An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 1974’s Black Christmas
During Christmas, a sorority house is harassed by strange phone calls and later targeted by a killer who might be closer than they think.
Is Black Christmas (1974) Scary?
Yep Black Christmas is creepy and does a great job of getting under your skin. There aren’t too many jump scares and the horror comes mostly from how the killer is portrayed as well as the atmosphere of the movie. By the end, you’ll never want to answer your rotary phone and luckily you most likely don’t have one.
Plot Synopsis:
The film opens with the POV of an unknown person watching and approaching a sorority house where a Christmas party is going on. The unknown person looks around the house, finds a trellis that leads to the roof, and starts to climb it.
Inside one of our main characters, Barb (played by Margot Kidder) gets a phone call and she takes it to the second floor where it’s less noisy. Back in the POV of the unknown person, they find an open window to the attic and climb in. The intruder climbs down the attic and watches Barb on the phone.
Barb gets off the phone and heads back downstairs when the phone rings. One of our other main characters Jess (played by Olivia Hussey) picks up the phone and calls the other girls over, yelling that “it’s the moaner”. Apparently whoever this person is, they have been calling over the last few days to harass the girls.
All the girls gather around the phone and it’s clear by how the camera pans around and the direction that our main characters are (from left to right below), Barb, Jess, Clare (played by Lynne Griffin), and Phyl (played by Andrea Martin).
The girls listen to the caller who is randomly switching from laughing maniacally to moaning sexually and demanding sexual favors. While most of the women are worried, Barb thinks it’s funny and antagonizes the caller. The man’s voice then gets serious and simply says “I’m going to kill you” before he hangs up.
Clare argues with Barb about antagonizing the caller leading Clare to angrily storm to her room to pack. In her room, Clare pulls some stuff out of her closet and doesn’t notice someone standing behind several plastic liners. The plastic starts to move and Clare approaches the closet thinking it’s Claude, the cat of the house mother, Mrs. Mac.
Unsurprisingly it’s not the cat unless cats have grown adult human arms and are into suffocating humans all of a sudden. In a jump scare, the intruder wraps Clare’s head in plastic and suffocates her.
Meanwhile downstairs Mrs. Mac has arrived with gifts and opens her gift to the raucous delight of the others meaning no one hears Clare being murdered upstairs.
As the party ends the house gets another call but it’s Peter, Jess’s boyfriend. Jess asks to speak with him privately the next day but won’t tell him what it’s about and that’s never good. Upstairs in the attic, we see a dead Clare on a rocking chair as we hear the same voice that was on the phone earlier singing a song.
The next day we see a man revealed to be Clare’s father, Mr. Harrison (played by James Edmond) is waiting for Clare in the city but she hasn’t arrived. After asking someone for directions to the house, he makes his way over. There Mrs. Mac and Mr. Harrison check Clare’s room but don’t find any clues.
After some shenanigans involving Mrs. Mac trying to portray the sorority house as professional in front of Mr. Harrison, which admittingly made me chuckle, the two set off to the fraternity house where the rest of the girls are doing a charity auction.
Meanwhile, Jess meets with Peter (played by Keir Dullea) and informs him she’s pregnant but she’s not keeping it. Peter is angry at her decision and begs to speak with her again that night in hopes of changing her mind.
Later at the house, Jess gets another phone call but this time the voice sounds feminine, and asks for Billy. The voice then changes to a deep man’s voice and continues talking about Billy. Jess yells that it’s the wrong number and hangs up.
Meanwhile, after a dead-end at the fraternity house, Mr. Harrison, Barb, and Phyl head to the police station to file a missing person’s report but Sargent Nash (played by Doug McGrath) doesn’t take it seriously. After learning from Mrs. Mac that Clare is missing, Jess meets with Clare’s boyfriend Chris (played by Art Hindle), and asks if he’s seen her.
We cut back to the police station a short time later where a woman is telling Lt. Ken Fuller (played by John Saxon) about her 13-year-old daughter Janice who has been missing since noon. They’re interrupted when Chris and Jess enter the police station and Chris yells at Nash for not taking Clare’s disappearance seriously.
Fuller calms Chris down and agrees to look into Clare’s disappearance.
Back at the sorority house, Mrs. Mac makes dinner for Barb, Phyl, and Mr. Harrison but a drunk Barb feels guilty for Clare’s disappearance (due to their argument earlier) and lashes out at the group. Phyl and Mrs. Mac demand she goes to bed and she regretfully does so.
Meanwhile, Peter, who is a pianist, had an evaluation earlier in the day and due to the pregnancy conversation he had with Jess, he didn’t pass. We cut to him quickly to see him destroying his piano in anger.
A search party is formed to look for Clare and 13-year-old Janice led by Fuller with Phyl, Jess, Chris, and Mr. Harrison joining. At the house, Mrs. Mac packs to head to her sisters and hears Claude’s meows echoing in the walls above her.
Following them to the attic she spots the dead Clare in the rocking chair. Before she can do anything, the killer releases a hook that impales and kills Mrs. Mac. The killer then breaks down screaming and smashes multiple things in the attic.
The search party in the park finds Janice dead and I think the movie implies that the same killer in the house also killed Janice. Jess arrives back at the house as the phone rings and the killer begs for her help. He pleads for someone to stop him but his voice changes and starts calling himself “Filthy Billy” followed by indistinct yelling.
Freaked out Jess hangs up and calls the police station to find out what can be done about the calls. While she’s on the phone someone comes down from the second floor and it’s revealed to be Peter who claims he took a nap waiting for her to arrive. Did Peter just walk into the empty house before Jess got there? Why are the doors always unlocked? Is Peter the killer or does the movie just want me to think he is?
At the police station, we see the person on the phone with Jess is Sargent Nash who once again dismisses the situation but he’s overheard by Mr. Harrison, Phyl, and Chris. The three immediately rat out Nash to Lt. Fuller who thinks the situation is serious following Janice’s death and Clare’s disappearance.
At the house, Peter tells Jess that he wants to marry her but she turns him down which leads to them arguing. Peter demands she not get an abortion but Jess insists she will. He then essentially threatens her and she kicks him out but not before he tells her “you’re going to be very sorry”. Dudes making it very difficult for people to not assume he’s a killer.
As Peter leaves Phyl arrives with Lt. Fuller and a tech to tap the phone line. Phyl and Clare lead Fuller to Clare’s room so he can investigate.
The tech finishes tapping the line, this is 1974 so there’s a lot of manual work he had to do including taking apart the rotary phone. Or maybe the movie is exaggerating what it took to tap phones in 1974, I don’t know but it sounds right.
He tells the girls when the person calls, the phone will also ring at the police station, and they’ll need to keep him on the line in order to trace the call. Before he leaves, Lt. Fuller also tells and shows Jess and Phyl that another police officer will be watching the house from across the street. So that officer is already dead.
Phyl breaks down thinking that Clare is totally dead and she’s right but how what evidence does she have? Phyl then heads to bed as Jess stays up to wait for another call. While Jess waits upstairs we see the killer climb down the attic ladder and enter Barb’s room where she’s sleeping.
Jess hears Barb gasping for air and rushes to her room where she finds her having an asthma attack. Jess helps her and Barb tells her she had a nightmare that a man entered her room.
Barb falls back asleep and Jess hears carolers outside singing. Instead of doing the normal thing of closing the curtains, turning off the lights, and pretending no one is home, Jess opens the door and weirdly enjoys the song the children sing.
Meanwhile, upstairs the killer reenters Barb’s room. He whispers to a sleeping Barb “it’s me Billy” and “don’t worry Agnus”. He then kills her by stabbing her with a glass unicorn. Jess doesn’t hear the commotion because she is too busy listening to carolers sing a song.
As the carolers leave, conveniently right after the murder is done, the phone rings and we see it also ring at Fuller’s desk. The killer does their usual shtick of random voices yelling at Billy but then repeats something Peter said to Jess during their conversation earlier. This means either the killer is Peter or the killer was in the house and listening to Jess earlier.
Fuller calls Jess and tells her they weren’t able to trace the call. Remembering how angry Peter was earlier when he arrived at the house, Fuller starts to suspect Peter but has to hang up before he can finish his thought. Jess then has a conversation with Phyl where it’s revealed she thinks the caller is Peter but isn’t exactly sure.
A short time later the phone rings again but it’s Peter crying about how Jess turned him down. This leads Jess to reveal to Fuller that she is pregnant and planning an abortion which furthers Fuller’s idea that Peter must be the caller. Jess then remembers that Peter was in the house when she got the call after Clare’s search party so she assumes this means it couldn’t have been him.
But I have the power of rewind and Peter revealed himself to be in the house after Jess hung up with the caller. It could totally still be him. Fuller decides to go find Peter to question him while the girls lock the doors and windows because for some reason they aren’t already locked! While upstairs Phyl goes to check on Barb and we see the attic door is open. As Phyl enters the room, the killer closes the door.
Jess locks the front door and gets another phone call. The killer once again does his usual schtick but this time we see the tech at the phone company tracing the call. Fuller who was out looking for Peter is called back to the police car and overhears the call.
The tech successfully traces the call and tells Fuller the calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE DUN DUNN DUNNNN. Fuller tries to call the officer outside the house but we see he’s dead with his throat slashed.
Fuller calls the station and tells Nash to only tell Jess to hang up and walk outside as he’s on his way. Nash agrees but when he calls Jess he ends up telling her the killer is inside the house which freaks out Jess.
Jess naturally freaks out and yells for Barb and Phyl not knowing if they’re alive. Since Jess is our main character she decides not to leave and grabs a fire poker in order to be a hero. Arriving on the second floor, she opens Barb’s room and sees both Barb and Phyl are dead.
Behind the door she hears the killer whisper “Agnes, it’s me Billy” and when she looks up she sees him staring at her behind the door.
The killer attempts to open the door but Jess slams the door shut on his hands causing him to scream as Jess runs. Unfortunately, the front door is stuck and Jess is unable to get out. Deciding to run to the basement Jess runs but the killer grabs her hair. She’s able to get loose and reaches the basement locking the door behind her.
After unsuccessfully breaking down the door, the killer gives up and leaves the house. Through the basement windows, Jess sees the silhouette of someone trying to look in. It’s revealed to be Peter who calls out to her and asks if she’s alright. Jess doesn’t respond and decides to hide instead.
Peter breaks the window and enters the basement while still calling out for Jess. Spotting her, he approaches her just as the police arrive outside. Fuller hears Jess’s screams and runs to the basement finding her having killed Peter.
A short time later the police and a doctor have put Jess to bed in one of the rooms instead of a hospital for some reason as we hear Fuller say he knew in his gut Peter was the killer. Fuller also adds he believes Peter made a call after each of his kills.
We also have Chris and Mr. Harrison in the room with Jess and Mr. Harrison faints, going into shock. The doctor asks Chris for help to bring him to the hospital and we hear everyone leave the house. As Jess lies there sleeping alone in the house, we pan over to see the attic door open and we hear the killer laughing and singing.
The attic door opens and it’s revealed the cops never checked the attic leaving Mrs. Mac and Clare’s bodies undiscovered. As we pan outside of the house we see a cop standing outside and the film ends as the phone starts to ring.
Although it’s left ambiguous it’s pretty strongly implied Jess is killed since, as Fuller said, the killer only makes calls after he’s killed someone. We saw an unconscious and alone Jess, saw the attic door open, heard the killer, and moments later the phone rang.
Review:
Black Christmas (1974) is great. I was worried that it would be a real slow burn like Halloween (1978) but nope, Black Christmas moves quickly and sets up the creepiness from the start. The acting, dialogue, and story are all well done. The ambiguous ending even fits the movie really well as it ends with a phone call… although as I said above, it’s strongly implied Jess is dead. But this is done so well that you’re creeped out by the phone ringing.
The killer’s background being completely unknown also works because we can tell from the phone calls that he’s a killer with some kind of past. But since it’s not important to the events of the night, it doesn’t need to be explained. The main characters are the sorority girls, not the killer. This adds a huge slow-building terror factor to the movie and makes it so we never know what the killer is going to do next.
One thing that I didn’t like was Peter’s character actions. I get the movie wanted to make him a red herring but, towards the end, the movie tried really hard to make the audience believe he was the killer to the point that the character became illogical.
Why does he break into the house through the basement when he didn’t have confirmation that Jess was there? Why was he watching the house? Why approach Jess who clearly looks scared and hiding in the basement without clarifying why he’s there? It’s a nitpick, sure, but it does feel like the movie tried too hard to throw off the audience.
Overall I highly recommend giving Black Christmas (1974) a watch, it holds up and is definitely a horror classic.
Cast IMDB