Ah Christmas, that magical time of the year where visions of sugarplums dance in kids’ heads, Santa holds court in the mall, and a raving psychopath breaks into a sorority house and begins killing all the residents. Is there a better season than this? If you’re at all like me, and have had enough of the whole peace on Earth/Rudolph scene, then you need to check out Bob Clark’s 1974 classic, Black Christmas.
The film opens with a POV shot from the killer’s perspective as he enters the brightly-lit sorority house. Soon after, the girls (Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and Andrea Martin) begin getting obscene phone calls, which they summarily dismiss. But the calls keep coming, increasing in frequency and intensity as the caller begins acting out some kind of twisted domestic drama–even continually changing his voice to suit each person as he shrieks and screams madly into the phone. Meanwhile, a town girl has gone missing, as well as one of the sorority sisters. The police become involved, lead by genre legend John Saxon, who must find and stop the killer before he strikes again.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Clark’s (he also directed the Christmas standard A Christmas Story, Porky’s, and Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things) film is that it uses many techniques that would become slasher conventions–but uses them several years prior to John Carpenter’s seminal slasher film, Halloween. Herein we are treated to the killer POV shot… four years before Carpenter would use it for the opening murder in his film. The phone is used to terrorize the girls, years before a spate of similar movies like Are You in the House Alone? would run the concept into the ground. The killer is motiveless, striking out at these victims for no real discernible reason–much like Michael Myers in the first Halloween. It should be noted that I’m in no way asserting that Carpenter stole from Clark, because it’s not true. Carpenter knew Clark and liked what he did with Black Christmas. When he went on to direct Halloween, Clark was developing another holiday-themed slasher, also set on Halloween. Clark’s never came to be. Clearly though, Carpenter was inspired by some of the things in Clark’s film and he certainly paid homage to Black Christmas with Halloween.
On the other hand, Black Christmas featured things that set it apart from the cliché-driven slasher films that would come years later. Jess (Olivia Hussey) is the film’s heroine, but she’s far from virginal. In fact, early on in the film, we learn that she’s not only pregnant, but also planning on aborting the unborn child because it would interfere with her achieving her future goals. Billy, our psychopath, isn’t some kind of supernaturally imbued madman, just a maniac. He also talks, unlike Michael and Jason.
The film features no real gore, but still manages to be extremely creepy. Clark utilizes a lot of nice camera work to make the sorority house seem large and foreboding in some shots, but small and claustrophobic in others. Billy’s phone calls (which Scream 2 paid homage to when Ghostface is mumbling in the restroom stall in the film’s opening sequence) are terrifying as they become more and more intense, but perhaps the most frightening one of all is the first one. After raving at Margot Kidder, he suddenly takes a very calm voice and says “I’m going to kill you” before hanging up.
Equally impressive are some of the film’s visuals. Whether it’s the leering POV shots of the killer looking down on the girls in the house, the corpse posed in a rocking chair with a plastic bag over her head and a baby doll in her arms, or the wide open eyeball of Billy peering at Jess through the crack of the door as she discovers some of his handiwork, this film will give you the creeps.
The performances are all quite good, far better than what would become the standard in later slasher films. Hussey plays Jess as both strong-willed and seductively vulnerable at the same time. Kidder’s foul-mouthed, alcohol-swigging sorority sister is both more entertaining and well developed than most of the human spam in these films. Keir Dullea plays Peter, the father of the unborn baby, and a tempermental musician who we’re never too sure of. And perhaps the best performances of all are the ones that go uncredited. Whoever played Billy did a great job. We never see his face, but he’s menacing and frightening nonetheless. Also uncredited but praiseworthy are the actors (?) who did the voice work on the phone calls. These are some very disturbing conversations.
Roy Moore’s script is well written and nicely conceived. The abortion angle is an interesting one, and the film has a bit of a vulgar tone that’s sadly missing from most of today’s horror films. Perhaps the movie’s only real weakness is that it relies on a gimmick near the end that would be used in countless other later films, thereby robbing it of any real effectiveness with today’s viewers. That shortcoming aside, Moore more than makes up for it by not going for the cop-out ending.
So, if you’re looking for a little scare after you put the kids to bed on Christmas Eve, forget about flicks like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Christmas Evil and watch this little known genre gem. It’s guaranteed to put you in the “ghoul-tide” spirit.
Horror Geek Rating: 5 out of 5
