Black Christmas
Director: Bob Clark
Year Released: 1974
Rating: 1.0
A sorority house is terrorized by pervy phone calls and a lunatic hiding in the attic - the girls, led by Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder, can't find him (or their missing roommate, who's been strangled and rocks around in the attic). Horror aficionados praise this as original cinema, but I can't fathom how a script without an ending is something to applaud - in a way, by letting the killer off the hook, the film is endorsing its own misogyny and sees the murders as symbolic retribution for Hussey's desire to have an abortion (the dead girl in the attic is posed with a toy baby under her arm; the loony on the phone repeats conversations about abortion Hussey has with boyfriend Keir Dullea). Dubious pro-life slant aside, the script also has two extra pieces it doesn't know what to do with: the murder of the little girl in the field and exactly what Dullea is doing in the movie (is he a red herring? is he involved in the murders?).
