Review #323: Black Christmas (1974)
The Twelve Slays of Christmas #9 - Black Christmas (1974)
Considered by many to be one of the first slasher films (and definitely the first slasher revolving around a holiday), Black Christmas follows a group of sorority girls at the start of Christmas break. First they start getting a series of disturbing phone calls, and then the girls start disappearing one by one. When it's finally confirmed that some sort of foul play is afoot, the police think they've figured out who the culprit is- but the calls might be coming from inside the house.
I'd never seen this film before, though I had seen the 2006 remake (which I'll be reviewing tomorrow). Right off the bat it's pretty easy to see why this is considered one of the classics- the plot is good and moves at a nice clip, the characters are engaging and fleshed-out enough (and not too much, which is important), and there's just the right amount of tension and suspense. It's mind-boggling compared to more modern films (including the remake) that throughout this entire film you never actually get a look at the killer- the most you ever get is a glimpse of his shadow or his eye visible through a gap in the wall, which really adds to the mystery and the ineffability of this unknown entity.
It's a bit of a spoiler to mention that you never see the killer (though for a movie this old I don't think I should be concerned) because the movie sort of tries to play a little trick on the viewer by suggesting that the protagonist's boyfriend might be the killer; I already knew going in that it wasn't going to be the case so that part was a bit lost on me, but I definitely appreciated when we got to that point near the end of the film and I realized that if I knew absolutely nothing about the story, it would definitely seem like that's what was going on. But in any case, the tension of the last few moments was very real as the police think the killer has been stopped, the Final Girl is asleep in her room, the house seems otherwise empty, but the camera lingers for just a little bit too long, and it begins to dawn on the viewer that the killer is still very much a presence, and he's almost definitely just outside of the camera's view. And then we get a final shot of the house, silent except for the phone ringing, reminding us of the calls the killer has made after each one of his kills...
I don't really have a ton to say about this movie, other than I think it's very, very good. I was expecting a much slower burn and was quite pleased when that wasn't the case. I do have some small gripes about the logistics of things (mainly involving the attic, like, how did the killer get his first victim's body up into the attic? Why/how was there a phone in the attic? And I understand that the police thought the killer was dead, but why did none of them think to check the attic for the missing girl they've spent half the movie searching for?) but I think I'm going to have a lot more of those tomorrow, so it can wait.
I definitely recommend this one, especially around Christmastime!
Overall Rating: 9/10 Hidden Bottles of Toilet Liquor
Yearly Tradition: Allegedly, this movie was one of Elvis Presley's favorites, and it's said that he made a yearly tradition of watching it on Christmas (a tradition his family supposedly carried on after he died). However, this claim is likely apocryphal, as there would only be two Christmases for this "tradition" to take place between the movie's release and his untimely death.
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