Producer and director, Bob Clark, must have some affinity for the festive season, given he is perhaps best known for two movies. Porky’s aside. In 1983 there was A Christmas Story, and nine years prior Clark made his finest work of a scattered film career, Black Christmas. The 1974 Canadian film was released in the United States (under the soon-banished title Silent Night, Evil Night) the same week as another iconic horror movie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Black Christmas was – and most definitely is – a cinematic catapult for the slasher film. Even if the reign of such sub-genre films since have diluted the legitimacy. Many, many horror films dealing with home invasion, or stalkers, have been influenced by Black Christmas. Including that John Carpenter movie set on Halloween.
Written by A. Roy Moore, the film was originally name Stop Me – something the nutty caller cries out with frightening despair at one point. Clark, though, wanted the blend of festive joy and torment to be prevalent in the film’s title.
Shot on location in an actual wintery Toronto, Black Christmas opens with what appears to be a disoriented, panting man who approaches the sorority house and climbs into a window and up to the attic. All from point-of-view shots. The identity of the killer is not only largely concealed throughout, but neither are we given clues to their history and/or motives.
We are casually introduced to the college girls, including Jess (Olivia Hussey), Barb (Margot Kidder), Phyllis (Andrea Martin), Chris, (Art Hindle) and Clare (Lynne Griffin), at a gathering at the house. And it is not long before the phone rings, and we are witness to a nuisance caller. Not the first it seems.
The disturbing nature of the calls, and the voice behind them, is clearly deranged, but doesn’t signify immediate danger to them. But as events transpire, Clare disappears (though we know exactly what happened), causing concern from her father, Mr. Harrison, when she does not meet him at the school.
The killer on the loose, in the very close vicinity, is hardly a spoiler. And not presented as such. We, the audience, know he lurks up there in the dark, unoccupied section of the house. The dramatic irony dwells where the film’s characters don’t know this.
Even Peter (Keir Dullea), Jess’ antagonistic boyfriend, becomes the closest thing to a suspect. His unfavorable response to Jess wanting to abort their pregnancy, then attempting to force her into marriage, adds fuel to the fire. Peter is an emotional fellow, but it is not pleasantness he oozes. Even the piano audition he has is a haphazard performance, to juxtapose the tension Black Christmas has already built. Peter will later take his anger out on the piano.
That very sound design is extremely prominent in Black Christmas, immersing its audience in the unnerving progress of its nightmare scenario. At times, a dog barking, an untuned piano and distant sirens merge to simply get under your skin – even these are everyday sounds. Add to that the shrill ringing of the telephone bell, or the constant creeks within the wood of the house.
The murders themselves are accompanied by organic noises. A woman’s screams as she is bludgeoned to death by an ornamental crystal unicorn is mixed with the sprightly carol singing children. Earlier yelps occur as an impatient taxi driver yells from outside. Rowdy members of the party downstairs are so enthused they surely cannot hear one of their friends being suffocated to death.
And those first person perspectives of our maniac are made all the more sinister by the rustic sound of his excitable, fatigued breathing. He groans and moans like he is suffering, which is peculiarly disturbing when he speaks on the phone to the unknowing sorority girls.
Director, Bob Clark, was uncredited as the intruder’s shadow, as was actor, Nick Mancuso, for providing the alarming voice/s. Not being able to see the big bad wolf is often more scarier than his snarly attack, and Black Christmas holds this throughout. Every now and then we catch a horrifying glimpse of that wide eye visible within the darkness. This absence is a more chilling mask than the one Michael Myers would wear four years later.
As the increasingly frightening phone calls continue (as well as those murders), the seemingly age-old method of tracking the calls via a noisy (of course) telephone exchange fits right into the film’s eerie nature. And even though we know all along, when the police lieutenant (John Saxon) discovers the killer is in the house and attempts to warn Jess, it is a shiver-inducing moment all the same.
Clark is not afraid scatter smidgens of wit across proceedings, nor does it falter the tense and taut atmosphere. The housemother, Mrs. MacHenry (Marian Waldman), is an eccentric woman always with a drink in her hand – could easily be placed into a comedy scenario, and does not hinder the horror here.
Margot Kidder’s Barb is a class act. Whether she is giving her phone number in letter form to the police desk including ‘fellatio’, or theorizing on how certain species of turtle that can screw for three days straight to a worried parent, Barb’s over-bearing presence is authentic comic relief.
On the contrary, the resourcefully played subplot with Jess and Peter offers genuine adult conflict and a potential villain. Both Olivia Hussey and Keir Dullea were previously best known for their respective work in the two greatest films of 1968 – Hussey as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and Dullea as Dave in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hussey is particularly impressive, carrying the weight of burden and fear, but in a magnetic, grounded performance without all the Final Girl theatrics.
The killer in the house notion has hardly been louder than it has in Black Christmas. The frenzied flurry of the narrative is perfectly fleshed out from start to finish. A voyeuristic portion of shock cinema that earned its cult following, but also still, decades later, needs to continue to be labelled as an innovator of a significant chapter of the horror genre. That ambiguous, nerve-jangling finale is a great sell too.
