BLACK CHRISTMAS. Remains a textbook example of a slasher

Horror is a genre that doesn’t necessarily feature in everyone’s annual Christmas repertoire, but a fair number of festive fright flicks have been made over the years. The film Krampus, still in cinemas here, fits perfectly into this tradition, successfully drawing inspiration from Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) and Jalmari Helander’s Finnish cult classic Rare Exports (2010). All three of these films fall into a mix of horror, fairy tale, and comedy—a combination that has proven most effective for this type of Christmas story. On the bloodier side of holiday horror, titles like Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) and its sequels, or the more recent Silent Night (2012), are niche, B-movie productions designed to shock audiences with gruesome murder scenes. These films exploit the image of Santa Claus as a figure hiding a psychopathic nature behind the guise of a benevolent gift-giver. In these stories, Christmas serves merely as a backdrop for a macabre spectacle.

I prefer the first type of Christmas horror, perhaps because it retains some family values, and the elements of legends and dark beliefs contrast wonderfully with the cheerful faces of children waiting for gifts and the atmosphere of goodwill and love that floats in the air, much like in Coca-Cola commercials. However, there is one title that doesn’t veer into the fairy tale-comedy realm. It opts for realistic violence and an unsettling atmosphere while being a classic, even groundbreaking, entry in the genre—and a highly successful one at that. That film is Bob Clark’s Black Christmas from 1974.

In the story, the sorority sisters of Pi Kappa Sigma gather for the holiday break, but just before they leave, they receive a phone call (not the first, as it turns out) from someone who terrorizes them with moaning and obscene comments. A somewhat drunk Barb (played by Margot Kidder, before her Superman days as Lois Lane) stands up to the caller so much that he promises to kill her. However, the first victim turns out to be Clare, not Barb. Clare is murdered in her room just minutes after the call. Her disappearance doesn’t go unnoticed by her father and the remaining sorority sisters. Soon, they too become targets of the maniac, who, unbeknownst to them, is still inside their house.

The plot of Black Christmas might seem formulaic today—a typical teen slasher where a group of young people is eliminated one by one by a mysterious maniac, whose murderous acts we often witness from his perspective.

But Clark’s film was made before the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980), and the countless clones that followed. If one were to identify the progenitor of this not-so-celebrated subgenre of horror, the Canadian film is the strongest candidate. Like Carpenter’s classic, it emphasizes the atmosphere of danger, the characters’ sense of helplessness and ignorance, rather than relying on spectacular or particularly gory death scenes, which became hallmarks of later slashers. Both films are set during festive periods, though the Halloween vibe is more palpable in Carpenter’s work than Christmas is in Clark’s. This makes sense, as the characters in Black Christmas are not particularly interested in midnight mass or Christmas dinner.

For example, Barb is never sober throughout the film, cheerfully offering alcohol not just to herself but also to a young boy during a student holiday party. Jess (Olivia Hussey) discovers she is pregnant and wants to have an abortion as soon as possible. Her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), who holds very different views about the child and their future together, reacts strongly to her decision, resulting in fits of anger. Meanwhile, everyone is alarmed by Clare’s disappearance, especially after learning that a 13-year-old girl has also gone missing in the area. These issues create a less-than-joyful atmosphere in the film—the murder scenes don’t contrast with the festive backdrop but rather complement the overall decay of values. This is most evident in the sorority house when Clare’s father visits and is visibly disgusted by the lax and frivolous behavior, tolerated by the housemother, Miss Mac.

While carefree behavior, sex, and substance use have always characterized the young protagonists of slashers—being almost inherent to the genre and often the reason why evil befalls them in the form of a maniac—Clark doesn’t moralize. The future director of the cult classic Porky’s (1981) laughs along with the girls who want to enjoy life, avoiding reducing their deaths to cheap entertainment, as would later happen in the Friday the 13th series. He steers clear of the cynicism typical of his successors, treating his characters with respect, making it easier for the audience to care about their fates. At the same time, the film includes moments of humor, even when the characters are aware that a murderer is on the loose. This approach slightly alleviates the tension, though the sense of dread is palpable from the beginning, as we see through the killer’s eyes how he sneaks into the sorority house and makes obscene, increasingly ominous phone calls.

The horror is omnipresent because, unlike the protagonists, we, the viewers, are aware of the danger lurking upstairs. The filmmakers mislead us by hinting at potential suspects and motives, even involving the police (with John Saxon in his usual reliable form as Lieutenant Fuller) in the search for the missing girls. Neighbors band together to ensure everyone’s safety, adding realism and a semblance of logic to the story. Thanks to this, along with the menacing atmosphere, unnerving music, and masterful direction, Black Christmas remains a textbook example of a slasher, created before the genre devolved into stories about foolish teenagers dying in gruesome ways. Even in this regard, Clark handles things more elegantly—death scenes, while brutal, are almost bloodless.

So, if anyone is in the mood for something grim, sadistic, and above all, terrifying this holiday season, they should choose this Canadian thriller, keeping two things in mind. First, avoid the 2006 remake directed by Glen Morgan, which retains only the title’s subtlety. Second, if Black Christmas proves too intense, Bob Clark’s other Christmas film, the family comedy classic A Christmas Story (1983), makes for the perfect antidote.