Like Having a Wart Removed.

 The plot developments between Jess and Peter regarding her pregnancy, plans for an abortion, and the timing of this news always intrigued me. I always wonder why Jess decided to tell him right before he was to play piano for a stuffy group of critics. He told her on the phone--a rather cold conversation where Jess rather tells Peter, with a "going through the motions" attitude, she needed to meet up with him about a conversation they must have, responding with "I know" after he tells her he loves her--he had been up for like three days with little rest and then she unloads on him her pregnancy revelation. She does say she hadn't planned to tell him about the abortion at all. My response was, "Why tell him?" Or the timing of it of when she tells him. Why not wait until Peter plays his piece for the critics before telling him? I was always a bit baffled by Jess' decision here. If she didn't want the child, knew that Peter was "always high strung" and "eccentric", an artist with a bit of a different kind of personality than others, and understood that his piano journey depended perhaps on a particular piece to be played for a very important group, why would Jess spring the abortion news on him? It isn't that I'm for or against aborting the baby in Black Christmas (1974), but it is hard not to wonder if some part of her wanted to sabotage Peter. And his total collapse and mood swings certainly intensify after the abortion news. Yes, this is her body, and all that...but he was never the same after this news. It is a subplot that even includes Billy on the phone mentioning "It's like having a wart removed", reminding her of her heated conversation with an unstable Peter, fraught with emotional devastation. Peter's mood swings are intriguing. He's very much painted as an unbalanced young man who is calm and rational one moment and a wreck the next. Jess seems more together and in control...their chemistry is always off, so I wonder what about Peter was Jess attracted to. I never sensed she really was *that* into him. This whole relationship is fascinating to me.

And the film wants to leave us pondering if he is the killer in the sorority house. Peter has the disposition for it. He sure won't leave the house without getting into the basement at the end, and you'd think Peter could tell that Jess was genuinely terrified of him. She was more than likely swinging for the fences as he approached her. His fate, behavior that night, the destruction of the piano, the phone calls, all of it...if Jess just went ahead with the abortion and never told him.