Blog Monster Movie Monday: Black Christmas

Black Christmas (1974)

Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon
Directed by: Bob Clark
Written by: Roy Moore
Production Company: August Films, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Famous Players, Film Funding Ltd. Of Canada, Vision IV, and Warner Bros.

The Slasher flick is a subgenre of horror film near and dear to my heart. I love the Slashers; Freddy, Jason, Michael…Even as the plots turn farcical and idiotic, I’ll enjoy a Slasher flick, but it’s a thrill when I come across an old Slasher that escaped my attention and it turns out to be a gem. This time, the gem is Black Christmas, and it may be the progenitor of the Slashers I so love.

The story doesn’t waste any time as we discover the scenario for our tale. Someone is hiding in the attic of a local sorority house, and while the girls party and plan for their Christmas breaks, we know all is not well in the warm sorority house. As the girls party, they are interrupted by a crank phone call, a person making rude and disturbing comments and sounds. They call him “The Moaner”.

Then one of the girls goes missing. As the sorority sisters realize that she’s missing, the concern and panic start to seep in to the characters. The reasonable explanations offered by the police are little consolation to the girls who know that their missing friend wouldn’t have just run off. Then the fun begins. Slowly and subtly The Moaner kills the remaining residents of the sorority house.

Some of you may be wondering what makes this Slasher any different from the myriad of others beyond the possibility to be the first to start the eventual Slasher tsunami. It’s all in the presentation, the subtle nuances: The camera work, the sound, and a tight script that doesn’t insult the audience or the characters.

We never see the killer! Ok, well, we see his hands and one eye…one creepy eye peering down at his victim from the crack between an open door and the wall to which it is connected. For the murder scenes, and showing us that the killer is still there and watching, moving ominously around the house, they used point-of-view camera work to show what the killer sees, and with odd angles and I’m sure other camera work which I’m not familiar with, we also see how the killer may see the world…distorted. It’s a convention used in many Slashers, but not to full fruition. At some point we see the killer, our curiosity is quenched, we get our neat and tidy resolution. But in Black Christmas, we’re still not sure. We don’t know, and that lack of knowledge makes us uncomfortable, unsettled…it adds to the horror.

But even more than the camerawork, the sound work takes a standard (though not at the time) Slasher flick and makes it something special. The musical score, if you can call it that, is truly one of the creepiest ever. I love John Carpenter’s music from Halloween and consider it one of the best scores of horror film, but it’s music. For Black Christmas, they didn’t resort to music…just the chaotic strums of a piano. Carl Zittrer says that he destroyed a piano using various instruments such as combs over it to create the off-putting sounds of the movie. Otherwise, the film is quiet save for the occasional eerie Christmas carol. “How can a Christmas carol be eerie?” you ask. Trust me. Watch the film.

But the most disturbing aspect of this film is the phone. Chaotic, frightful calls from the killer after each kill come to the Sorority sisters. The caller uses various voices, changing them in mid-call, saying some very disturbing things. Clark tells us that the lines aren’t just random, that everything said by the killer has a purpose, but again…we don’t know. And not knowing makes the calls even scarier.

While the camerawork and sound work are perfectly done to create our sense of dread and fear, the film works phenomenally better than most others because of a well written script. Most horror films, especially Slashers, there’s an assumption that the victims are going to be stupid. But Black Christmas creates a realistic scenario for the killer to commit his crimes. He doesn’t have to depend on the dumbness of his victims. Save for the first sorority girl, as the killer goes through the girls murdering them, there’s always a perfect reason why those who remain haven’t gotten curious why someone hasn’t returned. This is possible, of course, with a small cast. Unlike the commercially popular Slasher flicks, particularly Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, there was no attempt to squeeze in as many deaths as possible. The deaths were well planned, well paced, and creates for a true sense of horror.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say what a wonderful job the cast did. Margot Kidder is a delight to watch in this film, and she even won the Best Performance by a Lead Actress award for the Canadian Film Awards. John Saxon is great to watch in a more heroic role than his Nightmare on Elm Street role, and Keir Dullea, though I didn’t know him before the role, plays his role well. While Kidder won for Best Lead Actress, let’s not leave out the beautiful Olivia Hussey, who did a wonderful job.

I find it funny that these early Slasher flicks, with low budgets and “inferior” technology prove to be better horror films that the modern ones which have budgets and technology to do anything they want. Maybe modern horror film directors shouldn’t look for as much money as possible and see what horrors they can create within tight limits.