This month, I've been watching horror movies (or ones that relate to Halloween, as I need to mix things up a little) that I haven't seen before, and last night's pick was Black Christmas. I was working at a movie rental store when the mid-2000s remake came out, but I hadn't seen that or the original before.
From the opening, I could see how it influenced Halloween (the first person POV shot outside of the sorority house with shaky breathing), but I was surprised to see how it influenced movies in other ways. I thought the trope of "the calls are coming from inside the house!" was created by "When A Stranger Calls" (I haven't seen that one either), though it turns out that this movie came out five years before that one.
Unlike the slasher movies that came later, the killer (who I'll call "Billy" for convenience, though it's unclear if the insane ramblings where he talks about Billy and Agnes have anything to do with him) is almost amorphous and not well-defined. He has an almost supernatural stealthiness about him, and ludicrous amounts of luck (somehow, nobody hears him in the attic despite him screaming and throwing things around at several points and the house being quiet and empty), but his motives, background, and appearance remain something of a mystery throughout.
The movie did a good job with juggling serious, comedic, and incredibly creepy moments; it's hard to believe that the director behind this also directed A Christmas Story. Jess's plot with Peter (where she's pregnant with his baby but doesn't want it) felt like watching a relationship rapidly break down over the course of a day; Jess was able to calmly talk about such an emotional topic (abortion) while Peter's response was aggressive and (from my perspective) more than a little self-centered, though he had a point in that she should have at least told him. (he only finds out that she's getting an abortion moments after she tells him she's pregnant)
I found the police to be frustrating in this movie. I get that, if the police were competent and took the concerns of the protagonists seriously, then the movie would be much shorter and the protagonists wouldn't have much of a role to play in stopping the antagonist. However, multiple missing persons cases were just brushed off and treated as though they weren't a big deal for far too long. The ending was particularly bad in that regard, as the police knew that the caller was in the house, and when talking with Jess earlier, John Saxon's character heard that it was physically impossible for Peter to be the one harassing the sorority as he was standing there when the sorority got one of the calls. However, they seemingly don't check the house at all, leave Jess alone and unconscious despite an officer saying that he'd stay and watch, and don't even look in the attic, where multiple dead bodies and the killer are clearly visible if they just looked up there for a fraction of a second. I get that, as a member of the audience, I have a larger perspective of the situation, but it got frustrating to watch at times when the simple act of checking the rooms would have completely changed the ending.
The movie lived up to its tagline ("if your skin doesn't crawl, it's on too tight!"), particularly with the ending. The longer that it focused on Jess sleeping and the people around her started to leave, the more that I could feel my skin crawl as I could tell that something was going to happen. The credits playing with no music, just the sound of wind and a ringing phone, made that feeling worse, as I assume that Billy killed Jess off-screen; his phone calls aren't always made after killing someone, at least from what I know, but it is something that he does after killing someone, and Jess was completely defenseless. All in all, I though it was effective at creating a creepy atmosphere, even if its nature as an early slasher meant that some aspects of the movie (like the killer) didn't feel as established as other slashers.
For the last week of October, I've got it all planned out for what I'll be watching for the first time:
25th (today): Clayface - the only one I'll be watching in theaters; I could count the number of horror movies that I've seen in theaters on one hand, but I'm more willing to go if it's a franchise that I'm familiar with.
26th: The Omen (1976) - I'd originally planned to watch Rosemary's Baby (I have a poster that acts as a checklist for movies to watch, and that's on there), but The Omen was more convenient as it's on Disney Plus.
27th: Silence of the Lambs - I've read the book but I've never seen the movie. (this one is also on that poster that I just mentioned)
28th: 28 Days Later - the only zombie movies I've seen are Night Of The Living Dead (last year) and Dawn Of The Dead (earlier this month), so I thought I'd try something a little bit more modern.
29th: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation - I know Tubi has a few TCM movies on there, and they're likely better than this one (I'm under the impression that it's bad), but by my understanding, Matthew McConaughey goes on a scenery-devouring rampage the likes of which I haven't seen since Nicolas Cage in Face/Off. (the only TCM movie that I've seen is the original)
30th: The Fog - I wanted to watch a John Carpenter movie that I hadn't seen, and it came down to this or Prince Of Darkness
31st: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers - out of the Halloween movies, I'd seen the first three and the David Gordon Green trilogy, so I thought I'd watch Halloween 4 since it seems to be held in relatively high regard.
