Review: Black Christmas

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FDTC site founder, Mr. Chainsaw, makes a case for why this criminally unheralded and often ignored gem is deserving to be labeled as the king of the slasher genre.

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Review by: Mr. Chainsaw

I know most genre fans will get their panties all in a bunch for me saying this, but I've always maintained that John Carpenter's Halloween is quite a bit overrated. That's not to say it's a bad film, or that it doesn't have some excellent aspects to it (most notably one of the most effective scores in cinematic history), but I've always felt that its status as the alpha and omega of slasher films was undeserved. Criminally unheralded, and puzzlingly unknown to even seasoned horror fans, a particularly dark and nasty little Canadian film was birthed some 4 years prior to Carpenter's vision of terror that not only set the bar for an entire sub-genre, but set it so high that it has to this day not been surpassed - an often ignored gem that is, in my opinion, much more deserving to be labeled as the king of its kind. That film is Bob Clark's holiday horror flick, Black Christmas.

Taking place at a cheerfully decorated sorority house during the yule time season in which most of the sisters have gone home to be with their respective families during the seasonal break, Black Christmas opens with a festive holiday party hosted by the few remaining young ladies (among them Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder). Unknown to the house's inhabitants, a stranger has snuck into their home through an attic window and shortly thereafter, the party is interrupted by a mysterious obscene phone call - this sets up the film's first kill only moments later.

Like the plastic sheeting used to violently asphyxiate the aforementioned initial victim, Black Christmas keeps the tension taut and provides little in the form of relief - instead, we get a slow burning thriller which bears more of a likeness to the giallos of Mario Bava than to the blood bath slashers that became such a staple in the holiday slasher genre. The film's protagonist is kept tactfully out of sight (one scene in which the audience is treated to his creepily spying eye creates more shock effect than a hundred buckets of gore), and the use of sounds to carve out his presence - from the creepily escalating mania of the voice on the other end of the phone to the sound of footsteps trouncing down the stairs - allows the audience to exercise its mind's eye as the ultimate fear crafting tool. By the time we think we've solved the whodunit of the killer's identity, the climax serves up one of the best twists since Hitchcock's Psycho, concluding in an ending as bleak and uneasy as the journey itself.

Its easy to spot the influence Black Christmas had in inspiring droves of imitators, though none have ever succeeded in matching its effectiveness. Coming closest was John Carpenter's Halloween, which was originally conceived as a direct sequel but instead took on a life of its own, eclipsing Clarke's film in the process. Released 4 years later, Halloween went on to become the highest grossing independent film of its time and an instant classic, taking credit for ushering in a new era of horror. Borrowing heavily from many of the best elements of Black Christmas - from the killer's point of view camera to its minimalist approach and its reliance on its score to build suspense through auditory elements - Carpenter's film owes its very success to a movie it helped to effectively sweep under the rug. Even Fred Walton's, When A Stranger Calls, another 70's thriller which blatantly lifts its central gimmick from Black Christmas's idea of a harasser calling on the phone from inside the victim's house, was much better received then its overlooked predecessor. Perhaps the gravest insult of all, though, comes in a 2006 remake, which abandons the tense, meticulous approach of the original Black Christmas, in favor of a sloppy, gore soaked mess made to cater to the Saw crowd.

Ironically, Bob Clarke went on to make another Christmas movie in 1983 which became the film he is perhaps best known for - the endearing holiday family classic, A Christmas Story. Perhaps fitting for a director who's work swings wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other - ranging from Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things on one end to Baby Geniuses on the other - Black Christmas is the underrated black sheep in a varied and eclectic life's resume, as well as (ironically so) in the very genre it created. Nevertheless, its impact is evident in the thousands of films it has inspired in the last 35 years, even if its influence is not often acknowledged. Those who know of it, however, are hard pressed to soon forget this diamond in the rough.

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