While it’s true that we’re a generally a non-traditional bunch, Christmas has always been something of a special time here at Midnight Mass HQ. Beyond the fact that the holiday signifies the birthday of Peaches’ most fierce relative, we tend to appreciate the season for its ability to bring people together to celebrate in warmth and good cheer.
However, you need not worry that we’ve somehow gone soft on you. We’re still very much a merry bunch of miscreants, and one of the reasons we love Christmas so much is for the overwhelming abundance of seasonal scare films. For regular devotees of both the site and Peaches’ live shows, it’s a well-known fact that the only thing we like better than a white Christmas is a bloody one. With past stage show extravaganza presentations of films like Christmas Evil, Edward Scissorhands, and The Shining, Peaches has given the denizens of San Francisco a bevy of gore-soaked holidays spectaculars to rival the Rockettes. Furthermore, in addition to participating in some of the aforementioned shows, I have (to a much lesser degree) attempted to carry on this celebration in an annual Christmas article highlighting some of horror cinema’s finer festive frights. In previous years, I’ve treated you to a Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise retrospective, provided you with “the most comprehensive interview in existence” with Christmas Evil director Lewis Jackson (his words), and done a variety of re-caps of Peaches’ live holiday shows.
This year, I want to go back to basics and talk to you a little bit about a man who, for many, is the very embodiment of Christmas cinema.
No, I’m not talking about Frank Capra. Though I’m sure Frank was swell, he just doesn’t have the grit I know you children of the popcorn like and deserve.
A towering figure of the cult film community, the man in question is the incomparable Bob Clark.
Now, before you raise your hand with questions, let me stop you right there. Even if you don’t know Bob Clark’s name, I can 100% guarantee you’ve seen at least one of his movies. In fact, one of his films is so popular, TBS force feeds it to viewers for a full 24 hours straight on Christmas Day. Does that sound familiar? Or did you shoot your eye out?
That’s right, Bob Clark is the man responsible for the perennial classic, A Christmas Story. Though not a cult film in the traditional sense, the film’s garish presentation and fervent fan base certainly suggest that the story of Ralphie and his BB gun fit the criteria. With a viewership that grows annually, some of the film’s outlandish dialogue seems tailor-made for theatrical callbacks, and I submit that the sequence with Santa Claus is one of the most nightmarish holiday fever dreams this side of dinner with my extended family. Furthermore, the presence of Darren McGavin (film legend and TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker) gives A Christmas Story some serious horror cred, even as the seasoned actor chews up the scenery in defense of his precious leg lamp.
The genius of A Christmas Story is that it is representative of childhood nostalgia in the most pure way possible. It’s sentimental, silly, and most truthfully, just a little bit off. Through his lens, Clark presents us a vision of youth that is both magical and bizarre, and it touches a nerve in ways most family stories fall flat. After all, growing up is a little bizarre, and I think, as an audience, we appreciate that he acknowledged that oft unspoken truth. A Christmas Story endures year after year, not only because we relate, but also love it for its unabashed strangeness. In a season of saccharine TV specials and forced sweetness, it’s a welcome breath of fresh air. Family is strange, Christmas is stressful, Santa’s a weirdo…we get it Bob, and we are so grateful that you do too.
Of course, if A Christmas Story was Bob Clark’s sole contribution to seasonal cinema, he’d already be assured a spot in the Holiday Hall of Fame. However, nearly a decade before Clark delivered Ralphie unto the world, he had sent cinemas a Christmas card of a decidedly darker nature.
For those only familiar with Bob Clark’s Yule tidings from TBS marathons, I can imagine that the discovery of 1974’s Black Christmas is something of a shock. Made a full four years before John Carpenter laid the foundations of the slasher film with Halloween, Clark’s tale of a sorority house under siege serves as a perfect prototype of the cinematic blood flood that would follow.
Starring Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and genre icon John Saxon, Black Christmas concerns itself with sorority girls who are receiving harassing phone calls in the days before they leave for holiday break. Things escalate when the girls start getting murdered by an unseen killer, and suddenly ski trips and mistletoe are the last things on their mind. Whereas moments of pervasiveness and oddity serve as trimmings on the tree of A Christmas Story, they are the very heart of what makes Black Christmas such a chilling spectacle. A full two decades before Scream embraced the terror of a menacing phone call, Bob Clark was using it to unnerving effect, the somber ring deadening the warmth of the holiday scenery. Furthermore, despite the presence of twinkling lights and seasonal decorations, Black Christmas still somehow looks frighteningly stark. The decorations, although familiar, further contribute to the feeling of isolation in the house as the killer stalks from the shadows. Black Christmas is a purposely cold movie, and uses the deadening emptiness of winter as its masterstroke. In the silence of snowfall and what lurks beyond, all the comfortable iconography of the holiday takes on a freakish, nightmare tone, forevermore making us feel a little bit unnerved by our faerie lights.
It is often said that it’s awful to be alone during the holidays, but Black Christmas makes that sentiment seem horrifyingly true.
In considering A Christmas Story and Black Christmas, it’s really rather remarkable that one man is responsible for both. The former is a celebration of all the things we love and hold dear about the season, whereas the latter is the embodiment of all we hope our holidays don’t become. Yet, as noted when assessing both movies, Clark approaches each film with a manic glee. Perhaps, ultimately, this is what Bob Clark wants us to understand about Christmas: No matter what, it’s always extreme.
…and you know? Considering all the pomp and circumstance that goes into the holiday, both on the personal and world level, I can accept that assessment.
Of course, for the ardent cult film fan, Bob Clark was certainly much more than just a man who could make a finely tuned Christmas flick. I’d be failing all my dear children of the popcorn if I didn’t at least mention the bevy of other wonderfully weird films he contributed to the canon.
For example, the year before he unleashed Black Christmas, Clark was responsible for a sleazy little drive-in gem titled Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. Though a fairly standard tale of Satanic ritual and the living dead, the film has crossed into cult legend due to Clark’s considerably wacky filmmaking, and has seen new life time and again both on home video and DVD. Certainly not a horror masterpiece on par with Black Christmas, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things nonetheless showcases an emerging talent cutting his teeth on some very bloody subject matter.
Ironically though, despite being a heavy hitter in both horror and Christmas-themed films, the thing that Bob Clark is most identified with is sex.
For a whole generation, the 1980s were not only the decade of the slasher film, but also the era of the teen sex comedy. Long before American Pie revitalized the subgenre, there was a flood of theatrical and late-night cable flicks that brought the raunchiness, and towering above all contenders, like a phallic pinnacle of greatness, was a little film called Porky’s.
Directed by Clark, Porky’s tells the tale of a group of high school boys who set out to help their friend lose his virginity, only to run afoul of a villainous bar owner. While seemingly standard in plot, it was the suggestive filth of the details that made Porky’s the most sought after of the sex comedies. I’ve heard many a male friend share that this movie was the first time they saw a pair of tits, and I’ve heard many more speak of the film’s events as if it were their own coming of age experience. A staple of USA Up All Night and endlessly paraded on late night television, Porky’s was the Peyton Place of the New Wave generation, and a delicious slice of a time when even the suggestion of sex seemed to challenge our innocence. Such was the success of Porky’s that Clark went on to make a sequel, and in doing so, became the patron saint for a whole generation of horny teens.
With some very firm contributions to the world of film, Clark’s further cinematic offerings tend to vary in degrees. He revisited Ralphie and company in the lesser seen It Runs in The Family, and is also the man responsible for giving us the movie where Sylvester Stallone thought he could sing, Rhinestone (co-starring Dolly Parton, mentioned by Jim Hansen in my last article). Although seeing Sly ham it up with Dolly certainly merits a midnight screening of its own, few of Clark’s films ever quite match the grandeur of his most famous works.
However, as mentioned above, when the movies made include some of the powerhouses in Bob Clark’s oeuvre, there is nothing to prove and everything to celebrate.
Unfortunately, Bob Clark was tragically killed in a car accident in 2007, and is no longer with us to see his work continually celebrated generation after generation. Yet, as millions across the country prepare to tune in to watch A Christmas Story with their loved ones on the 25th, his legacy seems more assured than ever.
As a filmmaker whose work seems so connected to the experience of discovery, it seems only fair that we use this platform to help those who don’t know his name discover Bob Clark. For many, Clark’s works are the truest embodiment of everything we have to love…and fear…about this joyous season. In taking a multi-faceted approach, Clark ensured that each and every one of us, whether it be the nostalgic or depraved, have a Christmas movie to call our own.
And, of course, as mentioned, we know that Bob Clark’s credits extend past the holiday, and that’s why we took a moment to give a nod to some of his other contributions. However, if we’re being honest (and as Andrew Lincoln suggested in Love, Actually, “At Christmas, you tell the truth”), December is when Bob Clark’s star shines brightest. From a drunken Margot Kidder to the dangers of an icy flagpole, the season and all its sharing and scaring belong to him.
That’s why, this Christmas, we take our hats off to the cinematic legend that is Bob Clark. If you weren’t already familiar, do yourself the most festive of favors, and delve into this man’s remarkable body of work. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
And to Bob, we say:
Congratulations, Father Christmas…this is your MAJOR AWARD.
Happy Holidays.
