My Shudder Picks: Black Christmas

Being the horror junkie I am, I was surprised to learn so late in the game that a streaming site called Shudder exists. For my first watch I chose to view a title called Black Christmas from 1974.

For those unfamiliar with this Canadian film, it is considered an early pioneer of the slasher genre, a kind of mile marker between Psycho and Halloween. Olivia Hussey is the lead actress, and as such I'd expected that fundamental trope of virgin who lives through her friends' deaths and upstages the stalker in a grandiose revenge. Yet not the most accurate description of Olivia's role as we find out. Tropes or not, there are some complaints here.

It takes Hussey's character far too long to recognize that her friends are hacked up in the upstairs bedroom of her sorority house. Most of the film focuses on the initial disappearance with the first sister, and the clue-seeking which ensues. Makes sense. But again--why isn't anyone going into the room where her dead body sits at the window?

John Saxon plays a great police lieutenant, and it's my assumption that it's this performance which gave him the upper hand to land the same role in the first Nightmare On Elm Street.

Once the cops decide to tap the sorority house phone, the plot wises up and there are actually some good scares. The gore is minimal and the murder sequences are mildly violent at their worst. Ironically enough director Bob Clark would go on to make A Christmas Story nine years later, decidedly a more apt holiday effort.

For horror fans I would say this is mandatory only in the name of respecting the early prototypes of the genre. Olivia Hussey, John Saxon, and Margot Kidder all deliver fine performances, albeit some hokey dialogue and conversation (Kidder and the sorority mother are both ridiculous alcoholics) which doesn't do much to taint some genuinely creepy moments.

Three out of four stars.