As Christmas approaches, the members of a sorority have their holiday party interrupted by an obscene phone call full of threats and vulgar language. Over the next day or so the calls get worse, soon becoming a cacophony of different babbling voices of a man, a woman, and a lot of screeching and screaming. Little do the sorority sisters know that the sounds on the other end of line are coming from only one person - the killer who has crept into the sorority house attic.
The slasher subgenre of horror may have surged to tremendous popularity because of Halloween, but Black Christmas set the stage for that to happen. The elements are all here - pretty girls being stalked and killed one-by-one, the use of varied and creative killing implements, an ineffective police force, innovative "killer's point-of-view" camera work, and even a holiday theme. All that's really missing is gratuitous nudity and being able to see the killer clearly, which basically never happens.
Where Black Christmas has it over most of the imitators that came after is that Black Christmas is legitimately scary. Almost none of the later slashers are in any way suspenseful or frightening - you're just in it for the kills, the gore, the ritual of the formula. But Black Christmas has atmosphere, the unsettling and creepy phone calls, characters you come to care about placed in mortal danger, and some fantastic camera work that shows you just enough of the killer to make him mysterious and terrifying.
I am a late-comer to this movie. Maybe as a youth I was turned off by the 1974 date on the video box, or maybe because I only knew Margot Kidder (who has never looked better, by the way) as Lois Lane and didn't think I wanted to see her in a horror movie. Whatever the case may be, it took me all this time to get around to Black Christmas, but I'm sure glad I finally watched it. I'll revisit it this Christmas, and it will definitely become part of my holiday tradition from now on. Great movie.
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