Black Christmas Was Full of Stocking Stuffers (Or Perhaps Stalking Stuffers)

 

Last night, I attended a 50th anniversary screening of Black Christmas at the Brattle Theatre.

I am generally not a fan of the horror genre, but attended primarily because of the cast and the fact it was a Canadian film shot on location in Toronto. It was also a case of being one of those movies I watched to get out of the apartment for a couple of hours on a Saturday night.

Black Christmas starred Olivia Hussey (pictured) and Keir Dullea who had both attained stardom six years earlier in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, respectively. Joining Hussey and Dullea was John Saxon fresh off his success in the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. Rounding out the cast were a pre-Superman Margot Kidder and a pre-SCTV Andrea Martin. She would also appear in the 2006 remake. 

There were also a couple of lesser-known Canadian actors who certain audiences might recognize from certain films - Doug McGrath and Art Hindle. McGrath starred in the Canadian film classic Goin' Down the Road and would later appear in several films with Clint Eastwood including The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider. Hindle was of the main characters in the drama series E.N.G. which aired on CTV from 1989 to 1994. Both McGrath and Hindle also appeared together in the 1981 sex comedy Porky's. That film was directed by Bob Clark as was Black Christmas.

Bob Clark also directed A Christmas Story starring Peter Billingsley. After I bought my ticket, several Brattle employees were discussing the fact that Clark had directed both Black Christmas and A Christmas Story and thought there should be mashup of the two movies. Considering Darren McGavin is in A Christmas Story, such a mashup could have a Kolchak: The Night Stalker quality to it.

While the film is ostensibly set in the U.S., those with a keen eye can recognize it is in Toronto. There are several shots of the University of Toronto as well as the intersection of Main Street and Swanick Avenue which is not too far from the old headquarters of the Ontario NDP. 

Although Black Christmas is an influential film in the horror genre, the plot itself isn't terribly interesting. A sorority gets a series of obscene phone calls, and the women of the sorority get killed one by one while the authorities refuse to take it seriously until it is too late. I did find it interesting to see Dullea with really long hair. He could easily be mistaken for Malcolm McDowell, and I wonder if this was Dullea's goal here. 

While I'm not a fan of Black Christmas, it had some stocking stuffers. Or perhaps stalking stuffers.