Black Christmas (1974)

Holiday slashers became a thing for a while in the 1980s, all hoping to benefit off the success of Halloween.  It was largely a snowball effect, with Sean Cunningham's goal being, "Hey, it worked for John Carpenter," and putting out Friday the 13th two years later.  The major difference is that it contained more nudity and even more graphic violence.  From there came My Bloody Valentine, New Years Evil and an entire bevy of Christmas-related horror flicks. 

Halloween, though, would not have existed without Black Christmas.  For the longest time director Bob Clark (who is also the uncredited cowriter and reviser of Roy Moore's script) was known for the first two Porky's movies as well as another film, A Christmas Story, that has become a holiday classic.  However, his early films were horror, exploitation and suspense films.  His first dip into the genre was Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, directed under an alias, but followed by Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night), released early in 1974 under his real name.  Both movies were made with small budgets, partially funded by the Canadian government and made a moderate amount of money.

Black Christmas was an attempt to do something a bit more complex and start breaking into the mainstream.  Olivia Hussey, who plays the lead in the film, had previously appeared in Franco Zefirelli's adaptation of Romeo & Juliet in 1968.  The same year Keir Dullea, who plays Hussey's boyfriend in Black Christmas, had played one of the leads in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Black Christmas also features Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin and John Saxon in some of their first major roles.  The cast reads like a who's who of later screen queens and horror movie stars, and it is one of the things that works in its favor: it's not filled with amateur actors, but no one with a name big enough to break the budget.  On just a little over $600 thousand the original release was one of the biggest box office films in Canada in 1974.

Unfortunately, it took a number of years for much of the rest of the world to catch up with it.  Although it was direct inspiration for Halloween, the movie remained little more than a cult film, and one regularly dismissed by critics, until finally finding an audience over 20 years later.  It is now considered one of the classics of the genre, both because of the fine performances in the film and the frightening atmosphere that Clark conjures up, and has inspired two remakes.

The Christmas holiday is approaching and most students are planning on returning home to be with their families, including house mother Mrs. Mac (Marion Waldman) and Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin), one of a number of sorority sisters at an unnamed university in the fictional Canadian college town of Bedford.  During the last party before everyone heads out the house receives another in a number of obscene phone calls, but this time the response given by Barb (Kidder) triggers the killer, who sets up residence in the house's disused attic.  In the ensuing chaos of getting ready for everyone's departure it is at first not noticed that Clare is missing until her father (James Edmond) arrives and raises the concern with Mrs. Mac.

At first the police are dismissive until Lt. Ken Fuller (Saxon) steps in after a report comes in of a 13-year-old girl who is also missing.  When the girl turns up dead there is also concern that Clare may be a victim as well.  Jess (Hussey), one of the girls staying behind for the holiday, has a deteriorating relationship with her boyfriend Peter (Dullea) over her decision to have an abortion, and suspicion begins to fall on the latter at being behind the phone calls.  While the sorority house gradually becomes emptier Jess soon realizes that, no matter who the killer is, she is grave danger.

Bob Clark in a lot of ways is one of those "dependable" directors - no major auteur style, but competent enough to make the movie look good and get great performances out of his cast.  People largely know who he is because some of his films have had lasting appeal, while many of his others were either strange personal projects or director-for-hire jobs.  I really doubt Baby Geniuses was a passion project, as before his death he had been thinking of ways of getting Olivia Hussey and John Saxon committed to a real sequel to Black Christmas after the 2006 remake pretty much failed.  Still, unlike a number of his films, this one seems to have a bit more of an artistic flare to it.  A good part of that can be attributed to cinematographer Albert J. Dunk, who also portrayed the unseen killer "Billy".  He set up a rig so he could convincingly do the point-of-view shots, and his way of framing scenes can get quite creative.

What Clark is best at is story telling, and that's what sets Black Christmas apart from a lot of its successors.  John Carpenter took a lot of queues from this in Halloween, including the method of making sure the killer is a background character that looms over the rest of what happens throughout.  Deaths come quickly toward the end, but largely Clark keeps us wondering what will happen instead of showing us a lot of what does.  He also doesn't take time to explain things, but trusts the audience to fill in the gaps and, even though the discussion about abortion was not meant to stir up politics, but rather to actually give the characters something to talk about, it makes us actually care about Jess in the end while making the audience ambivalent toward Peter, whether he's the killer or not.

That also means this isn't a kill-a-minute movie, but rather quite an old-school thriller despite its influence on later films.  Not all early '80s slashers were pure exploitation like Friday the 13th, either.  The Burning is similar to Black Christmas in a number of ways, preferring tension over just mindless killing.  The intention was to keep the kills from going over the top as Clark, with Moore later in reluctant agreement, believing that doing so kept the movie focused on the characters and the tension.  Also, despite all of that, this movie can be hilarious when it needs to, with Margot Kidder getting a lot of the best lines - another compromise that Moore later admitted worked in the movie's favor. 

I remember being a bit disappointed with Black Christmas the first time I saw it - I was expecting something more like Halloween, and a bit bloodier given its reputation - but upon second viewing I think it deserves its classic status.  The violence is quite tame even by the standards of its time, there is no nudity (the women are treated like humans, not props) and often, unlike a lot of slashers, we also see the human toll the killings take.  While the killer's antics, while meant to be creepy, may occasionally border on camp, the movie is grounded enough in reality (and partially based on a real series of killings in Montreal) that it is quite effective even after all these years.

Black Christmas (1974)

Time: 98 minutes

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

Director: Bob Clark