Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies, I'm James A Janisse and today
we're looking at Black Christmas, a Canadian film released in 1974, often credited as the first modern slasher film ever made.
We're talking four years prior to Halloween, people!
Black Christmas is a pretty basic horror story with the cast of characters getting picked off one by one by an unknown murderer.
Even more stereotypical; they're all sorority sisters
So you're forgiven if your first impression is that this movie will be cheesy, or cheap.
But director Bob Clark didn't want cheesy or cheap
So he pushed first kelegian characters to be realistic and intelligent and deal with some real shit like accidental pregnancies.
He also shot it real well and included a lot of humor in the film and between his direction and the very talented cast,
this ends up being just a really well-made movie, y'all and it's also got a pretty decent kill count
So let's travel back 43 years and count them up
The movie begins with a sorority house and its castle like construction makes it a perfect location for this kind of film,
there's someone first person stalking around outside,
and I don't think it'll be a surprise for you to find out that it's the killer, meaning right off the bat
we have something Halloween would borrow four years later.
Before you know it, this dude is climbing in your windows, snatchin your presents up,
but he doesn't stay up in the attic for long, instead poppin' on down to the second floor
so he could start exploring this house, and it's inhabitants.
Downstairs are the girls of Pi-Kappa-Sigma doing some Yuletide boozing, some more than others (talking about you, Barb.)
"no, I've had a couple.."
She's played by future Lois Lane, Margot Kidder
She's got some mommy issues going on, so she ends up making holiday skiing plans with her sorority sisters Jess and Phyl.
Jess is played by Olivia Hussey, who, 26 years later would get yelled at by a clown at a gas station.
"Don't ya want it?!?"
Phyl was played by Andrea Martin, just a couple of years before she joined the original cast of SCTV,
which was kind of like canada's SNL.
When the phone rings, Jess answers it and is all like "Hey you guuuys!"
Cause the dude on the other end is someone familiar to them known as the moaner?
[Confused screaming & pig noises]
Yeah, and it gets a lot more unpleasant than that
Most of the girls are horrified, but Barb grabs the phone and tells the guy off
"You fucking creep!"
Still, he uh.. he kinda wins the shit slinging contest with a very serious threat
"I'm going to kill you."
The call upsets another sister, Clare so much that she leaves to go upstairs to pack.
The packing starts off well enough since she finds the houses cute kitty cat, Claude in her room,
but as she's packing away her entire closet at once, she fails to notice there's someone hanging out back there.
Eventually she does hear something coming from that direction, and after she gets dangerously close, the killer jumps out and starts strangling her with a plastic sheet.
He finishes the job off-screen and winds up taking her body back to the attic,
where he sets it in a rocking chair by the attic window.
What are you doing with that, dude? You're gonna scare Santa away!
The sisters downstairs didn't hear anything going on because the party has arrived in the form of house mother Mrs. Mac,
a delightfully foul-mouthed alcoholic played by Marian Waldman.
If anyone could drink barb under the table, it's Mac Mommy,
hiding her backup supplies in books cutouts and even in the toilet tank?!
Goddamn lady, just stick it in your purse!
You are 21, right?
Her lifestyle is getting judged hard by Clare's dad,
who comes to the house after Clare fails to meet up with him at the train station.
He's real upset with the way this place is being run, what with the vulgar posters, the encouragement of childhood onset alcoholism,
and Mrs. Mac's potty mouth as she calls to the cat.
"Goddammit, Claude ya little prick!"
But she don't give a fuck about him, Mac Attacks her own damn woman.
Jess takes the afternoon to meet with her wannabe piano prodigy boyfriend, Peter,
played by Keir Dullea aka Dave Bowman from 2001 a Space Odyssey,
she tells them that she's accidentally pregnant
but that she doesn't want to keep it.
Peter gets pissed because I guess he wants to have and raise the little piano progeny.
As she leaves he begs her to meet with him later to talk about it more,
and she reluctantly agrees after some pressuring.
Later that night, Jess gets another phone call from the moaner, and I've just got to say these calls are effectively creepy!
"Billy!" "Billy?"
"I'm sorry you have the wrong number"
"What your mother and I must know is."
And between the moaner's phone calls and Claire being m.i.a,
there's more than enough reason for Barb, Phyl, and Clare's dad to go to the police.
Too bad when they go there, they get stuck with dim-witted and short-fused sergeant Nash.
He's a real useless S.O.B to them,
but Barb manages to get her digs in with a prank when she gives them the number of the sorority house.
"Fellatio 20880, fellatio, it's a new exchange, 'f-e'"
Jess finds Chris, Clare's boyfriend at a hockey rink because Hell yeah, Canada.
When she tells him Clare's missing
But that the police ain't doing jack shit
He storms into the station and chews out Nash for being useless, all with a wonderful Canadian accent
"You're a friend of Clare Harrison?"
"Yeah, I've been taking her out."
He's got some kind of rapport with the police force apparently
So he's able to get some more help from lieutenant Kenneth Fuller,
played by John Saxon who also plays the police lieutenant as Nancy's dad in a Nightmare on Elm Street.
Dudes a good lieutenant, what can I say?
Also, hey, this movie jumps around a lot, and I didn't know how to seamlessly work this into my script
So let me just point out that at some point,
Mrs. Mac struggles to open the sorority house door and need some help with it.
"You know, we gotta get Mr. Rens to fix this door."
Yeah, the scene is kind of in the middle of nowhere, but it's good information to have for later, so there you go
Don't say I never prepared you for nothing.
Peter has some kind of important piano performance that day,
and he plays his dissonant classical piece like hes a goddamn rock star
I guess the performance was a little too Keith Emerson for the judges since next time we see him,
Peters smashing his piano with a microphone stand.
You're supposed to do that at the end of your performance, Peter not hours later, when your audience has gone home!
Leiutenant Fuller leads a big search party that night for both Clare and the daughter of this woman,
Mrs. Quaife; Janice, who's also missing.
While the sorority sisters are helping with that,
the piano man slinks down against a tree, and he's not in the mood for a melody,
he's waiting for Jess to get home, so he could talk to her more about this shmushmortion situation
inside the house, Mrs. Mac is getting ready to leave for the holidays and when Mac be packing,
She be drink attacking, cause you know she can't go an hour without reboozing.
Before she leaves, though, she hears Claude meowing up a storm
Cause kitties fucking around with Claire's corpse in the attic.
Mac climbs the ladder to go get the cat out of the attic, but her dress gets caught,
leaving her a stationary target for the killer, when he pulls back a hook on her rope aimed right at her head
He lets her discover Clare's body by the window before finally releasing the hook which flies into her face,
hooking her head and pulling her up into the attic where she screams until he ultimately finishes the job killing her just off-screen
You think the killer wouldn't be bothered by her short interruption, but you'd be wrong
[Angrily screaming]
....Chill.
Back at the search party a girl starts screaming, so everyone else runs to see what's going on,
Looks like they found Janice Quaife in a not so lively state.
She'll go on the Kill Count, but because it's a totally off-screen kill and body,
don't worry, I won't waste the Dull Machete honor.
Back at the sorority house, Jess gets another obscene phone call
"I know you're out there, nasty Billy!"
And the camera goes all in to capture Olivia Hussey's terrified face.
We see more scared Jess face when Peter surprises her coming down the stairs,
upset that she skipped out on their meeting to go look for her missing friends, so selfish!
When she calls the police to complain about the nasty phone call, Nash brushes it off,
but Clare's dad overhears and brings the complaint to the attention of Fuller, who reprimands Nash for being a doofus.
When Fuller goes to call the sorority house, we get the payoff to Barb's prank from earlier
"It's a new exchange, 'f-e,' fellacio. One of the girls that was in this afternoon gave it to me."
"She gave it to you?" "Yeah!"
It's a fun scene, and this dude in the background laughing like he's tripping out on shrooms
Just makes the whole thing even better
"I know.... something dirty, ain't it?"
[Hyena laughter]
Ha ha, it is!
Peter tells Jess that he's quitting the conservatory and that they're gonna get married.
But Jess is still hanging ten on that second wave feminism and since he's got a lot of nerve mister
"You can't ask me to drop everything I've been working for and give up all my ambitions because your plans have changed."
When she refuses to change her mind about the abortion she's planning on getting,
he first resorts the name calling,
"You selfish bitch.
You're talking about killing a baby, as if you were having a wart removed."
and then straight up threatens her.
"You're gonna be very sorry."
He leaves her in a very forte huff because he is not feeling alright,
and lieutenant Fuller, who sees him on the way out, starts to develop some suspicions.
Fuller and this other dude, Graham are there to install a tap on the phone.
While graham-cracker gets to work on his nerd shit,
Fuller inspects the house and builds a friendly rapport with Jess and Phyl.
Graham's rigged it so when the phone at the house rings they'll also get a ring at the station,
but as anyone who's ever watched the cop movie knows,
you got to keep the bastard on the line long enough for the coppers to get a trace.
For added reassurance, Fuller shows the girls out the window that they've got another cop outside in a car overlooking the house.
Hope that dude is able to see Peter as he's creeping around a tree and staring at the house some more in his turtleneck.
After a little cry attack, Phyl excuses herself to go up to bed,
So Jess waits up for the next phone call all by her lonesome
She leaves her post when she hears Barb having a panic attack upstairs, which Barb blames on a nightmare
She had of a stranger in her room, but don't be fooled by John Saxon, Barb,
that house ain't on Elm Street, and that wasn't a nightmare,
dude was really there just a minute ago, and now he's so brazen
he's just watching these girls from the hallway outside the room.
Damn, dog, learn to stealth!
Jess leaves Barb to her wine-soaked sleep and opens
the front door to a group of caroling kids on the sorority stoop, singing at her face.
while she's mesmerized by the dulcet falsettos of these prepubescent vocalists, the killer heads back into Barb's room
"Agnes, it's me, Billy."
He grabs a glass unicorn and raises it high above his head in the film's most iconic shot,
right when barb awakens he brings it down on her with several lethal stabs,
the murder is intercut with the children's choir, singing "o come all ye faithful,"
lending the whole thing a very artsy feel as Barb's hand crashes against the other glass figurines by her bed in slow motion.
All in all, a very memorable moment in this movie.
Jess gets yet another creepy call in the house,
"No, Billy, no!" "Shit!"
and is disgusted when the caller quotes parts of her conversation with Peter to her.
"Just like having a wart removed!"
At the station, Fuller and his phone tappers are trying to do some vintage NSA shit,
but the caller hangs up before they can successfully trace the line.
Jess and Fuller are both starting to harbor suspicions that the caller is Peter,
suspicions that get even worse when Jess gets a call that is actually from Peter.
During the call, he's very emotional and is crying about their fight earlier,
but he, too hangs up before they're able to trace the line.
Damn, Jess. You got to be a more engaging conversationalist!
After Jess and Phyl get spooked by a couple of dudes who are part of the search party,
they realized that none of the doors or windows in the house were locked,
so they set out to update their house for that crucial security patch.
But when Phyl goes to check in on Barb, the door to Barb's room closes behind her and Phil gets killed off-screen.
Gotta say though, I am a fan of Barb's little booze bottle wreaths she's got going on there.
That's a real total sorority
Jess gets one final phone call from the killer who goes on and on with a stark crazy monologue
"No! Billy, No!"
[Crazy Laughter]
At least this performance is long enough for Graham to get a trace on the call.
He calls the station and tells Nash that the calls are coming from the address of the sorority house,
and Nash relays that info to Fuller
"For Christ's sakes, Nash you got it wrong. That's where the calls are going into."
"That's where they're coming from, too, sir."
When fuller tries to radio his officer outside, Jennings, he gets no response
and we see that Jennings has had his throat slit in like not the best make-up effect, but you know what it's 1974
I'm not gonna rag on it too much.
Nash, following Fuller's orders, calls the house and tells Jess to get the hell out of there,
but when she mentions going to get Phyl and Barb from the rooms, he tells her why exactly she needs to just GTFO
"The caller is in the house, the calls are coming from the house!"
Now this isn't where that infamous line originates from, it's actually a common trope in an old urban legend
And you could argue it first appears in film in "When a Stranger Calls,"
but it's still a memorable moment here in this movie
Jess screams for her sisters and when she gets no response,
decides to risk it by arming herself with the fire poker and ascending the stairs on her own.
When she kicks down Barb's door, we see the bodies of Barb and Phyl all bloodied up and on display,
then Jess looks up to see the killer's eye peeking out from behind a door crack.
She slams the door against him and runs away,
but the front door doesn't open for because it's jammed.
See? Told you that random scene would come up later.
The killer starts coming down the stairs,
so Jess takes shelter behind the basement door and locks it.
The killer bangs against it for a while before leaving it alone,
and as Jess looks around the basement cautiously,
she sees a silhouette in front of the basement window.
turns out that it's Peter, calling her name and asking if she's alright.
Which is innocuous enough, but damn does he look creepy in this shot.
It doesn't help put Jess at ease when he bust out the window and climbs inside.
Jess is all freaked to hell, so it's probably best not to keep coming at her like that dude.
But he does and so after the cops arrive at the house and bust down the door of the basement,
they come across Jess cradling Peter's dead body,
thinking Peter was in fact the killer, Jess managed to beat him to death with the fire poker,
delivering herself to safety, at least... so she thinks.
Cops would just the bed as lieutenant Fuller says over and over how he just knew that Peter was the killer the entire time.
He leaves to go deal with some reporters, and after Clare's dad falls into shock,
Chris and another cop lifts him up to take him to the hospital, leaving Jess alone and asleep in her room.
Little does anyone know that there's still some quiet singing coming from up in the attic.
"It's me, Billy."
Yep, Billy, the real killer is still hanging out,
having tea parties with the bodies of mrs. Mac and Clare.
The camera dollies out with Clare's body barely visible by the flickering candle light in the attic window, and then the phone starts to ring.
the end.
at least, the end of this movie.
You could argue it was the beginning of the slasher genre, which is pretty cool.
And how many kills did the genre start off with let's find out and get to the numbers?
Oh, one second..
Hello? >Billy!
No, this this is James. There's no Billy here
Billy! Billy!
No, it's James
No, it's all right, man. You just got the wrong number it happens everyone alright? Alright, have a good one. nice guy!
Seven people died in Black Christmas,
which I believe is around the average amount for a slasher.
Of the victims the first five were women and only the last two were men,
giving us the first movie since Scream 4 with more female than male victims.
At a runtime of 98 minutes that comes out to a kill,
on average after 14 minutes flat.
I'll give the golden chainsaw for coolest kill to Barb. I mean, It's impossible not to.
The whole scene is the stuff of horror history, between the kids singing and the slow-motion glass breaking,
very artistic and well done.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will be Phyl.
That door closes real slowly behind her which is lame,
and the body reveal later isn't anything spectacular either
And that's it!
Black Christmas was released in 1974 and directed by Bob Clark,
whose other films include both a Christmas story and Porky's, explain that!
Clark would serve as a producer on the 2006 remake, which is what we'll be looking at next week,
but until then I'm James A. Janisse, this has been the Kill Count.
Hey y'all! Thanks a lot for watching my Kill Count for Black Christmas.
I want to thank some of my patrons,
like Seth Halpin, Huseif Mystery, and Carl Gordon Gustafson
I hope you guys are having a lovely December and a lovely holiday season.
This time of year really makes me reflect,
and I've just got to thank you guys for watching my stuff.
Couple more Kill Counts this year then we'll start the 2018 dead meat schedule, baby.
Got a lot of great stuff coming up. Don't worry. January's gonna be packed