Well, it is Christmas time, and with it comes the expectation, sometimes unfulfilled, that we will all gather together with family and friends to share in the warmth of community and close contact. It’s time to travel home, wherever that might be, to come together with those you most care about. To warm yourself by the fire, or just in the glow of colored lights, while outside the cold and the dark press in. And it is a time for indulgence – to treat yourself to something sweet, something rich, a bit of luxury, with the grey expanse of January and February stretched out before you. Not to oversell it, but today’s film is just such an indulgence—a classic about which I seriously doubt I have something new to offer, but writing something anyway is a gift I give myself. If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out before reading as spoilers abound. At the time of writing, I know it’s on Shudder.
Black Christmas (1974)
Bob Clark’s holiday proto-slasher classic (which I’ve previously touched on here) is such a stunning piece of work that it’s shocking to think that it was rather poorly received on release. It seems that reviewers of the day saw it as nothing more than a sleazy bit of pulp – just a killer picking off sorority girls one by one in grotesque death scenes, just producers cashing in on the juxtaposition of the holiday atmosphere with violence and death. And to be fair, it is all of those things, a paragon of pulpy body count cinema, full of tension, discomfort, and some real scares, but it is also such a deeper film experience, full of life well observed, alternatingly hilarious and tragic and terrifying and horrifying, all in a tightly constructed little package. What a holiday treat!
I think what most stands out about the film is the degree to which its characters are given room to breathe (until they’re not). There is a lived in quality to the sorority house and in the relationships between the girls who live there. In an early sequence, the camera moves around and within the house, suggesting the perspective of the killer even when it isn’t directly giving us his POV (which it also does), catching glimpses of the young women and the points of connection or conflict between them. Amidst the warm cacophony of their little pre-Christmas gathering, we overhear fragments of a conversation between Barb (Margot Kidder) and her mother – who it seems she won’t be spending the holiday with – a moment that will have a domino effect for the character throughout the rest of her time in the film, fueling her bitter, angry drunk behavior, but also telling us something of what hides beneath her tough demeanor.
We also get many establishing moments for the other girls, meeting them a bit – the sweet, doomed Clare (Lynne Griffin), saying goodnight to her boyfriend, excited and a bit scared at the prospect of introducing him to her parents; Phyl (Andrea Martin) lovingly embracing her big, shaggy mustachioed boyfriend, who will later make such an impression as a foul-mouthed Santa; all of the girls forcing the house mother, Mrs. Mack (Marian Waldman) to put on the ugly nightgown they’ve bought her before she goes off to find some of the bottles of booze she’s strategically hidden around the house; and significantly, Jess (Olivia Hussey), fielding a call from her problematic boyfriend Peter (Kier Dullea), wherein we start to catch wind of the possible discord between them and of his emotionally abusive tendencies. Even in the case of some characters who are more roughly sketched out, there are small details, subtleties which help them feel more solid, more present, more real. These are never disposable teens, waiting to get picked off; they are likeable young women who care about each other, who are sometimes cruel to each other (I’m looking at you, Barb), who have lives and hopes and dreams.
Of course, none of them will make it home for the holiday – none of them will survive at all. One after another, they are all killed by somebody, a killer who we never really see, and about whom, we never learn a single thing. We don’t know why he’s in this house, or why he kills, what his name is, or what he wants at all. And that is scary. After each murder, he calls the girls, using what we learn late in the film is another line in the house, and vocally unloads his unhinged psyche. It is in these phone calls that the film first approaches the horrific. There is something so threateningly beyond understanding in his psychotic stream of consciousness psycho-dramas; the phone calls feel like a violation, like an assault from the beginning, and it only gets worse. I have heard others wrestle with the text of the calls, trying to glean some sense of his story, but I think it is ultimately futile, and for me, it is so much more satisfying to have such an absence at the center of the action.
There is an interesting comparison to be made here with many other slashers, especially for those that spawned franchises. Often, even when we don’t know the killer’s true identity, that killer takes focus, occupying the center of the frame. It is often the killer who gets fans. It is often only the killer who returns for the next installment. This film is the opposite – the girls are the protagonists from start to finish and while the killer intrigues (and we are given at least one significant red herring to suspect), we never learn enough about him to connect to something – he never gets ‘cool.’
Instead, we have a bunch of young women to connect to, to root and fear for, and to lose. And the film takes their side, though many characters who should do so as well, fail to. We see all of them navigating inequities and dangers that seem startlingly contemporary (I suppose, highlighting how little progress there has been in some areas): presumptuous romantic partners exhibiting a potential for violence; police officers who don’t take their concerns seriously (such as when Barb reports Clare’s disappearance, but it isn’t until Clare’s boyfriend storms into the station that the police decide to start an investigation); and assumptions that their bodies and what may be growing within their bodies are not their own to make decisions about.
Made one year after Roe v. Wade, it is striking how straightforward the abortion subplot is presented. Jess is pregnant. She doesn’t plan to have the baby. Peter really doesn’t figure into this decision at all. She has her own life plans, and changing them to satisfy this moody, piano destroying man-child is simply off the table. Interestingly, Clark has said that the film wasn’t attempting to make a political statement, but it is inherent nonetheless. The intention may have been simply to set up a character who both Jess and the audience could grow suspicious of – someone we’ve seen get angry, even violent, someone who seems out of control, and has a motive, but in taking Jess seriously, and in never making her question or regret her own decision, the film perhaps accidentally stakes out a position concerning bodily autonomy and agency of character. Sadly, while she may overcome Peter’s attempts to control her body, to cancel her will, she is doomed to a more final violation of self, even if we never actually see it happen.
But what we do see, and hear, is so effective. The movie is just tight as a drum, constantly setting up elements which pay off spectacularly, editing moments together for contrast or build in such effective, riveting sequences. Of note for me is a short stretch when, while taking part in a search party for a missing child and/or Clare, an unnamed young lady sees something terrible and starts to scream. We see our protagonists start and run in the direction of the sound, but Clare’s father, who has been trying to find his missing daughter, gets there first. We see a look pass over his face – shock and horror –then relief –then sadness, right before the young girl’s mother comes running up, sees her own child, inhales to scream and – we cut to a phone ringing in the sorority house. It’s the killer, who will subject Jess to more of his horrifying psycho-sexual carrying on, having just killed Mrs. Mack. While she’s on the phone, the camera shows so much empty space in the house all around her. He could be anywhere. She is alone. A shadow falls on the stairs that she doesn’t see. Then feet appear and – it’s Peter – not the killer –unless he is –but he’s not –but is he? He’s here to tell her that she will be carrying the baby to term because he has decided that they are getting married and that’s just that (the killer might have been more pleasant). It all takes about two and a half minutes; and it is all so rich with nuance and real sadness and danger and suspense and character. It is a microcosm of the whole film.
I love all kinds of horror movies, but I particularly appreciate when films in which a lot of people die actually make some space for grief, when films filled with terrible things can allow characters to reckon with them, to have regrets, to be human. This is so present in the Barb arc. Early on in the film, stinging from the conversation with her mother, Barb lashes out at Clare right before she’s killed. As the film progresses, we see Barb get more and more drunk and inappropriate, sometimes hilariously so, but it also becomes obvious that underneath her prickly exterior, she blames herself. She drove Clare away to who knows where and is responsible for whatever has happened to her. She lashes out at the others, screaming at them to stop laying this blame at her feet, but I don’t think they ever have. It’s only her own guilt manifested, projected. Finally, Jess puts her to bed to sleep it off, and it’s moving to see the tenderness with which Jess cares for her belligerent, troubled friend. Finally, it is awful when drunk and defenseless, she is stabbed to death in her bed with a crystal unicorn as carolers sing downstairs, covering her screams. Again, we have a feast of character and suspense and deeply felt emotion and terror.
I could go on endlessly, describing other well-constructed and brilliantly acted sequences, other well observed nuanced life details (I love that Claude the cat jumps up on the lap of poor, dead Clare and starts licking the plastic bag on her face that suffocated her – because sometimes cats lick plastic – it’s just a weird thing they do—maybe Bob Clark’s cat did), but it probably serves the movie better, would serve you the reader better to just go watch it again (I really hope no one is reading this first –too late now, I suppose). It’s Christmas. Treat yourself.
Also, in the spirit of the season, take care of yourselves out there. May your coming year be free of psychos in the attic shouting obscenities at you on the phone!