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Black Christmas
"I'm going to kill you"
In October 1975, the Canadian slasher film Black Christmas was released in Toronto cinemas for the Halloween season. Directed by Bob Clark, the story involves a group of sorority sisters who receive threatening phone calls and are one-by-one stalked and murdered by a deranged maniac during the Christmas holidays.
Upon its release, the film received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office, but in the decades since has enjoyed renewed interest and a much deserve critical re-appraisal. Black Christmas is considered one of the earliest slasher films that went on to influence many other cult movie franchises.
Inspired by an old urban legend which dates back to the 1960’s about a teenaged girl babysitting children who is continually harassed by a stalker, and in some versions of the tale, is murdered by the unseen prowler, Black Christmas was, however, based on a real-life incident from Montreal, Quebec, during the Second World War.
In that case, a young boy bludgeoned several of his family members in November 1943, one of whom died. Several murder cases might have drawn inspiration from the film, which possibly went on to influence Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th Century.
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Black Christmas: The Original Slasher
Originally developed by Canadian screenwriter Roy Moore, under the title Stop Me, Black Christmas found inspiration from the urban legend known as the “The babysitter and the man upstairs,” which had become widespread by the 1970’s.
The tale had originated in the 1960’s, and revolves around a teenaged girl babysitting children who receives telephone calls from a stalker who continually asks her to “check the children”. This basic story had been adapted numerous times, and it itself based on the March 1950 murder of 13-year-old babysitter Janet Christman, who was brutally murdered and sexually assaulted by an unknown killer.
Moore had also been inspired when writing his screenplay by a crime that happened in November 1943. In a quiet and leafy suburb of Westmound in Montreal, and family was bludgeoned by a maniac intent on killing the entire family. When police arrived, alerted by a survivor, Mrs. Webster was found beaten to death at the hands of her teenaged son.
The young boy, George Webster, had also used a baseball bat to beat his two younger siblings, as well as a visiting Australian women. At the time, the case received little coverage, owing to the on-going conflict throughout the world, and was quickly forgotten by most.
The films producers ordered a rewrite of the original screenplay, in order to give it a university setting, and several alterations were made by Clark to the dialogue, who thought it was too much of a straightforward slasher film, and incorporated some humorous elements to give it more light-hearted moments.
Filming began in 1973 on a budget of $620,000. Olivia Hussey was cast as the main character Jess, who considered it a wise career choice and accepted the role after being told by a psychic that she would, “make a film in Canada that would earn a great deal of money.”
Based on his performance in the sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Keir Dullea was cast as Peter, the boyfriend of Jess. In supporting role, Margot Kidder played Barb, one of the sorority sisters, alongside John Saxton, who played Lt. Ken Fuller.
For the part of the films antagonist, Italian-American actor Nick Mancuso was cast as one of the main voices for the phone call sequences. In order to experience Mancuso as the deranged character of Billy, Clark had him sit in a chair facing away from him during the audition, so as not to see the actor’s face.
The Blackest of Christmases
The Serial Murder Plot of Black Christmas
The film opens with an unseen man climbing the exterior of a sorority house, where a Christmas party is being held, whereupon he enters the attic unseen. Inside the house, the house phone rings and is answered by Jess, played by Olivia Hussey.
She discovers it is an obscene phone call from a person who has called before. She calls to the other sorority girls who all listen as the caller rants in strange voices. “Lick it, lick it, lick it… Lemme lick your pretty pinky cunt…”
Barb, one the sorority girls played by Margot Kidder, insults the caller, who, in turn, promises… “I’m going to kill you”. A younger student, Clare Harrison, suggests that the caller could be dangerous and says “I really don’t think you should provoke somebody like that, Barb.”
Clare then replies “Oh listen, this guy is minor league. In the city, I get two of those a day.” Clare then returns to her bedroom, where the intruder suffocates her with a plastic dress bag and moves her body to the attic.
When the telephone rings again it is Peter, the boyfriend of Jess, and the two agree to talk in person the following day. The following morning, Mr. Harrison, played by James Edmond, arrives at the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority house to pick up his daughter, but she fails to show.
He talks with Mrs. MacHenry, the housemother, who tells him Clare is most likely at the fraternity common room and he agrees to drive her there. Jess meets with Peter and explains that she is pregnant but planning to get an abortion. This angers Peter, and they agree to discuss it later.
Later that evening the telephone rings once more, answered again by Jess. The caller shouts out the name “Billy!,” and then talks in different voices while referring to “Agnes and Billy”.
Jess hangs up abruptly. The next day, Mr. Harrison and two of the sorority sisters are in town attempting to report Clare as missing, but the desk sergeant doesn’t take the report seriously.
Jess talks with Chris Hayden, who says he hasn’t seen Clare since the previous night. At the police station, Chris and Jess learn that a young local girl has also vanished while walking home from school.
Back at the sorority house, after telling a drunken and argumentative Barb to go to bed, Mr. Harrison, Chris, Jess, and Phyl go outside to help search for the missing girl. The police have organized a search of the park for the two missing girls, comprising of several dozen locals under the direction of Lt. Ken Fuller, played by John Saxon.
Meanwhile, the housemother, Mrs. MacHenry, enters the attic in search of Claude the cat and discovers Clare’s body. The killer, hidden from view, throws a crane hook into her face, hanging and killing her, before manically trashing the attic in a rage.
In the park, members of the search party find the missing girl’s disfigured body. Back at the sorority house, Jess answers another obscene phone call, with the caller whaling and whimpering, “please stop me…” and screams the name Billy again, “I know what you did Billy!, filthy Billy!”.
She tries to find the housemother, without success, and calls to file a report with the police, only for Peter to surprise her by jumping out from behind, emerging from upstairs.
She tells him that a young girl was found murdered in the park, and that Clare is still missing. He tells her he is quitting and leaving, and attempts to persuade her into marriage, but she refuses and reaffirms her decision to have an abortion.
He threatens that she will be sorry if she goes ahead with the abortion. As Peter leaves angrily, Lieutenant Fuller arrives with a telephone lineman to bug the phone. Fuller requests to see Clare’s room, where he asks them questions about Clare’s boyfriend Chris Hayden and if she had any emotional problems.
The police leave a marked police car outside the sorority house. After Fuller leave, the deranged killer talks incoherently to Clare’s corpse in the attic. Jess goes to help Barb after she wakes screaming after having a nightmare and suffers an asthma attack.
While Carol singers are outside, the killer moves to Barbs bedroom and there murders, stabbing her to death her with a glass figurine. Jess experiences another unnerving phone call, in which the caller restates part of the argument she previously had with Peter.
Lieutenant Fuller calls her to say the attempt to trace the call failed, and asks her about her boyfriend Peter. When talking to Phyl, Jess worries that Peter could be responsible, but refuses to believe it. The killer calls again, this time pretending to be Peter, but the call is too short to be traced.
Lt. Fuller asks Jess about the abortion, and theorizes that Peter could be the prank caller. Phyl goes to her room and is the next to be murdered. Jess gets another phone call, in which the killer alludes to some sort of transgression between two children named Agnes and Billy.
This time the call is long enough to be traced, and Lt. Fuller attempts to contact the officer outside the sorority house, but he has been murdered. Sergeant Nash then instructs Jess to leave the house immediately, as the calls are coming from within the house.
Concerned for the welfare of Barb and Phyl, she ventures upstairs, where she discovers their bodies. Jess sees the killer for the first time, as he peers through the crack in the doorway, in one of the most iconic scenes of the movie. The killer then pursues her, but she manages to fight him off.
Jess run to the cellar and locks herself in, only for Peter to appear outside one of the windows. He smashes the window, enters the basement and approaches Jess. The police arrive and hear Jess screaming, then discover her barely conscious in the basement with Peter’s bloody body next to her.
Believing that Peter was the killer, they put Jess to bed in her room and leave her alone in the house, with a policeman standing guard outside. Reports arrive, and Lt. Fuller refuses to give any details of what went on at the sorority house.
Mr. Harrison faints from shock, and is taken to the hospital by police. As the sound of sirens disappear in the distance, the killer’s voice is heard from the attic, implying that he is still alive. The still-undiscovered bodies of Clare and Mrs.
MacHenry are seen through the attic window before the house’s telephone begins to ring, leaving both Jess’ fate ambiguous and the identity of the killer a mystery.
The film debuted in October 1974, in Toronto, Canada. In the United States, the film originally screened in July 1975 in Virginia under the title, Silent Night, Evil Night, which had been initially changed by the films distributor Warner Bro., thinking it would mislead audiences into believing the film was a blaxploitation movie.
The film later screened in October 1975 in New York and Chicago, as well as several theatres in Los Angeles. Owing to poor takings, the film was pulled from cinemas in December 1975. Although it opened to mixed reviews, the film eventually earned around $4.1 million internationally.
Billy: The Faceless Killer
The Antagonist of Black Christmas
Upon its release, the movie garnered some negative reviews that focused on the story, with one review calling it “slow-paced,” while another referred to it as a “routine shocker.” The lack of a conclusion of the story was cited by many as the reason why audiences did not enjoy the film, with one reviewer stating “it may well be that the makers simply couldn’t figure out how to end it.”
The film’s writers have since explained that they never intended for the killer’s identity to be revealed, and intentionally omitted it in an effort to make him more frightening.
Neither the character nor his portrayers were ever listed in the end credits, and as a result, fans of the film began referring to the killer as Billy, with director Bob Clark himself using the name when referring to the character during interviews.
As such, the character of Billy has become a “faceless killer,” and by making him more enigmatic it allows the audience to project their own fears onto the character, and thereby forming their own interpretations about him and his motivations. As a result Billy is considered the primary influence on later horror characters of slasher movies such as Michael Myers of John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween.
Ted Bundy: The Chi Omega Murders
The Real-Life Black Christmas
The film Black Christmas, under the title Stranger in the House, was scheduled to make its network television premiere on January 28, 1978, on NBC’s weekly segment, “Saturday Night at the Movies”. However, two weeks before it was due to air, a crime eerily similar to the murders depicted in Black Christmas occurred.
The Chi Omega Sorority House on the Tallahasse campus of Florida State University was the scene of a brutal double murder, in which two Chi Omega sisters were bludgeoned to death while asleep in their beds. The killer then went to a nearby room of the sorority house and violently attacked two more sleeping students, who survived.
On January 15, 1978, a man entered the Chi Omega sorority house at around 2:45am and bludgeoned 21-year-old Margaret Bowman with a piece of oak firewood and then strangled her with a stocking. He then went to the room of 20-year-old Lisa Levy and beat her unconscious, breaking her collarbone.
One of her nipples was torn off, she was bitten on the buttocks, then sexually assaulted with a Claireol hairspray bottle and strangled with a stocking. The intruder then entered the adjoining bedroom, occupied by 20-year-old Kathy Kleiner and her roommate, 21-year-old Karen Chandler, both of whom were sleeping soundly in their beds.
The man assaulted Kleiner, breaking her jawbone and lacerating her shoulder and then struck Chandler, who suffered a concussion, and lost several teeth because her jaw had been broken in three places. When the headlights of a car which was dropping off housemate Nita Neary illuminated the sorority house, the man became startled and made his escape.
The attacks had been overheard by several of the other girls in the house who alerted the dorm-mother and notified the police that an intruder was inside the residence.
Karen Chandler staggered out of her room and into the hallway, with blood seeping from a head wound, then Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman were found were found dead in their beds having suffered gruesome injuries. Although they survived, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner had suffered life changing injuries.
The attacker had escaped the scene, but made his way to a basement apartment eight blocks away and there launched a final attack, this time on 21-year-old student Cheryl Thomas.
She was found lying diagonally across her bed, her face turning purple with bruises and barely conscious, whimpering in pain. She had been beaten across the head and suffered a broken jaw and dislocated shoulder, whilst her skull was fractured in five places.
Next to her body police found a semen stain and a pantyhose mask which contained two hairs. Cheryl Thomas suffered the worst injuries that night and was left with permanent deafness and equilibrium damage which ruined her dance prospects and would stay in hospital for a month.
The perpetrator of these crimes would later be revealed as serial killer Ted Bundy, who had escaped custody for the second time on December 31, 1977, from the jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He made his way to Florida, where he rented a room under the assumed name Chris Hagen, a name that is suspiciously similar to that of a character in Black Christmas, Chris Hayden, played by Art Hindle.
There he began roaming the nearby campuses, which were his old hunting grounds back in Washington, he was wanted for the murders of several women from that state as well as Utah, Bundy would eventually stand trial for the Chi Omega killings and was sentenced to death. He was also charged with the murder of a 12-year-old girl, for which he would eventually be executed.
These were among the last crimes attributed to Bundy, and they bear a striking resemblance to the murders committed by Billy, the killer from Black Christmas. Bundy had moved around the sorority house, attacking several of the sorority sisters and killing two.
It is possible that during its initial release, Bundy had seen the film and it made a lasting impression upon him, compelling him to commit similar crimes during his last few desperate weeks on the run from law enforcement and soon to be the focus of an FBI manhunt.
The have been several Co-ed killers, such as Ed Kemper, who kidnapped female hitchhikers and college-aged girls between May 1972 and April 1973, and the Gainsville Ripper, who entered the apartments of students from Santa Fe College during a burglary and robbery spree that saw him murder as many as seven women and one man.
But the events of Black Christmas are undeniably similar to those committed by serial killer Ted Bundy, and may even have been the inspiration for one of his final acts of depravity, forever immortalized in the story of a classic cult horror.
Written by Nucleus
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