Black Christmas 1974 review

Published 12/17/2025

Rating : 9/10 Highly Recommend.

Black Christmas is a 1974 Canadian slasher film produced and directed by Bob Clark, and written by Roy Moore. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon. Given the moniker as the first slasher movie Black Christmas shocked audiences in the 70's and is credited with launching a genre. Roy Moore was by the urban legend "the babysitter and the man upstairs" and a series of brutal murders that took place in the Westmount neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec, Roy wrote the screenplay under the title Stop Me. The filmmakers made numerous alterations to the script, primarily the shifting to a university setting with young adult characters, which had the desired effect.

The film contains a number of overarching themes: drunk, apathetic college kids who make themselves vulnerable to a crazed sociopath, a slow, inept police department who continually fail to take the reports of a missing woman and bizarre calls seriously, and a murderer shown in the first person. These themes would serve as the basis for a number of slasher films, notably in Halloween (1978).

Black Christmas is a staple on many horror critic's and fan's top lists for the season. The murderer is a complex individual: he speaks in male and female voices, revels in chaotic tones, threats and creepy innuendos. He taunts the survivors after every kill. He's methodical, remorseful (he tells one of the students to stop him) and unrelenting. By comparison, the protagonists are all over the place; disjointed efforts that waste time and allow the killer to strike again.

The film is notable for Margaret Kidder's performance as the sorority's unofficial leader who struggles with alcohol, and John Saxon ( of Nightmare on Elm Street fame) for his turn as the lone competent policeman.

On the subject of the police, the third act involves a cat-and-mouse thriller when the police are trying to pinpoint the source of the calls and the survivors are repeatedly harassed. The details in Black Christmas are impressive. One could easily overlook the issue of doors not locking, floorboards creaking and effective use of shadows. We recommend Black Christmas for all of the above reasons, but we particularly enjoyed the killer's crazed, almost unhuman qualities which sets the audience on edge.