DailyView: Day 135, Movie 209

I had seen the 2019 remake of Black Christmas and I was not impressed. I have heard a lot of positive about the original film, a Canadian slasher movie directed by Bob Clark and is considered one of the first examples of the slasher genre. I was curious to see how this may or may not compare with the newest version of Black Christmas.

As holiday break approach, the sorority sisters put on a party before people leave for their plans. A series of obscene phone calls break the feel of the party, and lead to the murder of Clare (Lynne Griffin), by a mysterious intruder who had climbed into the sorority’s attic. Stashing her body away, the other did not know what had happened to Clare and when she did not show up to meet her father (James Edmond), they begin to become worried.

The group of sorority sisters is an interesting collection of characters that work well in the film. Jess (Olivia Hussey) is our lead character and she is having problems with her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea). She is pregnant but does not want to keep the baby and Peter disagrees. Barb (Margot Kidder) has her share of problems and she is using alcohol to cover them. Phil (Andrea Martin) is a fascinating and one of the most different looking character in the film.

This is nothing like the 2019 version. In the new film, there was a whole plot about a Satanic cult committing the murders. There was so much overacting nixed with poor story telling. The 1974 version was considerably more intense and scary. The whole intruder in the attic character is way more frightening and the calls on the phone were disturbing at any time.

There are some outstanding shots in the movie. The sequence with Barb and the killer was an amazingly beautiful and terrifying scene at the same time. There was some feel with this movie that it was a smaller, artsy work with some of the best shots of any horror movie I have seen.

This was 100% better than the remake in 2019. I loved how this film developed and the mystery of who the killer is and how the ending remained unresolved. This was a fantastic horror movie.