Deck the Halls

Black Christmas (1974)

I get up for Black Christmas every year in December. Like Carpenter’s Halloween in October, Black Christmas is a film that makes for essential viewing for this horror fan. I’m a little uneasy with using “slasher” to describe Black Christmas. I think this is built as a disturbing black comedy/suspense film, not a slasher flick with a psychopath using a knife and hunting victims. Sure the killer in the attic has a deep-seeded trauma resulting from childhood experiences in the house now serving as a sorority for Canadian college girls. Yes, the killer moves from the attic and into the house to pick off the sorority girls. But this isn’t a gorefest. It doesn’t feature one-dimensional girls getting naked, dumb as a stump, and servicing the film as slaughter fodder. POV is certainly a staple in the slasher genre, but it is innovatively used in Black Christmas (much like it would be in Halloween four years later), particularly at the beginning. Spying on the girls from outside their window, climbing up the trellis, and finding a final resting spot in the attic (feeling at home, too), Billy has the advantage of an unknowing habitation so he can sneak about without detection. It’s downright scary to me to not know that a really disturbed individual has taken refuge in the attic, undetected, and toying with those living under the roof of his former home. On occasion, Billy (with a large house and staircase) can seize upon the girls who aren’t prepared for him. Right in their own house Billy calls them on the phone and pranks them, his childhood trauma unfiltered and openly unleashed to them in word, with a vocal madness and outrage spewed out in all its ugliness and unpleasantness.

Tonight, I really enjoyed the use of Keir Dullea as the “high strung artist”, college pianist, Peter. He just had a good look to him as a red herring. I like this one scene where he just gets pissed off at Jess (Olivia Hussey) for wanting to abort their unborn child. Further add that she really is obviously showing signs that she’s done with him. She lays on him (right before his recital for these stuffy critics) that she’s pregnant, and so he must play for his future (he has spent three days without sleep practicing) with that albatross. He’s a bipolar mess; a wreck at times, while other times he seems rather calm, cool, and collected. I like how he seems perfect for the kind of mad killer in their midst yet, and that final scene with him breaking into the basement while Jess hides to the best of her ability was good stuff. All the “stranger in your house” really works up to its apex at the end as “Billy” runs after Jess and she barricades herself in the basement. It follows into the moment with Peter finding her in the basement. About as masterclass in regards of direction that I can possibly think of; the way Clark builds upon our knowledge that Billy is in (or near) the house during Christmastime and how Peter seems unstable (the destruction of the piano in the conservatory (just your garden variety temper tantrum, but seeing him do so mirrors Billy’s coming unglued in the attic after the murder of the denmother)) are similar enough to keep viewers guessing (particularly in the early to mid 70s before all of this became so ordinary).

I love the fact that each individual viewing all the way since the early 2000s have felt like rewards. I love leaving the film just as unsettled by the ending as the first viewing. It bugs me to a certain degree, but I like that we’re left feeling like Billy has all the power and could finish what he started with the sorority sisters available to him. It bugs me because I feel someone like John Saxon’s detective wouldn’t leave this fresh crime scene (and Jess) alone like that so soon after all the shit goes down. I just feel he would be all over that house, investigating every room until it was covered with fine-tooth comb. That said, that final pan through the house and away from the inside of the attic leaves such a feeling of unease that the possible flaw in logic from the standpoint of the house being unattended (except for the guard outside the house) is worth it. And the phone ringing with no answer has that lack of closure to the story that I find especially disconcerting.

The shots of distance in the house, from the staircase to the girl (s) downstairs in the living room, creating this space that allows us to visualize how much room the killer has available to him I certainly find effective. He can go back and forth from the attic to the house because of this. The element of surprise afforded to him is substantial because of the space within the house. The trellis climb at the beginning lets us know of a different avenue of escape and entrance, also has us taking part in a sense because we are looking through his eyes. We are always aware of his presence; all the while, the others have no clue…until Billy acts out, that is. The use of a camera in ways that weren’t so familiar and a minimalist score that chills the bones because it isn’t overbearing; there’s no surprise I just fall under the grip of the film all over again, annually.