User:Paleface Jack/Black Christmas

Paleface Jack/Black Christmas
Directed by	Bob Clark
Screenplay by	Roy Moore
Produced by	Bob Clark
Starring	Olivia Hussey Keir Dullea Margot Kidder John Saxon
Cinematography	Reginald H. Morris
Edited by	Stan Cole
Music by	Carl Zittrer
Production companies	Film Funding Ltd. Vision IV Canadian Film Development Corporation Famous Players
Distributed by	Ambassador Film Distributors
Release dates	October 11, 1974 (1974-10-11) (Canada) December 20, 1974 (1974-12-20) (United States)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English
Budget	$686,000
Box office	$1.3 million (Canada)

Black Christmas (originally titled Silent Night, Evil Night in the United States and retitled Stranger in the House on television screenings) is a 1974 Canadian slasher film produced and directed by Bob Clark, and written by Roy Moore. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon. The story follows a group of sorority sisters who receive threatening phone calls and are eventually stalked and murdered by a deranged killer during the Christmas season.

Plot

An unseen man climbs the exterior of a sorority house, where a Christmas party is being held, and enters the attic. During the party, sorority sister Jess Bradford receives an obscene phone call from a recurrent caller the house has nicknamed "The Moaner". During the call, Barbara "Barb" Coard provokes the caller, and he threatens to kill them before hanging up. Upset by the call, a younger student named Clare Harrison decides to leave and goes upstairs to her bedroom to finish packing for her trip home. There, unbeknownst to the rest of the sorority, Clare is attacked and murdered by the caller, who hides her body in the attic.

The following morning, Clare's father arrives at the sorority, stating that Clare failed to meet up with him at a train station. Housemother Mrs. MacHenry offers to help Mr. Harrison search for her. Later that day, Jess informs her boyfriend, Peter, that she is pregnant and plans to undergo an abortion, much to his disapproval. Meanwhile, Harrison and two other sorority members, Barb and Phyl, attempt to report Clare's disappearance to Sergeant Nash, who dismisses the report. Notified by Jess about Caire's disappearance, Chris Hayden, Clare's boyfriend, arrives at the police station demanding a search party. A local mother reports that her daughter, Janice, is missing around this same period.

That night, a search party, along with members of the sorority and Chris, comb the area and discovering Janice's mutilated corpse near the local park. While searching for the sorority's resident pet cat, Claude, MacHenry discovers Clare's body in the attic before the killer murders her with a crane hook. Shortly afterwards, Jess answers another obscene phone call and decides to file a report with the police. Lieutenant Kenneth Fuller arrives sometime later with a telephone lineman to tap the phone, so that the police can trace the location of the calls once they occur.

After Fuller leaves, a group of Christmas carolers appear at the front door. As Jess watches the singers, the killer sneaks into Barb's room and stabs her to death with a glass unicorn figurine, her screams being drowned out by the carolers. Jess receives another obscene phone call where the caller quotes a part of the argument she had with Peter. Lieutenant Fuller calls her to say the attempt to trace the call failed, and they both begin placing suspicions towards Peter. Jess and Phyl decide to lock up every door and window in the house. Shortly after, however, Phyl is murdered by the killer after she is lured into Barb's room.

When the killer then calls the house again, Jess manages to keep the caller on the phone long enough for the police to trace the calls to inside the house. Sergeant Nash calls to instruct Jess to leave the house immediately, revealing the killer is in the house. Arming herself with a fireplace poker, Jess ventures upstairs to notify the others only to find both Barb and Phyl's bloodied corpses arranged together and the killer watching nearby. Momentarily stunning him, Jess flees with the killer in pursuit, locking herself in the basement. As she hides in the basement, Peter appears outside one of the windows, telling her he heard screaming. He breaks the glass and approaches her. In a state of panic, Jess beats Peter to death with the firepoker, and the police find her barely conscious as she cradles Peter's body.

Believing that Peter was the killer, the police put Jess to bed, with a police officer standing outside. However, the killer's voice is later heard from the attic, with Clare and Mrs. MacHenry's bodies still undisturbed. A shadow is seen descending the attic's ladder before the house's telephone begins to ring.

Cast

• Olivia Hussey as Jess
• Keir Dullea as Peter
• Margot Kidder as Barb
• John Saxon as Lt. Fuller
• Marian Waldman as Mrs. MacHenry (as Mrs. Mac)
• Andrea Martin as Phyl
• James Edmond as Mr. Harrison
• Douglas McGrath as Sergeant Nash
• Art Hindle as Chris
• Lynne Griffin as Clare
• Michael Rapport as Patrick
• Les Carlson as Bill
• Martha Gibson as Mrs. Quaife
• John Rutter as laughing detective
• Dave Clement as Cogan
• Julian Reed as Officer Jennings
• Nick Mancuso as Billy / phone voice (uncredited)
  • Bob Clark as Billy's shadow / phone voice (uncredited)
  • Albert J. Dunk as Billy's POV (uncredited)

Pre-roduction

Development

Black Christmas was initially developed by Canadian screenwriter Roy Moore, who wrote the screenplay under the title Stop Me.

Principle photography

Filming

Principle photography began on March 25, 1974

• 6 Clarendon Crescent, Toronto, Ontario

• Hart House

• Grenadier Lake

• 97 Main Street

• University of Toronto

Post-production

Music

The film score was composed by Carl Zittrer.

Release

Theatrical distribution

Black Christmas was distributed in Canada by Ambassador Film Distributors and premiered in Toronto on October 11, 1974.

Television premiere controversy

The film, under the title Stranger in the House, was set to make its network television premiere on Saturday night, January 28, 1978, on NBC's weekly "Saturday Night at the Movies".

Reception

Contemporaneous reception

During its initial release, the film garnered mixed reviews.

Post-release

Home media

Black Christmas has appeared on various home video formats over the years.

Legacy

Retrospective reassessment

In the years following its initial release, Black Christmas has been positively reassessed by critics, gaining a cult following. It is now acknowledged as one of the earliest slasher films.

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, which has compiled old and contemporary reviews, reports that 69% of 39 critics provided positive reviews for the film, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "The rare slasher with enough intelligence to wind up the tension between bloody outbursts, Black Christmas offers fiendishly enjoyable holiday viewing for genre fans." On Metacritic, a similar website that aggregates both past and present reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".

Atmosphere

Performances

Realism

Scares/Tension

Sources

Books

• https://books.google.com/books?id=WcGxEAAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Bloodstained+Narratives:+The+Giallo+Film+in+Italy+and+Abroad&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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• Crump, William (August 28, 2013). The Christmas Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-4766-0573-9. Archived from the original on September 7, 2023. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
• Diffrient, David Scott (November 27, 2023). Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-4798-0.
• Downey, Paul; Hastings, David (February 14, 2022). It’s me, Billy - Black Christmas Revisited. BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-6293-3869-9.
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• Muir, John (November 22, 2012). Horror Films of the 1970s. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-9156-8.
• Nowell, Richard (December 23, 2010). Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4411-8850-2.
• Olivier, Marc (February 11, 2020). Household Horror: Cinematic Fear and the Secret Life of Everyday Objects. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-04656-7. Archived from the original on September 7, 2023. Retrieved October 4, 2021.
• Packer, Sharon; Pennington, Jody (July 15, 2014). A History of Evil in Popular Culture: What Hannibal Lecter, Stephen King, and Vampires Reveal About America. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-3133-9771-4.
• Paszylk, Bartłomiej (June 8, 2009). The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: An Historical Survey. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-5327-6.
• Rist, Peter (2001). Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-3132-9931-5. Archived from the original on September 7, 2023. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
• Robinson, Jessica (June 7, 2012). Life Lessons from Slasher Films. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-8503-5.
• Rockoff, Adam (21 October 2011). Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978–1986. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-6932-1. Archived from the original on September 7, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
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• Turnock, Bryan (June 11, 2019). Studying Horror Cinema. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-8003-4743-4.
• Vander Kaay, Chris; Vander Kaay, Kathleen (August 15, 2014). The Anatomy of Fear. Norlightspress.com. ISBN 978-1-9352-5497-3.
• Willis, John; Monush, Barry (May 1, 2010). Screen World 2007. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-1-5578-3729-5. Archived from the original on September 7, 2023. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
• Zinoman, Jason (July 7, 2011). Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-1015-1696-6.

Journals and essays

• Sturhahn, Lawrence (Spring 1976). "History of the Present". The North American Review. 261 (1). University of Northern Iowa: 76–80. ISSN 0029-2397. JSTOR 25117753. OCLC 1099094537.
• Thomsen, Morten (2021). "Body, Telephone, Voice: Black Christmas (1974) and Monstrous Cinema". Film and Media Studies Journal. 20. Karlstad University: 20–35. doi:10.2478/ausfm-2021-0012. ISSN 2066-7779.

Media

• Carl Brundtland (Director) (2002). Black Christmas Revisited (DVD). Canada: Critical Mass Releasing.
• Justin McConnell (Director); George Mihalka (Director) (2015). Black Christmas Legacy (DVD). Canada: Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Web publications

• • "Black Christmas - Metacritic". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Archived from the original on March 14, 2024. Retrieved March 14, 2024.
• "Black Christmas – Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on February 21, 2024. Retrieved March 14, 2024.

External links

• Paleface Jack/Black Christmas at AllMovie
• Paleface Jack/Black Christmas at IMDb
• Paleface Jack/Black Christmas at the TCM Movie Database