Director: Bob Clark
Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea
My Rating: Loved It!!
I've read in many places online that Black Christmas was the first movie to "start" the slasher genre, but that never made much sense to me. Years before this movie there were movies like My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, etc, so I'm not quite sure why so many people claim this is the first one, but I digress.
Black Christmas is about a sorority house that is terrorized by a psycho killer. The biggest thing that sets Black Christmas apart from other movies before it is the complete lack of motive by the killer. If horror has proven anything, it's that fear of the unknown is just as scary as the known. Seems that this fellow is killing simply for the heck of it. It should be noted that the script is unusually smart for a slasher movie. All of these people have normal sense, from the sorority sisters to the detectives, and the events and proceedings of each person are weaved in such a brilliant manner that the killer is able to stealthily take out his victims and not raise any red flags right away.
Right off the bat Black Christmas goes into first person view from the killers perspective, a technique more famously used in John Carpenter's Halloween several years later. I enjoyed the creativity of the killing scenes as well. There is one beautiful (I know I'm sick, calling a killing scene beautiful) scene in which a sorority sister is killed by being stabbed with a glass unicorn statue.
Black Christmas is definitely a seminal film in the slasher genre; it's a shame it's not revered up with the likes of Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It may not be the most nail-biting, scary, or exciting slasher/horror, but it's smart, realistic, and subtly psychotic.