Black Christmas: See the Original Before the Remake

I always feel the same way around Christmas. My heart swells with love, I cherish in telling my relatives how much I appreciate them, and I develop an urge to see sorority girls being murdered while in a state of undress. 'Tis the season. You may think that Black Christmas is just another ditzy slasher, but you would be gravely mistaken. Some claim that the film is responsible for the spate of mindless "dead teenager" flicks that would soon follow. In a sense, it is responsible for those films, but it should never be grouped with them. Black Christmas is a classy, suspenseful horror yarn that goes about its business with panache and systematic propriety.

A remake of Black Christmas will hit theaters on the 25^th. My lungs are collapsing in anticipation. How director Bob Clark could approve of such an inadvertence is anyone's guess. Speaking of Clark, what happened to the guy? How does one go from helming poised horror classics to helming Baby Geniuses and Baby Geniuses 2? His long-hidden talents are on full display in Black Christmas. The camera angles are crafty, the imagery is handsomely silken, and the slow pace never flatlines. I'm sure that many goregoers find the film's midsection to be trying, but I have an enrooted taste for aged cinema. Not to sound snobby, but...well, I am snobby. Nevermind.

Oh, the plot? A deranged nutbag hides in the attic of a sorority house and makes obscene (really obscene) phone calls to the pretties downstairs. Of course, he proceeds to kill a few of them. The fact that the psychopath is salted away in the attic is supposed to be a shock of some sort, but we see the unhinged fellow creep into the house in the opening frames. That's one of the very few mottlings that smudge the surface of this holiday horrorshow. It tries to be a whodunit, but again, we already know who the culprit is. It's a random nobody. Perhaps the impending revamp has a divergent plot device up its sleeve.