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Black Christmas


#34 - Black Christmas
Bob Clark, 1974


During Christmas, the inhabitants of a sorority house are targeted by a deranged murderer.

Looking at Black Christmas in 2018, it's easy to see why this is often cited as the prototypical slasher movie as it features many of the tropes and developments that would ultimately be codified by the commonly-cited "original" slasher that is 1978's Halloween. If one were to be particularly uncharitable, one could consider the latter film a flagrant rip-off with its use of first-person shots, drawn-out pacing, and centring of the film's conflict around women being subject to the violent whims of a male antagonist (then again, you could say both films owe more than a little something to the likes of Psycho and Peeping Tom - copies upon copies all the way down). Of course, what I wanted to do is see how Black Christmas actually does hold up, especially before I did my own run-through of the entire Halloween series it allegedly inspired. Certainly, there's a lot of be said for its compact and seasonal narrative that takes place in and around a college campus as the students prepare to leave for Christmas break. The film gets complicated immediately when an unseen, hard-breathing killer manages to break into a local sorority house and murder one of the sisters before she has a chance to go home - and it definitely won't be the last time he strikes.

There is quite a bit to be said for how Black Christmas is at once a sufficiently familiar rendition of the slasher formula and yet still distinct enough in its rawness that it stands out as its own thing. Much like inspiration and imitator alike, it is a patient film that begins with one shocking death and then takes it time getting to the next one, making sure to establish a vast collection of characters and the conflicts between them (with a prominent one involving the film's protagonist looking to abort an unwanted pregnancy despite the objections of her boyfriend). It still manages to maintain a perpetual sense of unease through such simple but effective sub-plots involving the sorority house receiving a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls or the disappearance of a little girl, never mind how the film does occasionally cut back to the killer's point-of-view to remind audiences that, yes, he's still out there somewhere and there's no telling when or where he'll show up next. These elements combine into something that never exactly manages to burst out into anything particularly intense but still maintains a simmering sense of dread, which may well be better than simply resorting to jump scares or even especially graphic displays of violence. As a result, I'm not overly wowed by Black Christmas but I can't deny that it's effective enough to deserve consideration as a minor classic in the genre. It may rely on a less-is-more approach to a fault, but at least it works out more often than not.