Slasher Saturday: Black Christmas
Olivia Hussey answers when a stranger calls in Black Christmas.
When you move into a sorority house, always check the attic.
What’s Black Christmas About?
Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) is working up the courage to talk to her boyfriend before Christmas break. She’s discovered she’s pregnant and is planning to get an abortion so it won’t interrupt her schooling. She also has to say goodbye to her sorority sisters at their off-campus house.
But as Jess prepares to speak to her boyfriend, things in her sorority house go awry. First, her friend Clare disappears, leaving Clare’s frantic father and the rest of the sorority house looking for her. They don’t look too far, however, because Clare’s corpse is in the attic.
That’s right, a killer has broken into the house and is picking off the sisters one at a time.
Jess begins answering phone calls in the sorority house from a deranged voice that whispers vile things and even acts out a childhood trauma. Bewildered, Jess goes to the police. Can the cops stop the killer? And does Jess know who’s behind the voice?
What Makes Black Christmas Good?
While Halloween might get credit for being the Gold Standard of slasher movies, Black Christmas set the template for it in many ways. It’s a relatively simple, bleak story about sorority girls that are murdered in their home by an unseen entity.
Though 1960s Peeping Tom pioneered the killer POV shot, Black Christmas seemed to popularize it. So if you’ve ever enjoyed a movie where the killer is heavy breathing on the soundtrack while you watch a hapless victim through his eyes, you can likely thank Black Christmas for it. Director Bob Clark (whose most famous film is the equally holiday-themed A Christmas Story) essentially created the template for the modern slasher film with Black Christmas.
Clark’s movie is also notable because it’s relatively restrained considering where the genre would go. The kills aren’t over the top. Black Christmas isn’t exploitative of the women — the sorority sisters don’t have sexy shower scenes, they aren’t murdered naked for a T&A shot, and they all have pretty distinct personalities. The final girl, Jess, is a smart woman who is also making the choice to have an abortion. Her worth isn’t determined by her “purity”, she’s a brave woman who won’t leave her friends behind and has a whole future plotted out for herself that doesn’t involve a shotgun wedding. Her fatal flaw is trusting the police department, which apparently doesn’t believe in thoroughly searching houses after violent criminals are apprehended.
While Clark’s movie influenced generations of filmmakers (yes, including John Carpenter) to come, initially it was a flop. Critics dismissed it as tripe. Audiences didn’t pay to see it. But the film earned a second look after Ted Bundy’s crimes made the premise of Black Christmas seem more plausible. In 1978, Bundy escaped incarceration and found his way into a sorority house where he assaulted and murdered several women. Black Christmas sadly got a bump in notoriety from the incident and developed a cult following, which in turn got critics to give it a second look.
If you’re a fan of the slasher genre, Black Christmas is essential viewing. Its format influenced and helped develop Jason, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger, and beyond that, it’s a genuinely creepy, beautifully acted film. The genre in general is sometimes unfairly maligned as schlock, but Black Christmas takes care with its characters and filmmaking, making it one of the top-tier examples of the category.
Verdict
A must-see for any fan of slasher movies, Black Christmas is the film that set the standard for the genre.
