Of course, there's a tradition of watching heart-warming holiday films this Yuletide season.  But if the eggnog starts to curdle, you might want to watch a creepy classic Christmas flick... one that will send you...

By TESS HENSEN

First and foremost let me say...I love this film! It is a must see for any horror fan, and a screening of it late on a Christmas Eve is the perfect time. It has become my annual Christmas Eve ritual to pop this gem in round about midnight, with a big bowl of popcorn, all snuggly in a warm blanket, prepared to be severely creeped out.

This is a highly underrated and often overlooked slasher classic that pre-dates Halloween, Friday The 13th and When A Stranger Calls, and I read somewhere recently that it was pulled from an NBC-TV showing back in the Seventies because the network feared it would be too frightening for it's viewers. Fans of any of these slashers will want to see Black Christmas, because it is from this film that many of the ideas for later slasher fare derived.

Released in 1974, and directed by Bob Clark, who later became most famous for directing another Christmas themed movie with a lighter side, A Christmas Story, and who also directed the cult teen romp Porky's, and in 1972 directed the horror cult favorite Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Black Christmas (a.k.a. Silent Night, Evil Night, a.k.a. Stranger In The House) is probably the film from which the mold was made for future American made slasher fare. It has all the requisite slasher ingredients--attractive girls, an insane psycho killer, a big creepy house, strange phone calls and an idiotic police officer.

The cast is stellar, and includes a wonderfully sassy performance by Margot Kidder as Barb, the drunken, sharp-tongued sorority sister who tells it like it is. Other cast members include Olivia Hussey as Jess, Keir Dullea as Peter (Jess's love interest), and John Saxon as Lt. Fuller--the only policeman in the department who has half a brain. A couple of the taglines for the film are as follows:

"If This Movie Doesn't Make Your Skin Crawl...It's On Too Tight!" and,

"Christmas is coming early this year...and it's murder!"

The plot goes something like this: A group of sorority girls at Pi Sigma Kappa are making plans for the Christmas holidays. At one of their holiday parties, they start receiving some very creepy, and obscenely vulgar phone calls. The caller, who refers to himself as Billy, alternately screams, cackles, talks to himself, and then begins to utter obscene sexual phrases to the girls. At first it is just shrugged off as a joke played on them by one of their boyfriends. The caller is forgotten about, and the girls go about partying and deciding what they are going to do over Christmas break.

Barb (Margot Kidder) has been snubbed by her mother, and has nothing to do but go skiing over the holidays and asks some of her other sisters to join her. It is unclear what Jess (Olivia Hussey) has planned, but it seems that she is staying in the house over the holidays as well. She is having a difficult time with her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea-most famous for his role as the ill-fated Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey) who is a possessive, high-strung, temperamental pianist, and their relationship is further complicated when Jess finds she is pregnant and is determined, against Peter's wishes, to have an abortion.

Another of the girls, Clare, is preparing to meet her father the following day for the holidays. She, offended by something the ever blatantly vulgar Barb has said to her, goes upstairs during the party to pack and prepare for her trip home. Upon entering her room, she finds the housemother's cat and shoos it away. Suddenly she hears a noise coming from her closet, and thinking the cat has hidden in there, she goes to investigate. The psycho killer is hiding behind a clear plastic garment cover, and he leaps out and smothers her with the plastic tarp. He has entered the house through a hole in the attic. He drags her body up to the attic and sits her in a chair overlooking the front entrance.

This scene is much more creepy and atmospheric than I could describe it...especially the shot of Clare, dead and wrapped in plastic, looking out the window as if in wait for her father to arrive. The next day, her father is waiting for her, and when she is late in meeting him stops one of the students and asks if he knows her. The young man says yes, and tells him the way to her sorority house. Clare's father arrives at the house, and after asking around, finds, much to his chagrin, that no one has seen Clare. He has a meeting with the hilarious housemother, who loves to indulge in the spirits almost as much as Barb does, and again, gets no information on where his daughter may be.

At this point, he and all the girls go to the police station to file a missing person's report. Here comes another humorously bawdy scene with Barb, who gives the incompetent and uncaring police officer a telephone number to the sorority house that is, well, interesting--to say the least. The fact that the police officer doesn't even know what she's talking about makes the scene much funnier. In the meantime, a younger girl goes missing, and the police force are organizing a search. The sorority girls volunteer to help, in the hope that they may also find out what happened to Clare.

Before the girls go out to help with the search, the housemother informs them that she is going to be leaving for her sister's, and may not be there when they get back. After the girls have gone, the housemother goes to her room to prepare for her trip. Suddenly, she hears her cat meowing and goes to investigate. The sounds seem to be coming from the attic, and even though she cannot figure out how the cat got up there, she climbs through the hole in the ceiling that leads to the attic, in search of him. As she is standing on the ladder looking around for the heard, but unseen cat, she spies, much to her horror, the body of Clare, still wrapped in plastic sitting in the chair by the window. She realizes that Clare has been murdered, and as this realization strikes she hears a cackle and mumbling sound from behind her. As she turns, the psycho killer throws a grappling hook (what the heck is a grappling hook doing in the attic of a college sorority?) at her, hooks her, pulls her through the opening and kills her, wrapping her in plastic just like Clare.

The girls are helping with the search party in a local park, when they hear another student screaming. The police and Clare's father, who is also helping with the search, run to the student and find she is standing over the body of a young girl who has apparently been brutally murdered. It is confirmed that this is the child that has gone missing, but is not Clare. Exhausted, the sorority girls return to the house to hopefully get some rest before they resume the search for Clare. Barb and the only other sister go to bed, leaving Jess awake and roaming the big house. The phone rings. It is Billy again, screaming, mumbling and shouting obscenities at her. Jess hangs up and calls the police. At first the moronic officer just tells her it's probably one of her male friends trying to scare her. When she insists it is not, he lets her talk to Lt. Fuller (John Saxon).

After getting off the phone, Fuller tells the officer that because of the body they have found earlier, and the missing sorority girl, and the phone calls going to the same house as the missing girl, that he should be investigating it a little more thoroughly. An officer is sent to the house as protection, and the phone is tapped to trace any more incoming calls. Peter calls the house, and is not in very good spirits when he talks to Jess because she has decided beyond a doubt that she does not want to accept the marriage proposal he made the day he found out she was pregnant, and that she is definitely going to get an abortion.

After hanging up with Peter, the phone rings again. It's Billy again, and before a trace can be made, Jess hangs up in disgust at some of the things he is telling her. The police call her and tell her that she has to keep him on the phone longer in order for them to get a trace. A few minutes later, Billy calls again. This time Jess hangs on the phone, listening to the myriad personality changes that Billy is going through with increasing horror. Finally, he hangs up. Calls are made between the various detectives, police officers and phone tracers. The trace was good, and the call is coming from inside the house!

The killer has been using the housemother's private line to call the other house phone. Lt. Fuller tells the idiotic police officer to call the house and instruct Jess to leave the house immediately without telling her why. He attempts to do so, but she insists on waking up the other two sisters so they can leave as well. The officer then begs her not to go upstairs, that the calls are coming from inside the house, and that she needs to leave the house immediately. She hangs up, and ascends the stairs to wake the other two sisters. To her horror, she finds them murdered in their beds.

As she turns to run down the stairs, she sees the killer peeking at her threw a doorway. She runs downstairs, but somehow the front door is now locked and she cannot get out. As she turns to run away a hand grabs her, and she finds the door to the basement...locks the door behind her and runs into the darkness. The killer tries to get in for awhile, then gives up. After a while she hears nothing more. Suddenly, she sees a shadow outside one of the basement windows. The shadow starts calling her name. She doesn't answer. The shadow continues calling her name, and finally breaks out the window and jumps down into the basement. It is Peter. He approaches her and asks if she is all right. She thinks he is the killer. The next scene shows the police finding them in the basement together, Peter dead, and Jess barely conscious. She has killed him. A doctor is called, and Jess is carried upstairs to her bedroom and sedated. The police are convinced that Peter was the psycho killer.

At this point I will stop, because the ending to this film should not be given away. It is one of the creepiest endings I have ever seen in a horror film. You must experience it for yourself.

Now you see what I mean when I say this is the film that most other American-made, Seventies and Eighties slashers are derived from. When A Stranger Calls, released five years later in 1979, borrowed heavily from it by using the old "caller is in the house " trick. Halloween, released four years later in 1978, borrowed from it by using the "psycho killer stalking pretty girls" schtick. However, one thing that differs, and is quite original in this film, is the fact that, except for a brief moment when we see the psycho killer's eye peeking threw a cracked door, we never see the killer!

Some of the scenes are even presented through the killer's eye, another thing that Halloween borrowed, to avoid having to actually show who the killer is. Also, since we never see the killer, or know anything about him, we never know what his motivation is. He apparently kills for no reason. This sorority house just happened to be a place he picked at random. That, to me, makes the film that much more horrifying and realistic. In most slasher movies, the killer has a reason why he is targeting the people he kills, in Black Christmas, this guy kills just because he enjoys doing it. He doesn't care who his victims are, as long as they are young, pretty girls.

I can't say enough about this film, except to say that you really must experience it for yourself. It's not the best slasher movie ever made, Halloween took Black Christmas a step further and actually made us care about the characters, or at least we cared about Laurie Strode. While we might care a little about Jess's character, the development of the other players is minimal, so, for example, we may not really care when Barb buys the farm.

Halloween also used music to a great degree to build tension. The music in Black Christmas is almost non-existent, but I guarantee you'll never hear a Christmas carol quite the same way again. I believe it is the set, a dark, atmospheric and huge old sorority house that makes the best use of tension building techniques. It never seems very bright in the house, even in the daytime. Dark wood paneling, and eerie red Christmas lights, are the main theme of the set, and it works to present a creepy atmosphere.

So, while it's not in the same caliber of Halloween, it's not very far off the mark, and can really pack the scares, with a minimal amount of gore. I highly recommend screening this on Christmas Eve this year with your sweetie, or better yet, alone, like I did the first time I saw it. Enjoy! Oh, and have a Merry Black Christmas!

And a scary seasons greetings to you, too, Tess!  Black Christmas has become a holiday horror classic, one that goes well with the holiday season...just keep your doors locked while you watch it!

Article copyright © Tess Hensen

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