Ghosts of Christmas Past

Quick, what movie invented the slasher genre, with all the beats that later became clichés – right down to having the killer strike on a holiday? Halloween, right? Everybody knows that. Well… not quite. While John Carpenter’s film definitely took Psycho to the next level, it was Black Christmas that came first – by about 4 years!



Viewing Black Christmas today, one might be tempted to conclude that it really adds nothing to the genre – until one realizes that it is the genre. Some of the most memorable thing – including the infamous telephone harassment – started here. The sorority house as a setting – that started here too. Some might be tempted to say, wait, ‘didn’t Ted Bundy kill a bunch of girls in a sorority house one winter in real life?’, and the answer is yes, that’s true – but that didn’t happen until 1978 – four years after this film came out.

The cast all does a fine job, especially John Saxon as the sober police lieutenant, and Margot Kidder, though almost old enough to be the mother of some of her co-stars, manages a convincing enough performance as the sorority’s requisite bad girl.

What’s to say about The Exorcist (the version you’ve never seen), except that you have seen it – or at the very least, like Black Christmas, through cultural osmosis you’ve practically seen the whole film end-to-end, even if you’ve never sat down and watched it.



Released the day after Christmas the year before Black Christmas, the evil antagonist of The Exorcist shares a lot in common, vocally anyway, to the villain of that piece, even though here it’s a demon (possibly the Devil himself) and in the former it’s (presumably) and entirely terrestrial villain.

However, unlike Black Christmas whose ending still packs a decent punch, The Exorcist’s ending seems a bit pat nowadays. Still, the version you’ve never seen restores the hitherto missing ‘spider-walk’ scene, and that alone makes it worth checking out (again).