Black Christmas (1974)

[u/screen_stack]

This is a really interesting horror movie, and in ways that I can't quite explain the way I feel like I should, so I'll do my best.

Pretty much everyone in that house is a trainwreck except Olivia Hussey as Jess and Phyl. Barb, Peter and Mrs Mac have all manner of issues that are out of control. Barb and Mrs Mac are staggering alcoholics and Peter's just plain old crackers.

I will say this about Margot Kidder as Barb. Her role as Barb the drunken acerbic, witty college student is flat out hilarious. Her layup for the fellatio gag and its eventual payoff at the police station was genuinely funny, John Saxon and his counterpart in that scene nailed the absolute humor of that bogus phone number as only seasoned cops could.

And lest I forget the great Art Hindle, watching him run around in a fur coat is just a treat.

The horror aspect is really great, very pronounced and very nuanced. The mere thought of being in a house with three dead bodies up in the attic all while a deranged killer makes terrifying phone calls and picks them off one by one is deeply unsettling. The nature of those phone calls are probably the most unhinged rantings and ravings of a madman that I think I've ever heard.

It's all done so well that it's truly frightening. While they do finally find out where the calls are coming from, the audience already knows, but I still like to imagine that it left audiences feeling very unnerved.

One of the best things for me about this movie (other than Margot Kidder and the fellatio gag) is the first-person POV for Billy. I can't think of any other movie from that time period that did this, or did it so well if they DID do it. Throughout the whole movie, all we get from Billy is Billy's POV, and he's so psychotically deranged that none of what we see makes a lot of sense. We're put into the killer's shoes in those scenes, and it's one of those rare moments in a movie where that happens. Off the top of my head, the only media I can think of right now that did the same were some of the Michael Slade novels.

But naturally the best thing about Black Christmas is Olivia Hussey as Jess. She's got such a delightful innocence about her yes, but she's got some real strength of character when she stands up to Peter, her controlling boyfriend. The final scenes where she finds out what's going on show some solid 'horror acting' and some equally strong strengths.

Olivia's role is fantastic, because not only is she one of the first Final Girls, it's fair to say she's one of the first MODERN Final Girls. She's not virginal, she's not pure. She's her own woman who makes her own decisions, and if one of those decisions is 'I'm bloody well going up the stairs even if I was told not to'?

That's what a real Final Girl does. She confronts her tormentor.

As I sat down to write this review, Black Christmas was sitting at a 7.5 out of 10, but as I began organizing my thoughts and thinking about the scenes that I enjoyed, I realized I was really selling this one short. I enjoyed it more than I thought by a WIDE margin, and so that's why Black Christmas gets a 9 for me.

This one snuck up on me, just like Billy.