Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon-Apalooza-Fest: 9/25

The feature: Black Christmas (1974)

Director: Bob Clark

Rating: 7 out of 10

Notice the year, people, this is a review of the original cult classic, not the shameless sequel that barely deserves a mention here. From what I knew of the movie it was only known as a cult, low-budget, B-horror flick that was mostly an afterthought compared to other horror classics of the era, but I think it's a bit more than that. The dialogue is snappy, the pacing is good, the tension is ramped up at the right moments, and the actors are all pretty darn good. You might even recognize a few of the stars, as Margot "Lois Lane" Kidder provides comedic relief and John Saxon plays basically the same part he would later play in A Nightmare on Elm Street as the town sherrif.

The plot is pretty vanilla: it's Christmas break at a sorority house and a murderer is in the house picking off the girls who haven't gone home for the holiday yet. It's a decent set-up for a 70's horror movie, and it works better in that era because a present day sorority house setting would be the epitome of stupid, drunken, naked girls spouting out worthless dialogue just so they could get drunk and naked. Nothing of the sort happens in this film, thankfully. I know I sound less than hetero saying that, but I want a little intelligence for my buck, and this film delivers. Where the films fails a bit is the lack of a noteworthy musical score. If I mention Halloween, Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws I would bet dollars to doughnuts that one of the first things that springs to mind is the iconic musical score in each film. So it's no secret that in order to become a bonafide horror classic music is of the utmost importance. It helps build mood and atmosphere, and while this films does pretty well with both in a very simplistic way, it could have been better.

My only other issue is it's simply not very scary. The creepy and obscene phone calls from the murderer are probably the best scare-tactics in the film, and even that wears off as they happen more frequently as the movie goes on. The pioneering use of the first-person POV steadi-cam (I think they were the first) as a way of cloaking the identity of the killer was well executed, but it pales in comparison to the technical mastery of the technique in the opening sequence of Halloween. But, credit where credit is due, Black Christmas used it a full 4 years before John Carpenter did, and it is effective.

I think the most interesting fact about the film is that it's director, Bob Clark, went on to direct a vastly different holiday classic, A Christmas Story. So there you have it, the man could satisfy audiences in horror and family films, which is something to be commended.

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