Joe Bob's Red Christmas

Cody celebrates the season with a Joe Bob Christmas special.

Following the server-breaking success of legendary drive-in critic and movie host Joe Bob Briggs’ “The Last Drive-in” dusk-to-dawn-to-dusk marathon in July of 2018, the Shudder streaming service gave the greenlight to two Last Drive-in holiday specials that would build up to a weekly series that would begin airing in early 2019. Those two specials were Thanksgiving and Christmas themed - so the following year, after the first season of the weekly series had wrapped up, we got the first Halloween special: Joe Bob's Halloween Hootenanny. And rather than continue with a tradition of Thanksgiving specials, The Last Drive-in just leap-frogged Thanksgiving and went right to Christmas. Joe Bob's Red Christmas aired on December 13, 2019.

The special begins with Joe Bob saying that this a public service, as it will save people from going off the deep end and killing the relatives they’re stuck spending the holiday with. He and Darcy the Mail Girl then start planning the cosplay / special effect they want to wrap up this triple feature special with, which will see Darcy replicating the “Linnea Quigley impaled on antlers” moment from the slasher classic Silent Night, Deadly Night, and they enlist production designer Yuki Nakamura to find the required antlers... But before Joe Bob can start introducing the movies that make up the triple feature, he has to go off on one of his comedic rants. This time, he confronts claims that the 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was bigoted by pushing the claims even further, revealing the special’s (fictional) insidious origins and hidden meanings. By the time he finishes that rant, we’re already 12 minutes into Red Christmas.

Then, he finally gets around to introducing the first movie, which is Black Christmas.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

During his introduction, Joe Bob says that director Bob Clark’s Black Christmas has a memorable ending and a really impressive camera move at the beginning. It’s technically a slasher, but not Joe Bob doesn’t accept the idea that it was “the first slasher,” as some fans will claim, because Psycho, Blood Feast, A Bay of Blood, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre already existed by the time this movie came along. It does serve as the foundation of Canadian horror, even if he’s not sure people care about such a thing. (Darcy assures him that Canadian horror is quite popular.) But even though it was filmed in Canada, it was set in America, which is why you’ll spot American flags in the set decorations.

Joe Bob goes over Bob Clark’s career, which included Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, Deathdream, Porky’s, A Christmas Story, and Baby Geniuses. He rejects the idea that John Carpenter stole ideas Clark had for a sequel to use as the basis for Halloween (and Clark himself didn’t believe Carpenter ripped him off, either), and he shocks the audience by giving the film a 3 star rating rather than a perfect 4 stars. (It deserves the full 4.) Even though Black Christmas is very popular among horror fans and is so highly respected that multiple documentaries have been made about it, Joe Bob gives the impression that he finds it to be a bit overrated.

The story takes place in the fictional college town of Bedford (a nod to the town of Bedford Falls in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.) Most of the action takes place in and around the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority house and at the beginning of the film, we see through the POV of a stranger as they climb a trellis on the outside of the house and enter the place through an attic window. That’s the impressive camera move Joe Bob was talking about. Using a phone that’s upstairs, this intruder makes obscene phone calls to the girls downstairs. Sometimes these calls will consist of screams and moaning sounds, sometimes there will be vulgar sexual comments... and sometimes the killer’s insane ramblings seem to be revealing information about his past. He seems to refer to himself as Billy, he had a younger sister named Agnes, and at some point he seems to have done something terrible to Agnes. Something that his parents were shocked and horrified to find out about. Unfortunately, “Billy” is not just a prank caller. Every now and then, he’ll come down from the attic and kill one of the inhabitants of the sorority house when they’re on their own. 

During his hosting segments, Joe Bob explains how opening POV shot was accomplished, digs into the careers of several cast members (Olivia Hussey, who took the job at the recommendation of a psychic; John Saxon, who just got off a plane two hours before he shot his first scene because he was replacing Edmond O’Brien, whose memory problems were the beginning of Alzheimer's; Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin, who was a last minute replacement for Gilda Radner), and confirms that Clark did have a back story for the killer worked out, which comes through in the calls. He says that the voice on the phone is a mixture of Clark’s own voice, three actors and actresses, and Nick Mancuso, who stood on his head while delivering the lines. He would like to understand all of the words in the obscene phone calls and ponders if one line contains the word pink or pig, which is an issue friends and I have disagreed on before. (I think the word is “pig.”) 

We learn that the initial script, written by Roy Moore, was based on an urban legend about a babysitter, but it was changed on the way to the screen to be set in a sorority house. Clark added in a couple of the alcoholic characters and drew inspiration from people he had known in his own life. The musical score was created through the use of clocks, forks, combs, knives, a piano, and distorted tape). A planned TV broadcast was delayed after real-life serial killer Ted Bundy invaded a sorority house, and when the movie did air on network television it was called Stranger in the House. Steve Martin and Elvis Presley are both known to have been big fans of the film... but Joe Bob isn’t fond of its “less is more” approach.

I think that one of the great things about this movie is the fact that the killer’s identity is never revealed. His face, his name, his motive, they remain a mystery. The murders he commits are just random acts of violence carried out against people who have no idea he even exists. Joe Bob disagrees so strongly that he gives it a 1 point deduction since Billy wasn’t revealed to be someone in the lives of the sorority girls. He thinks there’s off-kilter acting and fuzzy logic, and doesn’t find the movie’s sense of humor to be amusing. He also feels that back story should have been more obvious, while I love the fact that you have to pay close attention to the phone calls and watch the movie multiple times to really put together the information.

Joe Bob doesn’t think Black Christmas is a classic, but does admit that it has some great scenes. Darcy, as expected, likes the 2006 remake better than the original. Joe Bob also names the film’s tagline, “If this movie doesn't make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight,” as the worst tagline in history.

After the movie, Darcy shares some heartwarming letters from viewers with Joe Bob, then Yuki comes in with a tiny set of antlers that definitely would not work for the impalement that Joe Bob and Darcy are planning. So they send him off to find a different pair. 

JACK FROST (1997)

I’m always advocating for the idea that double features – or, in this case, triple features – should start off with the slower, more serious and prestigious movies, then get crazier and goofier as they go on. Several times throughout the first season of The Last Drive-in, the programming got things backwards, saving the slower and more serious movies for the second half of a double feature... but for the Red Christmas special, they got things just right. The slower and darker Black Christmas is followed by two movies that are completely bonkers.

Directed by Michael Cooney, who wrote the screenplay with Jeremy Paige, Jack Frost is, as Joe Bob describes it, “The story of what happens when a sadistic, cannibalistic serial killer on his way to the execution chamber gets mangled into a gelatinous mess when his prison transport vehicle crashes into a truck carrying a top secret experimental DNA scrambler, and since it’s Christmastime in Colorado, it gets all mixed up with the thick snow on the ground, and pretty soon we got a giant snowman with revenge on his mind.” And that it is. Serial killer Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) is transformed into a homicidal snowman and goes to the small town of Snowmonton, the Snowman Capitol of the Midwest, to get revenge on the lawman who arrested him in the first place, Sheriff Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport). 

Along the way to his confrontation with Tiler, Jack Frost knocks off multiple victims by freezing them, firing icicles into them, and more. The most well-known scene from the film involves the snowman assaulting a young woman (played by Shannon Elizabeth) while she’s in a bathtub.

I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan of Jack Frost, but it's so silly that I can't help but feel like revisiting it from time to time and getting another dose of its groan-inducing humor.

Joe Bob was hoping to make the Red Christmas special a Christmas party that would have been attended by other horror hosts, but none were able to accept his invitation. So, during the hosting segments, Joe Bob plays up his disappointment with this turn of events for comedic effect. Before he introduces Jack Frost, he lets viewers know that he has invited some fellow horror hosts to come over, including “the queen of them all” and a 50-year horror hosting veteran. He won’t name names, but confirms that there’s a “very, very famous guest” on her way over to the set... but his party plans will fall apart as the special continues to play out. Soon, Joe Bob will be informing us that the queen of horror hosts can’t make it this year and that another guest was delayed at the airport. Then he calls off the party entirely.

When he’s not talking about his crumbling Christmas party plans, Joe Bob asks, “hy is it always a snowman?” He says that anybody seen sledding in a Christmas horror movie has to be decapitated, as established by the 1984 classic Silent Night, Deadly Night. He reveals that Jack Frost was going to have a budget of $30 million and be directed by Renny Harlin, but when those funds fell through, Cooney took the helm himself – and ended up shooting the movie during the warmest winter in the history of its filming location, Big Bear in California. He gives an overview of Cooney’s career and discusses the many character actors that make up the cast. He enjoys the quirky musical tracks, which he describes as being country music for children combined with country music for drunks. He mentions that Cooney is the son of a British farce writer, which he feels comes through in the movie. It shows small town America as filtered through a British farce sensibility. It has dry but wacky comedy, showing the viewer ridiculous situations that are understated in the dialogue. All of the townspeople are oddballs, which reminds Joe Bob of the works Preston Sturges, particularly the 1944 film The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. All this talk of British farces inspires Joe Bob to drop some “important British pop culture information” that has nothing to do with Jack Frost. He also gets sidetracked by thoughts of the former Dr. Pepper mascot, Frosty Dog float.

Of course, there’s also talk of Shannon Elizabeth and that famous scene where she talks a bath with a carrot and the world’s most pissed off snow cone. 

When the horror host party is called off, Joe Bob asks music supervisor John Brennan for a sad Christmas song. Since they can’t get the rights to cover any known Christmas songs, we get some lyrics about Darcy’s upcoming antler impalement, then John and Joe Bob collaborate on a new song called “Lonely Red Christmas.”

One of the last pieces of trivia is a sad one: in real-life, actor Christopher Allport was killed in a snow avalanche, just a handful of years after he battled Jack Frost in this movie and its 2000 sequel. Then Darcy, in snowman cosplay, joins Joe Bob so she can introduce the Silver Bolo Award, which will be given to notable horror blogs, websites, etc. Joe Bob mentions that Darcy has her own blog, called Kinky Horror, then Darcy gives the first Silver Bolo Award to the online magazine Dinosaur Dracula.

Before we can get to the next movie, Joe Bob tells a joke about pig with a wooden leg. 

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 (1987)

The time has come for the final movie in this triple feature, but first, Joe Bob has something to say about unnamed government officials who have turned nasty and keep telling the public we’re screwing up and need to be punished, like that person in every family who just won’t behave. He compares the government situation to family dynamics and says we need more officials who act like understanding dads rather than vengeance-seeking spinster aunts.

Joe Bob then dives into Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 by giving us a recap of what the first movie was all about (young boy sees his parents murdered by a man in a Santa Claus costume, endures a horrific childhood in an orphanage, has to play Santa at the toy store he’s hired to work at, then sets out to deliver homicidal punishments to naughty people while wearing his Santa suit), the protests by appalled parents that got the movie pulled from theatres, and the success the movie had on VHS. Video distributor LIVE Entertainment, headed up by José Menendez, wanted a sequel but didn’t want to go through the trouble of having to film one and didn’t have much money to fund the endeavor anyway, so a producer tasked a couple of editors with building a sequel while using as much footage from the first movie as possible. Editor Lee Harry was then given $100,000 and seven day shooting schedule to fill out the story with new footage.

That’s why the first 40 minutes of Part 2 plays like a filler "clip show" episode of a television series. Traumatized by the events of the previous film, Ricky Caldwell, the younger brother of Billy Chapman, who put on a Santa Claus costume and went on a killing spree before being shot dead in front of Ricky, is now a patient in a mental hospital. During an interview with his new psychiatrist Dr. Henry Bloom, Ricky tells the whole story of the first movie, and audiences basically get to watch Silent Night, Deadly Night all over again, it's just been cut down a bit. We finally get some new footage when Ricky tells of the murders he has committed – and by the end of the movie, he has escaped from the mental hospital, put on a Santa costume, and headed out to do some more killing.

I’m not really a fan of this one – in fact, I think it’s awful. But I also think it should be seen at least once just so you can witness the audacity of the filmmakers. And, yes, I have seen it many more times than once. I’m a glutton for cinematic punishment.

As Joe Bob says, this may be the only sequel in existence that works better if you didn’t see the first movie, since it shows you most of the first movie all over again. Most of the film’s fans enjoy it due to the out of control, over the top performance delivered by Eric Freeman as Ricky. Not only does he have an unforgettable sneer, but he also raises his eyebrows 130 times during his dialogue scenes. Joe Bob also likes watching Eric Freeman because he reminds him of basketball player Bill Lambert – and mention of a basketball player allows him to discuss the Menendez murders and the fact that the Menendez brothers were featured in the background on a basketball card that was taken out of circulation after the murders.

As the movie plays out, Joe Bob informs us that the director was scared when he got to the set and realized he was in charge – which makes sense, because he was an editor who stumbled into becoming the director of this movie. He went on to direct more movies, but has done more editing than directing. This project was so overwhelming, he has said that he didn’t have time to talk to the actors about their roles. Meanwhile, a fellow editor was on set, encouraging Eric Freeman to go bigger and crazier with his performance. Apparently Freeman was embarrassed of this movie for a while, as he felt his performance was too over-the-top because he didn’t have guidance from the director.

Joe Bob discusses some of the cast members and points out some of the many wacky moments. He mentions that filming took place in Sierra Madre because the idea was that it would look like a typical American town... but it doesn’t, because nothing in Southern California does. He also points out that a lot of people who worked on the Silent Night, Deadly Night movies were not horror fans, including the director of the first movie. They didn’t like the story because they felt it was too violent... and yet, while bringing it to the screen, they somehow made it even more violent.

In the end, Joe Bob is feeling down-beat and says this is the lamest Christmas special in the history of Joe Bob Christmas specials. He invited thirty people to the party and none of them showed. So, he decides to wallow in his depression by telling a sad Christmas story, of a time when he was flat broke during the recession. He tried to take the bus to an important meeting, but he didn’t even have enough money to pay the bus fare. When he was told to pay up or get off the bus, a stranger in a horror shirt offered to pay the fare for him, but Joe Bob got off the bus instead. He then encourages Darcy to tell a sad Christmas story... and Darcy has dealt with some very sad stuff in her past. There was a time when she was living in crappy hotel rooms with her young, autistic son and they weren’t allowed to leave. Her significant other would put tape on the door when he left so he would know if they had opened it. She eventually escaped from her abusive husband, who she says retaliated by kidnapping their child for over a year. But Darcy got her kid back, she got a house, she worked at a sock factory to make money, then became a stripper against her family’s wishes. A job at a nude car wash would start her down the path that led her to the days of working with Joe Bob on The Last Drive-in. 

The special ends with the event they had been talking about since the beginning: Darcy gets impaled on a set of antlers by a killer Santa played by Joe Bob himself. The impalement cheers Joe Bob up – and the special closes with a John Brennan song.

Joe Bob was wrong. His fellow horror hosts may not have shown up for a party, but that doesn’t mean Red Christmas ended up being lame. In fact, it’s a pretty cool Christmas special. I may not like it as much as the previous Last Drive-in Christmas special, but that’s simply because I enjoy the movies that were shown in that one (four of the five Phantasm movies) more than Jack Frost and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. Black Christmas is tougher competition, because I do make sure to watch that movie every December.