Looks like Halloween (1978) isn’t as original as we thought it was. And, you too, Scream! Okay, and maybe you too to every single horror movie that came out after 1974. Y’all frankly owe it to Black Christmas.
The POV shots, the tonally conflicting holiday setting, the disturbingly anxious noises the killer makes, the bafflingly personal phone calls, the meticulous imagery, the haunting piano-lead score, and one of the coldest endings to a horror picture ever are just UGHHHH. These and many other factors to consider are what make Black Christmas one of those rare slasher movies that legitimately manages to be eerie. Where psychological horror commonly wins in these equations, Bob Clark’s horror classic somehow finds a way to make the simplistic genre—that it arguably helped ignite—genuinely unsettling.
I was originally feeling a solid A- on this project, but screw it, the more this movie eats at my brain, the more I love it, therefore, I’m raising the score. Black Christmas is undoubtedly an absolute horror tour de force.
Also, John Saxon playing a chief police officer in both this and A Nightmare on Elm Street is further confirmation that the two movies take place in the same cinematic universe.
And, the argument that Olivia Hussey has a virtually perfect face is officially up for debate. It’ll be a short one, however, because nobody is going to say that she doesn’t.
Verdict: A
“Black Christmas” is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, and Tubi.
Burning the Celluloid 
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