Last Ounce of Courage (2012)

The United States of America is an extremely politically charged place at the moment. What should be a partisan political system is anything but. The Democrats and Republicans can’t get along. Liberal people want to move things forward with respect for people of all backgrounds, while the conservative types want people to be less offended by everything. It’s the past versus the future with a wrestling match between ideologies taking place in the present.

This battle of two different political outlooks isn’t only taking place in the state houses. It’s taking place on the big screen. Film audiences are pushing for more representation. This has led to people of various races and genders getting to share their stories. The LGBTQ community has begun to find their place in film. Racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes, though still appearing in films, are less frequent than they were in the past. Things are progressing to create a more welcoming film community where stories from all people can be told.

As a counter to that, there are films that fight that idea. The Christian films that frequently straddle the line between mainstream and completely unknown, tend to stick firmly to their beliefs. The filmmakers behind these movies are unwilling to accept that their views might not be as respectful of other cultures as they think. They feel like the liberal majority in Hollywood has a large foothold. They need to share their views as well. The only difference is that the conservative Christian views feel much more like propaganda than the stuff that Hollywood usually puts out.

Last Ounce of Courage was one such Christian film that felt more like propaganda than anything. It came out in 2012 and showed mayor Bob Revere (Marshall R. Teague) fighting back against the people who wanted to cancel Christmas in his town, while mourning his son who passed away in the war fourteen years earlier. His grandson Christian (Hunter Gomez) had recently moved in and was learning the true meaning of Christmas through his grandfather’s actions.

The message of Last Ounce of Courage was clear. Christmas was about Christianity. People were becoming too politically correct, and it was killing Christmas. Thus, it was killing Christianity. The reason that people fought and died in war was for the freedom of Americans. Christianity was a freedom. To disrespect Christmas and Christianity was to disrespect the soldiers who were protecting freedom in America.

There was no subtlety to this messaging. The movie began with Bob Revere riding his motorcycle down the road with a giant American flag waving from the back. Most of the message, however, was in the dialogue. The characters would say things about their rights and about what other people thought of the Christians in America. It was a lot of dialogue about how victimized their community was in the modern world. And it’s that dialogue that will be used to highlight the various talking points that Last Ounce of Courage had.

“You know, I always saw myself as a patriot. I don’t remember anyone telling me freedom had to be fought for and defended. I love my country and I love being free.”

This quote right about summarized the attitude of Last Ounce of Courage. It’s the same sort of attitude that the phrase “Make America great again” has. The character of Bob Revere thought that America was great. Now, with the changing attitude of the general population, he was living in a different America. He was going to have to fight to get his America back.

The other thing that this quote implied, having now watched all of Last Ounce of Courage, was that freedom and Christianity were the same thing. Bob Revere spent the movie fighting back against a nation that was slowly erasing Christian expression. Symbols of Christianity were being removed from public places and Christmas was less about Christ. Bob was going to fight for his freedom by going against society and sharing his religious paraphernalia.

“Can you imagine? It offended somebody.”

The idea that people are too offended nowadays has been something said so many times that it is hard to count. Older people have used it when talking about younger people who care more about respecting people of all backgrounds. Comedians have used it when talking about how they used to be able to make certain kinds of jokes, which have become recognized as hurtful or harmful to people. The word recognized meaning that they were always hurtful or harmful, but it took this long for the majority of people to actually take a stand against that kind of humour.

In terms of Last Ounce of Courage, the offensive material was religious symbols. Apparently seeing crosses and such symbols of Christianity was offensive to people and Bob Revere was urged to keep them out of public. The people who were offended demanded that every public space be completely neutral and void of any religious symbolism. Those thoughts grinded the gears of the Revere family.

“For a long time, people were trying to pass laws to get rid of Christmas altogether.”

First off… Who was trying to get rid of Christmas? At no point has there been a large following of people who wanted to rid the world of Christmas. It’s one of the most celebrated holidays. There would likely be an outrage if it was outlawed. This whole statement made no sense. It was a case of a Christian writer trying to make the Christian faith the victims when there was nobody attacking them.

It was this attitude that pushed Last Ounce of Courage forward. The main conflict was that there was a separation of church and state, which apparently meant that there was not to be Christmas anywhere. And since Christmas was supposed to only be about Jesus Christ and nothing else, people were not allowed to share their faith anywhere. This, in turn, meant that their freedoms were being infringed upon, which was a major no no for a man whose son died in the war. What war? Fourteen years before 2012 was 1998, so I couldn’t tell you what war.

“When prayer was banned from school, so was the Bible. That’s just the way it is now.”

Maybe it’s because there is a whole Catholic school board around here, but the claim that the Bible is banned from schools sounds ludicrous. Even prayer being banned from school sounds a little strange. It could have been a case where they were mandatory things that were phased out as more religions and people without faith began integrating into the system. It would be tough to force Jewish, Muslim, Islamic, Atheist, and people of other faiths to join in on Christian prayer and the reading of the Bible. But to outright ban it sounds odd.

The thing is, God’s Not Dead 2 made the same argument. There could be some basis for this claim. In that film, a teacher wasn’t allowed to speak about her faith to a student that asked her about it. She ended up in court as a result of commenting on religion. Perhaps it’s a case of Canadian versus American schooling. Schooling here in Canada doesn’t have those same restrictions, from what I experienced. Maybe American schools do.

“Gentlemen, did you happen to know that about a hundred and fifty years ago, Christmas was made a federal and legal holiday? A religious and secular holiday. By using the threat of a lawsuit to keep Christmas pushed back into the churches and homes and out of public places and schools. And speaking of schools, did you know our children are not allowed to sing Christmas songs in our schools? Oh yeah, they’re not allowed to anymore. And a public school teacher is allowed to teach objectively about the origins of Christmas in the classroom. Well, they can. They don’t, but they can. And we can have a nativity scene, as long as other religious symbols are acknowledged at the same time. School districts across the United States are taking Christmas Break off the calendar completely and replacing it with Winter Break. Some towns, no red and green lights. Some towns, no trees. Some towns, no decorations at all. That’s not because it’s illegal. There is no law against it. Just a bunch of people that are afraid of what Christmas is really about.”

The war on Christmas. An all too common claim is that Christmas is getting too far away from what it should be about. It should be about togetherness and family. It shouldn’t be about capitalism and decorations. It should be about people sharing their lives and loving one another. It shouldn’t be about people wanting a gift or worrying about getting the right gifts for other people. The point seems pretty clear here. People what their old Christmas back.

In terms of Last Ounce of Courage, the old Christmas was the religious one meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The government had slowly been reducing the holiday from its “original” purpose. The religious elements of the holiday were removed from the public eye and banned from schools. The Christmas songs thing sounds like an odd point. I’m sure kids can still sing Silent Night or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in school. And the objective Christmas thing? What’s the point of bringing it up then backing off by saying “They don’t do it, but they can”? That last bit just cancels out the point. You can’t get outraged at something happening then say it doesn’t.

This whole war on Christmas thing came up in politics just this past week. It’s Christmas, so the old “We’re no longer allowed to say Merry Christmas” thing has creeped in again. The conservative people, who claim that the liberal people get too offended, seem to always get offended at the term “Happy Holidays.” Donald Trump was proclaiming that he won and people were once again saying “Merry Christmas.” It’s a dumb thing to get hung up on. Nobody cares whether you say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” They mean the same thing. They don’t mean much of anything. It’s just a greeting.

“We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom!”

Now we get to that crossover between freedom and Christianity. Bob’s son died in an unspecified war. He was part of a team that saved POWs. He left behind his parents, a sister, a wife, and a newborn child. Fourteen years later, Bob would put up his fight against the people who were killing Christmas. The fight was for freedom. He didn’t want his son’s death to have been in vain. His son died fighting for freedom in foreign lands, so Bob was going to fight for freedom in his hometown.

This was doubled down with what could be seen as the climax of the war against the war on Christmas. Christian, Bob’s grandson, helped a mutiny within the school winter play. He took to the stage and presented a video of his father on the day of his father’s death. His father spoke about fighting for freedom and how God and Jesus were with everyone at home. Then he was killed in an explosion. This happened in the video.

Christian had played this video, basically a snuff film, in front of a high school auditorium filled with people. They wept over the lives lost. The video was meant to represent how everyone was getting too far away from freedom. The play had been scripted to involve aliens and remove any hints at religion from the three wise men story. Now, thanks to the students who sang Silent Night with the original lyrics back in place, and Christian playing the video, the people of their town realized that they deserved freedom. They deserved to celebrate Christmas the religious way.

The sharing of Christianity was the message that Last Ounce of Courage conveyed to its audience. The world was against Christianity, and they had to fight back to make it seen that they should have the freedom to express themselves however they want. The movie repeated the idea that people were too offended and the good Christians had to fight for their freedom of expression. They had to be freedom fighters, much like the men who went to war and lost their lives.

The message of Last Ounce of Courage fit into the talking points of Republicans and their conservative supporters. It was a side of film that isn’t typically seen in the mainstream. Hollywood, though still predominately white and male, has made a few moves to add some diversity to the things being released. The Christian filmmakers of movies such as Last Ounce of Courage posit that America was better before it decided to move forward. Two different views. Two different sides of a crazy political system. Will they ever come together to find some middle ground? It seems unlikely.

What is likely is a bunch of notes right now:

• God’s Not Dead 2 (week 230) was referenced in this post.
• Last Ounce of Courage featured Katherine McNamara, who was also in New Year’s Eve (week 57).
• The star of Last Ounce of Courage was Marshall R. Teague, an actor from Road House (week 200).
• Have you seen Last Ounce of Courage? What did you think of it? Did it feel like propaganda or a different point of view? Let me know in the comments. Or you can find me on Twitter and tell me there.
• Twitter and the comments are also places where you can let me know what I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m open to any suggestions. I’m going to be working on the schedule for the next bunch of movies and could always use some ideas.
• There’s an Instagram devoted to the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Give it a look see.
• Now for next week’s movies. That’s right. Next week is one of the tens, so there are two movies being featured. There’s no real rhyme or reason to this choice outside of the first film featuring a New Year’s Eve scene that ties into the beginning of the second film. I’ll be watching the Sex and the City movies for next week’s post. That’s five hours of movie watching. I’ll see you soon for that.

Black Christmas (2006) and Character Depth

One of the most enduring genres of film is horror. Much like haunted houses, people find catharsis in sitting in a dark room and watching a spooky story. The fear raises their adrenaline. They release some of the pent-up emotions they’ve been feeling as they’re scared into, in a perfect world, their base animal instincts. Fight or flight, all from the safety of a couch, a theatre chair, or a car at the drive-in. Horror is that release.

In order to care about what happens on screen, the audience needs to care about the characters. The audience needs to be invested in what unfolds, and that comes down to how well the characters are written. If there’s no development to any of the characters, the scares, deaths, slashes, and all that horror fun will fall flat. It will feel hollow. The lack of character depth will make it feel like the story has no depth. When a character gets placed into a life or death scenario, the audience just won’t care.

Much of the character depth in horror movies was satirized in Cabin in the Woods. There was the whore, who is the promiscuous character from most slasher style horror movies. The athlete was the tough guy who should be able to fend of the bad guy but rarely ever does. The scholar was the nice guy. This character would typically be the love interest for the final girl. The final girl was classified as the virgin, who is the holier, more virtuous character. Typically, this would be a female, and she would make it to the end of the movie. Hence, the term final girl. Rounding out the pack was the fool. This character tends to be the outcast of the group. Where everyone else seemed like the popular people, the fool was the one who felt a little out of place. A stoner among the preps. That sort of thing.

These character types help to deepen the characters in horror films. Mostly slashers, if those specific character types are the norm. To make good characters, though, there needs to be a little more than those basics. The base types are a jumping off point to make audiences care about the characters. The scholar could be someone who has been pining for the main character for a long time without any reciprocated feelings. The athlete could have problems at home like an abusive father or something. The virgin might be applying to different schools and be hesitant to tell people she’s moving away for college. They still fit with the character types, but they add another layer.

The payoff to these elements with the characters can make the audience struggle with the death and destruction happening in front of them. The scholar’s love for the main character might have him sacrifice himself to get her to safety. The athlete could snap in a tight situation because of the abuse. The virgin may have to reveal her school intentions partway through the movie, which ends up tearing the group apart. Character arcs like these make a horror movie more entertaining for an audience. They don’t want basic characters that have zero depth being killed off one by one without consequences or feelings of any sort.

That brings everything around to the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, which lacked the character depth needed to make the horror entertaining. Billy (Robert Mann) was a tortured murderer who escaped a mental institution and headed back to his childhood home. A sorority now lived there. Billy began killing them off one-by-one leading to a bunch of terror for the sorority sisters. The cast included Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Crystal Lowe, Michelle Trachtenberg, Oliver Hudson, and Andrea Martin.

The only character in Black Christmas that got any real depth was Billy, the killer. This was in stark contrast to the 1974 original where Billy was the least fleshed out character. Some background was given to Billy in the remake. He had an abusive childhood home. His mother hated him because he reminded her of his father. She murdered Billy’s father while he watched. She sexually abused Billy to get pregnant, when he was 12 years old. She locked Billy in the attic. All of this led to Billy snapping. He disfigured his sister before murdering his mother and her lover. He then cooked his mother’s flesh and ate it. That was his backstory.

Having the backstory in no way made Billy a sympathetic character. The audience was expected to sympathise with the sorority sisters who were being murdered. Yet, none of the sorority sisters were given a background whatsoever. They were one note characters where the most depth was that one of them liked to drink.  There was the main character, the one who hinted at religion but never really showed an inclination one way or the other, and the den mother. As for the rest of the women, there was no way to differentiate them.

This lack of character depth created a problem in the story. Without the characters feeling developed, there was no tension when they were getting killed. They didn’t feel like real people. They felt like fodder for an unsympathetic serial killer. Sometimes having fodder for the killer to pick off can be fun. That could be seen in pretty much any slasher flick. There are people who don’t matter who are only a part of the story to have sex and/or be murdered. But they also usually have a main character or two who have a story arc. And that story arc usually involves more than trying to survive.

One example is the movie Sleepaway Camp. Most of that movie involved seeing despicable people at a summer camp being killed by an unknown assailant. Yeah, there were some fodder characters. But the main character had a storyline. She was trying to come out of her shy shell at summer camp, while the other campers were picking on her. Her cousin was trying to defend her honour and keep her safe. She was the outcast just trying to find a place to fit in.

Another example is Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Sure, it was another movie where Jason went around killing people. This time it was on a boat and in Manhattan instead of around Crystal Lake. There were obvious fodder characters who only entered the story to be killed. That happens a lot in the Friday the 13^th movies. But the main character had a story arc. She grew up with an overbearing family. She was going on this trip and was going to spread her wings. She was coming out of her shell. This is a pretty similar storyline to Sleepaway Camp. It’s a storyline, though.

With Black Christmas, there was no real storyline for the main character. The closest the movie ever came to that was the reveal that the main character’s boyfriend had a sex tape with her best friend. The main character didn’t know about that sex tape until the final third of the movie, and by that point, it didn’t matter. She found out and immediately had to fight off Billy. She never really processed the sex tape. There was no fallout. It didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered at all to the main characters aside from trying not to be killed. There was not extra depth.

The 2006 remake of Black Christmas fell flat because the characters weren’t fully realized. They were there to die and that was it. They had no other storylines to them outside of dying or trying not to die. It made them hard to relate to. There was no immersion into their world because their world was only death. It’s tough to invest in characters who have no depth, no development, and no secondary motivations. As flimsy as some b-plots are in slasher movies, having them can elevate the movies above a showcase of gore effects.

A good horror movie is effective through bringing an audience into the world. A close connection to what happens on screen can scare a person more than watching mindless death. It’s like going to a haunted house. When a person walks through a haunted house, they are more scared than hearing about a haunted house because they are in it. They are immersed in the experience. Horror movies need to immerse the audience to satisfyingly scare them. Good characters, good stories, and good atmosphere can do that. Bad movies sometimes forget that these elements are key. And that’s how we end up here.

Now let’s get through a few notes and head on out for the week:

• Sleepaway Camp (week 150) and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294) were mentioned in this post.
• Black Christmas featured Michael Adamthwaite, who has been a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies a few times. He was previously in The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30), Repeaters (week 62), Skin Trade (week 146), and In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (week 220).
• Cainan Wiebe became a three-timer this week, after already appearing in Air Buddies (week 270) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
• Leela Savasta is another three-timer for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Her three movies were The Craigslist Killer (week 17), Santa’s Little Helper (week 315), and Black Christmas.
• The final three-timer was Aaron Pearl, who had already shown up in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220) and Far Cry (week 364) before Black Christmas.
• Jessica Harmon was in Black Christmas. She was also in The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30).
• One of the sorority sisters in Black Christmas was played by Lacey Chabert, who was in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta! (week 70).
• Black Christmas saw the second appearance of Anne Marie DeLuise, who had previously appeared in Iron Eagle IV (week 90).
• Karin Konoval returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. She had first shown up in Alone in the Dark (week 152).
• Finally, Ron Selmour, an actor from In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (week 220), popped up in Black Christmas.
• Have you seen Black Christmas? What did you think? Were the characters as non-existent as I said they were? Do you think slasher movies should have some sort of simple arc for the characters? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• If you want to, you can also use Twitter or the comments to let me know about the movies I should be checking out for future weeks of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m going to start working on the next bunch of the schedule soon, and you can sneak some suggestions in there by letting me know now.
• If you have time, give the Sunday “Bad” Movies Instagram account a look. There’s some fun stuff there.
• Let’s get a quick talk about next week in here. There will be a post for the next movie, Last Ounce of Courage. That’s the movie. It’s out there. If things go as planned, there will also be a belated post for Far Cry. I’ve got three posts that were supposed to come out last month that I need to get up, and that’s the first of them. So, two posts, if everything goes as planned. We’ll see. Come back soon!