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CORRIDOR OF HORROR |
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REVISITS THE ALL-TIME GREAT XMAS HORROR MOVIE BOB CLARK'S BLACK CHRISTMAS |
This 1974 Canadian shocker pre-dated the slasher genre
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
IF YOU'RE ASKED to name the all-time best Christmas horror movie,
you naturally figure somebody's putting you on. Like, how many
Christmas horror movies can there be? Well, there are a few,
but none chills the blood like "Black Christmas," the
twisted 1974 thriller that freezes the hot egg nog in your mouth.
Yet here's another fact that may make you suspect this whole column is a joke: The movie was produced and directed by Bob Clark, the very same filmmaker who's best remembered for his two raucous teen comedies, "Porky's" and "Porky's II: The Next Day," or for his warmly nostalgic "A Christmas Story," which many moviegoers feel was the best Christmas movie since "Miracle on 34th Street."
Yet the truth is Bob Clark already had established himself as an up and coming horror filmmaker with pictures like "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" and "Deathdream" before he left the genre for comedy and other more mainstream projects. And "Black Christmas," also known as "Stranger in the House" and "Silent Night, Evil Night," is his masterpiece.
The film might be thought of as the forerunner to "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," "Nightmare on Elm Street" and the whole slasher genre that came along in the late 1970's and early 1980s. It has the standard slasher situation: Lots of girls alone in a house with a deranged killer. But it's nowhere near as gratuitously gruesome and it has an incredible amount of style.
For example, the opening and closing moments, both played under the credits, are unforgettable.
In the beginning, we see a long shot of an old, multi-story college sorority house at night while a chorus sings "Silent Night" on the soundtrack. As the camera moves in, it becomes subjective and we realize it's supposed to be the eyes of someone who's casing the house, looking for a way to get inside, unobserved. By the time the opening sequence is over, we've climbed up a trellis with the intruder and followed him through an unlocked window into a musty attic.
That attic is going to be a place of uncommon horror once the killer begins to collect his victims.
Likewise,
the closing sequence is a stunner. We realize there's someone
still lurking in the house after the police have left with the
body of the "killer." We know that the heroine is lying
on her bed, sedated, with no one watching her. Then the phone
rings and it continues to ring through the end credits. We realize
that the real killer is making that call from inside the house,
trying to wake the heroine, who believes she already has killed
the man responsible for all the killings.
The setting is the dark and cluttered old sorority house during
the Christmas recess. Most of the girls have gone home, but a
few stayed on: Jessie (Olivia Hussey), who's just learned she's
pregnant with the child of her boy friend, Peter (Keir Dullea);
Barb (Margot Kidder), the playful, foul-mouthed co-ed who seems
to fear nothing; bookish Phyl (Andrea Martin), who may be afraid
of her own shadow, and their house mother, Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman),
a lush who looks forward to emptying all the liquor bottles she
has hidden around the house while the girls are away for Christmas.
But as the other girls party with them before they leave for home, they don't realize that pretty young Clare (Lynne Griffin) has somehow disappeared. We know she's gone because we saw someone grab her from behind, wrapping a plastic bag around her head to suffocate her. But the others don't realize something's wrong until Clare's father shows up in town, asking why his daughter didn't meet him for the trip home for Christmas.
Meanwhile, a call comes in from "the moaner," an obscene caller who has been bothering the girls lately. Barb takes the call and listens while he talks to her in several weird voices, telling her how he's going to perform oral sex on her. When the spunky Barb tells him to go stick his tongue in a light socket, he tells her bluntly: "I'm going to kill you!"
If Barb knew Clare's corpse is now seated in a rocking chair in the attic, her tormented face still wrapped in plastic, while the killer rocks her back and forth, crooning nursery rhymes, she wouldn't waste any time getting out of the house. But girls in horror movies never know that kind of stuff in advance, do they?
Though Clark's film doesn't show much actual bloodshed, it may gross some viewers out with its language and cynicism. Kidder's Barb character talks like an open sewer. Her comic highlight comes when the police desk officer asks her for the sorority house phone number and she tells him it's FEllatio 6-9000 (or something to that effect). When he questions the prefix, she explains it's a new exchange.
The cynicism is even more total. While the missing girl's dad worried dad waits for her to show up, not only does nobody offer to help him, but he's also pelted with a snowball by some jerk. There's also a foul-mouthed Jewish Santa Claus who uses words like "bitch" and worse in front of children. Later, when the worried dad visits his daughter's room, he finds photos on the wall of an old woman flipping the bird and a couple having intercourse, their bodies forming a crucifix. One can see "Porky's" over the next horizon, all right.
But the real test of any horror film is whether or not it delivers chills--and "Black Christmas" does that in spades. For one thing, Clark throws away much of the genre rule book. For instance, you just know that the head cop (John Saxon) is going to turn up in time to save the heroine when she finally is left alone in the house with the killer, who's already stacked up the bodies of all the other sorority sisters who stayed behind. But he doesn't.
Clark also has some masterful sequences of macabre horror, like the one where the killer places a doll in the lap of Clare's corpse, rocks the rocking chair for her, carrying on a mixmaster conversation as multiple personalities, reminding his dead victim that "Billy's here." You know you're not going to talk a freaky character like that out of killing you should he pick you as his next victim.
"Black Christmas" also is interesting for its unusual cast of youngsters and veterans, including: Olivia Hussey, who was still clinging to leading lady parts though it was already six years since her initial burst of fame as Juliet in Zefferelli's "Romeo & Juliet"; Margot Kidder, then Canada's most promising young leading lady though still four years away from her defining role as Lois Lane in "Superman: The Movie"; Keir Dullea, the hot prospect from Frank Perry's 1962 "David & Lisa" and Kubrick's "2001--A Space Odyssey," now struggling to retain any kind of box office appeal; Andrea Martin, the young comedian who still was a few years away from her Emmy award and TV success with the Second City (SCTV) comedy ensemble; John Saxon, the 1950s teen hunk from Universal studios, just beginning to nail down a solid career as a superb character actor.
But do I suggest you rush out and rent the "Black Christmas" video right away? Not unless The Grinch really has settled in at your house for the holidays. By all means rent it, but wait until after Christmas, will ya? Nobody needs a good scare at this time of year, except maybe John Stanley, who's already seen "Black Christmas" and is beyond help anyway.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The illustration is from the "Black Christmas" video, © 1974 by Warner Bros.
You can
comment on this column or contact Ron Miller with an email to:
talkback@thecolumnists.com
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