Movie Review #2 Black Christmas

Movie Review #2: Black Christmas

Black Christmas was released in 1974, and I`m guessing it was quite unusual and gruesome for that time. It was directed by Bob Clark, who also made A Christmas Story, which is good, but he also made Baby Geniuses, which is not good. The film stars Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon, along with other actors but they are the main three. The film is about a college sorority house around Christmas time. A man climbs up their house and breaks into their attic. He kills a woman by putting plastic on her face which suffocates her; the image of her sitting in a rocking chair with the plastic on her mouth has become quite famous and is the cover for the film, for most versions. The girl’s father shows up looking for her, a search party is out looking for her and for a little girl who was murdered in the park. The killer keeps phoning the house, screaming in different voices, and he starts killing people one by one. It eventually leads John Saxon who is a detective, trying to track the killer every time he calls. Eventually he finds out the calls have not only been going to the house, they`ve been coming from the house. Olivia Hussey finds out she is the only girl alive now and hides in basement. When the killer can`t come in to the basement, he leaves the house tries to break into a window in the basement. This is when you see that the man outside the window is Olivia Hussey`s boyfriend Peter. He breaks in and finds her. Just as the police arrive they hear screams from the house they find Olivia Hussey in the basement and her boyfriend who is dead. They take out all the bodies except the two in attic, and leave her to sleep. While she is asleep the camera goes to the attic and the door to the attic opens and we hear the killer talking to himself.
I liked a lot about this film, but there were some stuff I didn`t like. To me, the scariest thing was the killer himself, not what he did. He would call the girls in the house and scream, yell, moan, and cry at them. He would hold conversations and arguments with himself in different voices. This was scary. The phone call that sticks with me is near the beginning, he calls and is yelling very sexual things to them and Margot Kidder insults him a few times, he stops screaming right away and calmly replies, “I`m going to kill you” and hangs up. That was scary as hell. And also, sometimes we see him in the attic and he is freaking out. He is screaming and pushing things over. Another thing I liked is that every time we see the killer, it’s from his eyes. We never actually see him, other little glimpses, like we see his eye. But it’s all first person point of view with him. One thing I didn`t like is how at the end when they think her boyfriend was the killer, yet they proved he wasn`t earlier on in the film. And also, they don`t check the whole house at the end, the police don`t check the attic… Why! It’s not like its hidden, there is a huge ladder in the middle of the hall leading to it, and they don`t check it! The killer is hiding there and there are two missing people`s dead bodies in there! Now, when they find Olivia Hussey`s boyfriend and think he is the killer, that was pretty believable, because he is insane. Olivia was pregnant and wanted an abortion he would not let her have one and he was acting crazy. We also see him in a recital for piano, he is playing piano and it cuts back Olivia`s character in the house. It then cuts back to the recital hall and Peter is destroying the piano with a lamp. He is crazy.
So yeah, it was a really good film, pretty scary, and a great Christmas movie!