Black Christmas – 25th
Anniversary Edition
PLEASE NOTE: This is a DVD that can only be
operated on machines capable of playing back Region Free/0/Zero DVDs in the
NTSC format, and can be ordered from our friends at HKFlix.com through their
website:
www.HKFlix.com
They have this and hundreds of other great, usually very
hard to get titles that are often long overdo to his the U.S. DVD market,
including two editions of this title.
Be sure to visit their site for more details on that as well.
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extra: C Film: B+
The final of three key Horror genre films Canadian
director Bob Clark made in the 1970s is his influential 1974 thriller Black
Christmas. At least as much as
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the original Exorcist and Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, it is the film most responsible for John Carpenter’s Halloween
(oh, those holiday titles), the film is not hurt by endlessly unnecessary
sequels and holds up extraordinarily well.
Our story focuses on a sorority house on Christmas Eve,
with the girls and their closet alcoholic mentor Mrs. MacHenry (Marian Waldman)
celebrating. Lately, they have been
getting obscene phone calls from ‘some creepy guy’ who will not leave them
alone. The girls (including Olivia
Hussey, Margot Kidder and Andrea Martin among the recognizable faces) are
trying not to let it faze them, but Jessica (Hussey) has an annoying boyfriend
(Keir Dullea) who she seems to be ready to dump. Unbeknownst to any of them, someone has entered the house and is
hiding in the attic, ready to kill. Can
even an aggressive police lieutenant (John Saxon) save anyone when the first
dead body surfaces?
This is the template for so much of the slice & dice
films, yet is not as graphic, though usually scarier. The issue of technology is interesting because even when some of
it is old, it is also forgotten, so a whole new kind of suspense is here even
Clark and writer Roy Moore could not have expected. There are a few story flaws here and there, but the film is so
well made, you keep watching. The women
characters are not the usual type in the genre and the men are a series of
beiger oddballs than you would expect, even in authority, though the film is
too naturalistic and realistic. The
energy level is pitch perfect and it pretty much is an unacknowledged classic.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image is supposed to be the entire
frame the film was shot in, according to a note on the DVD wrapper, but a later
Critical Mass Special Edition made a 1.85 X 1 letterboxed image available, with
a Dolby Pro Logic 2.0 Stereo remix. The
only sound available here, also on the new set, is Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. Though we are curious about the difference
between the two editions, I was very surprised how good and film-like this
version tended to look. The sound was
also very nice and clear, more so than we usually get for Dolby in this
form. If you do not want to spend the
extras money on the newer edition, this will satisfy your needs more than you
would expect.
Cinematographer Reg(inald H.) Morris does an exceptional
job of shooting this film, with an effectiveness that will bring to mind
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and it is fair to say this is a
soft matte film like that in that it is meant to be seen from 1.33 X 1 to 1.85
X 1 aspect ratios. That would include
1.66 X 1 and 1.75 X 1 in England, and definitely (by default) for widescreen
1.78 X 1 televisions. The newer edition
is not anamorphic, so you might want to consider this edition if you have an
HDTV, as when you zoom in on the image, you will get more picture image fitting
the set perfectly. Stan Cole’s editing
is another plus. For another good film
shot by Morris, see my review for Clark’s Murder By Decree elsewhere on
this site. Morris continued to lens
many of Clark’s films henceforth, and for good reason.
The score by Carl Zittrer is also really good, subtle,
effective and powerful in building suspense like the best suspense scores. However, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells
from William Friedkin’s Exorcist is also slipped in, as well as some
holiday standards. I would love to see
an uncompressed 6.1 remix for this film when an HD version surfaces. Extras on this edition are few, but include
text filmographies of the cast, a trailer with narration by an uncredited James
Mason, and two short interview clips with John Saxon. The Special Edition offers much more, but this 25th
Anniversary Black Christmas is as valuable and for serious Horror and
film fans, it is a must have.
- Nicholas Sheffo
