Black Christmas is a Canadian slasher film made in 1974. The genre classifier slasher should be used pretty loosely here, since the slasher wasn't really specifically typified as a genre just yet. However, it set a ton of the tropes for the genre in stone with its cast of young sorority girls as the victims. It also didn't reveal the identity of the killer and was a major influence on what a lot of people assume is the first slasher by giving more than a few ideas to John Carpenter for Halloween.
Yet another classic slasher trope is that the movie is holiday-themed, just like Halloween, Friday The Thirteenth, and New Years Evil. So here are the reasons why we consider it a cult classic, and some why it's overrated.
10 Classic: The Invention Of Tons Of Tropes
While Black Christmas certainly isn't the only film to have been hailed as the first slasher, it did its job at not just creating tons of tropes but also popularizing some that had been used before but hadn't seen mainstream recognition.
The plot device of having the killer make a call from inside the house isn't necessarily all that original when we're talking about stories, but the only other time it had really appeared in film, other than in Black Christmas, is with a film from two years earlier called Silent Night, Bloody Night. This is a really low-budget film that would sometimes air late on television, featuring some of Andy Warhol's friends.
9 Overrated: The Ted Bundy Controversy
Shortly before the release of Black Christmas and its first TV airing, Ted Bundy who was suspected of a string of murders in Washington and ran off to Florida, had just committed the multiple murder of at least 2 women at Florida State University.
Since the subject matter of the film could have very easily set off some memories of the recent trauma, some of the studio execs in the surrounding states decided to go ahead and air another film.
8 Classic: The Babysitter And The Man Upstairs
Given homage to in many slashers and parodied in others, namely Wes Craven's Scream, the idea of the killer calling you from inside your own house to leave menacing calls is a terrifying one; even if since we've done away with landlines for the most part, it's slightly less terrifying.
This trope is based on an old urban-legend where a babysitter is watching kids and receives a call asking if she's checked on them. How would he know who was in the house unless he too was there? Oh no!
7 Overrated: Siskel's Concern
Gene Siskel, famously of Siskel and Ebert, was frequently upset at horror movies, specifically horror movies that seemed fairly nihilistic. If you were to ask him, he'd surely tell you that he doesn't hate horror movies, he just hates bad ones.
It seems though that with this film he had a legitimate concern, which is that women who are talented actresses only take these kinds of hyper-sexualized roles because men in Hollywood make the roles for them. That does indeed ring true, but what does an older gentleman know about what women are comfortable doing?
6 Classic: The Garbage Bag Kill
There's not very much blood or gore in the film, as was customary for movies coming out in the early '70s, but a lot of the kill scenes are very, very effective at making the viewer feel uncomfortable.
Not only is the film shocking, but there is enough tension and suspense to make the surprisingly low kill-count worth it. What most fans cite as their favorite kill though, is when a woman is killed by strangulation with a plastic laundry bag over her face, only to have her corpse put on display in a rocking chair for the survivors to see later.
5 Overrated: Did They Actually Just Not Know How To End It?
The police get there just a little too late, as Jess is the only one left alive in the house. They see her next to the remains of a corpse and decide to lay her in bed and talk about the killings, even though they haven't yet discovered all of the bodies. They leave her there, and one of the policemen decides he's just gonna go chill outside, which somehow doesn't sound like the best idea considering he's at a murder site and hasn't confirmed that the killer has been found or dispatched yet.
The killer makes his way down from the attic and we hear another call from inside the house as the credits start to roll. This could potentially have all of the makings of a really good ending, but we'll never know if it's intentional or if they just didn't know what they were doing.
4 Classic: Its Humor
Horror isn't often lauded for being funny, even when there are tons of really really good horror-comedies out there. Black Christmas actually has a few really well-hidden moments of comic relief though.
There's the title itself, which is a play on the classic Christmas song "White Christmas". Barb is also continuously drunk, which really puts her at a disadvantage given the situation the girls find themselves in. She tells one of the cops that his attitude really sucks, she's slurring constantly, and we see that she's legitimately remorseful for not always treating her sorority sisters very well.
3 Overrated: Gave Birth To 2 Bad Remakes
The 2006 remake of the film is notoriously mean-spirited, which may sound like a compliment when talking about a horror film, but it isn't. While horror movies aren't supposed to be happy, the writers of that film feel legitimately malevolent in the punishments that they dish out to the characters.
The second remake that just came out recently is completely unrelated to the original film, has a feminist message that isn't bad or anything like that, it's just that the film really has no actual substance. There are great feminist horror films (Under The Skin, etc) but this isn't one.
2 Classic: The POV Shots
The last thing that absolutely needs to be mentioned are the POV shots. These are one of the tropes that the film grabbed probably from somewhere else, but they execute them expertly.
These most likely popped up for the first time in the British horror classic Peep Show and were further developed in Halloween and Friday the 13th.
1 Overrated: Stole Some Of Its Tropes
The other main complaint some people have about this movie is that while it did indeed invent a few tropes of its own, it also stole quite a few from Peep Show, Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A Bay Of Blood.
Many fans of the film would argue that it wasn't just ripping these films off, but simply paid homage to them.
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