Steve’s Stuff

I just watched the original Black Christmas and I’m not quite sure what to think. It predates John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) by four years and now that there is a 2006 remake, people are starting to ask questions - questions that don’t need asking. Did Black Christmas inspire Halloween? Is Black Christmas the film that is actually responsible for the glut of slasher pics in the 80s?

Since the movie industry sees fit to remake every previously released movie in the history of film (did we really need a remake of Rollerball???), Black Christmas is getting some attention from new viewers. It’s pretty unlikely that Carpenter based his film on this. His style has a lot more to do with Hitchcock and suspense filmmaking in general. If Carpenter based Halloween on Black Christmas, it would look something like this . . .

0:00 Titles
0:05 Michael Meyers comes to Haddonfield
0:10 Mindless chatter from annoying characters
0:12 Michael kills someone
0:15 The characters hang out
0:35 Michael kills someone else
0:36 The characters don’t seem to notice and go on with their boring lives
0:45 Michael kills someone else
0:46 More boring insight into the lives of stereotypical sorority girls
1:00 Michael stalks someone creating suspense
1:01 Michael kills someone ending the suspense
1:02 Characters begin to wonder if something is up
1:20 One more suspense/murder
1:30 The End.

Instead of that stratagy, Carpenter decides to go for the steady suspense all the way through, constantly escalating the level of terror in the audience and in the film. They’re two different approaches. One gives you five or six suspenseful moments and the other gives you one loooooong suspenseful movie.

So, it’s unlikely that Carpenter copied the film. What about all the other movies? If Black Christmas was so influential, why did studios wait until after Halloween to start churning out copy-cat films? Who even heard of Black Christmas until a few months ago?

With that said, it has some powerful moments. It’s remarkable in its excessive use of profanity. Tarantino has a lot of profanity in his films, but it doesn’t seem out of place. The hitmen in Pulp Fiction would most definitely use that type of language as would a deadly female assassin in Kill Bill. An old lady who runs a sorority house probably wouldn’t and when every other word is profane, it kind of sticks out. People go out of their way to curse in this film - they bend over backwards to curse. They let loose a string of obscenities over trivial things like looking for the pet cat! It’s hilarious and adds a lot of character to the film. It was, after, the 70s.

Besides that, one of the kills is interesting, the soundtrack is creepy, there’s a pianist that performs an atonal piece that sounds kind of like the harmonies of Bela Bartok and the violence of gesture of Henry Cowell with the performance practice of Cecil Taylor. Oh yeah - and there are a LOT of creepy phone calls. Very effective sound design.

However, it’s no Halloween and it doesn’t have the camp value of Friday the 13th. It’s a fun curiosity item, but it’s no trendsetter.