Another strong contender for “first” slasher, 1974’s Black Christmas gets credit for many of the tropes that the golden age of slashers was best known for. The cynical use of a holiday, archetypal young women in danger, and well-used killer POV shots; while novel at the time, these quickly became standard. There is one major standard that I’m leaving off this list, the final girl, but we’ll get to why, and why Black Christmas never got the same mainstream love as Halloween.
- Directed By: Bob Clark
- Written By: Roy Moore
- Starring: Olivia Hussey. Keir Dullea. Margot Kidder
Review – Spoilers Ahead!
Inspired by the urban legend of “the calls are coming from inside the house”, Black Christmas tells the story of a sorority harassed by an obscene phone caller on Christmas Eve.
Right off the bat, we’re introduced to the girls by their main characteristics. Barb is a bitch, Clare is the virgin, Jess is the nice one, and Mrs. Mac is the bumbling, wildly alcoholic house mother.
While not originally successful, Black Christmas is a movie found its audience. In recent years its even been re-examined with a more critical feminist lens. Its treatment of the male and female characters is striking on comparison to other movies of the same time. This was a deliberate stylistic choice from the director. He wanted to portray young women as more then “bikinis, beach blankets and bingo”, a reference to the beach party movies of the 60’s where girls were largely ornamental.
The Men of Black Christmas
While the girls are complex, flawed characters in Black Christmas, the men are not. Many of them display elements of being controlling and possessive over women, although they exhibit this in varying degrees. Clare’s father is the mildest case. He’s just an overprotective father who sent his daughter away to school. His need for control is understandable. It’s overprotective, not malicious.
Peter, Jess’s boyfriend, is somewhere in the middle. This is only because of what the other extreme is. He’s actively trying to baby-trap Jess, regardless of her wants, and tries to manipulate her into agreeing with his plans. He’s angry; he destroys things and threatens her. In any other movie, he’s the villain. Then there is Billy, the killer. His need to control women is so strong, it leads him to kill, then pose their bodies. He’s also shown exhibiting similar fits of rage to Peter.
There are a couple men who escape blatant negative characterization: John Saxon, as the detective and Chris, Clare’s boyfriend. It’s a plot point that Jess has to get Chris involved before the police will take their situation seriously. Despite being shown as levelheaded and intelligent, Jess is blown off by the male officer. As are the other sorority sisters trying to report their issues.
The Women
The women of Black Christmas are delightfully flawed. Barb is a drunk who covers her feelings and vulnerability with cruel jokes. Jess is smart and ambitious, and cares deeply about her friends. She’s also pregnant and getting an abortion. This plot was controversial in ’74, and it’s controversial now. Mrs. Mac is an outwardly friendly, opportunistic alcoholic who resents her position as house mother. She cares for the girls in her own way. She’s the least maternal house mother, but she’s not bad. Barb, Jess, and Mrs. Mac are the three most prominent women in Black Christmas, and they all defy gender norms.
That’s not to say that the sorority sisters are perfect “strong” women, or make perfect decisions. They mock goofy but well-meaning search party members, despite not taking any steps to protect themselves, like locking the doors to the house.. Barb plays a joke on a police officer that keeps them from getting the correct information quickly. Jess goes back into the house, knowing the killer is upstairs, after the police tell her not to. With the exception of the last one, these are all bad, but in character, decisions.
The Killer
Billy is one of the creepiest slashers, setting a standard that few have managed to hit. His use of multiple voices and cryptic backstory gives just enough information for the viewer to construct their own version of his traumatic upbringing. It’s a deeply unpleasant one, filled with hints of murder, abusive families, and other taboos. His murders are him constantly reliving an incident with “Agnes”. Honestly, I don’t really want to think too much about how all that ties together. It’s not hard to figure out. It’s just too disturbing.
He doesn’t wear a mask—that isn’t a standard yet—but his face is never shown. We get a glimpse of an eye when the rest of the face is in shadow, but that’s it. As the audience never sees his face, neither does Jess.
This allows the ending to happen. After a series of events that lead to Jess being in what should have been the final girl spot, she comes face to face with Peter. He’s now the number one suspect to be “Billy”. Peter however, has light grey or blue eyes; Billy’s are brown. We know this due to some brilliant establishing camera work. Despite being an angry manipulative douche who Jess kills out of fear, he’s not the killer.
So, Jess is the Final Girl, Right?
About that. The movie ends with Jess sedated in bed, still in the sorority house. The camera pans through the house, showing the room where Barb and Phyl were killed, Clare’s suitcase, and finally the door to the attic. It lifts a crack. The camera cuts to the bodies of Clare and Mrs. Mac, still undiscovered in the attic. As the camera pans out from the house, the phone rings.
Billy only calls after he’s killed someone. That last phone call means Jess is dead. This pretty much disqualifies her from being a final girl, as the prerequisite for that is actually “must be alive”. It’s a bummer of an ending, and I think part of why Black Christmas didn’t hit audiences the same way that Halloween did.
Why Didn’t It Take Off
There are other contributing factors. Movies that are overly cynical about Christmas can be a tough sell, especially ones focused on murder. There are also some issues with the logic of the ending. As much as I enjoy the twist, I cannot imagine a world where the police don’t take Jess to the hospital to recover, much less leave her in that house for one minute more.
While the women are portrayed as three-dimensional, the overall messaging about them and men does get messy when you consider how they end up. All the women in this movie die. So, these nice, well-rounded, progressive characters still face punnishment from controlling men. Jess perhaps more so than the others, considering her story arc. Now, they aren’t being punished for their specific actions, just for existing as women. Is that better or worse?
Black Christmas is regarded as more feminist than other slashers. That’s largely because of how the women are written, but like The Slumber Party Massacre, women being written as people shouldn’t be a revolutionary act.
Black Christmas is tense and scary, but also bleak and nihilistic. It’s possible that given the chaos of the previous years, the public was just not in the mood for this kind of slasher. The ending, while delivering a shocking twist, might leave audiences unsettled and unsatisfied, making it hard to recommend to their friends. I’m glad audiences have come back around on this one; it deserves way more love than it got at its release.
The Slasher Template
While Black Christmas didn’t achieve mainstream success at the time, it’s gone on to become a legendary slasher. The centering around a holiday is one of the most significant borrowed aspects by its descendants. Halloween, Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool’s Day, Thanksgiving, and so many more, used this same formula with slight adjustments. This isn’t even getting into the specifically Christmas-themed slashers. There are enough of those to make their own subgenre.
Black Christmas introduces elements, like the phone calls, that later movies will use, but it’s also credited for things that we’ve seen before, like the killer POV shots. A Bay of Blood used these in 1971 to define its main killer. That wasn’t even the first example, just the most recent I’ve watched. It uses them well. Combined with the sorority house’s claustrophobic setting those shots make the stalking element much more effective.
Final Thoughts
Black Christmas may be one of many “first” slashers, but it’s a crucial step towards their mainstream success. It clearly inspired Halloween, both in story and camerawork, as well as countless others. In fact, when someone, probably Blumhouse, releases the inevitable Arbor Day slasher, starring a smart girl, sassy girl, and nerdy girl, hunted down in a remote campground by a former lumberjack tortured by his guilt over his sister’s tree-related death, it will be because of the shining example Black Christmas set.
Black Christmas did become popular enough to get remakes in 2006 and 2019. They are not good.
The original Black Christmas is available on streaming.
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