Black Christmas

Tis the season, and what better way to follow up my review of the new muppet movie with a movie about killing people around christmas? The interesting thing about this movie, isn't really the movie it's self. It's the time it came out and the people involved.

For the most part this is just your standard silent killer flick. Sorority starts getting calls from a prank caller, girls start to go missing. There's the standard POV shots from the killer's POV, lots of steady cam, stalking the victims and what not. All the stuff that Halloween made popular in 1978....except this is from 1974, there's even an interview where Bob Clark, the director of Black Christmas mentions a conversation with John Carpenter and says that for his sequel to Black Christmas he'd have it be the next year the killer would escape from the institution in which he was kept and he would call it Halloween. Here is the interview actually (the second half of it)



I have also heard that John Carpenter wanted to call the movie "The BabySitter Murders" which Bob Clark brings up in this same interview that John Carpenter didn't intend to call the film "Halloween" but if that stories true, you have to admit that's pretty amazing. AND to further kind of cement the idea that there's a lot of influence on Halloween from Black Christmas. Margot Kidder in Black Christmas plays a character named Barb. In Halloween 2 she plays a character called Barbara Collier. Probably just a coincidence, I mean they're definitely not the same character but still.

Secondly the people involved are Bob Clark as I have mentioned before. Looking at his body of work this movie really stands out for multiple reasons. He had other horror movies like "Dead of Night." Crime Drama's like "Breaking Point" and comedies like "Porkies" but I think Bob Clark will always be remembered for one of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time, and that's "A Christmas Story" now if someone would FINALLY green light my cross-over between the two "A Black Christmas Story" where Peter Billingsly stalks a group of sorority sisters over the christmas holiday using a red rider BB gun and shooting their eyes out. AND THEN they could let me RE-RE-make Halloween using the same Peter Billingsly killer and finally get all 3 films in the same continuity. Like I'm sure Bob Clark and John Carpenter originally intended. I'm still unsure as to why Ralphie has such a hatred for babysitters and sorority girls? I imagine after he grew up and attended college he went to a lot of sorority parties and when women found out who he was they always asked him if he'd shot his eye out? Then any chance of him getting laid flies out the window and you're left with a sexually frustrated man who holds quite the grudge. Also his baby-sitter molested him at we'll say 11. This trilogy just writes it's self!