody to lay

(02:11:16):
down, and you know if youwalk through it, you know you'd end
up. You kind of looked downand it looks like you've got a kind
of a white pudding around the bottomof your shoes. I heard a rumor
that they wanted to do reshoots andbring you back and have you be Billy
the murderer at the end. No, I never heard that. I mean,

(02:11:37):
not only have I never heard thatrumor, but I don't think it's
true. It was never never passedby me. It can't be me,
first of all, because in thelast scene, which is one continuous take,
I'm sitting in the bedroom taking careof Olivia, and then the camera
tracks down the hallway to the atticdoor that starts to swing open. That's

(02:12:00):
where I am. I'm with Jessein the bedroom, and that that's trapdoors
starting to swing open. But weknow nothing's going to happen to Jesse.
Jess because because I'm there with her. But there's been lots of talk about
about sequels. People have talked toOlivia and I and about sequels. Most
John's now gone, there's a lotof people gone from that. You know,

(02:12:22):
nothing's happened. I know it cameclose. A few times. They
were going to have me and Oliviain the new film years later and never
happened. I think it's nice toleave it the way it is anyway,
you know. I mean, evenremakes for this film have not succeeded.
You know, I haven't seen anyof them, so I don't know.

(02:12:43):
I'm just just what I'm told.You know. People say, don't go
and see it. Yeah, Idon't imagine it's something you would rush out
and see. No, do Iunderstand. Andrea Martin was in one of
them, and I think in factthat one I think was done on the
West Coast someplace mistaken. I thinkI think they even gave Bob Clark an
executive producer credit on it, althoughBob told me that he wasn't very much

(02:13:09):
involved in a day to day orweek to week or month to month.
It's just I guess it was justto kind of buy his support you know,
from what I understand, it wasa huge hit when it came out,
at least in Canada. I don'tknow about that. When it came
out in Canada, I wasn't here. We finished filming it in the late

(02:13:31):
winter, maybe February March and thereof seventy four, and by the end
of November. By the end ofseventy four, I was living in Los
Angeles. I had moved. Idecided to take a chance and moved to
Los Angeles. So I accumulated asmuch cash as I could. I sold
my classical Porsche. I sold that. I even drove cab for a couple

(02:13:56):
of months. I went to acab company and told them, I know
how much money they expect from theircar every day, so I will guarantee
that if you give me the car. Twenty four seven. So I used
it both as a cab I gotmy license, and also I used it
for a personal transportation or for takingmy kids in the movies and things like

(02:14:18):
that, or taking my girl ona date. And I wouldn't I wouldn't
wasn't adverse to picking up a farewhile I was doing that at the same
time. So but I needed asmuch cash as because I wasn't sure how
long when I was going to beable to work in la You know,
it was kind of a jump withboth feet and see what happens, you
know, But ultimately you were verysuccessful. I was. Ultimately it took

(02:14:39):
it. There was some setbacks.I know. Almost right away. I
auditioned for and was told by thedirector that I got a I got the
lead in a film that was asequel to a big hit film called Macon
County Line. It was produced byMax Bear, who was Jethro and Beverwey

(02:15:00):
Hillbillies, and they were doing asequel called Return to Macon County and it
was done by American International Pictures,and so that the director wanted me to
It was a kind of a buddymovie. The director wanted me to read
with other actors that they might hire. So I did that for a couple

(02:15:22):
of weeks and then one day fallme. He said, okay, he
says, I'm bringing the two selectionsyou and the other guy in to meet
the executive producer, the guy whoowns AIP. So I went in there
and he said, a guy,a little short guy with cigar. He
says, so I understand you're goingto be working for me, and I
I jokingly said, I think I'vebeen working for you without any pay,

(02:15:46):
and the director was behind him andhe was waving his hand, you know,
like no no. The next dayhe fall me. He said,
the guy doesn't like you, hedoesn't like your joke, and so we're
going to hire this other guy isinsistency. He has the final word,
So we're going to hire this guy, Nick Nolty. So off they went.
So a couple of months later,though, I run into this guy

(02:16:09):
accidentally. The director. He says, what are you doing art? He
says, well, and I said, I'm actually trying to find a house
to live in because I'm tired ofliving in these apartment hotels and stuff like.
I don't do well in them.And he says, that's Quincy.
She's just bought a house that's rightnext door to me. I was worried
about some hippies that were living init. They were going to burn down,
So why don't you come and livethere? He said, I bought

(02:16:31):
the house and I said, oh, the rent bee and he said for
you nothing. So we ended upvery good friends and I ended up living
there. I think I ended upthere about four years and I didn't pay
any rent, so that was lucky. And then, you know, and
then I started getting getting some gigs, you know, like I think my

(02:16:52):
first one down there was Police Story, and then Starsky and Hutch. I
think I was on the first seasonof Starsky and Hutch. And I think
my first Hollywood movie was a moviecalled Small Town in Texas Susan George and
both Hopkins and Timothy Bottoms. Sothat was kind of fun. And then

(02:17:15):
I did actually did a really wellreceived movie called Law and Order, which
has nothing to do with the successfulseries later on, but that was with
Darren McGavin, who played my father, and that got a lot of good
reviews and that kind of set meup, and you know, I did
every I got to. Ended updoing a series with the Raymond Burke called

(02:17:37):
King's Confidential and so on and soforth. So I kept going like that.
It was it was good, goodtimes. One of the first times
I remember seeing you in movies wasInvasion of the Body Snatchers. Yeah,
that was that was a big one. That was one I really really enjoyed
and working with Brooke Adams and whenDean Boy and Jeff Goldblum. That was

(02:18:01):
great. How was Philip Goffman towork with? Oh, fabulous, fabulous
guy. He very relaxed, easygoing, sharp, great ideas, listen
to your ideas. The thing oneof the things I liked about that,
of all things, was not justPhil and Jeff and Leonard Nimoy and Brooke,

(02:18:26):
although at that time I guess DonaldSouthern was going through something. I
don't know what, but he andI didn't kind of hit it up.
That's okay. But the great thingabout that was working with the cinematographer Michael
Chapman. He was fabulous and Iremember one time. He used to sort
of be attached at Phil Coffin's hips, you know, and he was always

(02:18:50):
right in the middle of rehearsals andwatching and all that kind of stuff.
And so one day he's we're workingon something and he says to me,
or can you moved this way reallyslowly when you do that thing? And
I said, sure, Mike,But how come he said, I'm changing
the light subtlely at that moment toaccentuate the mood that you're in or the

(02:19:13):
mood you're going to go into.I thought, oh my god, that's
that's crazy, you know, butit's probably something that you know, cinematographers
have been doing for every but itwas something new for me, you know.
I mean, he's great, he'she did Taxi Driver, he did
Raging Bowl, the Wanderers, youknow, I think he did some of
I don't know if you remember thelast detail. Oh yeah, that was

(02:19:37):
that hell Ashby Ashby written by RobertTown and it was him and Otish Young
and Randy Quaid and they're delivering RandyQuaide back to the stockade or something like
that. THEIH actually shot I thinkthey shot some of that in Toronto.
As a matter of fact. Anyway, Matt Michael Chapman was great. Working
with him, was fabulous. Youwork in Toronto, or are you work

(02:20:01):
in Canada? You move away,you go down to la and then at
some point Toronto and Canada becomes HollywoodNorth. When does that happen? Well,
partially happened because the Canadian government startedhanding out tax credits and things like
that really tried to promote the industry. They saw a good thing when they

(02:20:22):
had it. When these they cameup here and spent, you know,
spend two or three million dollars inCanada. It seemed like a good idea,
so they offered them tax credits andthey're still doing it. And it's
I think, in fact, there'sso much work here in Canada, in
Toronto, particularly in Vancouver, ofcourse, that if there had been this

(02:20:43):
much work in Toronto back in nineteenseventy four, I probably wouldn't have left.
I probably wouldn't have done a lotof the things I did in the
States. I would have had apretty good career up here. I know
a lot of my peer group whostayed here and worked well. I mean,
they did well considering they were inCanada, let's put it that way.

(02:21:05):
In and they certainly have a namefor themselves up here. Although although
I just posted a face on Facebook, I posted three of Canada's leading actors
in a photograph that I took whereI was with them. They were all
interacting with me, and they're allin a line, and I had one
American friends say to me, whoare they? They're actors, I know,

(02:21:26):
but who are they? You know? All three of them have received
what's called the Order of Canada,which is like I don't know the equivalency
in the States, but it's thehighest honor you can get in Canada,
you know, so they're you know, they're all name actors up here,
but not so much known down inthe States. The other thing that kind

(02:21:48):
of went against me in Canada wasmy looks weren't conducive to getting roles up
here because they like they as MargotKidders said, you know, I'm the
perfect boy next door with my looksin those days, whereas up here they
wanted the mechanic next door. Theywanted a kind of a kind of a

(02:22:09):
rougher visage type guy. They wantedto kind of charactery young guys, things
like that, and it was alwaystough for me to get. It always
worked against me. They thought itmight be a little too good looking in
some ways of places. So inLa you know, they they that was
that was what they wanted down there. You know, I loved it because

(02:22:31):
they're casting people and everybody. Theydidn't know if you were weren't if you
were the next card gable, youknow, so they treated you really well.
They used to send scripts to myhouse and it was great, total
opposite up here. You know.Sometimes you'd go to waiting rooms here back
this is back then, go towaiting rooms, and they wouldn't need me
any chairs for you to sit andwait. You know, I remember for

(02:22:54):
some commercials we'd all be sitting,you know, be a big cattle call,
and we'd all be sort of sittingon the floor with our backs to
the walls. And I remember Ican remember one particular one looking down the
line of people and seeing Ackroid,Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, and Martin

(02:23:15):
Short, Catherine O'Hara, and soon and so forth. You know,
just a day of people. Theyare just all trying to get into some
probably a beer commercial. What itwas back in the day. It was
pretty rough, but it was likenight and day in Los Angeles and Hollywood.
And I love the weather. Howcan I go wrong? It's perfect
for me. I didn't even needI didn't need my fur coat. Was

(02:23:37):
the Clone Master? Was that yourfirst leading role? In a way?
I guess you could say it was, you know, I was number one
on the call sheet clone Master?Yeah, I guess it was. I
guess it was. It was.It was a pilot, of course.
How many clones did you have?Thirteen? That just happens to be,
you know, half a season,right, you were kind of Orphan Black

(02:24:01):
before Orphan Black happened. That's exactlyright. Yeah, you know, I
think in those days they usually havetwenty five twenty six shows in a season,
so you would have had those thosecharacters, those clones would have and
they all had different personalities, andthat was going to be the plan that
you know, there would be theywere scattered to the four winds, that
was the plan at the end ofthe movie. But they communicate mentally with

(02:24:24):
each other, no, that kindof stuff. So all kinds of plans
for dramatic things happening around the countryand maybe even around the world. I
don't know, but it never gotto happen, you know, but I
guess you're right. I guess thatwas kind of my first lead role in
Hollywood. Was it kind of thesame thing for The Power Within? Was

(02:24:46):
that a pilot as well? Itwas, Yes, it was. That
was Aaron Spelling, And that wasjust a lot of money. There was
a lot of money. And thatwas right after I just finished shooting The
Brood in Toronto. And that wasan accident, accidental that I did that
because I was actually I was actuallyup here in Toronto. My girlfriend had

(02:25:11):
gotten a job in Canada and afilm. I was up in Toronto visiting
her. It's kind of incestuous becauseshe was up here doing a film with
the director who had done Faceoff theHawk, my hockey movie. And you
might even know the movie, andI'm just trying to find it here.

(02:25:33):
It was called it was a scifi movie and it was called The Shape
of Things to Come, kind ofsecure. But she was up here doing
that, and out of the blue, somebody got touched something and asked told
me that David Croneberg wanted to seeme. Heard I was in town,

(02:25:54):
He'd like to meet me. Yeah, Shape of Things to Come with Jack
Balance, Carol Linley, Barry Morse, John Ireland. Anyway, I went
to see David Cronenberg and he basicallyall he asked me was if it was
true that my brother was Lang Hindle, who he was a most motorcycle racer,

(02:26:16):
very well known motorcycle racer. AndI said, yeah, he's my
brother, and he says, ohgreat, he says, so he wanted
to do this film, and youknow, I was in town, so
I thought to myself, Hey,sure, why not. It was but
it was gruesome. It was gruesome, and it was it wasn't much money.
You know, I used to callmyself the King of the Indies.
You know. It wasn't much moneyat all. But then got back to

(02:26:39):
Hollywood, my agent called me withthe offer from Aaron Spelling for The Man
the Power Within, which also hadanother title I think called Man with the
Power. It was kind of aridiculous thing. The guy, the guy
the doctor finds out, explains thathe was exposed to a nuclear blast.
His mom was in Nevada when thenuclear blast happened. She was pregnant.

(02:27:03):
He got a dose of radiation fromthat. And then one night he's changing
a tire in a storm and hegets hit by lightning. He's taken to
the hospital and then suddenly he hasthis power in him. And they were
able to put a device on hiswrist to control the power within, so

(02:27:26):
then he can turn it on andoff with this thing and and zap people.
If that was going to be apilot too, It was a pilot,
but it didn't go. How didthe pandemic affect you, because you
once you started working, it feelslike you never stopped. It affected me
last year in the sense that whilewe were in the grips of it.

(02:27:46):
A couple of things got canceled.A series I was doing, they canceled
that season, and then I wassupposed to do a film and canceled that
because it started in mid March,and then but then in September, this
other series came up and I wasable to do that, and that was
kind of an interesting premise for aseries. It was on the Sci Fi

(02:28:11):
Channel and was called Surrealistic like surreallike gu and then a State and it
was about a real estate company whocan get rid of ghosts, exercises ghosts
and spirits out of the house sothat the house can be sold. I

(02:28:31):
mean, that's a simplistic explanation forit, but it was a lot,
a lot darker and deeper than that, and it had some interesting things like,
for instance, the lead character,the lead guy who owns the thing.
At the end of some of theshows, he's he ends up.
He's talking to his dad. Theonly problem is his dad is passed away,

(02:28:52):
but he has this ability to tosee and talk to people that are
dead. They agree anyway, Iplayed the dad. Yeah, anyway,
So so we're seeing if that getspicked up. I think they did eight
episodes, but that was good.And then and then this year it's been
pretty busy. I've been doing I'vebeen done three films, and I did

(02:29:16):
that series that they canceled last yearDrop picked up, so I did that,
and and now I'm kind of takinga break and kind of looking at
things that they're sending me and tryingto figure out because it's really you know,
one thing I did find out fromdoing all our work is it's it's
the set isn't the same as whatit used to be. I used to

(02:29:39):
love the set and actually I alwaysjoked that a set is my Disneyland,
and it's become less so now becausepick me on this one series, well,
on the series, we're wearing masksand shields either for rehearsals. And
the one series that there was akind of a kids show, it's called

(02:30:00):
Holly Hobby. We were we hadto wear two masks and a shield even
in rehearsals, which which was awful. So it's just not as much fun
at it is. So I'm justkind of, you know, at this
point in my life, like I'mgonna have the ability to be able to
say no or sit back and relaxand wait for something. You know,
all of the stuff that you've beendoing lately, is this all in your

(02:30:24):
backyard? Is this all Canadian stuff? Yeah? I have a couple of
kids, well growing, they're growingadults, and one has two two kids
of her own. I have twokids that live in southern California. One
is an actor, but he's alsotaking studying law. My youngest his name
is Zeke Hindele, and he's reallybecome kind of an entrepreneur's he's producing his

(02:30:48):
own stuff. He's writing, acting, producing, directing, you know,
all that kind of stuff. SoI had to laugh at him because he
said to me one day he wasactually flew me down to be in his
his movie, one of his moviesand missus and you don't even been acting
for maybe a year and a halfor two years, and he's doing this
damn thing. And he says tome, he says, I don't I

(02:31:09):
don't seem to beginning anywhere like youknow, you know, you know.
And I said, well, youknow what I think you're mistakenly doing is
you're comparing your career to my career. I said, and let me tell
you something. My first two yearsin the business, I had troubled convincing
people I was even an actor,you know, I started in nineteen sixty

(02:31:31):
eight. I didn't do Proud Rider, my first acting job, until nineteen
seventy. And then while I wasdoing that, I did a little I
did that Foxy Lady on a coupleof my days off from Proud Rider,
and then the next thing I did, Face Off, wasn't until nineteen seventy

(02:31:52):
one. So three years later,I mean, you're you know, you're
way ahead of me, and you'reproducing all your stuff. You know,
back in the day, we canproduce something we would have had to,
you know, get big lights andget a big brand of big camera and
everything you guys can do with yourcameras practically in your hand, you know.
So I said, you can't compareto your career with what my career

(02:32:15):
became, you know, So don'tdo that to yourself, you know.
I mean, as he had toshovel up stuff out of an old building
exactly. Yeah. And the funnything was that after we built this theater
and the stage and the dressing rooms, and I did all that, and
I was basically their gopher, andI was working for no money. I
was I was living off made aton of money as a stockbroker. My

(02:32:39):
wife was thinking of leaving me andI had because I had We had two
kids and a third on the way. When I did this, she thought
I was insane. One day Icame into, you know, into the
theater, and you know, Isaid, after you want me to go
get your coffees donuts? This isthe thing I did kind of you know,
gopher, what can I do this? Knowing you had nothing to do?

(02:33:01):
Why didn't you go in and watcha rehearsal? Right? And I
went into So I went, Isaid can I do that? And they
said yeah? So I snuck inand I was watching it there in the
dark and they were rehearsing, andwhat that director was having a really really
bad day. He was yelling atthe actors and grabbing them by the arm
and shoving it up here and showinghim what he wanted and twisting their heads.
And I didn't I get enough whatI what I wanted to do,

(02:33:26):
and I just took off and ranout of theater and never came back.
They must have wondered what happened tome? That was that? And then
I found that actors studio guy whohad moved up to Canada and had changed
the whole course in my career.I might I might have even stopped acting
at that point, but somebody saidyou should go see this guy. So
I did, and he saw somethingin me, and and you know,

(02:33:48):
so it was all good. Well, at thank you so much for your
time. This was great. I'mso glad that we were finally able to
connect. Yeah I did. Wedidn't stay on Black Christmas very often,
but that's okay. Last but atleast let's hear from David Hastings and Paul

(02:34:13):
Downey, the authors of It's MeBilly Black Christmas Revisited, which is available
January twenty twenty two. Where doyou guys know each other from? Originally
an independent filmmaker based in the WestMidlands. We're we're both based probably about
forty miles from each other. ButI run like a website that just like
horror reviews and interviews are not likeand David Dunna the Halloween fan film called

(02:34:37):
One Good Scare I Think It Was, which is based on a comic book
which is kind of an adaptation tothe Halloween universe, and we kind of
got in touch and done an interviewand obviously found out that we kind of
had this mutual appreciation for the Halloweenseries. I mean, Dave was like
a He's like on the next levelto me in terms of Halloween knows things
that I don't. I couldn't evenfathom. But at the same time we

(02:34:58):
found out and just just forget andto know each other and becoming friends and
you know, attending like film screeningconventions things like that, that we both
really enjoyed Black Christmas. And tobe honest, the book, they never
kind of come up until about itwas around the twenty nineteen. It was
around the tail ender twenty nineteen we'dwork together creating a fortieth anniversary fan documentary

(02:35:22):
around Halloween's anniversary with it per twentyeighteen. Just a nice thing to do,
and I kind of rallied the troops, and then Dave helped to really
mold it and put it together andedited any films from like insert segments for
it, like you know, becausehe's days a filmmaker and aren't not kind
of have in the back of mind, are you you want to kind of
work together? And then i'd startedtogether around the tail under twenty nineteen,

(02:35:46):
Dave would ask me about it.I'll keep him updating. And then then
like the year after he kind ofwhat might have been twenty ninety probably was
actually in twenty nineteen, and Davesaid, are if you ever need a
hand, let me know, andit kind of like and I quickly realized
with the Beasts that book became thatI do need a hand, and I
need somebody I can can't kind oftrust it knows their stuff, and just
seemed like a really natural fit interms of what he was going to bring

(02:36:09):
to the project, because he immediatelyhad ideas that I adn't even considered,
and that was kind of the genesisof it effectively. I think I just
kind of got jealous and muscles andsaid can I help? And you said,
yeah, sure, why not?And I was like, okay,
cool, let's let's sit down andget an idea together and go from there
and see what angles you want tocome at it from. I know you

(02:36:30):
wanted to include the remakes. Iwas more concerned with the original. I
understand why you wanted to put theremakes in and stuff, or I kind
of left you to it for thatbit. There was a few ted bits
I kind of did, but Paulwas kind of the master mind of everything.
I've just kind of been following hislead for the last two years now
or something something like that. Bestpart of three years really, I mean

(02:36:52):
in terms of where it came from, because initially all it came from I
was doing some emailing around and Ijust wanted kind of some Christmas content from
my website and the you know ChristmasSarah you know, gets good traffic around
the sun the year, and hadspoken in the November I think it was,
it was out the twenty eighteen oftwenty nineteen, I think to Lyn
Griffin, who's one of the starsof the original film, and she was

(02:37:13):
like more than happy. She didthis great interview for me, really detailed,
and then kind of started to lookaround about who else I could talk
to who hadn't maybe talked about itbefore. I found out there was context
for the guy who designed the poster, you know, the iconic poster of
the you know Claire with the bagon ahead with the wreaths, and an

(02:37:35):
actually uncredited screamad who had never talkedabout the film before. The knowledge was
out there, but no one everfelt the need to interview. And I
was like, well, this isan opportunity here initially for the website,
but then when these these interviews startedaccumulating, that was when I found that
it really had legs. And Ialways find that with projects like this is,
you get to a point when youwhen you if you accumulate so much

(02:37:56):
information, which we had, they'relike, this, there's something more than
maybe we thought it was, becauseinitially it was it was just going to
be a series of articles of thewebsite, and then it got to a
point where we'd accumulated so many interviewsand started doing the research process like this
is and this was just on theseventy four film. At this point they
were like, this has got seriouslegs. So you know, we're gonna

(02:38:18):
have to, you know, figureout a plan basically. And then then
for me, the continuity for addingin two thousand and six and twenty nineteen
was to tell this basically, thisfifty year journey if if we could,
you know, and try and givepeople a timeline that you know, and
and filling the blanks areas they mightnot have been aware of. And because
when when we're covering the remake andalso the twenty nineteen film, we go

(02:38:43):
into how they came to be soso like the Journey of two thousand and
six begins in around two thousand andtwo, you know, it might have
been slightly beforehand, and we triedto go into a bit detail there.
You know, we're filling the blanksin terms of you know, the VHS
Serra reasons that people might not haveseen Black Christmas in the UK before.
So there's there was so much togo. It was it was crazy.

(02:39:05):
I mean, I never thought whenwhen we first started we'd find all these
like these nuggets of information and itputting them together, hoping that we would
put this comprehensive guide of the BlackChristmas universe effectively together for people to read.
You guys are of the age whereyou were directly affected by the video,
and estis correct. You weren't allowedto see a lot of films.

(02:39:26):
We weren't allowed to, but mymom had to let me. That's the
difference my mom And the only onemy mom and dad always said no too
was the first Elm Street and thereason being was because there was always the
implication of the first one of thechild molesting the trold predator. With Fred,
we've obviously was left four beyond whenshe got to know Beutly two and
everything. That's the only one thatthey kept back for me for a few

(02:39:50):
years. Remember it was on Channelfour late one night at ten o'clock,
and I couldn't watch it because Igo to school the next day. So
I recorded it and I spent allthat day at school going on, need
to get back into this film,because I remember just watching that first little
bit where you see his shoes andhe's making the noives and the glove and
everything, and they just I waslike, I need to watch the rest
of this film. This is crazy. But I remember the video and asked,

(02:40:11):
is stuff like we had issues withchild's play free and all kinds of
stuff because we had a I mean, it was a real tragedy over here.
We had the killing of a younglad called Jamie Bulger, and the
newspapers just went ballistic at the DailyMail, of course all this is filth,
Fit's vial and stuff like that,and they were The interesting thing about
the video, nass is a lotof people just thought they got banned out

(02:40:31):
right, They weren't a lot ofthem weren't banned. They were just quietly
taken off the shelves. So youcould see them and find them somewhere every
now and again if a video shopjust hadn't took him off. But they
weren't outright band. They were justquietly with my band. But I remember
the video nasties because if I thinkfor me as a horror fan, being

(02:40:52):
quite young as well, I waslike, well, I've never wanted to
kill anybody. Why would I wantto hurt somebody? Because I'm watching a
film that makes no sense What's Andthat's why my mom and dad were exactly
the same. That's why I watchedhammer horror films all the Friday the thirteens.
I mean, I remember watching Halloweenwhen I was six. I just
meant want to go and everybody inour street and for all of that and
stuff like that. But that seemedto be the primary message from the newspapers

(02:41:16):
and stuff. It's like we wereall deviance all of a sudden, and
it was just it was heartbreaking morethan anything, because as a horror fan,
you always feel like the outsider anyway. So to have this extra kind
of pressure of oh, well youare really an outsider, you know,
Bacco, it's kind of like,oh wait, really, I mean,
you know I and the beauty ofthe horror community is I I know,

(02:41:37):
so many people in the whole communityare some of the best people I've ever
met, who were some of themost kindest, you know, caring,
happy people I've ever known, andthey would go to the end of the
earth to help you and stuff.You know. So from my experience as
a kid to know and stuff andeverything, I'd never once in that image
of us all being weirdos or freaksand stuff and things like that, do
you know what I mean? AndI just think it was it was a

(02:42:01):
cruel way to kind of categorize andisolate a bunch of people who just like
celebrating horror films. You know,I don't remember that. I don't know
if anybody else feels like that.It's just you know, I mean,
I watch these films, going,God, that's amazing. I want to
know where they made that stuff.I want to know how Jason takes somebody's
head off and it's a prosthetic.You can see it for a few minute
seconds. Oh wow, that's cool. I want to do that. I

(02:42:22):
want to make that stuff and becreative and just tell the story and anybody
knows it's fiction all and stuff likethat. But good old Daily Fail was
Black Christmas directly affected by that.It's not effectively by the video Nasties,
because it's kind of even it's likephysical release as far as aware, it's
pre the video Nasty But there isa really interesting story which we're going too

(02:42:45):
in the book, which was basicallythe debut of the film was meant to
be I think it was chatter Dates, but there was an incident in the
UK called the Hungerford, Maaska,and basically somebody went a bit a bit
crazy in an area called Hungerford,you know, as in the Hunger Alaska.
And basically what happened was that happenedon the day that Black Christmas were

(02:43:05):
going to debut on the BBC,I believe. And basically there's a there's
a newspaper article where there was astatement put out there basically they said that
it wasn't being poor taste for BlackChristmas to be shown on that day because
of what had happened, even thoughthat you know the instance, aren't you
know, it wasn't anything to dowith like you know, like college campus
builds or whatever else. But yeah, not not so much in terms of

(02:43:26):
video nasties. I think it wasjust more it was just obscure, I
think more than anything, because therights holders didn't really until like the advent
of DVD, they didn't really pushit. So there was like, you
know, there was beta match releasesof the VHS. There was VHS releases,
but they just kind of came andwent. It wasn't until really Tart

(02:43:48):
and DVD, which it was nowlike a defunct label, took it on
and was working with some like reallypassionate collaborators which we got to speak to
as well, that the film reallystarted to gain traction and gain that that
new audience, which is a lotof the audience you find online now.
I think a lot of people we'vetalked to are people that maybe have discovered
it like post two thousand and Ithink if people didn't know about it before

(02:44:11):
that, it was kind of likeso obscure that you wouldn't see anything at
conventions or anything about it or stuff. Just be that kind of one of
those undergoing films that people kind ofknew about and so forth. I think
the Hungerford massacre was August nineteen eightyseven. I think it was that one.
I think I think it was aboundin August nineteen eighty seven. They
kind of banned guns ever since then, if if I remember right, and

(02:44:33):
might belong, but I know there'sa big thing about guns. At that
point. It was a complete no, no accustomed board. But it was
I mean, you could understand whythey took it off that day. By
the time you guys decided to startthis project, Black Christmas has been out.
There were there any people that youtalked to that were kind of surprised

(02:44:54):
by the amount of fandom that thefilm had, People like Ling Griffin and
stuff. They kind of kept involvedin, you know, supplement to for
DVDs and Blue Race. I thinkshe's kind of known what it is and
stuff. But I think, Imean way with the camera operator on the
original film, he was quite surprisedthat we wanted to and have a chat
with him over scope and stuff andthings like that, because it's I think,

(02:45:18):
I think for them, they knowthey made something special. But because
this is not like Halloween where itwas mainstream. You know, you've got
Nick Castle coming back to play Michaelin the new films and ole brief bits
and stuff, and you know thislegacy that goes on for decades and stuff,
because it wasn't as widespread as that. I think it was, like
I said, because it was undergroundfilm. You know, they knew they'd

(02:45:39):
made something special, but I thinkthat was all they kind of observed of
it. And I think now inpost two thousand worlds and stuff, I
think a lot of them who wasstill with us badly know. I've started
to kind of clock on both thisis actually something that we should be paid
off across the board. Bob Clarksuddenly knew he was he'd done something special,
you know, and thankfully so.I mean, it's so sad that

(02:46:01):
he was taken from us a fewyears back and stuff. But I think
Bob Clark knew, and I thinkJohn Saxon probably knew, because John Saxon
would talk about it and he wouldgo to some of these screenings and stuff.
But you know, some I thinksome of it they've kind of just
over moved on to other things thatthey're well more well known for. And
I kind of just maybe there ofstarting to see effective had on people since

(02:46:24):
we've had these nice special editions,blue veys and things that are coming out
and stuff. I don't know,what do you think Paul. A lot
of the initial responses we were gettingback on emails us that was a million
years ago, or you know,I can't believe you're still talking about that
film because we talked a couple ofpeople and and you know, and full
full disclosure, we approached our Tindaland kier Delayer. They either never got

(02:46:48):
back to us. I think itwas Art basically said I've kind of said
all I wanted to say on it, so he'd kind of made his peace
with it and moved on. Unfortunately, we'd get John Saxon before he passed,
but we've managed to use archival interviews. You know, somebody like Olivia
Hussey was very hard to pin downin terms of here availability. So again,

(02:47:11):
luckily she's got an autobiography where shehas spoken about the book, and
she's too fair. She waxes lyricaland interviews about it. We just couldn't
get on with her. It wasjust fundid things. But the people that
we did talk to, I mean, what's quite interesting about the book is
that we've managed to, like say, talk to some of these people like
Stan Cold, the editor, theproduction designer, Karen Bromley, who haven't

(02:47:31):
really spoken about the film at lengthbefore, and they have given us so
much information. I mean the interviewswith certainly with them them to Nick Mancuso
who does the voice of Billy orone of the voices of Billy, and
also Albert J. Dunku Dave alludedto there. They're just like their fountains
of knowledge and the fact that theycan remember even half of this stuff is

(02:47:54):
incredible to me because you know,I can't remember what happened last week.
Did you ever run into that kindof rash from situation where you've got different
points of view, so different versionsof the same story. I think the
most notable one that I can thinkof is one of the questions that we
asked is basically, who is theeye in the door in one of the
fen in the finale, when basicallywhen when Billy comes after Jess. We

(02:48:18):
asked multiple people who is the eyein the door, And to be honest,
we get we got different answers fromdifferent people, and it's very it's
very interesting because there's one little tidbitand I'll share I'll share this with you
because we got it from like averified source of such. We spoke to
a guy called Dan Duffin who basicallyused to run a website in the early
two thousands called It's Mebelly dot com, which was the resource for black Christmas

(02:48:41):
fans. And that was one ofthe websites that you know, me and
David out ironically without knowing it's bothfrequent, quite frequently during that time.
And I managed to track Dan downand speak to him. But Dan spent
a time getting to know Bob Clark, and he'd interview over the years,
and he actually spent time on setof the two thousand and six film Which
Is, Which Is, which isa full chapter in the book where he
tells us what it was like onset. But he spoke to Bob Clark

(02:49:05):
and he and even he asked him, he says, well, who's the
eye in the door? And BobClark apparently I think I'll come from them
the stray up. But he basicallyhe asked him, is it you?
And all he did was wink atHi when he walked off. And that's
one and he never never disclosed toanybody before he passed who the eye in
the door was and that and that'sjust kind of like it's that kind of

(02:49:26):
like childhood kind and not that childlikemischievousness. I think out of all the
questions that we were asking, thatone was the one question that we seem
to have kind of pinned out andacross the board. I'm not going to
say who we found out it was, but the person who was who basically
told us who it was was thatDunk, who was a cameraman because he

(02:49:50):
was there on set shooting that actualshot. So he was the guy on
the floor with the camera on him, pointing it at that door, with
they cracking the door and the eyelooking through. And there was only one
person who we interviewed who said itwas somebody different said, and everybody else
across the board that we prem spentto like adamant that it was this person.

(02:50:11):
And there's some reasons why in itas well, which they all kind
of humorously kind of recall for avariety of feason. So because it's one
of those kind of iconic parts ofcinema, that eyepiece. You know,
whenever you type in black Christmas intoGoogle, it's over there as a gift,
or it's there as a screen saveror somethingthing, and it's like,
wow, that's quite interesting. Andthere's so many things you can just point

(02:50:33):
into that kind of image a lowerSo who is the person who was it?
Because Billy's made up of a lotof different people. That's why I
think people seem to forget that.You know, you've got Birt with the
bloody camera stuck on his shoulder allthe wall, climbing up the side of
the house. But did a lotof his hand shots and everything. Somebody
did the eye somebody was I thinkthey said sometimes some of the set people

(02:50:54):
or people in the crew were doingthe shadow as a billow and stuff in
it because it's quite interesting. Whilethe amounts time since this research, I've
seen Billy more in that film thanever before. He's always there somewhere.
If you look, there's a bitwhere they're talking to John Saxon, and
I think it's that one John Saxonthere on about he's on about Peter the
boyfriend. You look in the background, he's there, He's standing there,

(02:51:16):
shadows there Billy, which because thenis we grew up on this with VHS,
so you don't see this in standarddefinition. But the more you get
onto these blue rays and stuff likethat, you look in the background,
he's pretty much there. Because that'show he's listening in on the calls and
stuff, you know, like it'sjust like having a walk removed and stuff
like that. Clarke talks about itquite a lot that he positioned him into

(02:51:37):
certain areas. So Billy's not justan eye in the door or climbing sort
of a house. He's actually therequite a lot. You just need to
kind of just look for him andstuff. And I've I've seen him multiple
times in different places. Now I'vebeen properly. Not that I did before,
but now I know where to lookat the stuff. I've been.
Oh my god, there he is. That was him, are right?
So that's where he's getting that informationfrom. O guy. God, this

(02:51:58):
guy's a whack. One thing wewere debating on the show was the death
of the little girl. Is thatBilly who's responsible for that? Or is
there another killer that's out there inthe world. General consensus is Billy and
it's him on him on the wayto that house, because it's not just
it's not a house that he pickslike specifically, it's a random house.

(02:52:22):
I think that's that's one of thebeauties of this film. It's almost it's
like Halloween, and since the firstone is it is completely random, and
that's quite scary, is that youknow, somebody could walk outside your house
and go, yeah, I'll agreedown and murder them stuff like that,
you know, and stuff. Ithink one of the most chilling parts of
that when they you know, theysay, oh, there's a girl that's
been killed in the park and hereor the screaming and the search party,

(02:52:43):
and you never see the body.You just see the reactions to it.
So you know, whatever they're lookingat must be inhumane, and it just
adds to that kind of that brutalityof Billy. So when he's upstairs in
the attic and he's having that threecount and he's just you know, like
that throwing stuff, and you know, what was he doing with that little
girl? Was he doing the samething? Was he just kind of ripping

(02:53:05):
him apart and stuff? And that'sgot to terrify you, you know,
And I think Clark always motion wasthe same person. It was Billy,
which just he did that before theattack on that sorts not who missed the
merch other people, but who wereyour favorite people to talk to? Who
was the most delightful interview that youhad? And honestly, this is not
like a political kind of it.I can't tell anybody abroad because everybody had

(02:53:28):
so many different ways of telling usnew information, and they were giving they
were talent with so much passion.And you know, I almost gratitude in
a sense this film, this littlefilm that they did, you know nearly
fifty years ago, was getting abook made about it, and that he's
still inspriving people today and people loveit still today. And you know,
everybody said stuff with so much enthusiasm, and everybody gave the time up.

(02:53:54):
Everybody was so passionate about all theirstories. You know, because you're talking
to actors, so you get theactor side of it. You're talking to
people behind the scenes so you gettheir reactions to it. You're talking to
Karen Bombley, so she's talking abouthow she worked with Bob to create an
overall look at the film and whythere's certain reds and greens and stuff.
So for me as a filmmaker,you know, I find that really interesting,

(02:54:16):
like from both sides of the cameraand stuff. So everybody was that
unique that I couldn't pick somebody out, but that's not me kind of b
Essen and stuff. I just therewas so much information being given in it
from everybody that it was just ajoy to kind of hear it in any
way, shape or form that wewere getting it. It was really nice
in terms of the conversations that wehad. We had the skype conversations with

(02:54:39):
Bert Dunk and Nick Mancuso, whichwere great. Bert Dunk was particularly fascinating
because he showed us production schedules thathe had kept from the film and he
still he still got them in hisoffice and it was like, and I
could see Dave's eyes just light up, like when he just brought them out
of this like this rusty old folderat the back. The rumor was like,

(02:55:01):
you've been sitting on these for nearlyfifty years, and just was just
fascinating. And again he was justreally he was very knowledgeable. But also
at the same time, like Davesaid, it's that it's that it's that
gratitude. And I personally think that, you know, if Bob Clark was
still with us today, he wouldwax lyrical about this film now because I

(02:55:22):
think he will have understood its legacy, where maybe fifteen years ago, twenty
years ago he might not have gotit. He might have known he'd made
a great film, but at thesame time he might not understood the effect
it's had on the on the genreand you know in cinema really, you
know, it's crazy. I thinksocial media and the Internet have helped this
film a lot, because, likeI said, like there's so many there's

(02:55:43):
little fan groups out there on Facebookand stuff, and people are starting to
realize this film that they liked,that they thought was you know, some
de grinds at all, you know, brilliant film has actually got more people
around the world are also loving itfor exactly the same reason and stuff.
So I think the Internet had amassive, a massive way of opening it

(02:56:05):
it's it's legacy, you know,and turning it into an even bigger cult
film than it is now. LikeI know now that like in the last
fifteen years or so, I mean, I certainly I've done this is my
traditional Christmas Eve is watching that filmregardless. I just I have to watch
that film on Christmas Eve with aglass of wine or something or a red
red red wine just on a barberand I just want a barb and you

(02:56:30):
know, and and and just andyeah, it's a big glass and just
just take it in for Christmas andstuff, you know, and then then
I'll watch it on Christmas Day nightagain, even I watched it twenty four
hours earlier. I can't get enoughof this film at this time of the
year. I just think it fitsin perfectly. When you put your tree
out, you've got your decorations ofyou've got the lights off, you know,

(02:56:52):
so you've got if you've got afire at home, you can see
all the shadows at the wall andeverything stuff, just like in the film
you're looking for Billy's shadow somewhere andeverything in the background just adds to it
so much. I find it.I find it very difficult to watch this
film July. You try watching thisfilm in July. It's weird. It's
weird. It's weird when it's stillwhite out slides and everything. It's it's

(02:57:13):
crazy this time of the year.It's just it's just perfect. It's perfect
film anyway. But in terms ofwatching it, and went to watch it
this this Sunda year, you can'tpunk along with it. I'm a bit
strange than the scent and every bookabout this, but I haven't really watched
the film since we've watched it toEnjay in three years now, so I'm

(02:57:33):
quite looking forward to watching this yearbecause every time we were watching it,
we went through common trees and wewent through reanalyzed it, we were looking
at scenes and then it was veryarduous and it and you don't enjoy a
film when you're doing something like thatbecause it's very meticulous. It's you know,
it's it's it's an exercise. Whereasnow we're kind of done with it.
Like the other day, I watchedThe Black Christmas two thousand and six

(02:57:54):
just and I just had it on, you know, just kind of had
it on and just kind of likewatched it. So in a sense,
the more surprising things that you foundwhile you're doing your research, I think
for me, I'm a bit ofa soccer for troubled productions, and seventy
four seemed to go like a dream, but the other two didn't. And
we go into quiet detail in termsof the two thousand and six and twenty

(02:58:18):
nineteen films and basically what went wrongin the sense that and I found them
stories they like, like Dave alludedto earlier, I kind of like took
the lead on on them and hekind of just like added bits in here
and there, and obviously made surethey're just kind of like, you know,
making narrative sense. Talking to alot of people from them sets who
was a real eye opener in termsof the way that Hollywood works, that,

(02:58:39):
you know, the way that thesystems changed, because they're come in
very in very different cycles, butthey're also quite the same in the sense
that the two thousand and six filmwas part of the kind of the two
thousand remake cycleway. But Halloween haschanged from asking at on Elm Street at
the thirteenth and then when twenty nineteencomes around, it's off the back of
Halloween making this massive hit at thebox office with like a like a fast

(02:59:01):
forward sequel, and it's almost likeBlubhouse trying to cash in, and it's
a very rush production. There's alot of problems on set, you know,
the writers and the director were undera lot of pressure. And then
it kind of they are so divisivethat people will maybe see them in a
different lade. They don't have tolike the films, but I think they
can maybe appreciate what they could havebeen. I think that's that's the way

(02:59:22):
I'd like to see them, becauseyou know, and then the day artists
subjective you know, where we lovefilms, we hate films, you know,
and we're all different. So Ithink having them in there, i'd
like, you know, say,a structure to basically what like people like
Glen Morgan who went in there thebest of intentions and just got completely shafted
for lack of a better in thein what they wanted to do. And

(02:59:45):
you know, April Wolf and SofiaTaquel, you know, we're given this,
you know, this stupidly tight scheduleto work too, which doesn't seem
possible, and then had to fliptheir story, you know, in about
three weeks I think it was.And then basically we're on set in New
Zealand. Of all places that youknow, not in an America, they
were in New Zealand, so youknow, foreign country, never been there

(03:00:05):
before, you know, and youknow, and then obviously problems with the
cast and it's just yeah, wedelve into that, and I just found
that kind of stuff that was kindof like, you know, that was
kind of like putting in my hand. It was really nice that people were
very open to talk about it,because because twenty nineteen were so fresh when
we were talking to these people inthe year after some people were a bit

(03:00:26):
apprehensive, but than others were reallyopen towards it. Like we spoke to
April, what and she goes andhear it here. Interview is actually one
of the best interviews in the entirebook for me, because she tells us
where the story comes from, andit comes from a very dark place,
which you know, I won't disclosehere can read about it in the book.
And she really came at the project. I'd approached Sofia and they had
approached April. Sofia was quite stungfrom the project and she'd obviously she'd received

(03:00:52):
a lot of and so in Aprilas well for this matter, and received
a lot of online abuse, whichyou know is something that I don't condone.
Pierce. When I watched the filmthe first time, I didn't like
it. I've watched it since andI found some merits in the film.
But at the same time, whenI was talking to April, you separate
yourself from that. You talk andtalk about the film, you talk about

(03:01:13):
the ideas. You don't you don'tsay, oh, I really hated your
film. You know, it's likeyou don't go out things like that.
That's just a professional And yeah,here interview is is fascinating. She puts
it all on the table, andit's quite a bold moved because obviously she's
still working in the industry, andyou don't know if that could could scolder
down the line with the way thatHollywood seems to work, you know.
And because there's people like Glenn Morganwho would have loved to have talked to

(03:01:37):
him, but he's so divorced fromthe project because of what happened that he
doesn't want to talk about it.And I can kind of understand him in
it in a way, but itjust would have been great to talk to
him, you know. And thenwe there's a few people that we we've
kind of given the offer to thatWe've said, you know, if you
want to talk down the line,you know, Olive your Hussey, you
know, the offer is still there. People like Dean Phrase whoism remakers,

(03:02:00):
I'd nurs you know in the obviouslyGlad Morgan and James Wong, you know,
if they want to talk in thefuture, then you know, the
doors always opened for me and andand the same goes for any of the
original cast because as we know,you know, well no one's getting any
younger. Are they it's nearly afifth year old film. So that was
the heartmaking thing about John Saxson,as we you know, we chased him

(03:02:22):
for the best part of two years, probably not knowing that he was probably
quite ill at the time or youknow, or you know, and then
he passed away and it was itwas it was just a bit. It's
sad anyway, because he's such anicon cinema. Never mind that it was
really a great to talk to him. There's definitely enough material if we have
went back for a second printed,there's enough there. And I would personally

(03:02:43):
be asking Bert if I could havesome of some copies of his production schedules
from that time. I would thatto me is kind of like a holy
grail which we which we're just literallyjust asking for. Prince. I put
them into a second print, ever, put the box so you guys could
see the eggs that things that werebeing shot on a certain day as you
know, as filmmakers doing stuff,you know, so you know, oh,

(03:03:05):
I don't know when was the OIsequence filmed exactly, you know that
specific date and stuff. I knowit sounds really kind of weird and stuff,
but you know, for people wholove these things and films. It's
like, you know, it's likewow, that's you know, if it
was filmed on do you like thetwenty seventh? You know, I can
guarantee people would stop watching that filmand syncing it up to that point.

(03:03:26):
Do you like the twenty sevenths ofit? Just so you'd have that shot
at exactly the time it was shotfifty odd years ago and so forth.
So because I'd do it, youknow, I just think that kind of
information. You know, it's it'snot for everybody, don't get me wrong,
But then the beauty of these kindof books and projects is for the
people who do want to know aboutthat stuff. It's there. Then it's

(03:03:46):
it's there forever, and we haven'tlost it. It hasn't been lost.
It's there for us all to enjoyit. It seems like a really good
covered project because you could do theseinterviews via escape and you didn't have to
necessarily leave the house that off andto be able to work very diligently and
putting this all together. I wasliterally sitting here for these interviews and stuff

(03:04:11):
where I and to have Nick Mancuseron Skye do the billy voice in front
of your life. It's quite anhonor in a weird kind of way to
hear him say, you know,start just randomly going off into the billy
voice and me going, oh mygod, my in a nerd, in
a nerd, he is doing thebilly voice, trying to look professional at
the same time, but inside I'mgoing, oh my god, oh my

(03:04:33):
god, oh my god. It'squite cool. That was very surreal,
actually, because when we spoke tohim, and I think Nick's living in
France at the moment with his wife, and he was kind of like it
was a very very interesting because hekind of he went up on so many
little tangents. But within the firsttwo minutes, without prompt he started doing
the voice, and I was like, we need to record this, We

(03:04:54):
need to record this and save this. This is I'm sure I probably for
days. I want to say thathe genuinely sent a little chill down this
mine because it was exactly it waslike it was on point. After all
these years. Surely your time,you know, your voice changes as you
get older and stuff, but it'slike it was exactly the same. And
I was like, this guy isinfamous. This guy's gonna live forever with

(03:05:16):
this voice. I'm shocked that hedoesn't do cameo or anything, because he'd
make a fortune on it. Doyou know if people vanging, you know,
asked for him to do a BillieBirthday message or something, he'd be
making it in with money. Honestly, I swear to God he would.
And because for the first customer hadprobably been me Christmas greetings from Billy,
they're fantastic, Happy Christmas, youpig. That was quite because last night,

(03:05:41):
and it's very rare that it getsto them other screenings here and last
night about forty odd miles away ina place called Nott and Go, they
did a one off screening of itat the cinemas last night, and I
was like, I've got to go. I've got to I've never seen this
on the big screen. I've gotit. This is like a bucket list
thing. And I think they're goingto train do it again next year because
poor Paul couldn't make it. Buthonestly, you could hear a pin drop

(03:06:01):
for the entirety that's screening. Nobodywas talking. Everybody was fully engrossed in
it, even the bits like Fallatiowas all the jokes for you being got
especially I love that bit. Theflatio is augent national everything. But everybody
got it, you know, allthe scary bits of people jumped, the
funny bits of people laughed, thechilling scary bits. People got it.

(03:06:22):
And it was just it was.It was such an experience to watch it
on a big screen with people whowere appreciating it and stuff, you know,
because you know horror fums today it'sit's bang bang jump, bang bang
jump. That is a pure kindof like a kettle in a sense.
It builds and builds and builds,and then at the end it's just some
leakshits and stuff. And you know, I think because it's it's difficult for

(03:06:43):
audiences to maybe watch something that kindof slow burning maybe today, but at
the same time of our people outthere who do want to get that stuff
still and they were up probably alltheir last night because it was. It
was a fantastic atmosphere, was fantasticevening just to see on the big screen.
It was. It was good.So tell me more about the book
one is it out? And whereis it? The book is will be

(03:07:07):
available on the twenty eighth of Januarytwenty twenty two. The publishers It's a
port called bare Man of Media.Basically the I think we're looking at possibly
hard back, pickback, and eformats all through their website, so they've
got social media. But if youjust search for bare a Man of Media,
it's bare manner as one weird mediaon Google, you'll find them straight
away. We did initially potentially lookup a before Christmas release, but just

(03:07:31):
to make sure that everything's kind ofokay, you know, crossing all the
you know, the eyes and theteas and whatever, we all kind of
mutually agreeing on January because at theend of the day, once it's out,
people can bite anytime they want.And then hopefully by the time next
next Christmas comes around, who knows, we may have an expanded edition.
But you know, as I've saidto Dave, and it's really weird once

(03:07:52):
you kind of finished a project,because you almost kind of especially a creative
one, you almost have to kindof divorce yourself from it a little bit.
And the way that in terms froma creative point of view, I've
kind of divorced myself from Black Christmas. I can go back to and enjoy
it again now because we've kind ofscratched that itch based basically to get this
information all down on a page,and it's it's more comprehensive than I ever

(03:08:16):
thought it was going to be.I just thought it was going to be
this maybe two hundred page book atbest, you know, that it was
just going to be about the seventyfour film, and it's become so much
more than that. I mean,Dave has put together a full critical kind
of analysis of the seventy four film. But it's something it's something that I
could never write that I just have. I am wired that way. In

(03:08:37):
terms of them an academic interview,you know, David's you know, in
terms of the education of from film. Davis is far beyond you know,
my levels of just enjoying films andanalyzing them. I didn't ask college with
films. So he's put together thisreally comprehensive look at themes that run throughout
the film and the way that charactersinteract and then really gone to town in

(03:08:58):
the analysis of how the film wasput together as well, you know,
in terms of shots, sound design, production design, and you know,
reading into themes as well, likelike say, we alluded to obviously abortion
theme is a kind of a anunderlined one obviously, you know, the
kind of the loss of innocence,you know, you know, very strange

(03:09:18):
time, you know, and especiallythe fact that it's a Canadian film as
well, you know, it's athat's a really obscure Canadian film becomes this
this beast. You know, itwas just fascinating I think to work on,
you know, and and and I'vesaid day multiple times, and it
sounds you know, in times itmight sound egotistical. I don't know,
but I said to him, said, I think we've done all right here.
You know, we we we wrotesomething in keeping it with the spirit.

(03:09:41):
What it is is it's the firstever chronicle or that Christmas that you
know, is it's probably put togetherpieces that other people have written over the
years, but also we put ourslants on things and tried to come up
with something that's hopefully you know,gives people answers to me the questions that
they've had for years, and thenyou know, longs people enjoy it,
you know, it's great. Ifthey hate it, you know, it's

(03:10:03):
it's fine too. One of thethings I'm really happy about is a lot
of answers to stuff it's never reallybeen answered before. And we've got people
talking about this stuff that they mighthave talked a little bit about in the
past, but these are quite extensivethings that they've really gone into, you
know, they've gone into for usthankfully, and with many thanks from us
as well, you know, becausethere's a lot of DVD supplements out there

(03:10:26):
and things like that, which aregreat in the wrong way, but everything
seems scattered across different things, whereasthis book kind of brings everything into one
place. And yeah, hopefully it'llenhance your enjoyment of Black Christmas along with
all the other things that have beensaid about it over the years, and
you'll get to uncover some of Billy'ssecrets. Still they've still got for you

(03:10:48):
guys. Next, Are you doinga book now about the Parky series.
I'm going back into filmmaking again alittle bit, because this kind of like
I've never wrote, I've never hada book, and there's like this before,
and I've enjoyed it a fantastic experience. I think I'll probably go back
to it with Paul one day.For the time being, I've got some
films. I've got a film comingout soon, Gordi on My Sunshine that

(03:11:09):
I'm kind of in post production on. We should be finishing it in a
few days, so I need tospend a bit time on that, and
then I've some scripts I need torips, so I'll probably be doing that
for a bit next year. Andthere's another film that we're finishing next year
for next Christmas called that Event,which is Christmas Anthology. I am going
back into horror film making, soI can't say anything else. I just

(03:11:33):
wanted to see Christe else I'll beI'll be battered. Probably ironically, I've
never seen it. I watched TheChristmas Story last night for the first time.
Talking about Bob Clark in journal,I've seen the Pokies when I was
in school, all them years ago, and never never joined the Dots for
about ten years, you know,before like the this is like just when

(03:11:54):
the Internet was starting to be athing, and never joined the dots for
years that he did Black Christmas aswell. How can this guy who's done
Porky's this crude and wonderful teenage comedyin which I love it. I think
it's fantastic. So it's so crude, you know, it's you know,
you look at things like American pieand that and Porky's was doing it twenty
years before then, you know,in terms of how how far ahead of

(03:12:16):
its time it was. And afriend of mine has got the he's got
the trilogy box set of pork Hesaid, he's worked it around before,
and it's like we've we've watched thesequels and the first film is so fantastic
and and I suppose maybe that's thebeauty of Black Christmas and the Wind that
hasn't ever been a sequel, soit's always got this kind of like it's
got this time stamp where it's thatyou know, you basically it's there.

(03:12:41):
Even if people do go back toit, it's always going to be there.
You know. It's it's it's likeand it's like any original you know,
we can we can you know,argue about remakes and sequels until the
cows come home, but you knowthe original is always going to be there.
And it's the same with Porkeys.You know, he's created these three
amazing films that are so diverse,is but they've all got this this kind
of like this little wink of likemischievousness about them. And even with Black

(03:13:05):
Christmas, like we say, withthe Filatio part the whole character of Barbers
is just like, you know,she's she's like she's a force of nature.
I mean, as Dave says,he loves the flatio scene. One
of my favorite scenes in the filmis when she's getting really drunk and the
dame trying to feed children booze andthey're you know, trying to sit on
Santa's lap, and it's like thisreally offbeat kind of humor. It's like,

(03:13:28):
this is in nineteen seventy four,when it wasn't like you know,
you know, you could probably seeyourself getting your knuckles wrapped for that.
You know, maybe ten years fifteenyears later, you know, you can't
do that. And you know,because it was this low budget independent film
that was you know, being donewith the best intentions. But it obviously
for Clark, it gave him acareer as well. You know, it

(03:13:48):
was it, you know, aslow key as it was, it gave
a talented filmmaker careering her and alot of other people too. You know.
It was really nice watching a ChristmasStory and noticing in the credits a
lot of the same people were stillin a Black people at the end of
to Stand Call, you know,we're coming back into the folding from the
production, so obviously, and we'vedone it as part of the book is
we've done a little chapter on BobClark's career basically in the way it kind

(03:14:11):
of went in what we've always foundgoing through his careers if if he finds
you worked well with somebody, alwaysmanages to work with them again, and
that's you know, that's the signof like a bit of an auty,
you know. And then again someonewho gets on with his casts. And
we found that a lot, likea lot of the people who we interviewed
were on the crew and some ofthe cast talked about how he would always
come back to them because he knewthey could do the job, you know

(03:14:33):
what I mean. Like there wasthis kind of a bit of a family
uniqu gwing on throughout these films.It was quite fascinating to see that because
I worked with the same people whenI'm doing films, like I work with
the same production signer, same producers, stuff like that. So it's quite
nice to see that we're not justdoing this, we're not making our own
stuff up as we go along,but actually following, you know what people

(03:14:54):
like great directors like Bob Clark wasdoing and stuff in the film world,
in the indie film world, anda sense and stuff. It's quite interesting
to see that kind of kind offamily linkage grewing on with all these films.
I've been kind of chipping away acouple of projects whilst we were kind
of pointing the finishing touches to them, to the book for Black Christmas.
So I've just finished the first draftactually ironically tonight actually when we've been talking

(03:15:18):
and a book about George The Revengeof All Things. So that's kind of
been a this weird, kind ofoffbeat obsession with that film, and I
know it's terrible, but it's Ifind it quite fun. It was really
interesting, like we were talking aboutearlier about talking about troubled productions, and
George's Revenge is a very troubled production. And it's been really fascinating because basically

(03:15:39):
during the research process for Black Christmas, I managed to get a few like
old newspaper clippians and started to hadan idea in my mind. I was
like, I wonder if I cando something with this and then put the
pieces together and hopefully that's going tokind of come together over the next twelve
months the rough drafts, and I'mjust kind of waiting on a couple of
interviews to come back for that.And then also I've tentatively started a book

(03:16:03):
on the Maniac Cop trilogy as well, because there's so many people who were
involved in them films. The amountof interviews for that already is is mind
boggling. You know, it's almostdouble what there was for Jews. Because
Jaws is it's stricky, because it'sagain it's nineteen eighty seven. It's weird
because we managed to get so manypeople to talk about Black Christmas, which

(03:16:24):
was released in nineteen seventy four,and when I tried to get a lot
of the people from behind the scenesof nineteen eighty seven's Jews The Revenge,
a lot of the people have passedaway. And it's you know, it's
not it's a younger film essentially.It's obviously it must have had a lot
of older heads on it in thesense which is it's a shame, but
you know, it's it's very interesting. It's been very interesting to look at
it with an analytic lie, youknow, especially going from a film so

(03:16:46):
revered as Black Christmas to one that'syou know probably you know, across the
board quite universally hated and they're tryingto give it a voice. I mean,
there's been books about Jaws, thebooks about Jews too. It was
a lot easier to find information aboutRevenge, and I actual preferre Revenge to
George three D. So it kindof felt like a natural fit and it
was I found the writing process quiteeasy, and it's been the same with

(03:17:09):
the Mania Cop series that and Iknow that me and Davill Will will collaborate
again in the future. We're justkind of we've been twinned with different ideas.
You know, it's just a BlackChristmas was it was. It was
a good opportunity to as well aswell from me, you know, it's
from a commercial pod view. It'sgood to look at a gap in the
market essentially and and not exploiting it. But you know, we like to

(03:17:31):
feel that. You know, thereare companions for Halloween, these companions for
Elm Street, finally the thirteenth,and now people have got a companion for
Black Christmas. So that's kind ofhopefully what we have we have given people
then you know, if they youknow, if someone ever wants to write
a book in the future. That'syou know, they've managed to get other
and choose the nose and then thatthey might use us as a reference point.
I don't know. You know,it's like I say, once it's

(03:17:52):
released, it out there, andyou know we're just gonna, you know,
ride the way of braise and criticism. Davenport, thank you so much
for your time. This has beenfantastic. Fifteen years ago, on Christmas
Eve, his family became his victims. What do you do? No,

(03:18:28):
all roads and airports are officially closed. This one is not gonna let up
a group of college friends. Thatsucks. Everyone should be home for Christmas,
are about to discover las. Whydon't you have in the present?
We got you their house? Igot it? Is he his home,

(03:18:50):
always called always bright? Who isin my house tonight? Don't you have
lots of toys to deliver to goodlittle boys and girls. You really shouldn't
provoke somebody like that, And onDecember twenty five you're definitely getting punkeed sant
Santas right, dere all he wantsfor Christmas is Meghan in a room.

(03:19:16):
Is a new family he can treatlike his very own. Sure, my

(03:19:54):
family now Black Christmas. All right, we are back and we are talking
about Black Christmas, and Mark youmentioned before the break, the whole idea
of a sequel to this. Yeah, we've gotten, well, we've gotten

(03:20:16):
a couple of fan films that aresequels. But more than that, we've
had remakes of Black Christmas. Firstand foremost the two thousand and six Glenn
Morgan remake, which ironically, GlennMorgan also was behind the remake of Willard
and behind Final Destination three, whichI was talking about all the creative kills

(03:20:39):
that you get in the Final Destinationmovies, and the two thousand and six
Black Christmas kind of goes along thoselines. It's got that Rob Zombie.
Let's devote all this time to thebackstory, and it does nothing but deflate
the atmosphere of the film. Tonot know who this person is. To

(03:21:03):
barely see Billy at any point inthe original. You see his legs at
one point, you see the famousshot of the eye a couple of times,
and that's it. And to getthis whole story of his childhood and
his liver disease and being yellow andthe baby, the incest storyline, and

(03:21:26):
it turns into a Boy in theWalls story as well. I don't dislike
that remake. I kind of giveit credit for being really way out there
and really stylized. It's got alot more style than I think it needs
a lot of times, But thataspect of the film I do not like.

(03:21:50):
I don't want all the backstory,and I do blame Rob Zombie for
that, and it's just uninteresting tome. A cipher is much more interesting.
Of course, I'm reminded of theyellow bastard from Sin City as we
see Billy. The very first timewe see Billy, I'm like, is
he yellow? What the hell's goingon? I kind of like the stuff

(03:22:11):
in the insane asylum and that hisroom is decorated with Christmas lights, and
that it gives a little present toone of the guards. It says,
you know, I'll be home forChristmas. By that time, we've already
had one death, so as soonas he escapes, I'm like, okay,
well there's obviously two killers. Sowhen there's a twist, I guess

(03:22:35):
it's supposed to be a twist.And Agnes is out there as well,
I'm like, yeah, okay.The only thing that surprised me is that,
and this was very much a cheat. They go from that kind of
kookie girl with the glasses. Theycut from her to the past, and
then I want to say, tocome back to her. So it's like,

(03:22:56):
Okay, that's obviously her memories.It's not. It's just that they
cut away and they cut back.I'm like, okay, you're cheating,
but whatever. And I want tosay there was around the time that we
learned that Agnes only had one eye, so I'm like, well, she's
got two eyes here, so definitelythis isn't adding up. But yeah,
and then all the eye trauma.I mean, this is like a fulchy

(03:23:20):
film going on here, with allof the eyeballs being removed and the baby
doll eyes and all this kind ofstuff. I didn't hate it, but
I think they could have called itsomething other than Black Christmas and been okay
with it. I was very confused. I watched it. I might even
watched it before I watched the original, but it's been a long time,

(03:23:41):
so this was only the second timeI had seen it, and I was
extremely confused at the beginning, andI thought, are we gonna are we
operating on two different timelines here?And it's going to merge at some point,
because, like you mentioned, wehad the kill of the Claire character
in this one, and I thinkshe's the only one with the name from
the original. I could be mistaken, though, and other than Missus Mack,

(03:24:05):
I'm assuming that Andrew Martin is MissusMack. Again. She is,
but then we're going back to theasylum, so he hasn't escaped yet,
And I thought, what's going on? So obviously I didn't remember that part
of the film from the first timeI watched it, and I didn't honestly
remember that Agnes was the main killerin this I thought the same thing.
This weird girl is going to beAgnes grown up and no, because she

(03:24:31):
gets her head chopped off, Sothat was wrong. And then I thought,
okay, yeah, now I getit. There's two of them.
Agnes is his daughter from this incestto his relationship with his mom. Okay,
I mean we talked about implied violencein the first movie. We talked
about not really knowing what's going onwith Billy and his life. You know

(03:24:56):
that there's implied incest, no implication. This is full out. This is
mom comes over to little Billy,Little Yellow Billy and just boom takes off
all their clothes. All right,Billy, let's do it. And it's
like, holy shit, did youhave to go there? Like, yes,

(03:25:16):
they went there in the first one, but did you have to go
there so much in this one?Like again, implication is much more powerful
to me than this one, whereI'm almost laughing at how out there that
they had to put things. Itfelt like this was where the people in
the back row who just weren't goingto pick up on any of these other

(03:25:37):
things. There's no subtlety, andit's that one up and ship like you
mentioned the Final Destination films and allthat, and we are so beholden to
that these days in horror films,where you have to have the inventive kids.
I mean, look at the Halloween, the New Halloween movies. It's
the same kind of thing. Halloween, like Black Christmas, was virtually bloodless.

(03:26:01):
You see a couple of the killings, but there's two strangulations and there
is some knife insertion, but it'sagain, it's very quick, mostly bloodless,
and that's not the point. AndI think John Carpenter definitely took a
page from this and was apparently afan of Black Christmas, and nowadays it's
like that's what people go to see, and we have to make them creative

(03:26:26):
and how do you just have tokeep ratcheting it up? And it's a
detriment I think to this film losesall subtlety, and so much so that
the characters, and this again,unlike the characters in the original, are
so one dimensional that I couldn't parseout who am I supposed to think as

(03:26:48):
the final girl here? I don'tmind a switch up, like, oh
I thought it was going to beher and now she's dead. It's like
like Maitland, like you mentioned earlier, I don't care which one of these
girls dies. I want Mary ElizabethWinstead to survive because I'm a news stand
But I couldn't remember, like who'sgoing to be the final girl? Are
we going to have a final girl? We usually do? Didn't didn't care,

(03:27:11):
didn't matter, And the one thatit ends up being was like one
of the least interesting characters in thefilm. Yeah, I thought for sure,
like, Okay, you know,is it going to be because in
the first movie you've got a livinghussy and you've got Margo Kidder and I
know Hussey was somebody before Black Christmas, so she's a known quantity. I

(03:27:35):
want to say that Margo Kidder wasas well. I want to say Sisters
was right around the same time,and I'm not sure what Kidder did necessarily
before that to put her on themap. Watching it with twenty twenty one
eyes, I was like, okay, well, these two are going to
have to survive. So when MarcoKidder ends up biting it, I was
like, oh, okay, that'skind of interesting. Well, you know,

(03:27:58):
we're for sure place and all ofher bets now on Hussey. So
when it came to this movie,I was like, okay, well,
I know Lacy Chabert, I knowMary Elizabeth Winstead, and I know Michelle
Tracneberg. Which one of them isgoing to survive? Little jokes on you,
Mike. So it's like, allright, great, thanks A.
Lott's my privilege to teach you thissemester Julia Winter breaks and Merry Christmas's ladies

(03:28:22):
excited for tonight. It is ourlast day of our last fall semester of
college. Ever, right, canyou take a photo of all of us?
Of course, where's Helena? Butshe was tieing back exsodas earlier,

(03:28:43):
but she looked really good. Cheez. We shouldn't have let to go back
by herself. She's fine. Comeon, a little little Helena hasn't gotten

(03:29:09):
home yet. If I were missing, and I'd want you to unleash the
bloodhound and track me down. Shewas at ko last night, still creating
problems. Huh right, hello,Hello, I'm worried that something bad happened.
It's winter break. Could just bea delay of some sort. Snow,

(03:29:31):
my friend is missing. Nine timesout of ten. The girls just
with a boyfriend. I will bringyou to your niece. There's some one
in the rocks. What can't bereal? The other movie, The School

(03:30:11):
has two hundred years of history.Many sacrifices have been made to keep on
traditions alive. You're alway in safe. I'm tired of hiding, I'm tired
of running. Blah blah blah,Oh ho ho. You mess with the

(03:30:35):
wrong sisters. And then there wasthe twenty nineteen movie, which I watched
for the first time today, whichagain doesn't necessarily need to be called Black
Christmas. There are some interesting nods. There's a bag over the head at

(03:30:58):
one point, there's a cat,but there's not a whole lot more.
I don't even think there's rather thanphone calls. It's more like manic dms.
But they're not from Billy. Thereis no Billy in this film unless
the rapist. I don't think hisname Brian. It's not Billy. So

(03:31:20):
I don't know why they felt theneed to call this one Black Christmas.
I think that they could have calledthe things that were similar. They could
have called him homages done the Tarantinoon it, because there is not that
much similar between this film in nineteenseventy four or even two thousand and six.
It's that most cynical of reasons theygot the license for the name.

(03:31:43):
And I vaguely remember when this happened. I heard about there was going to
be another remake, and I thought, well, that's odd, because I
mean, did the two thousand andsix one really do that well? And
it turned around quickly like that,It was months. It was much shorter
than most modern films get turned around. It was the Weinstein fallout where Dimension

(03:32:09):
Film or whoever held the rights atthat point, they were going to be
dissolved, and Blumhouse snatched up therights to Black Christmas got this and at
the time, he had made someinsensitive comments about female directors and you know
this whole thing, so approached thisfemale director to take on this film.

(03:32:33):
You can do whatever you want.There's no script. You write it and
maybe kind of connected loosely, sothey didn't you go along the original storyline,
which can be a good thing,can be a bad thing. I'm
trying to think of an example ofa film that is a reboot or a

(03:32:54):
requel or whatever you want to callit, where it kind of works,
was not connected or not the samebeat by beat story. But this is
so removed. I'm thinking, yeah, why call it Black Christmas. I
was thinking, oh, they hada script and it was too similar.
But they didn't even have the script. They just had the name and the
rights. And the only thing youget, like you said, are the

(03:33:16):
cat. And in all three filmswe have a glass unicorn and that's like
tick time, the one connection forall three at least. And multiple nods
throughout I think, with maybe aline here or a line there, and
I tried to catch as many ofthem as I could, but and they're
superficial nods. Like you said,there's no Billy and it's DMS through yip

(03:33:41):
yap. I thought they were gettingtexts. I'm so out of it.
My wife asked what a DM wasjust the other day, and I was
just like, well, duneamaster.Yeah. They started saying dms and I'm
like, oh, I thought youwere getting text messages. They looked like
texts. I just have to putthis out there for all filmmakers. If
you're going to put text messages ord ms or anything where you have to
read it on screen, please makeit a lot easier to read. Because

(03:34:05):
even on my TV, which isa fair size, I'm not reading any
of these things. I can barelymake out what's going on. It's like
you got a lot more room,bring that phone closer too. There was
a lot of screen and quick theywere quick. I'm like, I kind
of like it. It's a littlebit intrusive, but I sort of like

(03:34:26):
it when they just show up onthe screen as the text. I'm fine
with that. That's good. Yeah, it makes it easier to read,
and we're all so accustomed to itstaring at our phones all day anyway.
It's it doesn't break the fourth wall, I think maybe as as they might
think it does. But yeah,it's an interesting. It is an interesting
thing. And I was surprised that, and I think this is in the

(03:34:52):
book, the new book that weread, and it's not an interview with
the director, but that she's nota big horror fan. And I'm surprised
by that because the only things I'veseen from her prior to this are horror
films. So I was like,oh, well, okay, well you've
done at least three films now thatare horror related. Maybe one of them

(03:35:16):
is more of a psychological persona esquekind of thing, but I mean,
to me, that's I consider thathorror. I'm thinking, Okay, so
we picked someone to direct this who'sadmits to not being a huge fan of
horror, give them carte blanche onthe script. But then they were hamstrung
throughout their production where they couldn't doa lot of the set pieces that they

(03:35:41):
wanted to do. And then atsome point they made the decision to cut
down the violence to make it Pg. Thirteen so that young girls who were
the target audience could go see it, and all those things I think combined
just make it not a total disaster, but really castrate the film. It
has no impact and you can seepretty clearly where the edits are made to

(03:36:07):
the violence that you assume was there. And we talk about how it's nice
that the original is virtually bloodless,and really the only violent scene is the
death of Barb, but we don'tsee penetration. We just kind of see
her thrashing around and the franticness ofBilly. But this you don't see anything.

(03:36:28):
It's hard to tell what's killed thepeople that are dying. Is did
this guy gets shot in the head, because I don't. I have no
indication of an arrow going through thisperson's head. I have no indication of
this woman being stabbed in the eyeor whatever it is that was originally there.
They've cut it so much that it'scompletely gone. I don't even get

(03:36:52):
an implication of how they died,And that to me was when against the
power of the film. I thinkI might have liked it a little bit
more than you. I was remindedwhile I was watching it a lot of
promising a woman that whole idea ofand the empowerment and this squirrel that had
been raped before. Though with promisingyoung woman, it's the girl's friend,

(03:37:15):
even though you think it might bethe girl the main character for a while
or Woman, the very promising youngwoman. I was a little surprised that
they went a supernatural way in BlackChristmas twenty nineteen, and it really felt
like that ending. I think toyour point, it felt very rushed.

(03:37:37):
It felt like it came on veryquickly, and then just felt like it
got really rushed really fast throughout thelast bet. And here I was just
like, all right, yeah,cool girl power, and let's attack all
these frat guys and just murder thesea holes. But it just felt so
fast. I really wanted more ofthat. I was like, Okay,
this is a good time for Catharsis. Nope, didn't get that. I'd

(03:38:01):
like some of the ideas. Ilike Karri l was in this. I
always like imagine Poots and whatever I'veseen her in. I can see why
people liked it, and like Isaid, I think I might have liked
it a little bit more than youdid. But I still it's not one
of those where I'm going to goback to it anytime soon. I enjoyed
the message of it, I justthink it some of the lines were chew

(03:38:26):
on the nose. We get thiswas around the Kavanaugh thing and Brock Turner
and I'm all for that empowerment.But the boyfriend of one of the characters,
who's who's a you know, anally through most of the film,
at some point he starts kind ofgetting affected by this thing that's going on,

(03:38:46):
and you know, has some stereotypicaltoxics male lines, and at one
point he's like, I like beer, and it's like, okay. There's
a few other examples where he tellshis girlfriend, you know, you're being
hysterical. All those lines that menthrow at women when they're expressing these things

(03:39:09):
and trying to take that agency awayfrom them, So I get it,
but some of the lines were justso on the nose. I just kind
of rolled my eyes a little bit. My daughter asked about the sequels,
and I said, well, Idon't think we'll watch the two thousand and
six one, but I said thetwenty nineteen one. It's interesting. It's

(03:39:30):
very different from this. It's adifferent story basically, and it's PG.
Thirteen, So I mean, wecan watch it if you want, so,
I'd be curious to see how shesees it. So apparently there was
there have been two fan films aboutthis, one of them I've not been
able to find, which is calledBlack Christmas The Night Billy Came Home.

(03:39:50):
That's from twenty sixteen, and thereis another one called It's Me Billy,
a Black Christmas f in film.I didn't get a chance to watch that,
but I think he did Mark Idid, and I liked where it
was going at the beginning. Andif I remember correctly, it's the main

(03:40:13):
girl in this is supposed to beJess's granddaughter, and so in this universe,
Jess survived and I guess she hadthe baby or this might be a
different baby, right, No,And I think that's the implication, is
that she had the baby. I'dhave to watch it again now now you're
making me question that, or maybeshe didn't and that was a source of

(03:40:35):
problems later. I think it mightbe a different one, and that's there
was. There's a strained relationship Ithink between this girl's mom and the grandma
who's supposed to be Jess, andthat might be why the grandmother has died
and willed the house to this girl. So she's going there with her friends

(03:40:56):
to check out the house, Iguess, and maybe you put it on
the market or something like that,and they end up spending the night there
and oh, Billy is still therein the house. Billy's got to be
so old by this. He is, he is, It's it's again,
It's it's kind of funny. He'sgot this really long hair and it's really
old. And there's phone calls andso on and so on. And I

(03:41:18):
enjoyed where I was going at thebeginning. It left me a little cold
by the end. They try toreplicate the phone calls and it doesn't quite
work as well. You have themultiple voices. But I think this gives
a lot of credit to whoever mixedthen and edited those calls, because it
just kind of misses the mark alittle bit. And then there's a twist

(03:41:41):
at the end, which since youhaven't watched that, I won't spoil.
And I'm may be relating the wholething incorrectly, So if if anybody that's
listening, you know, wants tocorrect that stuff, they can. They
can write to you about it.Yeah, they'll slide into my DMS.
You know. The one thing thatwe didn't really mention when it comes to
Black Christmas is the second word inthe title, and just that I'm not

(03:42:05):
sure how many Christmas horror films wehad to that point, but now it's
ridiculous. I mean, Silent I, Deadly Night, that's a whole big
franchise. I mean, there havebeen so many films, horror films specifically
set at Christmas, and they've allhad a little bit of well, the

(03:42:26):
early ones had controversy around them.I don't know if Black Christmas had that
much controversy though. I know thatthey changed the name of it when they
were going to What Eric on TV, and then they ended up not airing
it anyway because of the Bundy murders. But yeah, I always found it
interesting, like how people would getso offended by a Christmas movie that is

(03:42:50):
also a horror film. The onlyChristmas horror movie that I can think of
that predates this is the one withMary Warnoff. Maybe it's Silent Night,
Bloody Night. All of the Christmasmovies use some variation of the Silent Night,
Blank Night, so it gets confusing, but it's sort of similar.

(03:43:11):
There are phone calls in that aswell. There are a bunch of the
Warhol Factory people in the film.John Carradine is in it, and it's
kind of interesting. I think mostof the prints out there are really really
bad. You can watch it justabout anywhere. But it has a little

(03:43:31):
similar kind of creepy vibe to itand is pretty pretty interesting. And that
it has phone calls in it aswell, threatening phone calls is a curiosity.
I think, Yeah, I seethat Candy Darling's in there as well
as Mary Warnoff. And yeah,the IMDb says, a man in here.
It's a mansion which was once amental home. He visits the place

(03:43:54):
begins to investigate some crimes that happenedin old times, scaring the people in
the region. The creepy mansion phonecalls. Okay, that's interesting. I
love the little anecdote that when BlackChristmas came to the States first, they
changed it to Silent Night, EvilNights so that people wouldn't mistake it for
a blaxploitation film. I mean,that'd be a great movie. I don't

(03:44:18):
know why there isn't a Black Christmas, black black exploitation film that would be
great. That sounds pretty good tome. I'd watch it on my episode.
I relate that I had read thestory about Bob Clark and John Carpenter
talking about Black Christmas and how JohnCarpenter asked if he would ever do a

(03:44:39):
sequel, and Bob Clark was bothagainst sequels and at that point already out
of the horror game. But ifI were to do one, I would
do this, have Billy institutionalized breakout, come back, start terrorizing again,
but this time it takes place onHalloween. And I called bullshit on that

(03:45:01):
story because I could never figure outthe source, and I just always kept
taking me back to a bloody,disgusting article online, and I'm like,
well, is this on a commentarysomewhere. I've watched Halloween with commentaries.
I've watched all the documentaries on Halloween. What's this from my blu ray that

(03:45:22):
I had? Doesn't have that audiocommentary because I would have found out that
it's a Bob Clark's story. SoI had always heard that Erwin Ya Blondze
had given Clark the title of Halloweenand said to place it during that time
of year. So having listened toyour Fade to Black episode, though it

(03:45:43):
seems like Erwin YOUA blonds likes totake credit for a lot of stuff,
so whether I'm not saying he didn't, it could be two people have the
same idea. But I was wrong. According to Bob Clark himself John Carpenter,
and he had this conversation. Atsome point, you're big enough to
admit it. I told people ifthey know where what about the story,
to let me know. And yeah, I get so much response from my

(03:46:07):
own show that it's it's over.I couldn't. I couldn't find at all
from from all the responses. Oh, because it was overwhelming. Okay,
I got you, I got YOUASo do love the whole idea of holiday
horror movies. You know, yourChristmas, your Thanksgiving, your Easter,
Paul Day. It gives a nicelittle something that you can tack plot points

(03:46:31):
onto or have a gag, asight gag, or or even a kill
New Year's Evil. There. Imean, there's a ton and they're sometimes
a lot of fun, sometimes achore to get through, and sometimes they're
completely unrelated to the holiday that they'rethat they've tacked onto. The title.
All right, let's go ahead andtake another break and play a preview for

(03:46:54):
next week's show. Join us spotUp, Fantastic Adventures, Up Blush,
Slash uses Football, Do Fight HisEnemy? Minims of a studis Are you
a man on the light by theMills who Flash Years strateg you are proved

(03:47:16):
successful? Will he survived? Findup? No what a Viater near You?
Music by Queen Rated PG. That'sright. We'll be back next week
with a look at Flash Gordon.Until then, I want to thank this
week's co host Mark and Maitland.So, Maitland, what is happening with
you? Ma'am well? I amputting together a substack platform that is my
introduction to gay adult novels of theseventies, and I invite everybody to please

(03:47:41):
come and take a look at itstarting in January. I am so old.
I don't know what a sub stackplatform is. Is that you like
yip yap? It's like substack.It's a subscription newsletter thing where you can
look at material produced by right islike me on a regular basis. And

(03:48:03):
Mark, what's going on with you? Sir? Well? If anybody in
your audience isn't aware that we justdid a Alan ormsby Bob Clark series over
on my show Wake Up Heavy,I want to make them aware of that.
We talked about children shouldn't play withDead, Things, Deranged and Death
Dream with you as a co hoston all three and with a third co

(03:48:26):
host, different co host for eachone. So Children had Heather Drain,
Deranged had Christas Show, and DeathDream had Sam Deagan. Those are all
available, and I also have theSimon FitzJohn interview that runs through each of
those episodes. I now have itup as its own track. You can

(03:48:48):
listen to that whole thing all theway through and coming up, I believe
I'll be talking to Anthony King again, the host of the Movies podcast,
and we're going to be doing anepisode on Rolling Thunder that'll probably be out
sometime around the same time as thisepisode. Well, thank you so much

(03:49:09):
folks for being on the show.Thanks to everybody for listening. To enquire
about advertising on the Projection Booth.Email sales at advertisecast dot com. Thanks
especially to our Patreon community. Ifyou want to join the community, visit
patreon dot com slash Projection Booth.Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth
and Billy take over the world.Other days, don't kill me with chill,

(03:50:05):
I'm killing chill with great ron dealthe time of year, can see
your friends, my fasts A turnto tell kill a ways. Something here
is fair from print to st blast, there where I'm thinking nights, wait
to see brother up the drips fromthe Christmas bread. Yeah, I just

(03:50:30):
don't joy for me christ Us,fly for me, no hope, no
chill, Christmas seas flaver yell sittingnow all the don't in your house,

(03:51:11):
no body stroll and dart all balls, got no money, you got no
friends, got no do don't getyou go for tel, sit l all
alone, tron you adorn around yourball and your father. Send me your
drowned in homes. Don't get thehead of my back back room down this

(03:51:35):
no joy for me Christmas in flyfor me, no home, no shit.
Chrismack is flack. Every girl andno one dies on Christmas and only

(03:52:05):
his time on yew And it wascries on Christmas halls, chrispas on Christmas
t girl with stake the halls withboughs of black your sier step to deal

(03:52:56):
of flagsta, don't do it justeighteen. You want to hear what you
can hear? Ho stranger your familyway, it's body chip teen, Oh
wonder where you body? When yougo wrong? We can we do you
talk with strangers? You don't,don't you? Yeah, it's not a

(03:53:20):
joy for me Christmas flack for me, no hope. Don't share Christmas flight every Gell

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