Black Christmas (1974) ****1/2
Black Christmas (1974) is my favorite slasher and might just be my favorite Christmas feature film. The performances are uniformly excellent, its female-centric cast is populated by actors that bring a realism and diversity of character that in the hands of a lesser director could have resulted in a basic stalk and slash exercise. Bob Clark's direction is economic—never flashy and every shot feels necessary. Reginald H. Morris's cinematography is stylish and makes exceptional use of shadows, the absence of light, and handheld camera.
Despite a good deal of humor—which I still find funny every time I watch the film (and I've seen it a lot)—there is a feeling of unease that is absent from so many films in the horror genre. This can be attributed to a few sources—Carl Zittrer's jarring and dissonant score for one, which falls more into the realm of sound design than music much of the time. Another is the juxtaposition of that score with long stretches of silence, punctuated by subtle, sometimes singular sounds. There are, of course, the truly unnerving phone calls (some of which were recorded by the director himself), featuring multiple personalities and vulgarities, which continue to disturb throughout the years. And there is the suspense that is built by these aforementioned elements, combined with the fact that the film doesn't heavily rely on its kills as "money shots" the way that so many slashers do.
That's because it doesn't need to—the mystery retained throughout and the unresolved ending satisfy in a way that films of this ilk rarely do. Black Christmas—released the same day (in Canada) as another masterpiece of horror, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (my review here), which works as well as it does for many of the same reasons—is an expertly crafted thriller that only gets better with age.
Despite a good deal of humor—which I still find funny every time I watch the film (and I've seen it a lot)—there is a feeling of unease that is absent from so many films in the horror genre. This can be attributed to a few sources—Carl Zittrer's jarring and dissonant score for one, which falls more into the realm of sound design than music much of the time. Another is the juxtaposition of that score with long stretches of silence, punctuated by subtle, sometimes singular sounds. There are, of course, the truly unnerving phone calls (some of which were recorded by the director himself), featuring multiple personalities and vulgarities, which continue to disturb throughout the years. And there is the suspense that is built by these aforementioned elements, combined with the fact that the film doesn't heavily rely on its kills as "money shots" the way that so many slashers do.
That's because it doesn't need to—the mystery retained throughout and the unresolved ending satisfy in a way that films of this ilk rarely do. Black Christmas—released the same day (in Canada) as another masterpiece of horror, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (my review here), which works as well as it does for many of the same reasons—is an expertly crafted thriller that only gets better with age.
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