Written by Roy Moore
Directed by Bob Clark
Billy (to Jessica): "Just like having a wart removed."
To think, it's been fifty years since the release of this movie. Fifty years and two remakes later. It's also a first time watch for me and yes, I hope to catch up with the 2006 and 2019 versions this month as well if possible.
Somewhat based on the urban legend of "the babysitter and the man upstairs", this movie took place within a sorority house. A group of sisters being tormented by a heavy breather on the other end of the phone.
A heavy breather who when he wasn't been lewd and sexually threatening also was going about killing these sisters, one by one. Our protagonist of the piece was a young woman named Jessica Bradford (Olivia Hussey). She was the one mostly interacting with the killer on the phone.
Of course, Jessica had other issues besides being stalked by a killer. There was the fact that she had fallen pregnant by her boyfriend, Peter Symthe (Keir Dullea). She wanted to have an abortion and Peter was dead set against the idea. Peter's overzealous attitude towards Jessica also led to the belief that he was the killer, only for the last scene to disprove that theory.
As for other characters, they're there as fodder. There's some screen time afforded to house mother, Mrs Mac (Marian Waldman) and bitchy sister, Barb Coard (Margot Kidder). Both are given rather brutal deaths by the killer while John Saxon has a decent supporting role as Lt. Kenneth Fuller.
What about the killer? For a guy who spent the movie tormenting and killing as many women as he could, very little was actually revealed about him. We just know by the end of the movie, he wasn't actually caught and his name was Billy (Nick Mancuso). Though not in the movie itself. It's an interesting to keep the level of ambiguity for the character.
- The iller is credited as The Moaner and along with Nick Mancuso, both Bob Clark and Albert J. Dunk also played the character.
- The movie was inspired by a series of murders that happened in the Westmount area of Montreal in 1943.
- Standout music: Some eerie score music from Carl Zittrer as well as Christmas carols used during Billy's attack on Barb.
- Chronology: Christmas time in the 1970s.
Black Christmas certainly maintained an eerie atmosphere throughout. The ambiguity with the killer and his fixation on Jessica definitely upped the tension and while other characters weren't as fleshed out, this movie certainly has earned its cult status among horror fans.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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