Black Christmas (1974)
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Plot- A sorority house receives a series of disturbing phone calls from “The Moaner” during a Christmas party, and it’s not clear what The Moaner wants or why he’s calling. Barb (Margot Kidder) dismisses The Moaner as a harmless and vulgar prank caller, but Jess (Olivia Hussey), Phyl (Andrea Martin), Clare (Lynne Griffin), and the other sisters are more concerned about his malicious intentions. Clare prepares to return home with her father, Mr. Harrison (James Edmond) for Christmas, but an unknown attacker quietly murders Clare in her room, and he hides Clare‘s body in the attic.
The house mother, Mrs. MacHenry (Marian Waldman) tries to ease Mr. Harrison’s concerns, but The Moaner’s calls won’t stop, and the discovery of a local girls dead body raises more questions. Something is not right in the small town of Bedford, and Lt. Fuller (John Saxon) suspects Jess’s unhinged boyfriend, Peter (Keir Dullea) as the culprit. The body count rises, as The Moaner continues to harass Jess, and Jess is forced to fight the killer, when he reveals himself…….
My Thoughts- Olivia Hussey, playing the quiet and likeable college girl, is the main character, but Margot Kidder easily delivers the best performance here. Barb is a lush, and she’s the loose cannon, who’s not afraid to bite her tongue. Jess, Clare, and Phyl are noticeably nervous and on edge, when The Moaner calls, and they don’t want to provoke him. But Barb constantly pushes his buttons, and she doesn’t care, if she goes too far. When she’s drunk, Kidder is someone, who has a blunt and raunchy sense of humor, and you want to laugh at her. But you’ll also see someone, who’s clearly dealing with some issues, because Barb is nasty, if she goes too far. Kidder’s charisma is undeniable, but she doesn’t receive too much screen time (everything is cut short after Phyl tells her to get some rest, because she‘s too dunk), because the spotlight is on Jess. John Saxon is a solid fit for Lt. Fuller, and it’s easy to pick out similarities between Fuller, and Saxon playing Nancy’s dead in the Elm Street films.
Black Christmas also features some good humor, with Margot Kidder and Marian Waldman basically playing an older version of Barb. She hides liquor bottles around the house, and you just get the feeling MacHenry is someone, who’s tired of babysitting a group of young college girls. Sergeant Nash (Douglas McGrath) is good for some laughs as a dunce, and it’s hard to forget about the hilarious scene, where Barb gives him the phone number for the sorority house at the police station. She starts the number with ******io, and Lt. Fuller has a “You’ve gotta be kidding me” reaction, when he reads the number. It’s clear Nash doesn’t realize Barb made a fool out of him, because he doesn’t know anything about ******io.
Black Christmas is another whodunit slasher, but it’s clear Peter is not the killer. He’s the first suspect, and they lead you to believe he’s the one, because he fits the bill. He turns on and hates Jess after she makes the decision to have an abortion without him, and she makes it 100% clear she has no intentions to marry him. Peter snaps, and he openly threatens Jess, but you just know it’s not him. Peter as the killer is too obvious, and he’s just a decoy to help set up the big surprise reveal/swerve towards the end.
Towards the end, it’s revealed the killer is Billy and Billy is The Moaner. Outside of him sneaking into the house, and murdering the girls one by one, we really don’t know anything about Billy. But with all the different voices, the weird moans, and his temper tantrum in the attic, you know Billy is someone, who’s truly dangerous. Billy’s house of horrors in the attic is another nasty sight. You know the guy is a sicko, because he’s keeping corpses in the attic, and he puts a doll in Clare’s arm.
He tells his story, and he reveals bits and pieces of his past through the phone calls (Agnes and his mother), but we never get a definitive and concrete explanation, and they never show the full view of Billy’s face. It’s all shadows and Billy’s face is covered in shadows, when he pops up throughout the movie, and Black Christmas plays a good guessing game for revealing the identity.
Black Christmas delivers brutality without showing a lot of gore or using gallons of blood. Billy uses a plastic garment bag to suffocate and strangle Clare, and it’s a grisly image, with Clare’s lifeless body still wrapped in the garment bag, bouncing back and forth in the rocking chair. Mrs. MacHenry dies, when Billy uses a big hook to kill her, but they don’t actually show the hook crashing into MacHenry’s head. You’ll just see Henry raising MacHenry’s body into the attic, and it’s more than enough to pull a reaction out of you. Barb’s death is horrifying, when Billy uses the horn on a glass unicorn statue to repeatedly stab her, but they don’t show you everything, just the stabbing motions, Barb’s agony, and the bloodstained horn.
I heard this on one of the horror podcasts I listen to, and one of hosts was giving his reasons for Christmas horror being of one his favorites in the genre. With Thanksgiving, it’s another time of year, where you’re supposed to feel safe. You’re supposed to be filled with joy and peace, but all bets are off, when someone comes in and shatters all of that. It’s so true, and it’s one of the reasons why Black Christmas is a beloved cult classic. Black Christmas has the look and feel of a cozy Christmas film, with the Christmas lights, the tree, and the carolers, but a sinister madman is out to destroy “The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.” Pure realism is a stretch here, but that’s true horror, when you stop and think about it.
Black Christmas is a memorable slasher for a number of reasons. Compared to the vast majority of slashers in the 80’s, the presentation and overall look of the film is more polished, a solid overall cast, and they do take a more sophisticated and nuanced approach here. Very little blood, no real gore, no nudity, no sex, and you don’t have a masked butcher running around and killing a bunch of horny teenagers and potheads. The mystery is intriguing, and Billy’s phone calls and threats are truly creepy.
Black Christmas is another horror film that draws from The Babysitter And The Man Upstairs, and the movie was also supposedly inspired by a series of murders in Montreal, Quebec. And the movie features some feminist social commentary. Jess wants an abortion, she already made the decision to go through with it, but Peter is enraged, when she doesn’t ask for his permission. On top of that, Peter doesn’t ask Jess to marry him. He basically tells her she’s going to be his wife, and they’re not going to have a discussion about it, because as the man, Peter has the final word in the relationship. But Jess doesn’t want to have a child and she doesn’t want to settle down, because she’s a young woman, who wants to pursue her dreams before it’s too late.
I love Black Christmas. It’s a good Christmas horror film, and Jess is a memorable final girl, but sometimes I get the feeling horror fans, experts, and horror die hards feel the need to go the extra mile to heap tons of praise on this film as a flawless masterpiece. Scream Factory released the special edition Blu-ray last year, Scream Horror Magazine gave it five skulls in their recent issue, and I’ve never understood this obsession with the “clever and smart” label for not revealing everything about Billy. Sure, you want to know more about him, and Black Christmas ends with a cliffhanger as the credits roll, because they didn’t catch Billy, and you’re lead to believe he’s still in the house, while Jess is sleeping. It’s true, you have to do some research, if you want to know more about Billy, but I’ve never bought into all the hoopla surrounding Billy.
And I hate to be that guy, but how in the hell did Billy get into the house without anyone noticing him? The neighbors, the search party for the missing girl, or the other girls in the house? That’s a lot of people in a small town. To take it a step further, how I’m supposed to believe it’s possible that NOBODY suspected or noticed someone else was in a sorority house full of people? Oh, and they search and look around the house, but for some reason nobody had the idea to look in the attic to find Clare and Mrs. MacHenry’s bodies?
Still, there’s no denying Black Christmas is a benchmark film for the horror genre and Christmas horror films. It’s one of the films that always pops up with Psycho and other films in the never-ending debate for the first real slasher film, and the movie establishes and features some of the early tropes for slashers and other horror films. And Black Christmas heavily influenced Halloween ’78.
In an interview, Bob Clark (the director and producer) revealed he had a conversation with John Carpenter about Black Christmas, and Carpenter asked about the possibility of a sequel. Clark didn’t want to be a horror guy, and he was done with the genre, but Clark told Carpenter about his hypothetical plans for a sequel. Billy would’ve been caught, put in a mental institution, but he would eventually escape, and return to the house to kill Jess, and Clark would call the film Halloween. Well, that storyline is similar to what happens with Michael and Laurie in Halloween, and Carpenter basically stealing the idea and passing it off as his own work was a well known conspiracy theory. But in the same interview, Clark himself said it’s not true, because Halloween is Carpenter’s film, he directed it, Carpenter wrote the script with Debra Hill, he did the casting, and the title Halloween was already decided beforehand, so Clark closed the door on all the rumors.
and silly moments, but the movie also had emotional depth. You can see the pain in a conflicted Louis’ face, when he has to kill Gage (again), and they tried to recreate a similar moment with Renee and Jeff at the end, but it doesn’t work, at all. It’s just awful, when Renee is repeatedly shouting “DEAD IS BETTER!!” in a high-pitched, cackly voice, while her skin is melting off, and Jeff and Chase are watching her demise.
