Black Christmas (1974)
Directed by Bob Clark
Christmas comes once a year, and during that magical time of year many of us cozy up on the couch and watch the classic family holiday movies that give us the warm fuzzy feeling of the season. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, It’s A Wonderful Life, Frosty the Snowman, and Home Alone all get us in the festive Christmas spirit. After all, Christmas is about love, kindness and goodwill towards your fellow man. Many of the movies try and capture those feelings and embrace the goodness of the holiday, then there are the other films of Christmas. Films that have a completely different effect on us as viewers. Films that make us feel uneasy and make our skin crawl. Films like Jim Carrey’s live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas! No, that’s not right, although that movie is horrible, it isn’t horror. Of course, I’m talking about the 1974 classic Black Christmas.
Black Christmas can be seen as the first full on slasher movie, as it predates Halloween by 3 years. While it doesn’t get as much recognition as Halloween, Black Christmas brings as much atmosphere and scares as Carpenter’s classic. Carpenter himself has stated numerous times that Bob Clark’s Black Christmas was a huge influence on his idea for Halloween. From the point of view shots to the holiday setting, the similarities are obvious. A seedy, and unnerving film from start to finish, Black Christmas deserves to be mentioned along with the all-time classics in horror. A funny, somewhat odd fact with this movie is that Bob Clark directed this. Who is Bob Clark? Bob Clark is the director of another classic Christmas film. A film a little more known to the masses. A film seen as a quirky off beat family friendly treasure. What film am I speaking of? I won’t give that away until the end, so think about it while you are reading this entry, haha!
Black Christmas takes place on a college campus during the Christmas season. A group of girls live in a sorority house with their alcoholic house mother. During the week they keep getting odd and disturbing phone calls, and the girls begin to worry. The man calling speaks with numerous different voices and refers to a boy named “Billy” many times. While the phone calls continue, the content of the calls begins to escalate, with such wholesome lines as “pretty pink cunt”. Meanwhile, there is an unseen person that keeps spying on the girls and eventually killing people inside the house. One of the best and creepiest scenes involves one of the girls being smothered to death with a plastic bag, then set in a rocking chair facing the window in the attic. That image is prominent on the movie’s poster, and has become one of the iconic shots from the film. Throughout the rest of the film, the authorities attempt to trace the whereabouts of the insane calls and attempt to find the missing girl. Why they don’t check the attic is beyond me! It is later found out that the calls are coming from inside the house, before it was cliché. Now it is a battle with the cops and surviving girls against the unknown caller/killer.
The acting is really on point. All the girls are at least above average and Margot Kidder does a great job as the rowdy and tough Barb. She is probably the most interesting character in the movie, because she is out of the ordinary for a girl in a slasher movie. Olivia Hussey plays the main girl of Jess. She is sweet and nice but not completely innocent like many main or final girls. Jess is pregnant and is planning on getting an abortion, which is met with great displeasure by her boyfriend Peter. Jess is a multidimensional character which I honestly love. After watching as many slasher movies as I have, it is great to see such depth and complexity in a final girl. Lt. Kenneth Fuller is played by John Saxon of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame, and he’s basically the same character. Saxon always brings his A game and he’s great at playing a sympathetic authority figure. The drunken house mother Mrs. MacHenry is played by Marian Waldman and she’s such a sloppy hilarious mess. She hides booze all over the house, in hollowed out books, in the toilet tank, everywhere and she constantly sneaks sips.
The kills are rather tame by slasher standards but it doesn’t mean they’re less effective. The smothering scene that I mentioned earlier is so disturbing and brutal that it is always the first scene that comes to mind when I think of Black Christmas. The shot of the girl in the rocking chair, bag still over her head is creepy and makes your skin crawl. There is another kill where a girl is stabbed to death with a crystal unicorn. All you can see from the killer is his crazed eyes. Not much blood is shown but the sheer brutality of the kill along with the raw emotion in the killer’s eyes is beyond effective and stronger than any blood bath kill in later slasher entries. The atmosphere is the star of the movie. The slow, stalking POV shots with the camera long with the feeling of constantly being watched is enough to draw you into an otherwise slow burn of a film. The camera angles and long running shots are really top notch. Black Christmas relies on the unnerving feeling of being watched and the harsh realization of danger being so close.
One thing I wonder during this movie. How can someone call from within the house? They must have more than one phone line because if you call your own landline phone, nothing happens. I have wondered this a lot watching films like this and A Stranger Calls. Maybe this was possible in the 1970s? If you’re old enough to know, please get at me about this, you can tweet to me @31horrormovies. The only real knock I have against this, is how slow of a burn it is. While the atmosphere, kills, and suspense are great, the movie does drag a little in the first half hour. This may turn off some viewers, especially if you have a short attention span. This movie was remade in the mid 2000s, I’m not even looking up the year because it was that bad, I want to forget that it exists, plus it was called Black Xmas…ugh.
If you couldn’t tell by the review, I love Black Christmas. Every time I watch it, I get reminded about how creepy and demented this movie really is. Some of the phone calls will make you snap to attention and say “did I just hear what I thought I did?!” The killer speaking in different voices and making guttural sounds just makes your skin crawl. I suppose that is why the movie had the tag line of “if this picture doesn’t make your skin crawl, then its on too tight!” If you love horror, and love Christmas then you HAVE to watch this. It is a classic and deserves more recognition than what it receives. Black Christmas vs Halloween? Atmosphere and creepiness, I have to give to Black Christmas. The killer is hands down Michael Myers, while Billy is deranged he doesn’t have the same feel as Myers. While I still think Halloween is the better film due to re-watch ability it has. As far as the scare factor, Black Christmas takes the cake. I give the movie an A-. If it wasn’t so slow in parts it would be a solid A from me. Oh and to answer the question I posted earlier. The family favorite Christmas movie directed by Bob Clark? Everyone’s favorite A Christmas Story! Think about that. What if TBS played Black Christmas 24hours on Christmas day? How different would our holiday be?
