Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael BLACK CHRISTMAS Actress Lynne Griffin on Her Amazing Career
On this edition of Parallax Views we continue our holiday series by speaking with an actress from a Christmas movie classic. Well, maybe not a Christmas movie classic in the traditional sense but in a more unorthodox one. No, I'm not talking about Bonnie Bedelia from Die Hard. Instead I'm talking about Lynne Griffin, the Canadian actress who played the iconic-if-short-lived role of the doomed Claire in Bob Clarke's 1974 horror chiller Black Christmas. Since it's release all those decades ago, Black Christmas has inspired two remakes/reimaginings and a high-profile fan film called It's Me Billy from noted voice actor David McRae. It's also a movie that really predates and arguably helped insprie elements of later horror movies like Halloween and the lesser slasher films that would follow. With a few plot elements reminiscent to When a Stranger Calls, Black Christmas centers on a sorority house being menaced by an obscene phone caller who eventually takes to picking off each of the girls one by one. In addition to Lynne Griffin, the movie also featured the talents of Romeo and Juliet's Olivia Hussey, Superman's Margot Kidder, 2001: A Space Odyssey's Keir Dullea, and the veteran rugged character actor John Saxon (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Enter the Dragon) as Police Lt. Ken Fuller. The film's director, Bob Clarke, would go on to make a more traditional holiday classic in the form of A Christmas Story as well as helming such features Porky's, Murder by Decree, and Turk 182 among others.
Lynne joins us to talk not only about Black Christmas but also some of her other acting credits including the Rick Moranis comedy Strange Brew, the cult classic horror obscurity Curtains (which feels particularly relevant in the age of the MeToo movement), and April Mullen's criminally underrated 88 starring Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, Freddy Vs. Jason, American Mary) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Addams Family Values). All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views