Christmas in August: Black Christmas (1974) v. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Two Christmas themed horror films, oddly enough both featuring killers named "Billy." One is an under appreciated genre definer and the other is just a steaming piling of somewhat hilarious cheese.

Black Christmas (1974)
A sorority house set horror film directed by Bob "Porky's" Clark? The first thing that probably comes to mind is boobs and dick and fart jokes. What you get instead is an incredibly mature, completely eerie and unsettling, highly influential genre film. Released a whole 4 years before John Carpenter and "Halloween" changed the horror genre forever, Clark firmly planted roots with "Black Christmas."

Set near Christmas when school is getting out for winter break, the girls of the house are celebrating the holidays and the pending break from school. Amongst their partying they get a phone call from someone they refer to as "The Moaner," an apparently frequent prank caller to the house. "The Moaner's" prank calls are sexually harassing in nature and are all around incredibly obnoxious. While some of the girls laugh it off, others feel fairly uncomfortable about it all. The next morning when one of the girls fathers shows up to pick her up, and she is no where in site, everyone starts to panic. Little do they know she's in the attic, asphyxiated with a plastic bag, and being lulled away in a rocking chair by "The Moaner" aka "Billy." Red haring situations, mystery and more deaths ensue.

The film begins with a P.O.V. shot of "Billy" waltzing up to a sorority house and climbing a trellis into the attic. Its a shot that later would become synonymous with slasher films, and that really became a staple when we first glanced through the eyes of a young Micheal Meyers when he kills his sister at the beginning of "Halloween." Where Clark and Carpenter's films differ though is that in Clark's, the killer is never seen. You see through his eyes, you see his deeds, you hear his heavy breathing, but you never actually see who he is. The effect is incredibly uncomfortable and unnerving. Where as Michael Meyers, yes is eerie, I find him less creepy when I see him standing there in his William Shatner mask.

A relatively bloodless affair, "Black Christmas" relies mostly on atmosphere and sound to really grab hold of your senses. The continuous shots of of Clare in the rocking chair, with a crazed rambling Billy are truly the worst. Relying only on diagetic sound, Clark really creates a haunted house feeling amongst the creaking halls and crannies of the sorority house. The phone calls that girls receive are a main irking point of the movie as well. They turn into a series of animalistc, satanic sounding babble, that leaves you baffled and fearing the unknown of what is on the other side of the phone line. By the end of it you really can't tell if "Billy" is some demonic force, or an incredibly fucked up rejected frat boy.

"Black Christmas" has easily weaseled its way into my horror favorites. It's another Canadian dish, which after this and "My Bloody Valentine" makes me more interested in their horror films at the time.



Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Billy's sees his family brutally murdered by a man dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve as a child. Billy ends up in a orphanage, and becomes haunted and deranged every year around Christmas. As a young man Billy gets a job at a dept. store for the holidays...the stores Santa gets sick...guess who gets to sit in as the replacement? Billy snaps.

Heralded as "One of the most controversial films of the 1980's" "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is nothing but a bunch of mediocre b-movie hub-bub. Relying mostly on blood and guts for shock, the deranged, horribly acted Billy takes away from any sort of scares this movie would have. Sort of a fun flick, but nothing special. It did spawn a sequel though, which is responsible for this incredible meme.