Black Christmas (1974)

 

Black Christmas (1974)

Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullia, Margot Kidder and John Saxon

Directed By: Bob Clark

Plot:

A creepy ass perverted phone caller with a hard-on for murder sneaks into a sorority house and starts offing the tenants.

My Thoughts:

***Spoilers***

Intensity to its fullest! One of my favorite scenes is when Jessica (The Gorgeous Olivia Hussey) finds some of her sorority sisters dead in a bed, and the killer's eye is peeping at her through the creak in the door. The whole chase scene down the steps afterward is edge of your seat material, some of the best I have ever experienced. Especially when you think Jessica is completely out of harms way, and the killers arm comes out of nowhere trying to grab her! I still freak at that scene! 

Enough could never be said at how amazingly creepy the phone calls are, highly uneasy at times. The switching of voices sends chills down my back. 

Another great scene is Margot Kidder's death, while the Christmas caroling continues outside the house. 

I also love John Saxon's character. A favorite scene is with him asking the inept cop about the fellatio number he got for the sorority house. 

There are a couple of plot holes that bugged me... 

Why on earth would Peter (Jessica's boyfriend) ever go looking for her in the basement of the sorority house at the end? You hear him yelling outside before he breaks out a window, but that does not make sense. Even if the doors were locked and he was yelling for Jessica, he already broke in once before (when Jessica and the others were at a search party for Clare), and it was never indicated that they were not locked that time. Even so, it still makes no damn sense what so ever that he would look in the run down basement that looks like none of the girls have ever stepped a single foot in. I feel this entire scene was just made to make Peter look like the ultimate Red Herring, but I think enough evidence was already pointing to him to totally steer the viewer away from the twist ending. 

Another thing that got to me was how they build John Saxon to act like a convincingly real cop, only to later make the whole police force to look like a bunch of backwoods dumb ass Rosco P Coltrane rejects. Early on Saxon is doing what a lot of cops do, asking questions that had already been answered. As when he asked of the last time who and when someone had seen Clare, he said, "Last time she was seen was this morning" when Jessica had already stated it was the night before. Subtle little bits like that won me over... 

What did not was that these friggin’ cops know there is a second phone line in the house, and they did not even think of that from the get go? Better yet, once they realized the calls WERE coming from the house, they never thought of checking the fucking attic, or not even once looked for it? Come on! It was right above the girls’ rooms! 

Nevertheless, I did love the downbeat last five minutes of the movie. I guess many people felt cheated with the outcome, I kind of thought it was genius, I just did not think the last ordeal with Peter and Jessica was needed at all for the ending to be so effective.