| Black Christmas Released: 1974 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: A deranged killer stalks a college sorority house over the Christmas holiday. He terrorizes them through a series of bizarre prank phone calls that sends the entire college into a bedlam of terror. Little do the students know that the phone calls are coming from INSIDE the house. (Where’s Carol Kane when you need her?) Summary: We begin our tale at a rather unassuming but nonetheless impressive looking three-story sorority house in the small Canadian town of Bedford. An unseen maniac prowls the campus grounds. Staring through the windows he sees that the sisters of Pi Kappa Sigma are having a Christmas party. The prowler climbs a trellis and sneaks through an attic window as the revelers make Yuletide merriment. Downstairs, student Barbara Coard (Margot Kidder) gets a phone call from her mother. Mom decides to cancel out on plans to visit her daughter in favor of shacking up with some new boyfriend. Barb calls her a “Gold plated whore” and hangs up the phone. Feeling fairly pissed off, she downs some liquor and shoots through about four cigarettes. Moments later, the telephone rings again. Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) answers the phone only to find a strange moaning on the other end. Apparently this prank-caller has called before, and Jess gathers her friend around her. The prankster begins making lewd comments about piggy cunts and slurping on his ‘fat juicy cock’. Barb takes the phone from Jess’ hand and tells the guy to fuck off. At this point, the party begins to break up. Many of the girls are returning home for the holidays and only a select few (Including Barb and Jess) elect to stay behind. One of their friends, Claire Harrison goes up to her room to prepare her things for a holiday vacation. Little does she know however that the killer is hiding inside of her closet. Using a dry-cleaning bag, he strangles Claire and takes her up to the attic. With the bag enclosed about her head, he props her in a rocking chair near the window. Now while all this is going on, downstairs we meet Mrs. MacHenry, the sorority’s housemother. This fat old broad is a total lush. She hides a half-empty bottle of Sherry in just about every room in the house. Now while Mrs. Mac is hunting around for more liquor, Jess receives a phone call from her boyfriend Peter. Peter is a music student who has been attending the conservatory for over eight years. Loser. Jess has something important to say to him, but she will only tell him in person. The following day we meet Mister Harrison outside the college grounds. Mister H is there to pick up his daughter Claire and is most perturbed to find that she isn’t there to meet him. He goes back to the sorority house where he queries with Mrs. Mac. Mrs. Mac tries to settle the man’s nerves while at the same time covering up some of her charges more lascivious decorations. During this time, Jess has her conversation with Peter. She tells him that she is pregnant with his child. Peter is elated by the news but Jess confesses to wanting to abort the pregnancy. Peter wants her to keep the child. He asks her to meet with him later to further discuss the issue, but Jess pretty much has her mind made up. Upset, she returns to the Pi Kappa Sigma house where she receives another prank phone call. This time, the caller is talking in multiple voices and screeching and crying. The message is mostly inarticulate babbling about a baby and a guy named Billy. Presumably, the caller himself is this so-called Billy. Meanwhile, the rest of the Bedford wives are down at the police station with Mister Harrison. He reports his daughter’s disappearance to the incompetent Sgt. Nash who replies that his daughter is likely shacking up with some boyfriend. Claire’s boyfriend Chris Hayden later arrives and berates Nash for the comment. The affair is ultimately plopped into the hands of lieutenant Ken Fuller. But Ken has his hands full with another matter as well. A distraught mother comes to him mentioning that her thirteen-year-old daughter Janice Quaife is missing. Fuller regards the Quaife case as a higher priority than the Harrison case. While everyone is down at the police station, we find Peter playing the piano at a recital. This guy totally fucking sucks. I mean…it is REALLY god-awful. Fucking Schroeder from the old Charlie Brown cartoons could play better than this clown. Hell, Forest Gump could probably play better than this guy. The judges are obviously not very impressed by Peter’s performance and he later destroys the piano. Pete’s got some anger management issues to work on. That night, we find a small dinner party at the sorority house. Mrs. Mac has prepared supper for Mister Harrison as well as for Phyl and Barb. Barb is completely shit-faced and stumbles about making comments regarding the mating rituals of turtles and zebras. Barb is obviously embarrassing everyone and Phyl tries to calm her down. Barb’s attitude changes from one of joviality to anger. She thinks that everyone blames her for Claire’s disappearance. She goes upstairs to sleep it off. Now by this point, Lt. Fuller has orchestrated a search party to try and track down the missing Janice Quaife. Many of the college students including Phyl Jess, Chris Hayden and Mister Harrison join in the search leaving Mrs. Mac at the sorority house. They eventually find Janice’s dead body in the town park. Now its time to get rid of the housemother. Fortunately for the killer, Mrs. Mac has made plans to leave the college during the holiday. This works to Billy’s favor since no one will become suspicious when she suddenly turns up missing right? Mrs. Mac meanders about the school looking for her cat Claude. She keeps hearing the fucker mewling from somewhere upstairs. The old lady climbs the steps up into the attic and finds the saran-wrapped body of Claire Harrison sitting in the rocking chair. But what she didn’t realize was that psycho-chicken Billy was standing right behind her with a pulley hook. He swings the hook downward catching Mrs. Mac in the face with it. He hoists her fat ass up into the attic and she becomes part of his collection. A short while later, Jess returns home and receives another prank phone call. The killer drones on an on about ‘Billy’ and someone named ‘Agnes’. He’s fairly inarticulate, but his wild screaming freaks Jess out nonetheless. Shortly after the call, we find that Peter is in the house. He let himself in and took a nap while Jess was out with the search party. They start arguing over Jess’ proposed abortion and Peter comments about how she’s “…talking about killing a baby as if you were having a wart removed.” Jess can’t be bothered with him right now and proceeds to report the phone calls to the cops. Lt. Fuller and a man from the phone company arrive just as Peter is leaving. Peter bursts right past the two cops and Fuller eyes him warily. The phone man, Graham installs a tap onto the house phone. Phyl eventually returns and expresses her concerns over Claire. She believes that she may actually be dead. Overwhelmed with grief, she goes upstairs to lie down. Jess hears strange sounds coming from Barb’s room. Racing upstairs, she finds that Barb is suffering from an asthma attack in her sleep (Little did she realize however was that the killer was actually in the room). Jess settles her down and returns to the foyer where a group of Christmas carolers have begun singing at the front door. Billy re-enters Barb’s room and stands above her sleeping body. He picks up a glass unicorn figurine and drives the horn end down into Barb’s stomach multiple times killing her. Since the shrill banshee like tenor of the Christmas carolers is assailing Jess, she doesn’t hear her friend being murdered upstairs. Damn Christmas carolers. They are the cause of at least HALF of the world’s ills. The little bastard finally leaves just in time for Jess to answer the telephone. It’s our favorite sicko Billy again, but this time Lt. Fuller is listening in on the conversation back at the police station. The caller makes a remark about “just like having a wart removed” and Jess hangs up in fright. Fuller is pissed that the killer didn’t stay on long enough to establish a trace. Jess is now convinced that Peter is actually the caller. Fuller calls Jess up and inquires about the nature of the call. Jess tells him that it may be Peter and reveals the nature of her pregnancy to him. While all this is going on, Phyl goes up to her room. She is pulled into the dark room by an unseen hand and that is the last we see of her. But don’t worry. She’s good and dead. And just to prove it, Billy makes another call to the house. He torments Jess on an on about killing a baby. (He’s speaking in the past tense, so its clear that he’s not talking about Jess’ baby.) This call however is longer than the others and Fuller is able to get a trace on it. The call is coming from #6 Belmont Street; the address of the dormitory. Sgt. Nash calls Jess in an effort to get her to quietly leave the house without alerting her to the fact that the killer is actually calling from one of the rooms. But Nash is a fuck-up from start to finish and he screams at the young girl sending her into a panic. “The killer is in the house!” he cries. Jess however, is still not totally convinced that the killer is NOT her boyfriend Peter. Arming herself with a fire poker she proceeds to go upstairs. (Dumb bitch.) She finds the massacred remains of Barb and Phyl lying on top of one another inside one of the bedrooms. The killer leaps out and attacks Jess. She screams and turns to flee. Racing downstairs she barely escapes the killer’s grasp. She runs down into the basement and bolts the door. The killer tries in vain to break the door down. After a few intense moments he stops. Minutes later, Jess hears Peter’s voice coming from outside. He tells her that he is worried about her and wants to apologize for being such a dick earlier. For some unfathomable reason, he breaks through the window of the basement and enters the room. He approaches the terrified girl who beats him down with the fire poker. Peter falls to the floor dead, and Jess is in shock. The cops eventually arrive and it is accepted that Peter was the killer. They take Jess up into an upstairs bedroom where they administer medication for the shock. They leave the house with the intent of returning in order to fully investigate the building. A single guard is left waiting outside making sure no one else enters the dorm. Meanwhile, from somewhere deep inside the house, a telephone begins ringing. Acting/Dialogue: Considering that this movie came out in 1974, the acting here is pretty solid. Margot Kidder plays…well…Margot Kidder. She’s the tough-talking, hard-drinking, chain-smoking rough-n-tumble type, whose every word is hoarsely squeezed out with emphysema like clarity. Olivia Hussey is pretty effective here as well. Her Argentinean accent is much stronger here than it is her later films. Keir Dullea plays the part of Peter. He goes a long way towards convincing us that he really is an angry sort of a fellow. You really wind up hating this character, and I think that’s a merit towards Keir’s acting ability. Sci-Fi fans may recognize Keir Dullea in his more mainstream role of Dave Bowman from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ironically enough, the voice behind the character of Billy is listed nowhere on the credits. But be that as it may, I have to give props to everyone’s favorite obscene phone caller. This guy is without a doubt the most disturbingly psychotic SOB I’ve ever heard. He is genuinely creepy and I loved how his multiple personalities kept overlapping one another. Those clowns from Scream ain’t got NOTHING on this fellow! I also liked seeing John Saxon playing the role he was BORN to play! That of a small-town police lieutenant. Saxon plays similar roles in A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (sorta) and From Dusk Till Dawn. Gore: You’re likely to find more gore in an episode of the X-files. Although there are a number of gruesome deaths in this flick, the gore level is actually quite subdued. The most riveting death is likely that of Mrs. Mac who gets a cargo hook swung into her face. But even this is fairly light. Guilty Pleasures: Surprisingly, there is no nudity here. But to be honest, with the exception of Olivia Hussey, there is no one in the cast who you would really WANT to see naked. There IS however one exposed butt cheek. This is likely from a male and can be seen on a peace-symbol poster that Mrs. Mac tries to keep Mister Harrison from noticing. The Good: Black Christmas is certainly an acquired taste. When I first saw it, I was really unimpressed and more than just a little disappointed. But upon further viewings I have come to respect this film for its contributions to the genre. Practically all of the scenes involving Billy are shot from a 1st person POV and we never really get to see what the killer looks like. The opening sequences with Billy stalking the campus were more or less imitated in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween. In the beginning of Halloween, we see the world through the eyes of six-year-old killer Michael Myers. The camera follows his course around the property and into the house accompanied by the sounds of Michael’s shallow breathing. It’s easy to see that Carpenter based his prologue on this earlier film. This is also the movie that established the obscene phone caller motif imitated in other classics such as When a Stranger Calls and Scream. When a Stranger Calls is infamous for its harrowing revelation of the poor victim who realizes that the dastardly obscene phone calls are coming from inside the very house that she is in. Now while the WASC version of this motif is superior to that of Black Christmas, I think its unfair that Black Christmas is never credited with being the progenitor of a classic horror movie cliché which is still being used in films today. This film is also one of the first to embark upon the theme of Holiday slashers. Again, a similarity between this and the afore-mentioned Carpenter piece comes into play. The only other thing that really requires attention here is the character of Billy. I cannot stress enough just how fucking eerie this guy really is! Early in the film, he establishes a trademark with his MO, which is maintained rather faithfully throughout the movie. Every time he kills a hapless victim, he immediately places an obscene phone call to the house. In retrospect, this has been going on prior to the beginning of the film. When the viewer witnesses the first phone call, Jess remarks “It’s him again…the moaner,” meaning that he has called before. This fits with the fact that several ‘townies’ have been raped on the college campus during the recent weeks. This also fits in with the killer’s mentality earlier in the film. His very first phone call is quite perverse and filled with various references to ‘piggy cunts’ and ‘pink pussy’. The very first call likely follows the off-camera death of thirteen-year-old Janice Quaife. Although we don’t learn of Quaife’s death until later in the movie, it stands to reason that this is when it likely occurred. The rapist mentality is not focused on in later calls however. From this point on, the caller exhibits obvious symptoms of MPD and we hear him switching between three different voices within the course of one call, often times the different voices even overlap one another. Not only is Billy an obscene caller, but he’s also quite the voyeur. He seems to focus explicitly on Jess for the remainder of the film and his calls are usually in reference to some horrible action that has been taken against some child. This seems to walk hand-in-hand with Jess’ own reservations regarding her surprise pregnancy. The movie ends with something of a question mark. We see that Jess is safe and secure in the upstairs bedroom, and we assume that Peter is the killer. This belief is fractured in the movie’s final moments when we hear a telephone ringing from inside the house. This not only reveals to us that Peter was not the killer, but also suggests that he finally claimed Jess as his last victim. The Christmas theme may seem ambiguous at first, but I have found that it does crop up in some rather amusing places. For the most part, it is only there as a plot tool. At least two of the victims were expected to leave school for the holiday and thus, their disappearances don’t seem incredibly alarming at first. The Christmas theme also plays into the whole childbirth elements. Christmas (of course) is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, but in this film, the birth of a child seems to create great moments of pain and hysteria. Billy rambles on about some dark event surrounding a child, and Jess herself expresses her desire to abort her unborn child. The Christmas themes can even by traced back to the means by which Billy does away with his victims. Claire is smothered with a dry-cleaning bag and left gift-wrapped upon a rocking chair. Even the presence of the rocking chair itself is thematic since classically rocking chairs always seem to end up under the tree at some point in these old stories. He murders Mrs. Mac by way of a large hook attached to a pulley. I guess this could either be compared to the hooks used to hang decorations on the tree, or perhaps even compared to the concept of a candy cane. Then there’s the death of Barb. She is killed with a small glass figurine, which could be symbolic of Christmas tree ornaments. Now on any given day, I would say, “Headhunter, you’re putting way too much thought into this” but I find the tongue-in-cheek symbolism to be a little bit more than coincidental. The Bad: I could have done without some of the comedic elements they tried to throw in here. They quickly decided to establish Sgt. Nash as being incompetent and they go through great lengths to provide us with as many examples of this as possible. At one point, the girls go to the police station to report the disappearance of Claire. When Nash asks for the phone number to the sorority house, Barb tells him that the number is F-E-L-L-A-T-I-O. He of course believes her and Nash’s peers have a jolly-good time laughing at his incompetence. Now while I found this amusing, the director really seemed to waste a lot of celluloid with a joke that is not really all that funny. One character I could have done without is that of Mrs. Mac. She just annoyed the piss out of me. This bitch can’t seem to get from one end of the hallway to the other without stopping to take a hit of some ‘Christmas cheer’. She’s got her little whiskey bottles hidden all over the house. This just doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense to me. If you were that much of an alcoholic, why not just keep a bottle set aside in your bedroom. Once again, I guess this was the director’s attempt to incorporate some humor into this story. Now I can appreciate a bit of ‘mystery’ as much as the next person. But this movie really leaves EVERYTHING up to your imagination. We never see the killer’s face (aside from a hand and a spastic looking eyeball). We never learn the killer’s true motives or identity nor why he decided to plague this particular sorority house. There is nothing here that indicates a connection between himself and his victims. We also never discover why he starts off as a presumed rapist and then turns into a sociopath with split personalities. Now I could buy into a motive of misogamy since most of his victims are women. But this fails as well, since the killer goes out of his way to kill a male police officer that was sitting outside. Some may argue that he killed the cop because the officer was checking on the house, thereby putting Billy at risk of exposure. But I don’t buy it. Billy was obviously not overly concerned with being caught or else he wouldn’t have left Claire’s body sitting in front of an upstairs window. The movie also shows that Billy is aware of everything that goes on inside the house. This is supported by the fact that he repeats a line of dialogue spoken between Peter and Jess earlier in the film. So Billy is FULLY aware of the fact that there is a tap on the phone and chooses to leave a long-winded phone call, knowing that the police will likely trace the call. Again, Billy does not seem to fear exposure. To be honest, I’m really not sure what Billy was going on about. For that matter, I’m not even really sure that his name was Billy. But as near as I can tell, it appears that Billy had been responsible for the torture and/or death of a young child named Agnes. Or at least, I THINK the child’s name was supposed to be Agnes. If Agnes wasn’t the name of the child, then she was certainly a co-conspirator of Billy’s (possibly his mother) and worked herself into his collective psychosis. Regardless, Billy seems to be the hub of a traumatic event centering around a young infant. I don’t think a little clarity here would have ruined the mystique of the film. My biggest issue with Black Christmas is actually the ending. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. All of the cops leave Jess upstairs to return to the station, leaving just a single solitary guard standing watch outside the dorm. Jess just KILLED a guy!!!! Now regardless as to whether or not it was self-defense, the police would have surely taken her down to the station for questioning. But no, they leave her (medicated) inside the house in an upstairs bedroom. They don’t even check the bloody fucking house! The killer is upstairs in the attic with two corpses and the cops don’t even bother to look up there! The moral to this story here folks is: If you are going to commit a crime, do it in Canada. You’re chances of successfully evading police capture increase by a factor of 10. Now, if you’re the type who enjoys films that maintain an unresolved air of mystery, then you will find Black Christmas to be right up your alley. But if you’re the type that prefers your Christmas presents to come in a nice neat package with a bright red bow…then you will likely be disappointed. Great Lines: “Nash, I don’t think you could pick your nose without written instructions.” --Lt. Fuller to Sgt. Nash after learning of the fake dormitory phone number. “You talk about killing a baby as if you were having a wart removed!” --Peter commenting on Jess’ desire to abort her child. “Did you know that there’s a certain species of turtle that can screw for three days without stopping?” --Barb drunkenly trying to impress Mister Harrison during dinner. “Ho! Ho! Ho! Shit. Ho! Ho! Ho! Fuck.” --Pat the distressed Santa Claus. Overall Rating: 6 out of 10 severed heads. |
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