Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

While John Carpenter's Halloween often garners most of the credit for spawning the modern horror genre, giving birth to the characteristics we all think of when we imagine slasher films, horror aficionados will undoubtedly point to this 1974 Canadian film as the true beginning of the modern era of horror. Preceding Carpenter's Halloween by a full four years, Black Christmas was the brainchild of writer Roy Moore and director Bob Clark.  Inspired by a series of real-life murders that took place in Montreal, Quebec around Christmas, the film had an uphill battle from the very beginning.

The Canadian film industry was nearly non-existent at that point in time. The government had begun a grant program to spur on the production of homegrown films, but most funding went to very artsy productions. Another hurdle encountered by the film-makers was that most talent had moved out of the country to pursue their careers in New York or Los Angles.  Shopping the script around to Hollywood studios, no one would touch it, feeling the subject matter far too risqué and non-commercial.

Eventually, the film was greenlit and filming began in and around Toronto over the winter of either 1973 or 1974 with a slightly reworked script -- the exact year seems to be in dispute according to the supplemental materials on this very disc. Utilizing a budget of only $620,000, the director was forced to improvise, creating much of the characteristic features of the modern slasher film out of necessity -- the makeshift shoulder harness camera rig to capture the point-of-view shots of the killer, is one prime example.

Upon its release in the US, Warner, fearing people would confuse it with a Blaxploitation film, changed its name to Silent Night, Deadly Night, and the film originally faltered in US theaters, ironically, until its title was changed back to Black Christmas. Critical reception was mixed, but the film has built a continuously growing cult following over the years, playing at midnight showings in theaters all over the world every Christmas.

The film itself follows a group of sorority sisters who are terrorized and killed by an unseen killer over the Christmas holiday at their sorority house. The killer first begins harassing them with perverted phone calls, and the girls  name him "The Moaner," but the calls soon become more violent and frightening.

We see the first girl, the shyest of the group, Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin) killed as she goes upstairs alone, asphyxiated by a plastic bag, but we never see the killer. The next day, when Clare's father comes to pick her up, everyone realizes she is missing. Now the intensity picks up as the search for Clare ensues, and the body count starts to mount. People begin to suspect that the killer may be Peter Smythe (Keir Dullea), Jessica Bradford's (Olivia Hussey) boyfriend, but is it?

As is often the case with even the best of the slasher films, Black Christmas falters when it comes to its plot -- there isn’t much of one.  There are frightened women screaming and there's plenty of killing, but not much in the way of coherent story line.  But director Bob Clark's innovations cannot be denied. What seems so humdrum today was surely innovative in 1974, and that it came out of Canada and not Hollywood is something that everyone from up north should be proud of.

Here's a film where you never see the killer, with "PoV" camera angles and darkly lit sets, people meeting their untimely deaths in myriad unusual and creative ways -- these are all characteristics that are synonymous with slasher films today, often credited to Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but they were done here first. Making it even creepier is composer Carl Zittrer's haunting score, consisting mainly of heavily treated female voices and prepared piano, juxtaposed with the cheery Christmas carols. It's a fittingly devilish pagan holiday horror fest that no true horror fan should pass up.

The Picture

Black Christmas comes with a relatively low bitrate AVC/MPEG-4 encoding of its 1.78:1 framing that averages 15Mbps. The transfer is one of the worst catalogue releases I've seen on Blu-ray in a long time. The source shows obvious wear in the form of dirt and scratches and there is a very heavy and sometimes inconsistent level of grain that becomes awfully distracting.

Black levels are all over place, sometimes deep, sometimes bluish in tint, at times washed out, but always displaying large amounts of crush, causing details to be lost in the film's many darker scenes. Flesh tones display a definite red push, and the overall contrast is so dull that everything has a murky appearance. The contrast and black levels tend to fluctuate occasionally in certain scenes causing a slight flickering effect.  It seems that not much care was put into bringing this film to Blu-ray, or the film elements were so far gone as to be unsalvageable.

The Sound

This Blu-ray Disc release of Black Christmas comes with the original English Mono (Dolby 2.0), English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Mono (Dolby 2.0) audio options. Although there are no lossless or uncompressed options offered, the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is still a big improvement over the English Mono track.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix adds a good bit of directional sounds to the sides and surround channels, like telephones ringing, wind howling faintly in the background and other atmospheric sound effects. Dialogue is always understandable, if somewhat dry and muffled in places. The eerie score is nicely spread throughout the soundfield with an ample if not overabundant amount of reverberant effects added through the main and surround channels. There are hardly enough low frequencies to cause much activity in the subwoofer and much of the sound stays in the upper-midrange.

In contrast, the original mono soundtrack suffers from very distorted dialogue with narrow dynamics and an extremely dry sound. Although it may be a nice option to have the original theatrical mix, in this case it is vastly inferior to the new 5.1 channel mix.

The Extras

For true fans of this film the supplemental material offered on this Blu-ray Disc release will be a pleasure to go through. There is much historical information to be gleaned on the evolution of the film and its production.

The extras available on this release are:

• 12 Days of Black Christmas (4:3/standard definition) -- Actor John Saxon narrates this mini-documentary on the film's creation and evolution to the screen, including interview segments with the cast, director and crew. Among some of the interesting tidbits that can be picked up from watching this featurette is the revelation that a whole new shoulder harness camera rig had to be developed for the filming in order to capture the film's "POV" shots.
• Midnight Q&A (4:3/standard definition) -- This is a question and answer session with the director Bob Clark, actor John Saxon, and composer Carl Zittrer after a midnight showing of Black Christmas at The Nuart in Santa Monica, California.
• Interviews (4:3/standard definition):
  • Olivia Hussey -- In this interview segment with Olivia Hussey, the actress speaks of her time during the production of Black Christmas and also reveals that she, ironically, cannot watch scary movies because they frighten her too much. Another interesting bit of trivia she reveals is that the director originally wanted to film two different endings, one that included her character dying.
  • Art Hindle -- This interview with the actor whose role was relatively small in the film is interesting nonetheless. Hindle actually recalls the film being shot in 1973, not 1974, and recounts from his recollection of events why he places the film's production in 1973.
  • Margot Kidder -- The actress reminisces on the early years of her career, particularly in Canada during the days when the Canadian film industry was nearly non-existent.  
• "Uncovered" Sound Scenes (4:3/standard definition/Dolby Digital 5.1) -- These brief  scenes are here to demonstrate sounds that were newly discovered when the film's mutlitracks were returned to for remixing into 5.1. An earlier soundmix included sounds that did not make it into the film's original final soundmix.:
  • "Trellis Climb" -- Billy climbs the trellis while the crowd in the house is clearly audible
  • "Final Pan" -- Billy is clearly heard instead of muffled.
• English Trailer (4:3/standard definition)
• French Trailer (4:3/standard definition)

Final Thoughts

If you're a horror fan and you want to see where slasher films really got their start, then there's no way around it - you need to check out this Blu-ray Disc. Perhaps due to its low budget this film can never look or sound great, but this Blu-ray's transfer is one of the worst catalogue releases I have seen. The surround mix is a definite improvement over the original mono track, but being supplied only in a lossy Dolby Digital format hampers it. For these reasons, I can only recommend this as a rental, unless you are a true completest and must have this in your collection.

Where to Buy

• Black Christmas on Blu-ray Disc (Amazon.com)

Product Details

• Actors: Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea
• Audio/Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1, English Mono (Dolby 2.0), French Mono (Dolby 2.0)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R
• Studio: Somerville House
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: November 11, 2008
• Run Time: 98 minutes
• List Price: $29.98
• Extras:
• Two Original scenes with a new vocal soundtrack
• "The 12 Days of Black Christmas" a documentary featuring current interviews with Art Hindle, Doug McGrath, & Lynne Griffin among others
• Separate interview segments with Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder
• Midnight Screening Q&A session with John Saxon, Bob Clark, & Carl Zittrer