So then, behind this door we have the story of perhaps the most important Yuletide horror movie of them all - Bob Clark's Black Christmas. With a poster bearing the memorable tagline “if this movie doesn't make your skin crawl, it's on too tight,”. Black Christmas was released on October 11th in Canada, with a US release on the 20th December, and hitting UK and European screens the following year. Made for a tiny budget of $686,000, the movie would take over $5 million on its initial release alone. And in addition to its huge profitability, it is perhaps an understatement to say that this movie has been massively influential.
Now the film has its genesis in two concepts colliding in the imagination of Canadian screenwriter Roy Moore. On one hand he was inspired by the old urban myth of the babysitter and the phone. In this tale, often told around campfires and at sleepovers, a babysitter is menaced by a maniac calling her up on the phone, with the twist being that when the police trace the disturbing calls, it is discovered that they are coming from inside the house.
Moore felt there was potential here for a movie, and drew further inspiration from a real life murder case that occurred many years before in Montreal. Basically at Christmas 1943, a kid went crazy and killed his family. And so Moore came up with a script called Stop Me which featured a multiple murderer on the loose during the Christmas holidays.
The script was picked up by film producers Harvey Sherman and Richard Schouten, who have a rewrite done by Timothy Bond (who go on to be a writer and director in his own right, working on episodes of a huge number of cult TV shows such Star Trek The Next Generation, Due South, Sliders, Hercules and the Friday 13th TV series). Now aside from general polishing, Bond made a major alteration by relocating the action to a university sorority house.
When director Bob Clark came on board, he made further changes to the script as he was tired of college kids being portrayed in movies in a very unrealistic manner. And so he reworked the script to flesh out the characters, and also added some touches of humour too, notably in the creation of the character of the sorority house mother, Mrs Mac, played by Marian Waldman.
Thanks to this improved script Clark was able to attract a very talented cast to this little Canadian horror movie, netting Olivia Hussey riding high after Romeo and Juliet, and Keir Dullea still sparkling after his starring role in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Rising star Margot Kidder signed on because she liked how wild and unconventional her character Barb was. Finally the movie gods smiled on Clark, and he was able to get his dream casting at the last minute, with the late great John Saxon coming onboard for the role of Lieutenant Kenneth Fuller.
So then if you don’t know, here’s a quick spoiler-free plot outline… It is the end of term and at a sorority house, the students are preparing for the festivities and to travel home for the holidays. The girls in the house have been bothered by a series of obscene phone calls which so far they have laughed off. When a local girl is murdered in a nearby park, the disturbing phone calls are no longer so funny. And the girls become increasingly concerned when one of their house mates misses a meeting with her father and appears to have vanished. And what they don’t know is that an unidentified man has climbed into the sorority house and is now hiding in the attic. And of course he will kill again…
Black Christmas is often cited as the movie that kickstarted the slasher genre, and indeed we have many key elements present and correct here - set piece kills, killer point-of-view shots, and a final girl. However there are key differences too. To begin with rather than the usual isolated setting, the sorority house is in the heart of town and the police, in the shape of John Saxon’s detective, are investigating from the outset. And hence the movie’s plot is more focused on the murder mystery elements, than on cat-and-mouse sequences between killer and victim.
And the killer in Black Christmas is not your usual slasher villain either. Presumed to be called “Billy” from hints dropped in the phone calls, this killer is not out for revenge or simply just evil, as is the case in virtually every other slasher. For Billy's motives are shrouded by his own insanity. As I mentioned we get a series of hints in the phone calls to his backstory, but how much of this verbal jigsaw is truth and how much is just the ravings of a highly demented individual is open to question. Likewise Billy doesn’t have a signature look, no facial deformity or iconic mask. Rather he is just a shape, a silhouette glimpsed before he strikes.
Director Bob Clark masterfully tells this creepy Christmas tale, the characters come across as real people, and often he shoots in an almost documentary fashion, heightening the realism of the situation. The kill scenes are often very sudden and imaginatively staged, heighted by the experimental score created by Carl Zittrer, which relied on discordant sounds rather than actual music. And very much borrowing from Freddie Francis and All Through the House, the majority of the real music we hear in the movie are Christmas favourites and carols being played or sung in the world of the film. Likewise the snowy setting and seasonal decorations are brilliantly used to counterpoint the dark and bleak events playing out, often under the glow of twinkling Christmas lights.
On its initial release Black Christmas received what can at best be described as mixed reviews, with many critics claiming it was just pointless and unpleasant. But while undoubtedly Black Christmas is bleak and dark, it was more than just an exercise in nastiness. To begin with, it is because it is so brilliantly crafted that it does deliver a distinct chill. But also Bob Clark masterfully uses humour to both undercut and raise the suspense, and his script rewrites have been greatly appreciated in later years, with many modern reviewers praising the social subtext and realistic portrayals of the young students.
And so, while it got short shrift from reviewers back in the day, over the years, the film gained a cult following, and now has been positively reassessed as a classic movie. Also like many of our festive milestones, the movie has been hugely influential. It was a chat about Black Christmas between Bob Clark and a young film-maker named John Carpenter that planted the seed of an idea that would become the classic horror movie Halloween. And Halloween in turn would inspire Friday 13th, and thus the slasher movie genre was born, with dozens of movies featuring murderous maniacs stalking young people appearing in the 1980s.
Now thankfully, Black Christmas, unlike many of its slasher offspring, has been spared the indignity of endless sequels. However, it has been remade twice, firstly in 2006 and a second time in 2016. Now interestingly both these movies, quite wisely I think, decided not to simply retell the events of the first movie, and instead crafted alternative horror tales drawing on elements of Black Christmas. However both films ended up missing their marks.
The first remake came with a good deal of talent both before and behind the camera. Starring was a bevy of hip young actors - Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Lacey Chabert. Meanwhile helming the movie was Glen Morgan, who with long-time collaborator James Wong, worked extensively on The X Files and Millennium, created the scifi series Space Above and Beyond, and then masterminded the Final Destination movie franchise. Quite the pedigree.
2006’s Black Christmas very much piles on the festive trimmings, with decorations everywhere, a bold palette of seasonal colours, and Yuletide themed kills with deaths being delivered by candy cane, icicle, tree topper and ice skates. However despite aiming to be a fun, colourful over-the-top slasher, tonally the film is all over the place. Unwisely this movie gives Billy an extensive backstory which is both ludicrous and distasteful. For example, he has severe jaundice and is therefore bright yellow like a Simpson. But the depicted abuse both physical and sexual from his mother is less than amusing. And hence it ended up being too silly to be disturbing, but too nasty to be fun. Apparently while making the movie, director Glen Morgan had numerous run-ins with the Weinsteins and Dimension Films over the direction and content of the remake, and this I think probably explains why Black Christmas (2006) turned out like it did.
Now the 2016 remake from Blumhouse Productions very much goes in the opposite direction. Well at least at first. Director and co-writer Sophia Takal attempts to pick up the social realism angle from Bob Clark’s original, and sets her movie very firmly on a university campus, tackling modern themes, and working with a gifted cast playing everything straight that included Imogen Poots, Brittany O'Grady, and Cary Elwes.
And in the first couple of acts, this approach reaps decent rewards, with contemporary social commentary blended well with a mystery maniac loose on campus. However unfortunately too, this movie suffers for being tonally uneven, with the film becoming increasingly daft as it goes along, and ending up in a truly ludicrous place by the end. So sadly both remakes, despite their good intentions, have ended up on the naughty list.
However we still have the original to revisit every year, and for Yuletide horror, Black Christmas still sets the standard to aspire to. For, despite being fifty years old this year, Bob Clark’s little movie still packs a huge punch and remains the quintessential creepy Christmas chiller.
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