PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Every year around Christmas my wife and I always watch Silent Night, Deadly Night, Christmas Evil, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to help us get into the Christmas spirit. We also always watch Black Christmas as well, and it is without a doubt one of our holiday favorites. It just wouldn’t be the holiday season to us without watching it, and I think that it is just as awesome now as it was when it was released in 1974.
Synopsis
After receiving several disturbing phone calls from an obviously deranged unknown caller the members of a sorority house start getting killed off around the Christmas holiday.
Black Christmas is just a fantastic movie and I think that it gets better each time I watch it. It has a lot going for it such as a great cast, and awesome premise, and some truly creepy and disturbing moments. It’s without a doubt a Christmas classic in my opinion, and even though it is 50 years old it still holds up nicely and is one of the greatest Christmas horror films of all time.
The plot is simple, but it is effective. It centers around a sorority house that is being plagued with obscene (and increasingly disturbing) phone calls, and before you know it the person behind the calls is soon taking out the members of the sorority one-by-one in several gruesome ways. We don’t know who the killer is or why he is doing what he does, and part of the fun is trying to figure out who the culprit is and what his motivations are. It all makes for a great little slasher flick that is ahead of its time in a lot of ways, and it never fails to deliver no matter how many times I see it.
Directed by Bob Clark (Porky’s, A Christmas Story) and written by Roy Moore (She Cried Murder, The Last Chase), Black Christmas is nothing short of amazing. One of the biggest strengths of the film is its cast, led by Olivia Hussey (Romeo and Juliet, Psycho IV: The Beginning), who does a fabulous job as the main character Jess. Jess is just an all-around likable character and is without a doubt one of the best final girls ever. Hussey does an awesome job bringing her to life, and as a result you care about her and just want her to live to see another Christmas.
John Saxon (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Enter the Dragon) is just as great as usual as Lt. Ken Fuller, and he’s the guy you want on your side when a homicidal maniac starts targeting you. My favorite character from the movie though, has to be Barb, played by Margot Kidder (The Amityville Horror, Superman) as she’s just a total and complete hoot and is one of those types of characters that you just want to hang out and have a few drinks with. I’m also fond of Sergeant Nash-played by Doug McGrath (Pale Rider, Ghosts of Mars) as his scenes are hilarious.
I also appreciate the fact that the movie has a nice bleak tone and there are parts that are just genuinely creepy in general. While we don’t know a whole lot about him (and never really get a clear look at him) Billy, the film’s antagonist, is utterly terrifying and is without a doubt completely out of his mind. He’s a scary guy and the phone calls that he makes are pure nightmare fuel for sure. Once you hear that voice that he uses when he calls his potential victims it is extremely hard to get it out of your head, and it stays with you for days after you watch the movie. I dig the fact that we know nothing about him (though you can sort of piece together what his deal is if you pay attention) and think that he is one of the scariest horror film villains ever.
The death scenes are mighty fun, too. We get a woman who gets suffocated with a plastic bag, a poor woman who gets killed with a hook (and then pulled up into an attic), and the absolute best one that involves someone getting stabbed to death with the horn of a crystal unicorn figurine. While the film doesn’t have a huge body count (only a handful of people get killed), the deaths that do take place are effective and disturbing, mostly because they are a little more realistic than the murders you see in most slasher flicks.
As you can tell, I am a huge fan of Black Christmas. I’m not alone either, as I know a lot of horror fans who love it as well and consider it to be the greatest Christmas-related horror films of all time. It spawned a bad remake in 2006 and an even worse one in 2019 (that has basically nothing to do with the original film other than it has the same title), and there’s even a pretty cool fan film out there that explores Billy and Agnes’ past that is fun and worth searching the web for, so it is obvious that this movie has definitely left its mark on the world.
As luck would have it, a local theater is actually showing it tomorrow and I am going to go see it as I have never seen in on the big screen, so I am stoked and looking forward to it. If you’ve never seen Black Christmas stop what you are doing right now and go check it out as it is without a doubt a true Christmas treat.
