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From director Bob Clark of 1983’s A Christmas Story fame, Black Christmas from 1974 is a Canadian horror movie set during the Christmas holiday that is about a mentally-deranged serial killer who murders a sorority of women one by one. The premise of Black Christmas (1974) takes inspiration from an urban legend that occurred in Montreal Quebec in the specific neighborhood of Westmount during the 1960s known as “The Babysitter And The Man Upstairs”, in which a babysitter was stalked by an unknown individual by receiving a series of disturbing phone calls.
While Black Christmas isn’t exactly the very first film in the Slasher genre as that honor has been attributed to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic adaptation of Psycho in 1960, Black Christmas is still often regarded as at least one of the most inspirational & influential Slashers of all-time ever made due to its success being the driving force of wanting John Carpenter to make 1978’s Halloween, and I myself can say without a doubt that Bob Clark’s Black Christmas truly deserves that recognition for I very much consider it to be one of the greatest within the genre.
Black Christmas works exceptionally well as a horror film all in thanks to its very haunting atmosphere, strong performances from all the actors & actresses, and a well-executed mysterious ambiguous nature, actions, and motivation of the Slasher villain that works favors in making Black Christmas genuinely scary & terrifying to watch.
The 2k digital remaster scan from the original camera negative on the official Region A Blu-Ray release put out by Shout Factory through their Scream Factory line is a pretty solid quality transfer, but I did notice a very times in which it looked grainy in some scenes, but it still didn’t ruin my experience of seeing Black Christmas, and it is still a very good Blu-Ray I can easily recommend buying considering Shout Factory tends to do a great job with the effort they put into their home video releases as they did include a disclaimer in the beginning of how much they did the best they could when remastering the movie in 2k (which is appreciated).
So now that all is said and done, Black Christmas (1974) is in my opinion, a masterpiece of horror & Slasher genre film-making that perfectly proves how much of a talented director Bob Clark was back in the day, and although it is scary and at times unsettling, 1974’s Black Christmas is still a well-made Christmas movie that needs to be seen at least every December as a way of celebrating the holidays.
I give Black Christmas from 1974 5/5 Stars, and Two Thumbs Up!
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