Soldiers Pay; Black Christmas

Soldiers Pay is a hodgepodge documentary short, directed by David O. Russell among others, consisting mostly of interviews with dozens of soldiers about the 2004 Iraq war. There's enough enraging and fascinating material here to choke a Halliburton horse, but not really enough to make it a full-blown documentary. It's more like DVD extras material for Russell's excellent film Three Kings, which it was actually supposed to be. Russell was hoping to use this as ammunition against Bush during the elections, but the studios found out and nixed it; however, Russell managed to release it to the public at a later date, well after the elections. Damn! I still can't believe that $#%&*#@ was re-elected, or that we're in the mess we're in. What to do? Throw up our hands in despair and disgust, and watch another movie.

And the next movie? Black Christmas (1974) by Bob Clark, who is perhaps most famous for directing Porky's. Laugh if you want! Black Christmas practically invented the slasher genre, inspiring such films as When a Stranger Calls. With no outright blood or gore, it's pretty low-key in comparison to modern slasher flicks, but even today, some of the shocks are truly horrific, the obscene phone calls truly obscene.