Black Christmas is a Canadian slasher film from director Bob Clark, and The Canadian Film Development Co. The film was written by A. Roy Moore. And it stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon. It’s based on a popular urban legend and real-life murders, this holiday horror was released in Canada on October 11th, 1974. Later it was released in the U.S. on December 20th of that same year. It’s U.S. release was titled as Silent Night, Evil Night. I am going to be watching the Shudder Network version on Joe Bob’s Red Christmas.

IMDB Synopsis

It’s time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don’t express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem?

Written by Ed Sutton

Analysis

Bob Clark delivers a wonderful horror movie for the holidays. It has a charm and theme that pairs perfectly for the season. A true christmas cult classic with perfectly carved out characters for the killer to hack and slash. Or suffocate. I love seeing John Saxton in these old horror flicks. Not to mention Margot Kidder who “played” a good drunk. It’s a shame that Gilda Radner

It’s interesting to note that this film had gone through many script changes. Originally starting off life as The Babysitter Murders. A title that had originally been attached to John Carpenter’s Halloween early on. But that’s not all. Allegedly John Carpenter had gotten the idea for Halloween following a discussion with Bob Clark and a possible Black Christmas sequel.

Overall

Black Christmas is widely considered the first modern slasher film. But I think there are other movies that can fight for that title. Maybe it’s just seeing John Saxton, but I think Black Christmas is a horror movie with a really warm Christmas feeling. It’s a film that I can highly recommend to horror movie fans during this winter season. Warm up next to a flaming corpse and check out this flick.