Black Christmas
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| Black Christmas | |
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 Black Christmas movie poster |
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| Directed by | Bob Clark |
| Written by | Roy Moore |
| Starring | Olivia Hussey Margot Kidder Andrea Martin John Saxon Keir Dullea |
| Music by | Carl Zittrer |
| Distributed by | Ambassador Film Distributors (Canada) Warner Brothers (USA) |
| Release date(s) | 11 October 1974 (Canada) 20 December 1974 (USA) |
| Running time | 120 min. |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $620,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
- This article is about the 1974 film. For the 2006 remake, see Black Christmas (2006 film).
Black Christmas (1974) is a Canadian horror film, directed by Bob Clark. Black Christmas stars Olivia Hussey as a young college student who must deal with a deranged killer lurking in her sorority house. It also features Margot Kidder and Andrea Martin, before either had gained fame in the United States, John Saxon and Keir Dullea round out the cast. The film makes use of dark corners, off-kilter camera angles, and uses its score by Carl Zittrer sparingly to create a claustrophobic and frightening experience.
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[edit] Plot
The film opens at night with a small party occurring in a sorority house for a private school. We are introduced to all of the girls in the sorority house, the main ones being Jess, the hero of the film, Barb, a drunken loud mouth, and Phyllis, Jess' friend and the peace keeper of the group. The girls have been receiving mysterious phonecalls from someone they call "The Moaner". The calls start out sexual in nature, but they gradually grow more macabre, with the man on the other end saying strange things in different voices. The shyest sorority girl, Claire, goes upstairs to pack, and when she goes into the closet, the killer dives out and wraps a plastic bag around her head. He then drags her into the attic, where he's making the calls from. The next day, Claire's father comes to pick her up, but nobody knows where she is. It becomes a mystery as the police search for the missing Claire. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mac, the house mother, stumbles upon the killer and gets a crane hook in the face. Meanwhile, Jess admits to her boyfriend Peter that she is pregnant, but she's having an abortion. He begins to act strange, and shows off some anger problems. As Barb and Phyl are murdered by the killer, Jess gets another call. The police trace the call and realize that the calls are coming from in the house. Instead of going out, Jess goes upstairs and is attacked by the killer. She manages to escape and heads to the basement. There she runs into Peter, who she now falsely believes is the killer. He approaches her to talk, but Jess hits him over the head and kills him. The police feel the case is closed, and leave the house, leaving Jess alone to sleep off the excitement. As the credits begin to roll, we hear the phone ring once again.
[edit] Production and history
Working from a budget of $620,000 and an eight week shooting schedule, the film was shot in 35mm format utilizing Panavision cameras and lenses in and around Toronto during the winter of 1974. When originally released in the United States, Warner Bros, fearing that audiences might confuse it for a blaxploitation movie, changed the title to Silent Night, Evil Night. It performed poorly until its title was changed back to Black Christmas. (It was later retitled Stranger in the House for television broadcast).
Though John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) is generally credited with popularizing the main motifs of the contemporary slasher film genre, many genre aficionados will contend that Black Christmas invented many of them four years earlier. For example, the film features shots from the perspective of the killer, replete with muffled breathing noises. Also, it is a slasher film centered around a holiday, much in the manner Halloween was.
[edit] Cast
- Olivia Hussey as Jessica Bradford
- Margot Kidder as Barbie Coard
- Keir Dullea as Peter Smythe
- Andrea Martin as Phyllis Carlson
- John Saxon as Lt. Kenneth Fuller
- Marion Waldman as Ms. MacHenry
- James Edmond as Mr. Harrison
- Lynne Griffin as Claire Harrison
- Doug McGrath as Sergeant Nash
- Art Hindle as Chris Hayden
[edit] Remake
See also: Black Christmas (2006 film)
A remake is coming out December 2006. It will star Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kristen Cloke, Crystal Lowe, and Lacey Chabert. Andrea Martin will be playing Ms. Mac.
[edit] DVD Releases
Eclectic DVD has released two editions of Black Christmas. The first was a bare-bones release that hit shelves on November 6, 2001. This was then followed by a collector's edition released on December 3, 2002, that featured a making-of documentary and two commentary tracks (some of the commentary material was obviously taken from interviews for the documentary), among other features. On December 5, 2006, Somerville House will be releasing a new "special edition" disc that will offer a new featurette and two deleted scenes, in addition to interviews with Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder; no commentary tracks have been announced for this particular release.
[edit] Trivia
- First horror film to use the "the calls are coming from inside the house" plotline. Later used in When a Stranger Calls.
- John Saxon's scenes were filmed separately from the leads, yet they appear to be in the same room.
- Edmund O'Brien was originally supposed to play the character that Saxon played. According to the documentary feature On Screen (produced for the Canadian cable network Space), O'Brien was removed from the picture when he began showing signs of Alzheimer's disease; Saxon filmed his first scenes only two hours after arriving in Toronto.
- Originally scripted as The Babysitter, the title was changed to Stop Me, and eventually produced as Black Christmas.
- The original script was written by Canadian Roy Moore (with writing partner Timothey Bond) who had read about a similar story happening in major cities around the world in a 12 month period. This was never proved. Apparently the Westmount section of Montreal was the closest story to home.
- Director Bob Clark, in the On Screen documentary, claims that he came up with the basic idea of Halloween (including its title) as a hypothetical sequel to Black Christmas; he later gave the idea to John Carpenter.
