Why this 1974 slasher is the ultimate anti-Crimbo horror

There is nothing quite like the incendiary impact of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, the Canadian proto-slasher that laid the groundwork for genre archetypes, while subtly subverting them, back in 1974. Disrupting this joyous time of year through terror and bloodshed, it gets annual play with horror fans everywhere. Favoured holiday viewing by the Presley estate, inspiration for John Carpenter’s Halloween, and most recently referenced in Terrifier 3, the cult classic is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a 4K theatrical re-release. Unlike the half-baked remakes it has spawned, the original still holds up, with unappreciated elements going viral online.

Oozing 70’s atmosphere, Black Christmas nightmarishly captures a malevolent perversion of peace and goodwill — in all its unnerving home invasion splendour. Even so, its legacy is far greater than establishing killer POVs and final girl tropes in this setting. Filled with feminist leanings and textured social commentary both sophisticated and superior for its time, it’s a film that requires multiple viewings and continues to feel fresh despite its age. That’s especially true in the wake of Donald Trump’s dismaying re-election to the Presidency of the United States.

Based off of the urban legend of ‘the babysitter and the man upstairs’ – predating 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, that has a similar slow-burn premise – Black Christmas follows a group of sorority sisters who receive obscene, threatening phone calls from a mysterious and deranged man named “Billy”. Unbeknownst to the group, he intrudes and hides in the attic of their sorority house, setting into motion a string of grisly, sombre murders in a simple yet provocative expression of toxic masculinity. 

Much like Tobe Hooper’s equally seminal The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, released the same year, Black Christmas has an air of true crime authenticity to its story. Screenwriter Roy Moore claimed it was also influenced by George Webster, a 14-year-old boy who bludgeoned his mother to death with a baseball bat in their Westmount, Montreal, household. Indeed, gendered violence against women is as old as the human species. But in the aftermath of the famously heinous Tate–LaBianca murders, by the early 1970’s the landscape of the Western world was one of pervading danger and distress. 

It is fascinating, then, to see Clark – a male American ex-patriot – direct and produce the female characters in his low-budget picture with spirited sensitivity. The well-drawn women in Black Christmas are not just disposable. Contrary to those featured in future exploitative slashers, Clark grounds his film by crafting interesting, relatable personalities. For as little screen time as some of them have, every oblivious college student is memorable and sympathetic, making each whodunnit death all the more harrowing. Billy’s first tragic kill is Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin), hiding amongst the plastic clothes bags of her closet, he suffocates her as she begins to pack for winter vacation. 

Clare’s character sets the tone for the rest of the film — while timid, she is the first inclination of an unshakeable second–wave feminism. Glimpses of her bedroom decor suggest a liberation from the conformist behaviours of a conservative patriarchy. Georgia O’Keeffe-esque flower paintings. Posters of nude hippie bodies linked in a peace sign, and an elderly woman giving someone the finger. Underneath, the phrase “Express thyself.” Foul-mouthed housemother Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman) later gives Clare’s stuffy, old-fashioned father the middle finger behind his back. Her character challenges domestic life, though this mostly manifests itself as alcoholism through hidden stashes of hooch bottles.

There is no lurid focus on women undressing or engaging in sexual activity in Black Christmas, yet Billy takes exceptional issue with female sexuality in all its varying degrees of seriousness. Four years before her breakthrough role as Lois Lane, Margot Kidder brings a raunchy and darkly comical quality to the film as the loose-tongued, Playboy-reading Barb. In a TV documentary interview, Kidder said she was attracted to the unconventional character “because she was wild and out of control”, unlike typical leading lady roles. 

Unphased by Billy’s nonsensical calls, spurting expletives that would make even today’s censors blush, Barb makes lewd comments right back at him. She drinks, smokes and swears her way through overtly sexual interactions with visibly uncomfortable characters, even labelling Clare a “professional virgin” while empowered in her own sexuality. In graphic scenes, Billy repeatedly stabs Barb to death as she lays in bed by the phallic horn of a glass unicorn statue, demonstrating that women are punishable regardless of where they fit on the scale of women’s lib. 

Despite all her vulgarity, it’s easy to find yourself rooting for Barb. Regardless of when she drunkenly tells a roomful of people that there is a species of turtle that can get in on for three days, or while convincing local law enforcement that “fellatio” is a new phone exchange. There is a certain strength to her character. She, along with fellow sorority sister Phyl (Andrea Martin), challenge authority at the police station to file a missing persons report following Clare’s disappearance. 

Carol J. Clover, in her essay “Her body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”, notes that “Policemen, fathers, and sheriffs appear only long enough to demonstrable risible incomprehension and incompetence.” This much is true for Lieutenant Fuller (John Saxon) and Sergeant Nash (Douglas McGrath), who only begin to take the women seriously when Clare’s boyfriend Chris (Art Hindle) angrily berates them. Their lack of due diligence allows multiple killings to occur, simultaneously failing a missing high school girl who is later found murdered in the park. Meanwhile Clare’s rotting corpse sits undiscovered in the attic.

Our view of him obstructed, Billy makes clear a pattern of manic, menacing behaviours towards women throughout Black Christmas, causing psychological torment before slaughtering them one by one. Exhibiting awful acts of physical and psychosexual aggression, akin to domestic assaults against women in the home, there’s a personal touch to his hands-on approach. In a distressing game of cat-and-mouse with final girl Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey), he forcefully grabs her by the hair as she tries to escape. When he’s not making guttural, nasally noises and sexually-charged death threats over the phone, he’s screaming and smashing up the female space he has invaded.

According to Sophia Takal, director and co-writer of the 2019 remake, “The killer in the original represents misogyny. You think you’ve gotten rid of it. But it’s still in the shadows and will come when you totally let your guard down.” Billy is more than just a faceless killer we never get a full shot of, apart from his large eye staring at Jess through the crack of a door. We never get answers to his motives for killing women, there is no justification to his actions but he is an amalgamation of sexism and misogyny, language reminiscent of incel rhetoric. Billy stalks and harasses in a tale that can easily be reframed into a more modern context — just substitute it for real-life horror stories of unsolicited online communication.

The same goes for Jess’s highly strung boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), an anti-feminist red herring character who may or may not be the killer on account of an abortion subplot. See, Roe v. Wade had passed just the year prior to the release of Black Christmas and, radical for 1974, Clark probes honest relationship dynamics through the pro-choice lens of a woman claiming her bodily autonomy. It is unfortunate, then, that its power still reverberates today, with Roe v. Wade overturned. Claustrophobic camerawork in the film plays a significant role in the creation of a threatening atmosphere, creepy and ominous angles tracking the sorority girls going about their lives. This reaches its peak when Peter surprises Jess in the house. 

Reeling from the news that she is pregnant and wishes to have an abortion, Peter reacts with a temper, destroying a grand piano and even calling Jess a “selfish bitch”. He proposes marriage and she rejects this. Jess’s confident refusal of traditional female roles is shocking and progressive material, prioritising her own dreams and ambitions and refusing to give up her own plans just because his have changed. In spite of this, Peter’s petty quibbles lead to abortion being described as “just like having a wart removed”. He might as well be saying the “your body, my choice” mantra, his stubborn attitude echoing the misogyny of young, pro-Trump men.

Coupled with the matter-of-factness of abortion talk, Hussey, of Romeo and Juliet fame, carries her role of the unorthodox heroine having sex out of wedlock with loyal, self-sacrificial conviction. Learning of the killer’s presence in the house, Jess stays, determined to save her already-dead sisters. Arming herself with a fire poker, she is confronted by Billy just as she discovers the bodies. In the basement, Jess manages to evade him, but when Peter makes another sudden reappearance, she kills him out of fear for her own life.

In the film’s final moments, Jess is alone in the house, heavily sedated and recovering in bed. But the phone begins to ring, and police are outside, leaving the fate of our main character and the identity of our villain unknown. Has evil really been vanquished? Black Christmas leaves us with a chilling ambiguity that underscores its feminist core — the true horror isn’t just the violence inflicted on women, but the pervasive misogyny that lurks in every corner of the world they inhabit.