Editorials
Holiday Horror Streaming Picks for Hulu, Amazon and Netflix
With December finally here, it’s time to load up on the holiday horror. It’s the time to celebrate yuletide terror, killer Santa’s, and spilling massive amounts of blood in the snow. So I scoured Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix for your streaming horror watchlists to help you have a scary little Christmas. What I’ve discovered is that Hulu opts for surprising offerings, Amazon nails it on quantity, and Netflix really likes anthologies. There’s a surprising lack of a lot of definitive classics across the streaming platforms, though you can count on Amazon to offer micro-budget films like A Cadaver Christmas, or Krampus cash-ins like Krampus Unleashed. Luckily there’s enough selection to load up this holiday season, and here’s your guide on what to watch this holiday season:
HULU
P2
Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) learns a harsh lesson of the importance of letting go of work and spending time with family over the holidays when she’s locked in the office garage by a psychopath on Christmas Eve. Written by Alexandre Aja (High Tension) and Franck Khalfoun (2012’s Maniac), who also directed, this is one holiday horror movie that deserves more love than it’s gotten over the years. I concede that it’s not necessarily the most memorable of plots; however, Kahlfoun and Aja have an uncanny knack for delivering tension and uncomfortable moments. Wes Bentley nails his character as the somewhat sympathetic psychopath obsessed with his prey. This one is also scheduled to leave Hulu at the end of the month, so jump on this.
ATM
Both the title and plot should indicate what kind of mindless B-movie this is, and that’s not always a bad thing. This Christmas time set thriller sees a stockbroker, David, taking his crush Emily and another co-worker, Corey, home from the office Christmas party. Corey forces David to stop by an ATM booth, where the trio gets trapped inside while a killer in a parka lurks outside, murdering anyone nearby. Yeah, it’s about as silly as it sounds. Which means it’s the perfect thriller to watch with a group of friends and spiked eggnog. The cast is surprisingly strong, like Alice Eve as Emily, despite a core of characters that make the dumbest choices. ATM isn’t the greatest holiday horror film by any stretch, but in the right setting it can be an entertaining watch.
New Year’s Evil
Originally released on December 26, 1980, this New Year’s Eve set slasher follows a Los Angeles radio DJ that receives a phone call from a killer who calls in to state they’ll be killing someone every time the clock rings in the New Year in a different time zone. A bit more sleazy and schlocky in tone, this slasher does take the Hitchcockian bomb theory approach in that you see who the killer is early on, setting up some great cat and mouse tension. It also offers a ton by way of gore and punk rock. Plus, with Christmas hogging the spotlight, New Year’s doesn’t get near as much love.
AMAZON
Jack Frost
What if Jack Frost wasn’t the personification of ice, sleet, and freezing winter, but a serial killer on his way to his execution that crashes into genetic material, causing him to mutate and fuse with the surrounding snow? Intentional low-budget cheese-fest, Jack Frost opts for borderline offensive humor (I’m looking at you, sexual assault by carrot scene), silly humor, and over the top kills by a murderous snowman. Because of that, it’s the perfect antithesis to the holiday spirit. Really, though, it’s the definitive holiday horror film that has to be seen at least once to be believed. The special effects mostly fall in line with the small budget, but they do spend most of it on the gruesome, great transformation sequence of Jack Frost from human to snowman. If you’re team Jack Frost, Amazon also offers the non-Christmas follow up, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.
All Through the House
A throwback to ‘80s slasher featuring a deranged Santa-masked killer, this micro-budget slasher should tick off a lot of boxes on the yuletide terror watch list. It’s not the most original, nor perfect, but it totally delivers on the gore. Slashing, slicing, dicing, and buckets of blood, this Santa delivers. All Through the House also nails the nods to other slasher classics, like Black Christmas or Deep Red. It may be low budget, but it doesn’t skimp on the practical effects. At least not with the copious amount of blood flow. If the concept of Santa getting brutal with his kills appeals to you, this should make your must list. This Santa loves hedge clippers and violence, to give you an idea.
Silent Night
Technically, this is only available on Amazon video through a Tribeca Shortlist subscription, but they offer a 7-day free trial, so there’s your loophole. This killer Santa slasher is a very loose remake of definitive holiday horror classic Silent Night, Deadly Night and features a horror worthy cast featuring Malcom McDowell, Jaime King (2009’s My Bloody Valentine, Sin City), and Donal Logue (Blade, Zodiac). McDowell plays the scene chewing Sheriff on the trails of the serial killing Santa on Christmas Eve, and Logue is the cynyical jerk Santa turned red herring. The movie doesn’t stick its landing, but it does make excellent use of a wood chipper, its killer Santa, and a ton of blood. The cast makes this loose remake a lot more fun that it probably could have been otherwise.
NETFLIX
A Christmas Horror Story
A holiday-themed anthology that intertwines its stories via a radio DJ played by William Shatner, produced by the people behind the Ginger Snaps trilogy. As with nearly all anthologies, not all segments work, but for the most part this Christmas horror movie works. The segment featuring the changeling that’s swapped with a child during a family Christmas tree outing is surprisingly creepy, and the segment featuring Santa versus zombie elves is a lot of fun. Of course, having someone like Shatner tie the tales all together probably tells you all you need to know about this one.
Gremlins
What else is left to say about Joe Dante’s classic, holiday and otherwise? It’s one of the absolute best, and thanks to Dante and practical effects, still holds up decades later. It’s a great gateway horror film for kids, making this the perfect family horror film for the holidays. Phoebe Cates’ Kate has a disturbingly dark background with Christmas, while Gizmo’s so adorable that kids won’t even notice the adult moments. For those that want their spiked eggnog and their cookies, Gremlins is the perfect pairing.
Holidays
This anthology covers a wide range of holidays, but it’s the last two segments that make this applicable to this list. Scott Stewart’s (Legion, Dark Skies) approach to Christmas sees Seth Green’s Pete contend with a deadly holiday gift of virtual glasses. The real highlight, though, is Adam Egypt Mortimer’s helming of New Year’s Eve, written by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer (Starry Eyes). Serial killer Reggie has the tables turned when he picks up an awkward girl for a New Year’s date on a dating website. Lorenza Izzo nails her awkward turned ruthless character, making this uneven anthology end on a strong note.
XX
The first segment in this female-helmed horror anthology, adapted from a Jack Ketchum story by Jovanka Vuckovic, is set during Christmas time. A young boy, Danny, peers inside a man’s gift box while riding home on a train and what he sees causes him to stop eating. It’s unsettling, psychological, and delivers some jarring visuals. Not only is it arguably the strongest segment of the film, it’s also appropriately holiday themed for the season.
What’s on your Holiday watch list this season?
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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