The balmy temperatures notwithstanding, Christmas is just two weeks away and we’re well into the thick of it. Jingle bells on the radio, essays on the singular horror of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime, Very Special Episodes of your favourite shows … it’s all rolling at us full force.
But we can still push back. We don’t have to tip over into holly jolly syrup just yet. We can have our weird Christmas this week.
Tonight (Friday, December 11) at 7 pm, for example, The Royal is staging what amounts to an act of seasonal disobedience. Joining forces with This Exists – a YouTube channel dedicated to rescuing and exhibiting the strangest and silliest aspects of popular culture from the memory hole, they’re screening … well, I can’t tell you what they’re screening because then it might not happen. But if you take a look at their Facebook page, you might be able to figure it out. And you’ll probably want to be there for it.
Maybe you’d rather scream than laugh. That’s where Black Christmas comes in. Bob Clark’s horror classic – arguably the first slasher movie, and unquestionably the film that inspired John Carpenter’s Halloween – has just been reissued on Blu-ray and DVD by Anchor Bay Canada (in a “Season’s Grieving’s” edition, ho ho ho) and has booked a couple of theatrical engagements to boost awareness.
On Tuesday (December 15), the film screens at 9 pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the presence of star Keir Dullea – in an archival 35mm print! – and if you can’t make that, it’ll be at The Royal at 7 pm next Saturday (December 19), hosted by co-stars Lynne Griffin and Nick Mancuso. (Self-promotion alert: Mancuso’s my guest this week on my podcast, Someone Else’s Movie, talking about Federico Fellini’s 8½. Here’s the iTunes link to the show, if you’re curious.)
See? You don’t have to just submit to the usual Christmas rigmarole. You can be weird about it. Not as weird as a family of Wookiees watching Bea Arthur on their holo-television, I’ll grant you, but that’s a pretty high bar to clear.
