It's 12 days before Christmas and I will be enjoying an early Xmas dinner in a week and a half. Whether it's Wintery outside or not, it's pretty difficult to avoid the Christmas vibe/ hype, so I decided to roll along with it and treat you to some Christmas movie advice. Instead of presenting you with the typical suggestions - films that most people have already seen - I will do the opposite.
Today, I will start out with a 1970s film called Black Christmas. A pretty nice contrast with what most people are hoping for, a white Christmas.
From the title alone, this might sound as a blaxploitation movie. A subgenre that was quite popular in the 1970s. That isn't the case at all though. We're talking about a slasher film* here.
Black Christmas is brought to you by the director of Porky's and Porky's II. Some of you might have seen these predecessors of the American Pie series. I can tell you that I enjoyed them a lot as a teenage boy. It was the sexiest stuff that I could watch back then (in the days before Internet). The parallels between these films are the high school humor, most of it related to sex. But, where American Pie and Porky's are comedies, Black Christmas is a horror movie that is too gruesome to be called a horror comedy. It contains some humor though.
I had seen the film almost a decade ago and decided to give it another watch recently, to refresh my memory. Mainly because I had seen thousands of films since then and I only remembered it to be a kind of POV slasher - like Halloween (1978) - that took place in and around a sorority house.
Now I've given it another watch and I have to say that I still like it. The impact that it had on me the previous time was a little stronger though. I believe that - when I watched it before - the image quality was better. Which is kind of strange as it's years later now. The thing is, this time I had to make do with 360p, a resolution that might look okay on a smartphone but I can tell you that it's a little tough to watch on a laptop ( as I did).
It's pretty cool though that the full film can be watched on YouTube and - if you're able to ignore the image quality and give in to the movie - it's actually not too bad. I will add the link to the full movie underneath this post.
Anyhow, I know that for many people image quality (the sharper, the better) and audio quality ( the louder the better, just kidding ) are holy but I myself learned not to be distracted too much by these kind of things unless it's just unbearable. A film is so much more than that and if we nitpick about everything life doesn't get any better.
Black Christmas might feel a little slow at times - it was the 70s after all and it is no action movie - but I wouldn't call it boring. Just don't expect fast paced editing and quick scares. It's a slow paced 70s horror movie and it tries to build suspense. You won't see a lot of gore either. If that's the kind of horror you're into, this won't be your thing. Don't expect any nudity either. There's way more in Porky's.
With 97 minutes in length, Black Christmas does not fill your whole evening. So if you're indeed planning to watch it around Christmas, there's plenty of time for more movies.
Quick recap:
If you're into 70s movies - and believe me, I am! - if you like horror, are a fan of slasher films, you don't mind swear words and sex jokes and you love suspense films and... more importantly, if you feel like watching a totally different Christmas movie for a change, you might want to give Black Christmas a chance.
Outro
I discovered that Bob Clark, the director of Black Christmas, also directed the 1983 comedy A Christmas Story. Funny enough, I had thought about that film, as a possible entry in my 'Not Your Average Christmas Movie' series. I was totally unaware that it was a product of the same guy.
Thanks for reading Part 1 of my Not Your Average Christmas Movie series. As always - feel free to comment on this post. It might be the start of an atypical Christmas movie chat with me.
Black Christmas - Official Trailer:
Full Movie (360p):
*For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the slasher film, a subgenre of the horror genre, Black Christmas was made several years before John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). The last two are often seen as the first slasher movies and were followed by classic horror series like Nightmare on Elm Street (from 1984 onwards) and the more modern Scream movies (1996 - now). Nevertheless, even Black Christmas wasn't the first slasher movie, not even close but that's a whole different story.
Image Source:
Black Christmas, 1974 - Poster
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