Black Christmas (1974)

Tagline: “If this film doesn’t make your skin crawl….it’s on too tight,"
Running Time: 98 minutes

Film quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 2/5
Entertainment Value: 4/5
Originality: 4.5/5

Introduction

Made well before ‘Halloween’, ‘Friday 13th’ and ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, it’s remarkable that this VERY early slasher isn’t more well known. Criminally overlooked, largely because of the success and sheer brilliance of John Carpenter’s juggernaut of a film, most serious horror films will know all about it but be faced with blank looks by their friends whenever it’s raised in conversations about ‘scary movies’. Setting up some of the tropes that Carpenter ran away with, it’s easy to view it as just another slasher film, except that there was no other slasher film at the time! Even more frightening due to it taking place during the season of goodwill it should be regarded as a landmark film.

In a nutshell…

A sorority house is winding down for Christmas as an intruder creeps into the attic and begins to pick off the girls one by one, unbeknownst to their housemates and the housemaster. It’s only when one of the girl’s father’s arouses suspicions that all may not be well in terms of one of the girls who has gone missing that alarm bells start to ring, including those of the house phone as a series of increasingly disturbing calls plagues the house. Could they be connected to the girl’s disappearance?

So what’s good about it?

Don’t be fooled by the age of the film, it has some truly terrifying moments. The atmosphere is relentlessly bleak and the soundtrack always seems to carry the sound of a draft, making the house seem cold, creaky and unsafe. The sound in this film is terrific with Carl Zittrer’s unsettling score complementing the clearly deranged mind of the killer perfectly. He created a bizarre patchwork of distorted sound effects using everyday household objects such as forks to manipulate the sound of pianos and other musical instruments. It resulted in a soundtrack every bit as unnerving as the one Tobe Hooper used in his chainsaw classic and becomes the unsound mind of the unseen killer.

The set up is beautifully simple. We know that there is a killer in the house because we are introduced to him via a mechanism which is now commonplace but, at the time, was truly original and that is the killer’s point of view. We see him gain entry and seek solace in the attic, an extraordinary shot down before the invention of the steadicam. We see him, through his eyes, come down, suffocate his first victim and take her into the attic where we presume he stays. This puts us on edge for the rest of the film as we know he’s there but our potential victims don’t and the fact that the murders appear to be motiveless, coupled with the moments where we literally hear him scream and tear the place apart, leaves is in no doubt that these ladies are in permanent danger.

This brings us onto the phone calls and it’s fair to say that these must have been pretty shocking in their day. They are obscene to say the least and include screaming, child’s laughter, insane, incoherent babblings and rambling as well as extremely profane language. But the most chilling comes when one of the more ‘forthright’ characters, Barb played by a pre-Lois Lane Margot Kidder, challenges him and, calm as a button his voice goes flat with a simple “I’m going to kill you”. It may be based on the old ‘killer upstairs’ urban legend but the phone call element, chilling sound effects and point of view shots gives the killer an omnipresent quality which sets you on edge from the first minute to the very last.

This brings us on to the climax which is where it differs from most other slasher films. Who the hell is the killer? Where did he come from? What’s sparked his rage? Every other slasher I can think of answers, or at least alludes to who the killer might be. The ending is incredibly ambiguous, finishing on the sound of a telephone ringing which, judging by what happens in the rest of the film, leaves the fate of the killer and ‘final girl’ very much open.

One final word on the subject of Christmas and how this film subverts the festive season. It opens to a very ominous and creepy rendition of ‘Silent Night’ as our killer enters the building and Barb’s murder is set to carol singers belting out sombre Christmas songs whilst she is stabbed to death by a glass unicorn. Again, a first for using a weapon as symbolic of the ‘punishment’ by the killer! Unicorns symbolise purity as Barbara spends most of the film talking about animals able to have constant sex for three days solid, tricking the police into using fellatio as a code and goading the prank caller with sex talk, whilst glass symbolises clarity yet Barbara has passed out drunk.

And what about the bad?

One thing you can’t level at this film is that it falls into clichéd horror movie tropes as this is really where it all began. However if you want to pick a fault with it it’s whether or not a clearly insane man who moves about a lot and screams very loudly at himself can go undetected just yards away from his victims. Of course it’s one of those ‘if he was discovered you wouldn’t have a movie’ type of criticisms and suspension of disbelief is required in any film of this type.

I suppose the one thing that didn’t sit too well with me was the juxtaposition of humour outside the house, particularly within the police station, with the very serious and intense scenes within the house. For me it didn’t need the comedy to make the scares more abrupt or shocking. Also, Peter’s character is a little too obvious for me and was clearly written that way to present him as a suspect rather than for any rational reason.

Any themes?

That’s a tough one. Modern day slashers can be viewed as morality tales whereas this doesn’t precisely follow the same rules that were popularised in ‘Halloween’ and its many imitators. As the killer is in the house there are elements of distraction that prevent the sorority girls from seeing what’s under there very noses. For example Barbara would not have become a victim if she had remained sober and perhaps been taken more seriously by the police if she hadn’t made fun of them.

It also portrays the women as strong-willed, despite ultimately becoming victims. Barbara stands up to the police and the killer, Jess stands by her decision to have an abortion against the highly strung Peter, Clare is clearly rebelling against her rather stuffy father. However they get punished for it so the message comes across as mixed…is it good to be a strong woman if it leads to you becoming a victim by antagonising the weak males, whose desire appears to be to assert their masculinity over them. I find it an odd message but then again it’s kind of an odd film with no real resolution, reason or redemption.

Release history

For once the interest lies in the US where they didn’t really seem to know what to do with it. Released as ‘Black Christmas’ originally, the distributors inexplicably changed the title to ‘Silent Night, Evil Night’, under which it absolutely tanked. The title was changed back for a home video release to much more success but, what’s in a name? Not much apparently as it was then edited for television under the title ‘Stranger in the House’ but was pulled from its premiere, coinciding as it did with a recent spate of murders involving sorority houses and was considered too close to the real life horror, seemingly carried out by the infamous Ted Bundy. Subsequent Home video releases have generally gone by without a hitch.

In the UK it suffered unusual cuts, censored for its language rather than its graphic content to which there really isn’t that much. One obscene phone call in particular caused offence with the graphic repetition of the word ‘cunt’ removed along with some other sexual content. It sailed through uncut for the 2003 Tartan DVD and all subsequent releases, including numerous festive showings on Film 4 and Zone Horror.

Cultural impact

There might have been a four year gap between this and ‘Halloween’ but the impact is clear, it is a precursor to the modern day slasher, no question, and arguably the very first of its type. It was also the very first to use a seasonal holiday or calendar event to base proceedings, first person killer (or at least the first to popularise it), final girl, terrible place and many of the other things that we now see as cliché.

Clark has been quoted as saying on several occasions that he spoke to John Carpenter about the possibility of doing a sequel to ‘Black Christmas’ and ideas were bandied about. One of those was the genesis of what became ‘Halloween’ with babysitters being stalked instead of sorority girls. By extension you could argue that had there been no ‘Black Christmas’ there would have been no ‘Halloween’. That doesn’t mean to say there would have been no slasher film but would we have seen the late 70s/early 80s horror boom without the huge number of slasher films that came from that era. The horror landscape would certainly have been different and a lot of the credit can be laid firmly at the feet of Bob Clark.

Final thoughts

Criminally underrated, ahead of its time and, despite viewing it now with the consequence of the clichés it helped to bring about, not given the credit for its originality that it richly deserves. It is relentlessly frightening at times and unbearably tense, delving deep into the mind of an unknown psychopath without ever introducing us to him. It is an unsettling film and for the genre it helped to create it should be respected as a landmark in American horror that is due a serious re-appraisal.

Memorable Quotes

Mrs MacHenry: “These ladies would hump the Leaning Tower of Pisa if they could get up there.”

Clare: “Could that really be just one person?”
Barb: “No Clare, it’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir making their annual obscene phone call.”

Barb: “Darling, you can’t rape a townie.”

Farmer: “The next time you’re gonne get the gun up your ass…..sideways!”

Jess: “Hellooo”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Halloween’, ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’, ‘Christmas Evil’