SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25)
By:
December 25, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite horror movies. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
BLACK CHRISTMAS | d. BOB CLARK | 1974
Widely considered one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Black Christmas celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in December 2024.
Written by A. Roy Moore (who was inspired by the infamous urban legend, “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs”), directed by Bob Clark (who later helmed another, vastly different Christmas classic, A Christmas Story), and filmed in Toronto, Black Christmas is positively elegant in its terrifying simplicity. A deranged killer sneaks into the attic of a sorority house as Christmas break begins, then makes threatening phone calls to the young women two floors below, before eventually murdering them, one by one.
Many of the killer’s scenes are filmed from his manic point of view, so we never get a good look at him, and we certainly never learn his motivation. “It’s me, Billy,” he rants on the calls, but is that really his name? These unknowns make Black Christmas infinitely scarier than many horror movies that waste time creating elaborate backstories to “explain” why crazed slashers do what they do. Not knowing why is almost always more terrifying.
The phone calls offer some of the most traumatic moments ever committed to film. The killer becomes more unhinged with each successive call, until finally reaching a screeching, wailing crescendo of total madness by the film’s last act. During these calls, Clark fixes the lens on star Olivia Hussey and her big, expressive eyes as we watch her horrified reactions to Billy’s insane, unsettlingly graphic rants. The phone calls are assaultive violations — to Jess and her sorority sisters, and to us, the audience. It’s horror at its most chillingly effective.
Hussey is a revelation here. Her performance as the thoughtful, strong-willed, independent Jess Bradford anchors the movie. She’s at the center of everything — Jess takes most of the killer’s abusive phone calls, and also features in a memorably progressive subplot. Black Christmas’s honest and sensitively handled portrayal of a woman contemplating aborting a pregnancy remains a high-water mark for the topic on film, even fifty years after its release. Yet it’s late in the film, during the famous “The caller is in the house” scene, where Hussey shines brightest. As the gravity of the situation comes crushing down on Jess, the stark terror on Hussey’s face seems all too real.
I haven’t even mentioned the rest of the tremendous cast, including Margot Kidder as the foul-mouthed, drunk sorority sister Barb, or cult movie god John Saxon as the kindly police detective on the case. Everyone involved turns in brilliant work. For this, and so many other reasons — The score! The script! The cinematography! That jaw-dropping ending! — Black Christmas‘s reputation as the proto-slasher is well earned. It set the bar so impossibly high that I don’t think another slasher movie has ever surpassed it. For this horror lover, Black Christmas is as perfect as horror gets, which is why I came here to scream my enthusiasm for it.
Happy 50th, Black Christmas!
SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Crockett Doob on THE SHINING | Dean Haspiel on TOURIST TRAP | Fran Pado on M3GAN | Erin M. Routson on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT | Adam McGovern on THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER | Michele Carlo on THE EXORCIST | Tony Pacitti on JAWS | Josh Glenn on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) | Kathy Biehl on HALLOWEEN | Annie Nocenti on ROSEMARY’S BABY | Carolyn Campbell on WAIT UNTIL DARK | Marc Weidenbaum on DAWN OF THE DEAD | Amy Keyishian on SHAUN OF THE DEAD | Gabriela Pedranti on [•REC] | Mariane Cara on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY | Trav SD on FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY | Colin Campbell on EVIL DEAD (2013) | Lynn Peril on NIGHT GALLERY | Heather Quinlan on THE CHANGELING | Kenny Simek on REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on IT (1990) | James Scott Maloy on CONTAGION | Nick Rumaczyk on THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF | Max Alvarez on THE INNOCENTS | Michael Campochiaro on BLACK CHRISTMAS.
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