Blu-ray Review: Black Christmas (1974)

"One of the best Slasher flicks of all-time."

*This is one of the very first reviews that we ever psoted way back in 2008, but we've brought it back to the top to coincide with the new Collector's Edition Blu-ray release from Scream factory, because it's a classic slasher that deserves the love.  

Poor Billy is only tying to find someone who will listen to him; too bad he wasted his time on those snotty sorority girls... because they don't seem to care at all! Every time he calls and tries to pour his heart out to them, they laugh and hang up on him and just won't listen. That obviously means that they have to die.
 

Billy 'bout to kill some bitches.

You see, Billy lives in the attic, so it's easy for him to kill a girl, meow like a cat, hide her body, then wait for another one to kill. He really does like meowing like a cat. He also likes to ski, but nobody ever asks him about that. Not even Agnes, because she's a bitch. Sure, everyone eventually gets whats coming to them... just not Billy. He didn't even get as much as a card for the Holidays.

Far be it from me to spoil the what happens for you here, but suffice it to say that there's a dead bitch in the attic, and her cat is a total asshole.

See, this is why I hate cats... She's dead, asshole. Go feed yourself!

What a creepy classic this one is. Tense, dark, and unsettling, Bob Clark made a Horror movie that was years ahead of it's time with Black Christmas. His use of shadow, odd angles, and tension in place of buckets of blood were genius for its time, and it still holds up well, nearly 40 years later. Not bad for a little movie with a budget of under a million dollars.

This film is not only a Horror Classic, but it was also groundbreaking when it was released; it was one of the first slasher movies ever made; it used the "the calls are coming from inside the house" gag years before When a Strangers Calls did; and it was one of the first movies to show us the action from the killer's POV. This movie deserves to stand alongside Halloween as one of the best slasher films ever, although it tends to be a footnote when the two are discussed. Shame, that.

Merry last Christmas ever!

I may have had certain misconceptions about this movie before I saw it...

Turns out it's not that kind of Black Christmas, after all...

WTF was up with the Cops at the end? I mean do we seriously leave a girl all alone in a house where multiple murders were just committed and where the killer is still at large and we haven't even really searched the house all that well in an effort to find him? That sentence was a HUGE run-on, but it had to be said in exactly that manner.

Everyone is on the phone in this movie.

There were a few on-screen deaths, but they were very light on the blood. Creepy though. Very creepy. 

She must have died mid-Christmas Carol.

 Nope... This one was tame in that department.

Hussey.

"Darling, you can't rape a townie" or "I'm going to kill you."

"But... but I'm a townie!"

When someone tells you to get out of the house, you don't run upstairs with a fire poker.... you GTFO of the house!

"You want us to leave now? Alright, we're on our way upstairs!"

Black Christmas is an all-time classic that every Horror fan should have in their collection, especially those of us who love slashers. It's really interesting that between this movie and A Christmas Carol, that Bob Clark gave the world two seminal (although for completely different reasons) Christmas movies. Maybe he just really loved the Holiday Season?

A

Black Christmas is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Olivia "the" Hussey and Margot "crazy as fuck" Kidder are in this, and both are looking rather 70's hot.