FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Festive Slasher Movie That Inspired John Carpenter’s Halloween
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you never know who’s on the other end of the line, of if they have anything going on upstairs in their attic…
Black Christmas (aka Silent Night, Evil Night) (1974)
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
Directed by: Bob Clark
Please note that this is not the film we teased last time; we are running this piece now and very much out of season in respect to Margot Kidder, who passed away suddenly this Monday
It seems every Christmas, for many years, we sit down and watch this movie directed by Bob Clark from 1983:
His earlier Yuletide-themed film from 1974, not so much:
Please note that there will be a few unavoidable spoilers in this piece; unlike most houses, we don’t judge you for peeking early at the presents…
We begin just before the holidays, at a sorority house at an unnamed university (the University of Toronto, for the curious who may ask where some of the scenes were shot as the film goes on). We have scenes of the party at the Pi Kappa Sigma chapter, and get introduced to some of their members: Barb (Margot Kidder), the raging alcoholic; Phyl (Andrea Martin), the voice of reason and studious sufferer of a head cold throughout the film; Claire (Lynn Griffin), the “good kid” who doesn’t drink and party as hard as her sisters, and Jess (Olivia Hussey), who before we get to know her well enough has to take a phone call, a really, really nasty obscene phone call that the rest of the house listens in on.
We cut back and forth from these to other shots, on the outside of the building. It’s quickly established that what we are looking at are scenes from the direct point of view of someone who breaks into the house, climbs up the trellis and into the attic.
The sorority’s uninvited guest waits upstairs for Claire to go to her room and start packing to go to her family for the holidays. We cut back and forth between watching her normally and through the eyes of the break-in artist, who upgrades to murderer when he suffocates her with a plastic bag and drags her into the attic.
When Claire is late to meet her father (James Edmond) the next afternoon, he turns to her sorority sisters and their house mother Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), a woman with more places to hide sherry bottles around the Pi Kappa Sigma house than Al Capone could have dreamed up, for help finding her. He also briefly encounters Peter (Kier Dullea), who we learn as we follow is a conservatory student who is Jess’ boyfriend.
More like was, as she breaks up with him over the issue of her pregnancy; she wants to have an abortion, and he wants to marry her. His somewhat fragile sense of self goes completely awry in cut scenes between him losing his cool, Jess and friends trying to look for Claire, and Claire sitting in the attic undisturbed.
At least until Mrs. Mac, looking for her cat (and maybe a sixth bottle of sherry she had hidden somewhere) while a cab waits downstairs for her, finds Claire in the attic. Unfortunately, our killer’s there too, and he does away with her with a swung hook and tackle.
The police, ultimately, come into the picture, even as there is a missing girl case that’s drawn their attention. In the midst of all that’s going on, Detective Fuller (John Saxon) determines that there’s something going on, especially as the obscene phone calls keep coming, and getting more threatening as the person on the other end identifies himself as “Michael”:
Anxious to find the threat, Fuller gets a trace placed on the sorority’s phone, hoping to track where the caller might be. Which is of little value, as the killer in the house strikes again, taking out Barb who is sleeping it off just as carolers come to the door:
Ultimately, Fuller and the police are able to track the threatening phone calls to the killer: the calls are all coming from within the house! This leads to a final confrontation…
…after which the killer has escaped, and is alone in the house with the final survivor, Jess. There’s the ringing of the phone as we pull out and roll the end credits, Michael and Jess’ final confrontation never revealed…
Which actually makes for a more interesting ending, leaving us hanging not only as to what happens to Jess, but who Michael actually was. The best we get to see of him is one shot of a single eye on the other side of a door; because he displays no supernatural abilities beyond good luck and a strong back and set of hands, it’s his anonymity that gives him the our attention, as we try and fathom the unknowable.
Not that there’s nothing to inspire awe in the viewer, especially modern ones. The fact that we have women on screen being very frank in how they enjoy themselves, having control over their choices and bodies, is a stark statement to an age like ours when things seem to have gone backwards. The fact that the characters in the 2006 remake seem to have regressed, being forced to follow the rules of slasher films which did not exist in 1974, makes one very aware of how much has been lost over the years across the board.
As for getting to know people, the characters we get from the cast are compelling as their displayed facets draw us in. This alone is worth our attention, and becomes even more compelling watching this 40 years on and knowing what’s to come. Seeing Kidder’s Barb going balls-to-the-wall through life is compelling viewing in this strong early performance in her career, while watching Martin play a straight role so soon before joining SCTV and becoming a comedic actress icon makes you aware of a side of her you might not have 
considered.
As for historical consideration, an early fan of this film was John Carpenter, who started a correspondence with Clark after the film’s release. A few years after their conversations, when Clark discussed ideas for an abandoned sequel, Carpenter ultimately builds on those and comes up with what he felt was at least spiritually tied to the earlier film, Halloween. While many of the elements of the modern slasher film trace to Carpenter’s work, it’s Clark’s 1974 project that is the ur text from which all such movies originate.
Making the film for horror fans the gift that just keeps on giving…
NEXT TIME: Baring further surprise tragedies, we will finally try and make our way into orbit…
