DVD Review: Black Christmas

DVD Review: Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1973, CAN).

I'm on a real horror kick at the moment for some reason. I had gone off it for a long while after finishing my dissertation for which I watched some classics but also some real shit. This one completely passed me by though, I just forgot it and I do not know why. Although many cite John Carpenter's Halloween as the first slasher movie, this is incorrect, and this title goes to Bob Clark's low-budget Canadian made Black Christmas.
Just before christmas, a sorority house full of female college students starts receieving prank calls from a rather twisted individual. After one of the girls is killed and hidden by a mysterious figure (Don't flame me, it happens in the first 10 minutes), the girls start to become concerned for the safety of each other and themselves.
A pithy little summary like that is all that is needed. All slasher films rely on one major setting, a series of characters, most female, getting picked off one by one and indeed Black Christmas started all this. It also began the killer POV shot which Halloween made truly famous in its opening scene. Many of the scares are also fairly predictable but before you criticse you have to realise that this was the film that started it so of course we are used to it, but audiences at the time would not. The girls can all be lifted from stereotypes which we take for granted in these films, the strong willed "final girl", the girl who likes to party, the girl who is constantly scared et al. All of these roles are performed admirably by the actresses involved. They all also seem to be of the age they play which considering films like Scream, is a refreshing change.
So then, for all the cliches which audiences today know very well, what does this film bring to the party by itself? What makes it worth watching now? The prank calls made are really some of the most unsettling things I have heard in quite some time. I watched this at 1pm on a Friday afternoon with it being light outside, but I was by myself in what is essentially a student house where I actually left the back door open all night a couple of nights ago, and I really started skecthing out. The noises made, at first weird but soon more and more intense are a crazy mishmash of different voices, animal noises and straight up screaming. This is something I have not seen or heard in a film made since. Sure we have had prank calls in many horrors, but certainly not this freaky. The other major refreshing thing this film brings is the killer himself. We areq neqveqr giveqn any solid facts about him and what his motivation is but theq diffeqrenceq beqtweqeqn this and theq killer from say Wolf Creek is that we are given someq information but nothing fully formed. All we have to go on is theq ramblings of the killer, his talking of Billy, Agnes and their parents. The body in the sttic and his fetting of her seems to suggest that he is renacting himself and Agnes but he seems to have some sort of incestual obsession with her. This lack of information feeds into the misunderstanding that drives the end of the plot in that these girls never try to find the prankster and indeed they wouldn't. In later films, the protagonists have become more pro-active (see the difference in the "final girls" in the original Texas Chainsaw and the remake), but these girls quite rightly rely on the police, who themselves are only human and prone to mistakes. This makes for an incredibly dark ending and one even I was shocked by. The lack of real resolution lingers with you after the film is over and there is no respite from this darkness. Many horrors made nowadays either settle for the happy ending or go looking for a sequel. While this ending, if done today could be seen as the latter, this can not be said for this film. This just adds to the unsettling atmosphere the film carries throughout.
A true masterclass in tension and plain darkness, this film rightly inspired many to come and it would be nice to think that people will lookf for this rather than the remake, which while I haven't seen and will review when I do, seems like it could piss over the memory of this (the director of the remake, James Morgan himself has said he doesn't like the final result). This film I know will influence the screenplay I am working on and I urge all those interested in the slasher genre to seek this out. A true classic of the horror genre.

Video: As good as I suppose the source material is going to be made. A soft transfer with no notcieable problems but a real made low-budget look which kind of takes away from the experience.

Audio: Original 2.0 audio or 5.1 soundtrack. I chose the 5.1 and while obviously artificially created for the DVD, it does some interesting stuff with the sound, but not as creepy as it could have been made.

Extras: Haven't watched them, I think I am going to be buying this at some point so I'll post an update when I do.

Really do recommend this film and the extras look good, the director's commentary particularly.

Right, think I'll have something up tomorrow or I may take the weekend out to work on the podcast.

Have a great Friday folks, going to see The Sunshine Underground tonight which I am very excited about. Good album, but made so much fucking better live.

Ian out.