Taglines: Christmas is coming early this year. And it’s murder.
Black Christmas movie storyline. On the evening that the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority (which is headed by their house mother, the booze swilling Mrs. Mac) is holding their Christmas party, the house receives the latest in a string of obscene phone calls from who the girls call “the moaner”, but who identifies himself as “Billy”. Some like Jess Bradford don’t like the calls, others like brash Barb Coard are somewhat amused by the calls, others like Phyl Carlson don’t think much of them, and straight laced Clare Harrison is offended by them.
The calls are just the latest trouble for Jess, who is pregnant and who doesn’t want to tell her sensitive but volatile boyfriend, music student Peter Smythe. For this latest call, which is a bit more elaborate than those previous, Barb decides to make a snide comment in return, which provokes a threat by Billy. The next morning, one of the girls goes missing.
The desk sergeant at the police station doesn’t think much about this as a missing person case, especially as the police are already dealing with another missing person case (a thirteen year old girl named Janice Quaife). The police don’t act until more information is brought to the attention of Lieutenant Kenneth Fuller by Clare’s boyfriend, Chris Hayden.
As Lt. Fuller and his men investigate, which includes placing a wire tap on the sorority house phones, more and more incidents happen to those living at the sorority house. In addition, the obscene calls continue and increasingly have a personal connotation to one of the girls, which includes information that could only be known by those involved. Or is there another reason why the caller knows so much about the specific girl in question?
Black Christmas (Canadian French: Noël Tragique. Originally titled Silent Night, Evil Night in the United States) is a 1974 Canadian slasher film produced and directed by Bob Clark, and written by A. Roy Moore. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin, Marian Waldman, Lynne Griffin and John Saxon. The story follows a group of sorority sisters who receive threatening phone calls and are eventually stalked and murdered by a deranged killer during the Christmas season. It is the first film in the Black Christmas series.
Inspired by the urban legend “The babysitter and the man upstairs” and a series of murders that took place in the Westmount neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, Moore wrote the screenplay under the title Stop Me. The filmmakers made numerous alterations to the script, primarily the shifting to a university setting with young adult characters. It was shot in Toronto in 1974 on an estimated budget of $620,000, and was distributed by Warner Bros. in North America.
Upon its release, Black Christmas received mixed reviews, but it has since received critical re-appraisal, with film historians noting it for being one of the earliest slasher films It is also praised for concluding without revealing the identity of its villain, as well as serving as an influence on John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Aside from its earning a cult following[4] since its release, a novelization written by Lee Hays was published in 1976.
Black Christmas (1974)
Directed by: Bob Clark
Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin, James Edmond, Lynne Griffin, Michael Rapport, Leslie Carlson, Martha Gibson, John Rutter
Screenplay by: A. Roy Moore
Cinematography by: Reginald H. Morris
Film Editing by: Stan Cole
Art Direction by: Karen Bromley
Makeup Department: David R. Beecroft, Bill Morgan, Katherine Southern
Music by: Carl Zittrer
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: October 11, 1974
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