Black Christmas: A Novel

 Because I just couldn't stop fucking writing...

I was looking through the last few years of Decembers and I was startled to notice that I hadn’t written an official review for Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974). It is a film I think is one of the best horror films of the 70s, not just of the seasonal killer-in-the-house variety. I think Clark left a great legacy behind him with three very interesting horror films, a wonderful Sherlock Holmes film, three raunchy and lovable sex comedies, and a beloved Christmas family film. And yes, there were some ill-advised and regrettably ill-conceived “Baby Genius” movies that didn’t bookend his career on the right note. But I think Black Christmas, among others, is one hell of a way to start early in your career. Some gripe and complain about the use of humor in Black Christmas, but I think there’s some real genius in the way he balances it all. Look at how the girls of the sorority give their denmother a gown as a present (for which she truly loathes but puts on the best front she can for them) while Claire, upstairs in her dorm room, is being suffocated by a plastic dress cover. To think that while pleasantries are going on downstairs, a horrible murder is occurring unbeknownst to them upstairs. And to alternate both of these back and forth with you both in horror and amused is quite jarring…but I think it is clever. Sure, you might not agree. You might find it annoying. Perhaps you want your comedy, then you want your horror. But I kind of admire the guts to do that. Why not jerk you around?

The obscene phone call from “the moaner” (the killer in the film, upstairs in the attic, using the house’s own phone, running through memories of past, floods forth past mixed with madness and depravity to repel, confuse, and fascinate the girls) is absurd and creepy. But then foul-mouthed, boozing toughie, Barb (Margot Kidder) almost delights in the gross, insidious, sexually repulsive trash spilling out because it affords her a chance to give him right back what he’s dishing. 

Barb’s dirty mouth making a fool out of the college town deputy with “fellatio” the next day, gradually increasing her booze intake, with the funny, caustic and sarcastic attitude worsening into a toxic drunk with little left to amuse anyone.

Clark tries to dance with the tempo of his film, moving through a night and day during Christmastime (which turns to night as the film eventually ends) with equal parts disturbing and humor. It’s a dance I have been particularly volunteering to enjoy for years now.

Clark never fails to remind us that this is a horror film, though. A father visiting his daughter and her not showing up to meet him, later locating her sorority and finding her missing. If only she was just with her new boyfriend or some other simple reason. Not Claire up in the attic, placed in a rocking chair, the plastic that suffocated her still in place with the face fixed in death, mouth open and eyes staring with no life behind them. Clark gets this amazing, unsettling shot up in the attic where through the window we see Claire's dad and the denmother leaving, the lens pulling back to reveal who they are looking for, right where few are unlikely to look.
 
Keir Dullea was probably considered quite a big deal of casting, although 2001 was nearly six years prior. His character is quite an elaborate one although he’s “red herring” in every possible way. He’s considered “high strung” in description by girlfriend, Jess (Olivia Hussey; the class of the casting, although she’d fall prey to low budget horror after appearing in “Romeo and Juliet” when it appeared she might be a European star in the making), who has turned him inside out with her admittance of being pregnant, with plans of an abortion. To this day, I have asked myself why she just didn’t go and have it considering his feelings for her keeping it were never going to matter anyway. Her telling him does him no favors at all. He was in training for a major piano presentation in front of highly influential critics.

• He wants to begin a family with Jess but she’s fully invested in her individual dreams, not at all wanting to be shoehorned into a long-term relationship. So just don’t tell him. She just isn’t ready to be deeply involved with him. It isn’t that she doesn’t care, I think that is realized. But it is clear she understands that he’s got his quirks and peculiar temperament. I asked myself if she wouldn’t have figured Dullea’s Peter would overreact and she’d be have to address an overly emotional “artist”. Not only does he overreact, Peter completely falls into a pit of despair, striking the keys of his piano with thunderous gloom, a discordant melody stinking up the nostrils of his onlooking judges. When the recital bombs, Peter responds afterward by destroying the piano! The film clearly spotlights him as a dark figure, complicit to fits of outburst. 
• He also often talks with Jess in differing tones. At the end, his voice is calm and not the least bit ominous…it is when Jess is hiding from him. Prior to this, his calls to her about the baby are deeply agonizing and heart-breaking. It seems to transition to the calm by film’s end, seeming to indicate he worked through his emotional tidal wave and peace had finally settled him. For Jess, he was quite possibly the killer. Clearly it would have been quite impossible for him to be the killer considering his whereabouts when Claire was suffocated. But the characters in the film are not as secure in that belief. And they have a chat while the search party were out, encountering a girl murdered in the park. Who murdered her? Was it Billy? 
• The chat goes as you might expect: Peter posits getting married and giving up his dreams of being a concert pianist. Jess has no desire to marry him, keep the baby, or give up her own ambitions. So let's get this over with: she tells him she's pregnant, wanting an abortion, right before his recital which would have secured potential for realizing his dream, a dream he detonates,  tells him she doesn't want to marry him, and makes sure to clear the air that he might have crashed and burned but she wasn't. Yeah, he might be a bit mad for a reason but she's all about "adult conversation." I have no qualms personally with her decision--it's her body--but the decision of when to tell Peter about it is a bit odd....almost as if she wanted him to just fall apart. 
• But, quite frankly, I wonder why she's with him at all. They never show at all in this film why they make a right couple. We never see warmth, just angst. He tries, but there is an air of overbearingness about him, as if he tries to rein in this free spirit intellectual who will have none of it. How would this ever work? The two just don't seem compatible. 

For about thirty minutes, Barb had been a source of sarcastic and caustic humor. She’s an acquired taste but her Fellatio phone number that would make Sergeant Nash (Douglas McGrath; Pale Rider (1985)) the butt of a major joke that has his boss, Lt. Ken Fuller (John Saxon) and fellow detective (John Rutter) laughing out loud. Nash doesn’t take the Claire-is-missing complaint filed all that seriously (he’s in a college town so Nash has probably seen this a few times…) until her boyfriend, Chris (Cronenberg Canadian film vet, Art Hindle), hears from Jess about her not meeting up with her pops (James Edmond) and demands some action, for which Fuller listens. Then comes the police investigation which turns up a body…that isn’t Claire.

Barb, her glass sculptures and asthma, vulnerable in bed, and Billy discreetly/covertly waiting to "take care" of "Agnes (Barb must resemble his "sister") when carolers sing to Jess. It is the same situation that has existed twice before. Mrs. Mack (Marian Waldman), hearing her cat in the attic, right before she's about to leave the godforsaken sorority house, investigates and gets "hooked". Billy goes berserk and leaves the attic in tatters, with quite the tantrum. Claire, you know what happened to her. Barb, because to Billy she's "Agnes", is just sleeping when the unicorn is used to give her the premature dirt nap. 

The telephone has become a horror icon. The 70s especially loved the telephone. Instead of a device that helps to communicate in positive, helpful ways, the telephone was also a vocal horror show if whoever on the other end speaking had "derangement issues". The phone is certainly an icon in this film. It rings and what lies in wait is a chaotic gibberish of mania that forwards ahead non-stop garbage madness. This is Billy's tool and without it he is just some loon who sneaks about in a house and adds to his body count. With the phone, he gives you what exists in the padded cell of his mind. That scene, such a masterwork by Clark who has the ratcheted up score which pushes the right buttons and revs up the goose pimples, with the phone where it is learned the call comes from inside the house, and Jess learning of her peril (and John Saxon's reaction of "holy shit") is as well choreographed a piece as could be expected in the almighty 70s.

Clark goes the route of many in the 70s; it doesn't end with the happy ending. In fact, it doesn't conclude at all as we would expect. There is no code dictating that Billy is discovered, nor his bodies in the attic. There's no guarantee that Jess, dozing and under such duress she is near catatonic, in a bed inside the sorority house, with only a cop posted outside, will not wind up as Barb did. And the phone rings. And rings. And rings.