Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas (Canada 1974  97min.)   directed by Bob Clark, written by Roy Moore

Horror thriller starring Olivia Hussey. Pre-Christmas festivities turn sour as a group of female college students get a series of obscene and threatening phone calls. Then the murders begin...

 "If this movie doesn't make your skin crawl... It's On Too Tight! "



Black Christmas is an under rated Canadian film which predates the slasher/stalker sub-genre that came to dominate the Horror field folowing the success of Halloween (1978) and Friday The 13th (1980).

Writer Roy Moore came from television and this background obviously came in useful - the film is tightly plotted and manages to walk the comedy/horror line very successfully during the first half ; thus setting up the full steam ahead horror of the second.

It's a slight story and one that has been used in numerous variations over the past thirty years. Small group of people (in this case female students) are caught in an enclosed space (their sorority house) and are picked off one by one by an unseen lurking psycho.

So far - so much the same. However director Clark keeps finding new and inventive ways to move the story forward visually and uses the scripts standout device of the insane, garbled phone calls from the killer in a very effective way.

Olivia Hussey is the nominal star, which is a shame as her acting talent wasn't (yet)  really up to the role ; however, the rug is pulled out from under her by Marot Kidder - still four years away from Superman - she grabs the role of Barbie (drunken loudmouth no-nonsense tough girl) and clings on for dear life. An exceptional performance from an actress that Hollywood found too difficult to manage and handle and was allowed to slip from the public view - a terrible waste of talent.

Also among the cast are the always reliable TV actors John Saxon (as the investigating detective) and Keir Duella as the prime suspect boyfriend of Hussey's character.

At this remove it's possible that Black Christmas would appear to be just another in a long line of haunted house/ slasher films - however, there is still enough that is novel and fresh on offer to distinguish it from the mundane and average.

You should also bear in mind that at the time of it's release many of the conceits and detail of the script, which are now over familiar, were fresh and new. I'm fairly sure that a trick that now turns up everywhere from CSI down with regard to the phone calls was being used for the first time here.

Director Clark was later responsible for the Porky's films (!) before disappearing into Canadian TV . Roy Moore has only ever had one other screenplay filmed.

It's one of those films that is much greater than the sum of the parts - the cinema equivilent of the punk group who manage one timeless single before being returned to obscurity.

Avoid the 2006 remake at all costs. It's rotten.