I haven’t reviewed Black Christmas??! What? I fuckin for sure thought I had.
Keir Dullea and Margot Kidder star in what is quickly becoming one of my favorite horror film slashers of all time. Seriously, this one is beginning to eclipse even John Carpenter’s Halloween.
A sorority group of girls has been receiving crank calls from some weird voiced freak who says disturbing things about pussies or killing people, the girls listen with bizarre interest. Margot Kidder is sorta the alpha of the group and won’t take that shit, and she takes charge of the situation. Could the crazy calls have something to do with the creepy attic?
This is an interesting blend of whodunit, slasher, and interesting character study. Keir Dullea is a pained piano performer, there’s jealous other guys around, and there’s suspicions on different people at different times.
Couple that with a really dark atmosphere and believable small scale scares, this is a completely formidable and intense horror movie. I’ve seen it either at Christmas or Halloween for the last 3-4 years and I seriously adore the ending to this.
Really awesome and on display in this a lot is the perfect mix of journeyman directing straight forward approach, mixed with a few perfect auteur artistic shots. There’s sequences, such as the famous eye shot, which are so well done you feel such delight, coupled with such a great steady hand in the rest of the film it really allows those to shine.
As a spoiler, the end of this seems to directly inspire Halloween, and the darkness of the ending is so great that you’re just left with shivers. The best thing about this movie is that it’s genuinely disturbing and scary, from the weirdness of the calls to the isolation in the shots. Leaving without a resolution is so macabre that you can barely even handle it.
Also, I’ve been long thinking about sequels and legacy. As a film goes, we try to divorce ourselves from bad sequels (see: Star Wars). But we still have seen those movies and they’re still tainting the legacy. It’s really awesome this has no sequels even though it’s left open ended. What a fuckin triumph that this wasn't revealed to be some terrible actor who looked stupid in the second movie.
A couple years before Halloween, i do consider this a slasher origin story as well. 5 stars.
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