Black Christmas

A maniac sneaks unseen into the attic of sorority house Phi Kappa Sigma and starts to menace the remaining inhabitants with seriously obscene phone calls.

After the boozy, take-no-shit Barbie (Margot Kidder) gives nearly as good as she gets, the caller who then issues a death threat and abruptly hangs up. Good girl Clare (Lynne Griffin) is worried that Barbie's actions will only encourage the caller and, after an argument, goes up to her room. Unbeknownst to the others, she never gets there, being suffocated in plastic wrap by the killer, who then hides her body in the attic.

As the others go to the police station to file a report about the obscene calls, Clare's father arrives in town to collect his daughter. When she fails to show up and it emerges that no one, including her boyfriend Chris (Art Hindle), has seen her since the previous night, a missing person's report is filed with Lt Fuller (B-movie star John Saxon).

Later a young girl's body is found by a search party investigating another disappearance, though there is still no sign of Claire…

Meanwhile Jess (ex-Juliet Capulet Olivia Hussey) starts to worry that her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea) is acting rather strangely, even for a neurotic would-be concert pianist who has just been told that his girlfriend is pregnant and wants an abortion. Could he be the killer?

Although relegated in most discussions to a mere footnote as an influence on John Carpenter's seminal Halloween, Bob Clark's Black Christmas deserves to be better regarded in its own right.

Like Carpenter, Clark avoids graphic gore, focussing instead on suggestion and using careful mise-en-scene, editing and use of music to build suspense. But, whereas Carpenter's film relied on his minimalist synthesiser theme, Clark's favours an avant-garde soundscape of unsettling noises, an aspect that is arguably closer to the work of Italian gialli thriller composers of the period like Ennio Morricone – even if the Canadian's film also lacks the catchier, poppier entries that would tend to alternate with the suspense themes in the Italian product.

Likewise, Clark's film eschews the dubious – if arguably unintentional – sexual morality of the American slasher. Rather than combining the roles of virgin and final girl into a single character, as Halloween and Friday the 13th do, Black Christmas splits them, with the pure, prudish Clare first to die and Jess – who would conventionally be doubly punished for both being sexually active and wanting an abortion – the one most likely to make it to the end credits. (In this regard it's perhaps significant that Kevin Williamson's Scream neglected to quote Black Christmas – the giallo, if we take it to be such, simply does not have the comforting rules of its later American counterpart.)

None of this is, however, to say that Black Christmas is a better film than Halloween. It suffers by comparison with an excess of dumb humour – a reminder that Clark's greatest commerical success as a film-maker would come with 1981's Porkys – and a deeply unsatisfactory ending.

But with quality performances – Kidder displays a manic-depressive quality that one isn't completely sure was acted, Dullea a sense of danger beneath the surface and Hussey determination without being a hard-hearted bitch – and solid, professional direction from one of the great unsung talents of 70s horror cinema – able to work worthwhile comment into the most unpromising of material such as the Vietnam veteran returns home as a zombie allegory Deathdream and the Jack the Ripper/Sherlock Holmes crossover Murder by Decree – the film emerges as a cut above Friday the 13th and other rather more run of the mill entries.

This Region 2 DVD from Tartan, released under their Terror imprint, presents Black Christmas in a newly remastered anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer, with a choice of the original sound mix and a new 5.1 remix. But for an ever slightly unstable opening credits sequence, the visuals are of good quality, with solid tones and little damage evident. The audio is suitably disquieting even in 2.0, with a good balance between dialogue, music and ambiences.

While somewhat dry the feature commentary with director Bob Clark is informative and refreshingly self-critical, explaining the rationale behind specific shots – "If I hadn't shown at least one hockey scene I would have been asked to leave Canada" he wryly remarks – and highlighting aspects of the film that don't quite come off, such as the fundamental impossibility of Dullea's being the killer.

Though failing to give much in the way of context to the film either with regard to his career or the giallo and slasher film, Clark does give his take on the relationship between Black Christmas and Halloween: Not wanting to do another horror film he had suggested what happened next to Carpenter but also says that, if the Halloween director had indeed taken inspiration from this, he had moulded the resultant film into something entirely his own.

The retrospective documentary starts off badly in a "Hi, I'm Troy McClure…" way with co-stars/hosts Lynn Griffin and Art Hindle revisiting the Toronto house that served as the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority. Fortunately things soon improve, with useful interview contributions from the likes of sound designer Carl Zittrer, who explains how the film's unsettling score was influenced by avant-garde composer John Cage and his use of the prepared piano, and Saxon, explaining his last-minute casting as Lt Fuller after the intended actor, Edmond O'Brien, proved not to be up to the role. All told, a useful piece that nicely supplements and counterpoints Clark's commentary to provide an alternative, broader, perspective on Black Christmas's production.

Next up Black Christmas fan and webmaster of www.itsmebilly.com Monte Cohen takes us on another tour of the house – rather more fun for him than us, one suspects.

The package is rounded off by alternative title sequences for the film as Silent Night Bloody Night and Stranger in the House, both framed in 4:3 and running one minute 20 seconds, trailers and radio and TV spots, a stills gallery and a trailer reel for other Tartan Terror releases (Bundy, Ed Gein, Society, Trauma, Pumpkinhead, and Bride of Re-Animator).

All told, a good presentation of the film and a solid package of extras that augurs well for future Tartan Terror releases though, at the same time, fans with access to a region free player may prefer the Eclectic DVD release with its second commentary track featuring John Saxon and Keir Dullea.