Title: Black Christmas Director: Robert Clark Distributor: Critical Mass Release Date(s): 1974 (Theatrical), 2001 (25th Anniversary DVD), December 5th 2006 (Special Edition DVD) Score: 9.3 (Out of 10)

Black Christmas (1974) Movie Review

B ob Clark’s 1983 classic, A CHRISTMAS STORY, has become a holiday tradition. For many, Christmas isn’t really Christmas until they’ve seen it at least once that year. TBS airs in almost constantly from Thanksgiving until December 26th, even having an all day back-to-back marathon of it all day on Christmas day. But Bob Clark, the man who brought us “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid” and “I can’t put my arms down” first brought us another holiday classic, only one for people with a slightly more morbid holiday sensibility. That movie was 1974’s BLACK CHRISTMAS, and though it was never a big hit in the United States, it changed the genre forever.

BLACK CHRISTMAS is the story of a sorority house terrorized by a psychotic during Christmas break. While this basic premise doesn’t sound like much, especially because if you remove the whole Christmas thing it sounds like every slasher flick made in the 1980s, before BLACK CHRISTMAS nothing like this had really been done before, and rarely has it been done as well since. The story centers around Jess (Olivia Hussey from PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING, as well as the classic 1968 ROMEO AND JULIETTE), a sorority sister in Pi Kappa Sig. She and a few other sisters are getting ready for the Holidays when Clare (Lynne Griffin, from STRANGE BREW and STEPHEN KING’S STORM OF THE CENTURY), one of their newer members, suddenly goes missing on the night before she was supposed to go home. Because of all the coming and going due to Christmas, her disappearance isn’t noticed until the next day, when her father comes looking for her. The girls are also being harassed by highly disturbing phone calls from an unknown source, which are at turns incredibly lewd or terrifyingly psychotic. At first, the police don’t take the girl’s disappearance seriously, assuming that she had snuck off with some boy somewhere or was off partying. However, when a 13-year-old girl also goes missing, they realize that things might be more serious than they originally thought. Despite police surveillance and wiretaps on their phones, the disturbing calls continue and soon the girls start disappearing one by one. The tension builds along with the body count, until the movie reaches its clever and highly disturbing ending. Which, of course, I’m not going to ruin here.

I know it doesn’t look like much on paper, but the movie’s greatness isn’t so much in its story, but more in the way it is brilliantly executed. First of all is the acting, and the depth of the characters being acted. The film’s female lead, Olivia Hussey, was captivating despite playing a more or less passive role in the proceedings. She plays Jess, a character distracted by problems in her own life until she suddenly becomes aware of the horrors around her. At the film’s outset we find out that she is pregnant with her boyfriend Peter(Keir Dullea, who played Dave in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)’s baby, but that she doesn’t plan to keep it. Peter, however, has other plans, and is quite upset that Jess has left him out of such an important decision, adding a bit of drama to the Jess’s back-story. Despite being one of the most stunning actresses of the 1970s and early ‘80s, Olivia Hussey didn’t do many other notable horror movies; she claimed they scared her too much. She did, however, play Norman’s Mom, Norma Bates in the 1990 TV movie PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING, was in STEPHEN KING’S IT as Bill’s wife Audra, and was in um… ICE CREAM MAN starring Clint Howard. Please forgive her. Where was I? Horror movie pedigree aside, her lovely British accent, classic beauty and understated delivery made her captivating as Jess. Margot Kidder (Lois Lane in Richard Donner’s 1980s SUPERMAN series, Kathy in the original AMITYVILLE HORROR, and, despite being in an assload of films, nothing else you would care about) was another of the sorority sisters, the comic relief character Barb. Besides being a walking cigarette ad (even as Lois Lane she practically had smokes stapled to her forehead) Kidder’s character was the foul-mouthed, constantly drunk attitude problem that thought she was better than everyone else. In short, she was acting like Margot Kidder. Oh, snap! Regardless, she delivers most of the movie’s memorable comedic dialogue, along with Mrs. Mac (played by Marian Waldman who was also in DERANGED and PHOBIA, two lesser known Canadian horror movies), the closet-alcoholic-free-spirit housemother. Other stand-out characters included Lieutenant Fuller (played by John Saxon, who was in such genre classics as A NIGHTMARE ON ELMSTREET, FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN, TENEBRE, and the recent MASTERS OF HORROR episode directed by Dario Argento, PELTS), a subdued, competent and efficient police detective, and Sergeant Nash (played by Doug McGrath, from GHOSTS OF MARS and PALE RIDER), a less competent and efficient desk monkey who is the brunt of some of the movie’s best jokes. The cast is rounded out by Lynne Griffin as Clare, who is adorable but doesn't live long enough to make an impression, Art Hindle as her boyfried Chris, who may as well not have existed, and funny girl Andrea Martin of SCTV (Canada's version of Saturday Night Live) playing Phylis, who, strangely enough, wasn't given a single funny line. Nor was she killed first, which is also surprising.

But great characters and actors aside, it is Bob Clark’s minimalist approach that made this film something really special. Be it the music, special effects, plot exposition or humor, everything is done in an understated manner that makes the whole film feel just that much more unsettling. Unlike a movie like HALLOWEEN, where loud, unsettling music kicks in when you are supposed to jump, suspenseful strings when they want you to feel tension, and so on, BLACK CHRISTMAS is almost entirely free of background music. This works incredibly well for this particular film, since nothing about it is really “boo” scary or bombastic; just seeing a character walking into a room in which you know the killer is lurking is unsettling enough without music telling you it is supposed to be unsettling. In fact, having this happen in absolute silence is even more unsettling, since you have nothing to distract you from the horror you know is coming. The same thing goes for gore; for a slasher film this is a mostly bloodless affair. This is not to say that the claret doesn’t flow when it is necessary, but rather that when it does it is that much more unsettling. Seeing blood in a blood bath easily loses its effect as a fear factor, as you quickly become used to it. But suddenly seeing it against the more or less pristine environs of the sorority house make it that much more effective. Without beating a dead horse, the same can be said of almost all elements of the film: the humor is more humorous when it happens because it is so unexpected, the shocks more shocking… and so on.

The cinematography was also notably excellent, creating a unique atmosphere and even doing some innovative things with point of view. Due to Bob Clark’s insistence that we never see the killer (and we never do. There’s no Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees here) Reginald Morris, the cinematographer, and Bert Dunk, the camera man, came up with a rig that allowed hand’s free use of the camera, mounting it on the shoulder. This may not seem impressive now, but remember, this was 1974 and the cameras were roughly the size of a Buick. Plus it had never been done before. Anyway, this allowed an “actor” (often Morris or Dunk themselves) to play the killer, leaving their hands free to… well, kill. This made for some very memorable shots reminiscent of a first-person-shooter video game like DOOM, but twenty years before. This also allowed us to see the killings without seeing the killer, and allowed some disturbing scenes in which we see the killer’s psychotic outbursts, but from the killers eyes.

And though as I pointed out earlier the film takes a less is more approach to the musical score as well, what they did use was exceptionally well done, and the sound design was nothing short of amazing. On the musical side of things, they obviously used a few Christmas carols due to the time of year in which the film takes place. But what they did to make this fit the film is record each specifically to fit the mood of the film, using slightly haunting and echo-y effects to make them seem ethereal and almost ominous, as if they were being sung by ghosts or from slightly underground. The effect is exceptionally subtle, but gives even the holiday cheer a bit of an unsettling feeling. They also did some innovative things with sound design, especially in the disturbing calls that they receive from the killer. These phone calls are obviously off kilter in content (brilliantly so), but also contain several voices recorded in various interesting ways, such as screamed into the body of a piano in order to get the reverb off of the sensitive strings. Thus the phone calls become some of the most unsettling and memorable moments in the film.

As mentioned earlier, even though BLACK CHRISTMAS was a big success in Canada and Europe, and has since become a cult classic, it never made it big in the U.S. Though we may never know why this is, we do know that those American filmmakers who did see it were heavily influenced by it. John Carpenter is was an avowed fan of the film, and though HALLOWEEN is an original idea and property, it obviously owes quite a bit to BLACK CHRISTMAS, especially with the point of view shots for the killer (a bit of trivia for you; Bob Clark and John Carpenter became friends before HALLOWEEN was made. Carpenter told Clark that he was a huge fan, and was wondering if he was ever going to do a sequel, and if so, what it was going to be about. Clark said he didn’t really plan on it, but if he did he would have the killer captured and institutionalized. The killer would eventually escape in the fall and return to the sorority house where BLACK CHRISTMAS took place to continue his killings… on Halloween. Take that as you will, but the similarities to HALLOWEEN are suggestive, at the very least). Another great example is the 1979 classic WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, which rips off its biggest shocks from BLACK CHRISTMAS. It is quite literally half the film that BLACK CHRISTMAS was.

All in all, this is one of the first, and finest slasher films ever made, and deserves a lot more recognition than it has received in the past. I myself am not a big fan of slasher/gore films (usually because I love a good story and the story in a slasher film is like the plot in a porno; it only holds up until someone starts screaming), but I consider this one of the best and purest horror films ever made. Sure it does have some cliché moments, such as when the heroine goes upstairs even though she KNOWS that is where the killer is… but it isn’t really a cliché because a) it makes sense for the character, and b) it created the cliché in the first place. Anyone who considers themselves a fan of such movies as HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH owe it to themselves to see this movie, if only to see where it all started. Everyone else should see it simply because it is damn good cinema, and shows us another kind of Christmas Story. It is an absolute classic.