BACKGROUND
There are real-life horror stories in the news every day, and often these true stories have a way of inspiring fictional horror stories. A writer will see something disturbing in the news and it will stick in their head, and the way to purge the uneasy feelings they have about the news they read will be to write a fictional version of such a scenario. That’s how we get horror classics like the 1974 film Black Christmas, which has a script – initially written by Roy Moore, then reworked by Timothy Bond – that draws inspiration from multiple separate, horrific real-life incidents.
It starts with an urban legend that has been circulating since at least the 1960s and centers on a teenage babysitter who has already put the kids to bed for the night. She gets a call from a stranger who asks her, “Have you checked the children?” She brushes it off... but the stranger keeps calling her. With the situation getting increasingly scary, the sitter notifies the police of what’s going on. They tell her to try to keep the stranger on the line so they can trace his calls. And when they do trace a call, they find that the stranger is calling from inside the house. He’s lurking upstairs... and he may or may not have murdered the children, depending on which version of the story you’re told. This legend might have its roots in a real-life incident where a thirteen-year-old girl was killed while babysitting in Columbia, Missouri back in 1950.
Canadian writer Roy Moore decided to write a script called Stop Me that would be based on the urban legend, and while writing the script he also drew inspiration from a real-life murder case he had read about. It happened in Montreal in November of 1943. A 14-year-old boy took a baseball bat and bludgeoned his siblings into unconsciousness, murdered his mother, and seriously injured his mother’s friend, who was visiting from Australia. The kid was deemed to be temporarily insane and was institutionalized until he was 22, at which time he was released. There has also been some speculation that Moore was inspired by the case of a serial killer nicknamed The Vampire Rapist, who was killing women in Montreal and Calgary not long before the script was written, but that may not have had any impact on the story. The title Moore came up with is also reminiscent of the “Chicago Lipstick Killer” case, where a man who was attacking and killing females of all ages would leave messages to the police, written in lipstick, asking them to catch them before he could kill anyone else. “I cannot control myself.”
Moore’s Stop Me script made its way into the hands of producers Harvey Sherman and Richard Schouten, as well as established genre filmmaker Bob Clark, who had made the horror films Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Dead of Night (a.k.a. Deathdream) and signed on to produce and direct this film as well. But first, the script needed some revisions. Timothy Bond was brought in to replace the babysitter urban legend set-up with a story that would take place at a sorority house on a college campus, and Clark wanted to make sure the script, which he thought was “too much of a straightforward slasher film” in its original form, would feature realistic characters. Through his own rewrites, Clark also added some humor into the mix, basing one particularly comedic character, the sorority’s alcoholic housemother, on his own aunt.
Clark is the one who came up with the title Black Christmas, too. He said he enjoyed the irony of a dark event occurring during a festive holiday.
SETTING
Although filming took place on the University of Toronto campus, the story takes place in the fictional college town of Bedford (a nod to the town of Bedford Falls in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.) Most of the action takes place in and around the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority house, the filming location being a private residence that stands just about a mile and a half down the road from the University of Toronto. The house used was an excellent choice (and, thankfully, the owners were quite excited to have their house become a filming location) because it’s large, looks very cool, and yet there’s an immediate creepiness as soon as you see it sitting there in the dark of a cold winter night.
The girls hang out on the bottom floor and have their bedrooms on the second floor, then there’s an attic that’s used for storage and is accessible via a ladder that leads to a small door in the second floor hallway ceiling. At the beginning of the film, we see through the POV of a stranger as they climb a trellis on the outside of the house and enter the place through an attic window. For the entire rest of the movie, we know this intruder is lurking upstairs while the sorority sisters go about their lives below.
KILLER
Who is this person who has invaded the Pi Kappa Sigma house? We’ll be presented with some suspects as the film goes on – but one of the great things about this movie is the fact that the killer’s identity is never revealed. His face, his name, his motive, they remain a mystery. The murders he commits are just random acts of violence carried out against people who have no idea he even exists.
The only clues were get about what’s going on with the killer come through the obscene phone calls he makes to the girls downstairs, using a phone upstairs. Sometimes these calls will consist of screams and moaning sounds, sometimes there will be vulgar sexual comments... and sometimes the killer’s insane ramblings seem to be revealing information about his past. He seems to refer to himself as Billy, he had a younger sister named Agnes, and at some point he seems to have done something terrible to Agnes. Something that his parents were shocked and horrified to find out about.
Unfortunately, “Billy” is not just a prank caller. Every now and then, he’ll come down from the attic and kill one of the inhabitants of the sorority house when they’re on their own. He has killed before he entered this house, and chances are he’ll be killing again after the end credits are over.
United States distributor Warner Bros. did try to get Clark to add a new ending to the film that would have made it clear exactly who the killer was, but the director declined to do so.
FINAL GIRL
There were no rules established about final girls in horror films when this movie was made, so Bob Clark and their collaborators didn’t know the choices they made when coming up with the character of Jess Bradford, played by Olivia Hussey, were rule-breaking choices... although they had to be aware that there were controversial aspects to the character.
Jess is in a relationship with an edgy, piano-playing young man named Peter Symthe (Keir Dullea), and when she finds that she has gotten pregnant, she makes the decision on her own to get an abortion. She then reveals the situation to Peter right when he’s about to perform an important audition on his piano for a good of people evaluating his performance... and, of course, her timing throws him off completely. She should have picked a better time to tell him, or just not tell him, since his feelings on the matter wouldn’t be taken into account anyway.
Beyond the abortion drama, Jess is actually one of the least interesting characters we meet in the sorority house. She’s a bland character who has the occasional amusingly intense line delivery when she’s on the phone... but she has good relationships with her fellow sisters and seems nice enough, as long as you’re not dating her. When she eventually has the police trace the disturbing phone calls she has been receiving and finds out they’re coming from inside the house, from an upstairs phone, she doesn’t leave the house like the cops advise her to do. Instead, she grabs a fireplace poker and heads upstairs to check on the friends who are supposed to be sleeping up there. A decision that kicks off a climactic chase and attack sequence that starts off upstairs but quickly heads down into the basement.
It’s worth noting that legalized therapeutic abortions had become legal in Canada in 1969, just a few years before Black Christmas was made, but those required a committee of doctors to certify that continuing the pregnancy would likely endanger the woman's life or health... so Jess probably wouldn’t been able to take a legal approach to the abortion she was determined to get, if she got it locally. Abortion was decriminalized in the United States the year before Black Christmas was released, so she could cross the border to get an abortion – or, since she has an English accent (born in Argentina, Hussey had lived in England for several years by this time), it indicates that she could go back home to England to get the procedure, which might be covered by The Abortion Act 1967.
VICTIMS
Anyone who’s in or around the Pi Kappa Sigma house could become a victim of the maniac lurking in the attic, whether they’re a sorority sister, a visiting boyfriend, someone who lives in the area, or a police officer called in to help with the situation. This means that not only is Jess a potential victim, but so is Peter (although the movie mainly paints him as a suspect). Local police Lieutenant Kenneth Fuller may be played by John Saxon, but he could still become a victim. Or the hero. Or just a supporting character who doesn't do much. The body of a 13-year-old girl who was attacked while walking home from school is found by authorities and volunteers searching for her on a dark, snowy night.
In the sorority house, we’re introduced to Jess’s fellow sisters Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin), Phyl Carlson (Andrea Martin), and Barb Coard (Margot Kidder). Clare seems like she could have been final girl material if she weren’t the first person to get killed. She had been planning to go home for Christmas, her dad is coming to pick her up... but she doesn’t live long enough to get away from the sorority house. Phyl is another nice girl – so nice, in fact, that Gilda Radner was initially offered the role, but she had scheduling issues. Barb is more wild than the others, and seems to have a drinking problem – which is almost understandable, because she also seems to have a pretty lousy homelife. She was planning to go home for Christmas as well, until her mother made plans to go away with a boyfriend instead. Barb’s irreverent attitude does allow for some funny moments, though.
Another person with a drinking problem in the sorority house is housemother Barbara "Mac" MacHenry, a.k.a. Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman). This lady has bottles of booze hidden all over the house... and frequently takes the opportunity to get a chug from them.
DEATHS
Showcase death scenes weren’t really a thing when Black Christmas was made – not outside the works of Blood Feast director H.G. Lewis, anyway. So it’s not too surprising that “Billy” doesn’t deliver much in the way of standout murders. The movie has a fine body count, but several people are killed off-screen, with their bodies being found later. When someone does get killed on-screen, we don’t actually see blades impacting flesh. That said, there are a couple notable deaths.
The opening kill of Clare is shocking and troubling, as the killer grabs her in her walk-in closet and suffocates her with a plastic bag. Clare is then left sitting in the attic for the rest of the movie, the plastic bag still over her head. We may not actually see a hook hit Mrs. Mac in the face, but the implication is strong enough that we know a hook has hit her in the face. We then see her legs get pulled up through the doorway into the attic. That’s pretty effective.
Barb gets it the worst. The killer comes into her room while she’s sleeping and she wakes up just in time to see him standing over her, holding a glass unicorn decoration. The killer then uses the unicorn’s horn to stab her to death.
CLICHÉS
A slasher movie set on a college campus may not have been a cliché when they decided to move the story into a University setting, but it has definitely been a popular, frequently used concept ever since. The ending twist (“The calls are coming from inside the house!”) was lifted from a popular urban legend, so that has been done multiple times. You’ve got a final girl and the authority figures who don’t seem to accomplish anything worthwhile.
There are clichés, but Black Christmas also subverts a lot of expectations. “Wild” girls and nice girls alike get killed. The final girl is planning to have an abortion. We don’t find out anything about the killer. The movie plays by its own rules.
POSTMORTEM
Filmed from March to May of 1974 on a budget of $686,000 - $200,000 of which came from the Canadian Film Development Corporation – and was ready to make its way out into the world by the end of that year. It was given a Canadian release in October and did well. Warner Bros., which had a massive horror hit with The Exorcist in December of 1973, thought this movie could be another Christmastime horror success for them... but when they put it out in December (under the title Silent Night, Evil Night so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a blaxploitation movie), it was overwhelmed by the higher profile releases of The Godfather Part II and The Man with the Golden Gun. It didn’t make much money at all. So Warner Bros. pulled it from theatres and tried to give it a roll-out release under its original title, starting in August of 1975. Again, Black Christmas didn’t make much money for Warner Bros.
Still, with a gross of $2 million, Black Christmas was the third-highest-grossing Canadian film of all time in Canada.
On January 28, 1978, NBC aired Black Christmas (now under the title Stranger in the House) as part of their Saturday Night at the Movies program. Unfortunately, real-life serial killed Ted Bundy had just murdered two young women in the Chi Omega sorority house on the campus of Florida State University two weeks earlier. Some affiliates in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia felt that showing Black Christmas at the time would be in poor taste, so they showed Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze instead.
Black Christmas may not have been a huge box office success, but it did earn a devoted cult following quite quickly, and it wasn’t long before genre fans were calling it a horror classic. It would eventually receive a couple of remakes, but never a sequel – even though Clark had an idea in mind for how he would approach a follow-up. In the mid-’70s, he was collaborating with John Carpenter on a backwoods horror movie called Prey that never made it into production, and he revealed to Carpenter what the Black Christmas sequel would have been: the mysterious killer would escape from a mental hospital and continue his killing spree on Halloween. That’s enough information for some fans to say Carpenter ripped Clark off when he made the movie Halloween a few years later, but Clark didn’t feel that borrowing the concept of a killer escaping from a mental hospital on Halloween was enough to earn Carpenter’s film the “rip-off” brand. Anyway, he liked Carpenter’s Halloween, and the Black Christmas sequel wasn’t going to happen whether Halloween was made or not.
Fifty years after its release, Black Christmas stands as one of the most highly respected horror fives of the last six decades and it’s a movie that many genre fans make sure to watch every single December. It’s a great film that’s definitely worth keeping in the yearly rotation.
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