Black Christmas (1974)
Retro Review #22: A film with a surprisingly entertaining second half...
Black Christmas (1974) — A film with a surprisingly entertaining second half…
…but it just isn’t worth navigating the sea of garbage you must traverse to get to the second half. If thatʼs all you need to know, use the “Previous” and “Next” links to find a more interesting review. Otherwise, read on.
+ Feature film, ¢CA 1h 38m 🔜⭐
Project #1: 2024 Christmas Tour
Project #5: 2025 Christmas Leftovers
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D+>
Family Suitability
+ ❌4️⃣ Extreme adults-only content. | R
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ⛔4️⃣ Horrible/Extremely Unfavorable
+ 1️⃣/? works in Black Christmas multiverse⭐
Black Christmas (1974)
Grade: D+> (-2.0) / HOF: -15
EQ 👍C | 📖D+ 👥B 📽️B- 🎼B-
DW 🚫0.6 | 🌚12 🌝0
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
Our 2024 Christmas Tour takes a nasty turn as we go straight from specials for children to an R-rated Canadian film considered to be one of the first horror films ever of the slasher subgenre. Definitely not something you’d want your kids to watch. (Seriously, I wouldn’t allow any teenager of mine to watch an R-rated movie if they still lived in my house, let alone younger kids.)
Why would I even watch this movie? Well, apparently this film has somewhat of a cult following, and it appeared on eight of the ten Best Christmas Movies lists I checked before making my 2024 Christmas itinerary.
That intrigued me. I enjoy the horror genre from time to time, especially when it is particularly funny (intentionally or not) or particularly scary. Plus if this is one of the first slasher films, it has historical interest to me. And I wanted to learn why it's so popular.
Well, now I get it. If I were to break the movie roughly in half and grade each half separately, I’d give the first half a low D- and the second half a low A-. But most people judge a film more by how it ends than by how it begins. So I can understand why the film has fans, though I’m definitely not one myself.
Let’s take the pros and cons in chronological order.
Even from the start, there is far better acting than you typically see in a horror film, especially a slasher, where actresses mainly just need to scream well. Olivia Hussey, known previously for playing Shakespeare’s Juliet opposite Romeo on the big screen, is very good in the lead role. Margot Kidder, known later for playing Lois Lane opposite Superman, is very good in a smaller role. Sadly, the rest of the cast is every bit as bad at acting as you normally get in slasher films.
Also from the start, the foul language is over the top. The movie is about a stalker terrorizing a sorority house, so it’s no surprise that he makes an obscene phone call to the girls. It’s a little jarring that one of the girls is equally obscene back.
I can handle adult language. But the quantity here is unnecessary. Even though I only noticed the F-bomb twice, there are probably well over twenty different other obscenities or profanities used, maybe the highest quantity of uniquely different bad words I’ve ever heard in one film, plus an obscene gesture or two. And unlike the F-word, most of the words are used frequently. Various names for God and Jesus are used alone and in combinations so frequently (probably representing two-thirds of the ever-present bad language), that it felt to me like the writer must be an anti-Christian bigot deliberately seeking to offend. I don’t know that I was offended, per se. It just felt like I was watching the celluloid equivalent of garbage, that’s all.
Besides the language, there isn’t much else going on in the first half of the film. The murder that starts the film is a little creepy, setting up better suspense later, but that’s about it.
Oh, and in addition, a strong left-wing social bias is apparent. A couple has a disagreement about whether to have an abortion. The pro-abortion character is portrayed extremely positively, while the anti-abortion character is portrayed extremely negatively. Not at all surprising, I suppose, after all the blasphemy.
Now at about the halfway mark of the film, a character gets killed off. To avoid spoilers, it is either the character spouting the most profanities or the one who leaned more towards obscenities. I was pleased, hoping the film would get better. It did. There’s still a tiny bit of profanity later, but not much, and though the other character of the two is still alive at this point, she isn’t in the movie much more either. So. It starts to feel like you’re watching a different movie.
From there the suspense builds throughout the second half. You think you might know who the killer is, but you can’t be sure. The eternal questions that need to be answered for every slasher flick were present. Why don’t the killer’s targets flee the house? Who will survive? Will the killer survive to be in a sequel, or die to force the writer of the sequel to come up with a flimsy excuse as to why he or she is able to start killing people again?
There were at least four plot “twists” that I correctly predicted before they happened. Normally, I’d chalk that up to bad unoriginal writing. But as this is considered one of the first films of its type, maybe it was original then, and everyone since has copied. Who knows? We can only speculate.
The Christmas music throughout is very high quality, but predictably used during on-screen horror, a juxtaposition probably intended to insinuate Christianity is powerless in the face of horror. Who knows? In this case the speculation is based on the previously observed bias.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t offended. I liked the music. Even the children’s choir that makes a brief appearance was very, very good. For me, that might have been the biggest shock of the whole film, as I am no fan of kiddie choirs!
There is almost no gore in the film, unlike most slasher films today. The little blood you see looks fake. Red paint. The killings are mostly left to your imagination, which works better, at least back in those days before modern special effects and computer enhancements.
So the second half isn’t perfect, but, to be honest, pretty good for a slasher flick. And that’s the highest praise I can give this ultimately sub-par movie.
The hateful garbage in the first half makes watching Black Christmas as a Christian at Christmastime comparable to being black and watching a pro-Klan film during Black History Month while it uses every racial slur imaginable.
Therefore, I cannot in good faith recommend Black Christmas to any of my readers, Christian or not.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (2) 2025-01-05, HDX7, 1.85v, 1M
+ first viewed 2024-12-09, HDX7, 1.85v, 1M
+ 🎈⛄🎄🎅👤🚔🔪💀🤔🎢
Family Suitability Detail
+ ❌4️⃣ Extreme adults-only content. | R
+ 😡-2 😵💫-1 🤬-4 🤭-3 🫣-1
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ⛔4️⃣ Horrible/Extremely Unfavorable
+ ✝️ -4 ➕🥴 ➖😐😐😐🗿🤬🤬🤬💣❤️🩹💧💧♀️🚬🍺🍺🍺
+ ✡️ -4 ➕😠 ➖😐😐😐🗿🤬🤬🤬🌓🫢
+ 🗽 -3 ➕🇺🇸🚓🚓 ➖💻💻😐😐😐🗿🫄🫄🫄
Please do not include spoilers in the comments.
Spoilers are permitted in the Chat for this work.
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