BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
It seems the older I get the earlier the anticipation leading up to the holiday season begins. This isn’t a critique, rather, there is simply something so campy about celebrating holidays out-of-season that I find so charming. Although, nothing is more ostentatious than a festive cross-over. From films like THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993) to TV episodes like “Christmas Every Day!” from The Fairly OddParents, there are so many unique ways the media has chopped and screwed different holidays to come up with some interesting stories to tell. Unsurprisingly, Christmas is often at the core of these narratives with Halloween being its main antithesis. As someone with a hefty amount of Catholic trauma, seeing the subversion of the Yuletide is equally as cathartic as it is entertaining. The holiday season has always been more horror than Hallmark for me, so movies like BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) help reallocate some of the dread felt during that time of year. While the carolers are caroling and adults feverishly shop for their friends and family, something much sinister is lurking in the shadows, and for once the villain isn’t anyone’s racist uncle. Before Michael Myers was running around with cutlery in a clown mask, Billy was singing lullabies to a corpse in an attic.
Throughout my years of perusing the horror genre, BLACK CHRISTMAS is one of the few genuinely scary horror flicks I’ve come across. On the surface this movie is the definition of a slasher with an unknown assailant picking off the members of a sorority house right before they’re supposed to leave for winter break. While the premise and character motivations all seem to be explicitly stated, there are aspects of the film that go wholly unresolved, allowing the imagination to run wild while trying to piece together the why and how of certain key moments. For example, the attacks on the main cast of victims are punctuated by eerie calls made to the house by the murderer, not dissimilar to the popular urban legend of the babysitter and the man upstairs. During these disturbing calls the killer takes turns taunting the girls and padding out his own backstory, a confabulation that tells the tale of a troubled youth named Billy, his sister, Agnes, who’d met a rather unfortunate fate, and their parents who seem to be simultaneously worried about, scared of, and furious with Billy. These calls are single-handedly the most elusive and iconic pieces of the narrative. The killer’s one-sided exposition dump does an impressive job of providing just enough information to theorize about his disposition without giving away everything. Billy isn’t the only complex character, though.
All the sorority girls mentioned by name have incredibly unique personalities that feel real and refreshing in a horror genre whose likeness resembles a walking conglomerate of cliches and stereotypes. The fact that these women can’t be boiled down to labels like “the mean one” or “the smart one” is a testament to BLACK CHRISTMAS not just being a good horror, but a good movie. This dynamic is at its peak with the main protagonist and the film’s designated final girl, Jess Bradford. Her subplot explores a more existential horror as Jess navigates her life, her career, and relationships through the frame of bodily autonomy. It’s reiterated that Jess knows what she wants out of life, and it is those around her who try to instill a sense of anxiety about the future. Jess’s character arc is part of a greater juxtaposition within the narrative where the regular and often mundane are contrasted against scenes of the macabre.
The strongest aspect of BLACK CHRISTMAS is its tonal divergence. A prominent example is the fact that a killer is preying on a house full of young women during what many people would consider “the most wonderful time of the year”. Silent nights and snow days tend to have a much more positive connotation to the holiday season, but in this film the chill and eerie quiet create an ambience where you’re never quite sure that’s going to happen next. One of the most unnerving scenes is when Jess is watching a group of children caroling completely unaware that her sorority sister is being brutalized upstairs, and just when you think it can’t get any worse a chaperone for the group begins hurrying the children home, warning Jess that a dead body had been found in a nearby park. This is far from the only instance of emotional whiplash with plenty of scenes dedicated to comedic relief and moments of misplaced hope.
Part of why this storytelling pattern flows so well is because at no point in the story is it ever truly revealed to the characters just how dangerous their situation is. This makes watching them theorize all the more interesting as they futilely try to either explain or make excuses for the unsettling events happening around them. Case in point, the entire runtime of BLACK CHRISTMAS is centered around everything that happens while the sorority sisters desperately try to find their “missing” housemate who is immediately revealed to the audience as being one of the killer’s first victims. The movie doesn’t even offer a conclusion with the reveal of the girl’s lifeless body to those in the house who managed to survive, but with all remaining characters still speculating on where she could be with some even holding on to the hope that she’s alive somewhere. This, paired with the ending I am refusing to spoil, is honestly one of the creepiest conclusions to a horror movie I’ve seen. Not only is the killer still out there, but there are no resolutions to the several conflicts that arise throughout the movie. That isn’t to say there is no conclusion, but rather the conclusions reached are understood only by the audience, leaving the characters to build a misguided and extremely faulty sense of security.
BLACK CHRISTMAS is great if you’re of the mind that there’s no such thing as a scary horror movie. I understand people’s aversion towards the genre, especially when it comes to staples like slashers that have so many incarnations and parodies that begin to bleed together after a while. Ironically, BLACK CHRISTMAS feels very new and fresh considering how old it is. The movie doesn’t take itself for granted as it carefully constructs a narrative within well-thought-out settings that feel just real enough to elicit fear amongst even the most jaded of watchers.
The terror of the unknown is carefully utilized to create a dynamic set of dreads and anxieties that both the characters and audience can share while still having extremely separate understandings of everything going on. The mysteries within the film also make for an engaging rewatch as clues and hints at the ending are hidden in plain sight from the very beginning. BLACK CHRISTMAS is a cinematic rollercoaster that doesn’t hold back. So, whether it’s Halloween, Christmas, or just another manic Monday, this cult classic is sure to be on someone’s movie rotation year-round.
