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Black Christmas
Silent Night, Evil Night / Stranger in the House / Jessy - Die Treppe in den Tod
Canada 1974
produced by
Bob Clark, Findlay Quinn (executive) for Film Funding of Canada, Vision IV, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Famous Players
directed by Bob Clark
starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin, James Edmond, Doug McGarth, Art Hindle, Lynne Griffin, Michael Rapport, Leslie Carlson, Martha Gibson, John Rutter, Robert Warner, Syd Brown, Jack Van Evera, Les Rubie, Marcia Diamond, Pam Barney, Robert Hawkins, David Clement, Julian Reed, Dave Mann, John Stoneham sr, Danny Gain, Tom Foreman
written by Roy Moore, music by Carl Zittrer
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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A mysterious madman has hidden up in the attic of a girls' dorm and
treaqts one of its tenants, Jess (Olivia Hussey) to obscene phonecalls
before killing her friends one after the other and hiding their bodies in
the attic with him. Eventually, Jess informs the police led by Lt. Fuller
(John Saxon), but while the cops do everything to find her missing
friends, they fail to search the attic. Jess tells her boyfriend Peter
(Keir Dullea) that she's pregnant from him but wants an abortion, which
totally throws him off-balance, so much so that she eventually suspects
him to be the killer. Eventually, a tap is put on Jess's phone to find
out where the obscene phonecalls are coming from, and she is told to
remain inside the dorm at any cost - but then it's found out that the
calls are actually coming from inside the house, and when she tries to
leave, it already seems to late ... but Jess puts up a fight, and
eventually she kills an intruder she thinks to be the killer, who then
turns out to be Peter. It's only when the police and ambulance have come
and gone, and the attic still hasn't been searched, that whoever it is
calls again ... Margot Kidder plays Jess's constantly drunk friend and
is pretty hilarious doing so. Predating John Carpenter's Halloween
by four years, this is considered by some to be the first slasher movie -
and thus called a cult classic - as incorporates the formula popularized
in a myriad movies from the late 1970s and early 80s pretty much to the T
- but this film hasn't been without its predecessors, from Italian giallo
cinema (then still in full swing) all the way back to A
Spiral Staircase from 1946 (and probably even further back), while
at least one earlier film, the little-known Teen-Age
Strangler from 9 years earlier has already all the
slasher-elements in the right places.
But enough hair-splitting, the film itself is most certainly no match
to the masterclass in horror and suspense that is Halloween,
but taken by its own merits it's an ok if slightly functional shocker, one
that leans heavily into grindhouse territory, and while by no means
perfect, there are some well-conceived sequences when it comes to suspense
and violence, some of the comedy is actually quite funny, and while the
cast is rather uneven, John Saxon, Margot Kidder, Marian Waldman as
alcoholic sorority mother and Doug McGrath as inept police sergeant sure
stand out. In all, I wouldn't exactly say this film has earned its cult
status for anything but it's relation to Carpenter's slasher masterpiece,
but it's an ok genre movie that at least knows how to entertain.
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