Black Christmas (1974)

Film: Black Christmas (1974)

Stars: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin

Director: Bob Clark

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Halloween is generally considered to be the pioneer of slasher films, and it definitely did change (I would go so far as to say perfect) the genre, but it wasn't the first slasher film.  In fact, slasher films had been gaining popularity for a while headed into 1978 when the John Carpenter film would change the game.  Perhaps the most famous example of this came out in time for the winter holidays in 1974.  Black Christmas was a modest hit at the time (it struggled being up against The Godfather, Part II and The Man with a Golden Gun at the box office), but it would gain in reputation in the decades that followed, especially after the advent of the VHS (for those of you too young to remember this, horror films were a staple in video rental places-there would be rows of shelves solely devoted to them).  It was also, on a personal level, a movie I heard a lot about growing up because it was the one scary movie that completely scared my mom, who saw it at a retro screening when she was in college (as you'll see from the plot, a bit too close-to-home for a girl walking to her dorm room at night).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place at a sorority house, where a group of girls are partying while an unseen man climbs into their house into the attic.  They soon get a crank phone call from someone, saying provocative and deeply sexual things to them.  They laugh it off, but then one of the girls, Clare, gets murdered by him suffocating her with a plastic dressing bag.  The film progresses over the course of roughly 24-hours, with them initially finding out Clare is missing (though in a plothole I'm just not buying, she's literally in the attic, her corpse rotting in her chair, the whole movie).  The killer never really leaves the house, staying there killing the girls and their sorority mistress one-by-one.  Meanwhile, we get a sub-story about Jess (Hussey...who is quite good in a role she doesn't need to be) who is pregnant, and is going to have an abortion despite protestations from her boyfriend Peter (Dullea), who becomes increasingly obsessive and angry at her for not wanting to have the baby.  The film ends with her, being chased by the killer, confronting Peter, whom the audience at this point is positive isn't the murderer, but she isn't, and so she kills him.  In a terrific twist, the police see her, stunned, and also think she's killed the murderer, Peter, and leave her behind, sleeping in the house...but then the phone starts to ring, with the audience understanding that the killer is still there, and likely about to kill Jess as the credits start to roll.

The movie is weirdly well-constructed, especially for a relatively low-budget slasher film from Warner Brothers.  The editing is remarkable.  It looks as if the actor playing the killer has actually taped the camera to his head, giving us a point-of-view shot of the house (similar to Michael Myers...it's impossible to believe that John Carpenter hadn't seen Black Christmas given the similarities).  The technical proficiency is really helpful to the movie, and adds to the scares.  One of the most frightening shots in the film is the recurring one of Clare, dead & plastic, rocking in her chair upstairs, the only creature who knows she's there is the cat.  It's terrifying because she literally died, they found the "killer"...and still no one has managed to look just a few feet away from where they are to notice that her body is there.

That's kind of the brilliance of Black Christmas, though, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed.  The police are so incompetent I initially thought it was a plot crutch, but the movie is centered entirely about how the voices of women are silenced.  Jess, along with her roommates Barb (Kidder) and Phyl (Martin, and yes it's that Andrea Martin) are constantly trying to get the men in their lives to listen to them, to take them seriously as women & as adults.  In the end, they literally have a man take away their voices, and that happens because the other men in their lives didn't take them seriously.  In an era of Roe vs. Wade and the ERA, this film reads like one of the earliest truly feminist horror films we've watched for this series.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream