Black Christmas (1974)

1974’s Black Christmas opens with a first-person shot of a man approaching a sorority house, peering inside, and then climbing the lattice work to enter an unlocked window. We then cut to the inside of the house as the sisters wind up a Christmas party and prepare to go to bed. As viewers, we know that there’s now a menace inside the house. The girls, however, do not. Because we’re watching a horror movie, we know that the girls will eventually be picked off one-by-one. We just don’t know when or how.

This formula may sound familiar. It’s been repeated in many a holiday-themed slasher movie. Halloween‘s box office success may have sparked the onslaught of slasher flicks in the 1980s, but it was Black Christmas that provided the narrative blueprints for those later movies. In fact, John Carpenter modeled Halloween‘s famous opening scene directly on the scene I described earlier.

Although screenwriter Roy Moore’s story couldn’t be much simpler, the cast — featuring the likes of Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, John Saxon, Olivia Hussey and Andrea Martin — elevates the material with universally excellent performances. Director Bob Clark and his cinematographer, Reginald Morris, construct a claustrophobic atmosphere inside the sorority house. The musical score by Carl Zittrer, while also very simple, provides an aura of dread that permeates the sorority’s halls.

Slasher films are known for their buckets of gore and splatter. Black Christmas, however, relies on the unseen to provide its scares. Most notably, the obscene phone calls the girls receive are genuinely disturbing. The voices — and the unhinged things that are said — are more unsettling than most of the graphic kill scenes that would become the hallmarks of the genre.

I’ve pointed out the many similarities that Black Christmas shares with later slasher films but one notable difference — and perhaps the most important — is that the killer is never given a mask to wear or an iconic weapon to use. In fact, the killer remains hidden from view. He’s only seen as a shadow or through point-of-view shots. There are no rules he has to follow nor any motivation that guides his actions. No one is safe because anyone could potentially be a target. And the movie keeps us guessing to the killer’s identity right up until the end.

Another thing that Black Christmas does not do is dumb down its college-age characters. The sorority sisters are all intelligent, strong women. Without spoiling any of the plot, there are plenty of adult conversations that take place as the film unspools. While the sisters are seen partying and having a few drinks, it’s not their sole focus in life. (Well, not all of them. Margot Kidder’s Barb, however, is a trainwreck.) A major trope in slasher films is that premarital sex leads to death at the hands of the killer. That trope definitely did not start with Black Christmas.

It’s also worth noting that the film has a humorous side that periodically helps break up the tension. Most of the humor involves Sergeant Nash (Douglas McGrath,) a policeman who takes a condescending attitude towards the sorority girls. Interestingly, Bob Clark would go on to direct two very popular comedies: 1981’s Porky’s and 1983’s A Christmas Story.

It’s a shame that Black Christmas doesn’t get the same widespread respect and recognition that movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th receive from casual horror fans. It’s a highly enjoyable and creepy low-budget movie that deserves more attention. Not just because of its eventual influence on later horror movies, but because it’s a damn good one in its own right. Modern audiences who have already seen countless retreads or reinventions of Black Christmas might find it quaint. Worse yet, they might think it is being derivative. That’s just sad.