Horror Movie Odyssey: Day 8 - Black Christmas (1974)

Disclaimer: I am sick as hell and half loopy from cough medicine so what follows may or may not be entirely decipherable.

Black Christmas is a slasher movie that was made four years before John Carpenter released Halloween and set a foundation for the genre. In 1974, a film about a crazy person knocking off an entire sorority was probably still a pretty fresh idea and I respect that they were doing something different here. The age of this movie goes a long way towards absolving it of its flaws - well, one flaw remains: “The Prowler” as he is credited, has got to be the least competent murderer ever.

Not Everyone Can be an Astronaut

The prowler’s first attempts at being all prowlery come in the form of obscene phone calls. When he hits up the ladies of Delta Alpha Kappa so that he can relay his modestly scary sexual inclinations, they actually gather around the phone to listen before bullying him off of the line. Fission Mailed. Later phone calls devolve into Timmy impressions from South Park and what I think are supposed to be spoken word dramatizations of conversations he once held with his mother.

Fish in a Barrel

As fictional sororities go, Delta Alpha Kappa is pretty mundane. The only real point of interest for these girls is they are all clearly suffering from some kind of mass narcolepsy. In a world where Jack Bauer can fight terrorists for 24 consecutive hours, these ladies can’t keep their goddamn eyes open for more than a few hours at a time. With a killer that is so unimpressive, the only tension in the movie is derived from the race to knock off these characters before they just head on upstairs to pass out of their own accord. Can he get to the sick girl before she passes out from her cough medicine? How about the girl that had too much to drink? Even the big ambiguous ending involves the final girl sleeping peacefully with the fucking killer still in the house. He might as well be stalking a coma ward.

From a historical perspective, this movie is pretty interesting. It may not be all that effective when compared to its contemporaries, but at least the people involved had the foresight to realize that watching a series of paper cutouts get stabbed to death can be fun and interesting. Had they not elected to make their killer a perpetually hyperventilating schizophrenic man-child, this film could be remembered with the kind of admiration typically reserved for Halloween.