'Black Christmas' Is So Much More Than a Holiday Christmas Horror Movie

If there's anything better than Christmas itself, it's Christmas movies. Who doesn't enjoy cuddling under a warm blanket and watching Home Alone, or even taking in the action of John McClane (Bruce Willis) killing bad guys in Die Hard? Everyone has their favorite Christmas movie, but perhaps the most popular of all is Bob Clark's A Christmas Story. This wasn't Clark's only Christmas movie though, and arguably not his most influential. Before Bob Clark made this holiday staple, he was a horror director, and his scariest offering was 1974's Black Christmas. Released 50 years ago, it's one of the most important horror movies ever made. The slasher craze, which is mostly credited to the success of Halloween, wouldn't exist without it.

Bob Clark's 'Black Christmas' Sequel Idea Was the Story For 'Halloween'

Ask a horror fan what the first slasher film is and most will answer with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in 1960, or the lesser-known Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, which came out the same year. The first slasher ever made dates back to 1932 with Thirteen Women, but the one that started the craze that would dominate the 1980s is John Carpenter's Halloween from 1978. Halloween gave us so many of the tropes we know today, from the idea that anyone who has sex or does drugs will die, to the unstoppable killer who keeps coming back, and the booksmart virginal final girl who goes up against him.

Halloween begat Friday the 13th, but John Carpenter's movie wasn't exactly so original. Four years earlier, Black Christmas did much of it first. It gave us a silent killer hiding in the dark, extended POV shots from his gaze, and had him striking out against young women as a way of reenacting a childhood trauma. And it all happened during a holiday. Bob Clark has said that he doesn't think John Carpenter ripped him off, but he did once recall, during a 2005 interview with Icons of Fright, a conversation he had with his friend where the future Halloween director asked what Clark would do if he made a sequel to Black Christmas. He told him, "I said it would be the next year and the guy would actually been caught, escape from a mental institution, go back to the house and they would start all over again. And I would call it Halloween.” Sound familiar?

'Black Christmas' Beat 'When a Stranger Calls' to the Terrifying Phone Twist

The main aspect that sets Black Christmas apart from Halloween is the presentation of their killers. Michael Myers is a shy guy who never speaks, but Black Christmas' Billy never shuts up. Throughout the film, he prank calls a sorority house several times, rambling almost incoherently with the scariest voices you'll ever hear. Scream might have become famous for having Ghostface call his victims with a chilling voice provided by Roger Jackson, but as horrifying as he was and still is, he can't match what Billy is capable of.

What makes Black Christmas even more scary is that Billy is upstairs in the same house as his victims when he makes these calls. This leads to a spine-chilling ending when the police call the last girl standing to tell her that the calls are coming from inside the house. We knew the entire time he was there, but that doesn't make the moment any less creepy. Many casual horror fans know the "the calls are coming from inside the house" routine from the opening scene of When a Stranger Calls. Both films take this scene from a popular urban legend, "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs." While the urban legend is more synonymous with When a Stranger Calls, Black Christmas used it to terrifying effect first.

Jess Bradford Is One of the First and Best Final Girls

A slasher can't really be a slasher without the trope of the final girl that harbinger of good who has to go up against evil. The most famous of final girls is Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, who played the character in seven Halloween movies over 44 years. She's not the first one though. Although there are characters you could label as final girls before these examples, the most popular early examples are Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) in Black Christmas, both of which came out in the same year.

These two final girls couldn't be more different. Sally spends most of her movie screaming her lungs out and running from Leatherface and company, while Jess is more calm and collected. She is also far from the trope created by Laurie Strode. Both are smart young women, but Jess isn't shy and innocent. She not only has a boyfriend, but she's pregnant and wants an abortion. Jess is a fully-formed character living her life, only to have it interrupted by a raving lunatic.

Movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Scream always get way more attention than Black Christmas. And it's understandable. Bob Clark's movie was a smaller Canadian release which, outside of two reboots, never became a franchise. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Ghostface are pop culture icons, while Billy is not a household name. Just like Black Christmas, he lurks in the shadows, out of sight to those not paying attention, but those game-changing names and the wave of slasher copycats around them wouldn't exist without what Bob Clark did first and best.

Black Christmas is available to watch for free on Tubi in the U.S.

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