AMC debuts history of holiday horror
Just in time for Christmas season, “Eli Roth’s History of Horror (10 p.m., AMC, TV-MA) rounds up grisly films with a holiday theme. This survey may make you revisit some critically denigrated slasher movies with and without Jamie Lee Curtis (“Halloween”) in the cast.
Filled with interviews and a wealth of clips from five decades of demented entertainment, this holiday “History” oozes with a certain knowing fandom. Who knew that the director behind the beloved “A Christmas Story” all but invented the holiday slasher movie?
Made in Canada, the 1974 shocker “Black Christmas” appalled holiday audiences with a tale of a sorority house terrorized by a homicidal obscene prank caller. Employing techniques lifted from Italian horror master Mario Bava, director Bob Clark never revealed the killer’s face, but instead showed the grisly events from his point of view. The film included
Keir Dullea (“2001”) and Olivia Hussey (“Romeo and Juliet”) as well as pre-“Superman” Margot Kidder and pre-“SCTV” Andrea Martin. Released just a year after the Roe v. Wade decision, “Black Christmas” had a subplot about Hussey’s character contemplating an abortion.
“Black” was not the only holiday horror movie to flirt with topicality and political and social satire, or to feature talent that transcended the genre. “Terror Train,” another Canadian shocker, about glib medical students on a New Year’s Eve party train, was the directorial debut of Roger Spottiswoode, who hired John Alcott, famous for being Stanley Kubrick’s cinematographer on “Barry Lyndon,” a masterpiece of natural lighting featuring scenes illuminated only be candlelight. “Terror Train” takes place in railway cars and was shot entirely at night, giving many scenes the appearance of lurid gothic paintings.
This “History” recalls other films, including “Krampus,” “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” “My Bloody Valentine,” “April Fool’s Day” and “Happy Death Day.” Many are shot through with revenge themes about outcasts getting back at those who
shunned them.
› Satire of another sort emerges on “Fairfax,” an animated comedy streaming today on Amazon Prime. Set in the world of adolescent would-be influencers, it follows four kids desperate to follow the next “drop” or product launch from “Latrine,” a hypertrendy corporate giant.
The story allows these kids to snicker at the conformist world of the desperate hipster adults in their midst. Like every such comedy from “The Simpsons” to “South Park” to “Family Guy,” it lampoons current pop culture figures
at a furious pace. Spoiler alert: In the first episode, Joaquin Phoenix’s “art” project proves incendiary.
At the same time, the kids’ hunger to consume proves a tad dispiriting. It’s interesting to note how many satires of mega-corporations have come from Amazon, one of the biggest business behemoths of all. Between “Upload,” “The Boys” and “Fairfax,” it has not been afraid to laugh at itself, or to co-opt the resistance to its ubiquity and influence.