Black Christmas

When Halloween arrives each year, the first movie that springs to mind is John Carpenter’s all-time classic ‘Halloween’. There’s a good reason for this: it’s one of the best horror movies ever made, and stands up wonderfully to repeat viewings. I’ve seen it dozens of times, and it never fails to impress by spellbinding me with its unique feel and atmosphere. 

If you haven’t seen it...by all means, do it! It’s one of the staples of cinema, not just horror cinema. Perhaps I’ll do a full review in the future. It’s absolutely deserving of one, even though a lot has been written about it already.

The subject of this recommendation, however, is a lesser-known gem, the 1974 Canadian movie, ‘Black Christmas’. Like ‘Halloween’, it’s also one of the best horror movies ever made.

Right from the opening titles, ‘Black Christmas’ paints an ominous, unrelenting atmosphere that never lets up until the credits roll...and even after that (perhaps especially after that!) it never really lets the audience off the hook. Even during the movie’s lighter moments of comic relief, the foreboding atmosphere never lets up, always surrounding the viewer with a level of persistence that’s rarely felt in the horror genre.

The movie eschews gore almost entirely in favour of suspense and atmosphere, and many details about the movie’s characters and plot deliberately remain a little opaque. For example, the villian terrorises his victims through (sometimes very obscene) phone calls and switches between various persona. By piecing together the dialogue in the phone calls, the audience can form their own ideas about the killer’s history and background, however nothing concrete is ever spelled out. Visually, the same holds true: the audience never sees the killer, although careful viewers will catch a glimpse of something lurking in the shadows occasionally, somewhere in the background. 

This strategy is very effective because it gives the audience an entire story that they can virtually create for themselves; something they can imagine and churn over in their own minds. 37 years later, audiences are still discussing the possible identity, characteristics and motivation of the killer.

If the killer is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, then so too are the major characters in the story of ‘Black Christmas’. There’s a wonderful moment during which the main potential victim withholds vital information when questioned by the police that may end up jeopardising her own survival. This is exactly the kind of gripping story element missing from almost every horror movie, yet is a great example of why ‘Black Christmas’ endures as a classic.

There’s one scene in particular which is directed, photographed and edited with superb precision and economy. Describing it in detail would spoil one of the movie’s great pleasures, so I won’t do that, however, it’s the scene in which a character is searching for a cat and decides to check the attic. That’s all I’m going to say about it, apart from stating my opinion that any other way that this scene could possibly have been staged would be categorically less brilliant than what we get to experience here.

Finally, the ending of the movie is sheer perfection. It is courageous, spine-tingling and just downright creepy. It leaves me speechless and its effect is devastating each time I experience it. There are very few movies made that exhibit this level of confidence in themselves, that truly have the cojones to risk everything and give the audience this kind of ending, but the ones that do are the ones much more likely to last in the mind of the audience and truly stand the test of time.

Has ‘Black Christmas’ made an impression on you? If so, please leave me a comment below.