Classic Movie Review Black Christmas

Black Christmas (1974) 

Directed by Bob Clark 

Written by A. Roy Moore 

Starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Andrea Martin, Lynne Griffin, Margot Kidder, John Saxon 

Release Date December 20th, 1974

Published December 4th, 1974 

A static shot of a home at night greets as our entry point to Black Christmas, Bob Clark's legendary holiday slasher movie. Clark holds the shot of the house throughout the credits, which include the title of the film in a lovely script known, according to find my font, as the Pamela Font created by Dieter Steffman, a German designer with a long history of creating unique fonts used by The Rolling Stones for their album covers, among many other iconic pop culture fonts. The font is not important but, it's a minor fascination for me and I love the idea that there are people in the world who are famous for creating fonts. 

Following the end of the credits we cut to the front door of the house. The Greek letters on the outside of the home and the fact that a young woman enters the front door, lead us to the correct assumption that this is a Sorority House, home to a number of young college aged women. After we've seen the woman enter and a camera pan to a nearby window communicates what appears to be a party underway, we cut back to the front door but things are different now. Instead of a steady camera pan or a static shot, we are now in a perspective shot. We are in the perspective of someone approaching the sorority. As Christmas music plays inside, the soundtrack is dominated by the heavy breathing of the person whose perspective we have assumed. 

The subtle shift in camera style is skillfully played by director Bob Clark and his cinematographer, Reginald H. Morris. Even someone who doesn't pay close attention to such things as the way the camera is used in a particular scene, will understand the shift from a standard series of shots establishing a place and a status quo, will recognize that the camera perspective has shifted from a passive to an active participant in the scene. The Christmas music falls away, replaced by a subtle, deep bass, slightly unnerving. The breath of this new character is underscored by a chilling wind sound effect, the cold underlining the chill you feel as this heavy breathing individually slowly makes their way to the door of the Sorority. 

Without a word spoken, Bob Clark has amped up the tension and placed you in the perspective of an unseen character who may or may not be a dangerous killer. If you know the movie you are watching is a horror film, the title Black Christmas, is pretty good lead in that direction, then you can infer that you, the audience, are the killer. Clark here is commenting on the horror movie in general. Placing the audience in the perspective of the killer is an indictment of an audience who comes to a horror movie to watch people die. In the span of less than 2 minutes, Clark has demonstrated a mastery of film form that will play out further as he introduces actual dialogue, characters, and incident into Black Christmas.

The scene then transitions as the unseen heavy breathing person steps forward and the camera returns to its previous status as an observer of events. The shadow of this unknown individual crowds the frame, seeming to move forward toward the windows of the Sorority House and as this person slowly approaches the house, the camera recedes until we jump inside the house and a Sorority member, we will come to know as Barb (Margot Kidder), descends the stairs. Inside the house, the front door is open, presumably having been opened by the unseen man but, he's still outside, the open door is a red herring of sorts, a distraction. We are thrust back into first person perspective soon after as the unseen character climbs a trellis to an open window in the attic. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Directed by Tobe Hooper 

Written by Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper

Starring Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Gunnar Hanson

Release Date October 11th, 1974

Published October 11th 2014 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is more than just a movie, it’s a marker in time. The film is a flashpoint of American history, a cultural capper on 10 plus years of some of the most uncertain and tumultuous moments in American history. Between 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974 we saw multiple assassinations of famed leaders, the start and end of the Vietnam War and dozens of other cultural upheavals that would play a role in the creation of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Tobe Hooper’s horror masterpiece reflects the moment it was created in ways only legendary films do. The comparisons are limited because so few movies are as near perfect a reflection of their time. James Cagney in Public Enemy No.1 comes to mind. One could argue for Gone with the Wind or, more recently, Get Out, Jordan Peele’s remarkable look at modern race relations, as genuine moments when art crossed over into political culture and reflected something important. 

Despite its place in the bargain genre of the slasher horror movie, I believe completely that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of those legendary, moment-defining movies. It’s a film thick with metaphors of the time in which it was created, metaphors that reflect the moment in time in which it was made flawlessly. You can argue that I am inferring a great deal more than what director Tobe Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel had in mind but whether intentional or by accident, they made the most of the moment movie of the 70’s. 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre stars Marilyn Burns as Sally Hardesty. Sally is a hippie, one of the last of a fracturing sub-culture beaten down by war and the old guard establishment. She and her friends put on a good face about it, traveling the countryside in a VW Bus, smoking marijuana and talking about peace and love but reality is creeping in on the hippie mythos as we join the story. Sally is joined by her brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), who is in a wheelchair. 

Franklin is just home from Vietnam and his bitterness is the first warning of the beginning of the end of the good vibes that the hippies had been living off since the mid-to late 60’s. While the rest of the group, including Sally’s boyfriend, Jerry (Alan Danziger) and their couple friends, Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) do their best to ignore Franklin, his presence is a black cloud in their otherwise sunny view of the world. 

That sunny outlook, smile on your brother, everybody get together and try to love one another, is about to face an even bigger challenge than Franklin’s bitterness. Part of the hippie ethos is picking up strays, helping those in need. It’s a wonderfully positive quality but as the hippie generation grows up and the world begins to change not in the positive way they had hoped, that worldview slowly matures from Peace and Love for all to the Me Generation of the late 70’s, a selfish worldview influenced by the growing negativity of the culture. 

That change is embodied by a hitchhiker that the gang picks up along the way, a malevolent weirdo without a name and played with icky glee by Edwin Neal. While the hippies think they are doing a good deed, the Hitchhiker appears eager to punish their naiveté. He’s rude, obnoxious and threatening. Eventually, the hitchhiker pulls a knife and the group is forced to throw him out of the van. He’s not gone from the movie however, as we will see, he’s only the appetizer for the horrors to come when the van runs out of gas and the group seeks the kindness of strangers at a nearby farmhouse.

In the 1950’s it was commonplace in small towns for people to welcome others into their homes. In small towns, doors were left unlocked and folks knew the names of almost everyone in town. A community used to be a real community and even strangers could find temporary open arms as needed. However, the spectre of Charles Manson and several other high profile murders along with a precipitous and breathlessly reported on rise in crime began to permeate small towns in the late 60’s and early 70’s and by 1974 places that used to welcome a visit were now growing paranoid and insular. 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre signifies this change with a violent and grotesque display that reflects a definitive end of such openness. When one of our hippy friends approaches the farmhouse of a stranger he has no compunction about simply opening the stranger’s door and introducing himself. There he is met by the terrifying visage of Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) who acts as much in psychopathic rage as he does in fear, a paranoid fear of the unknown that he feels he must meet with extreme violence. 

The symbology could not be more clear. The reflection of a society growing desperately more fearful is demonstrated bluntly and shockingly by the swing of Leatherface’s meat tenderizer. No longer could strangers expect open arms from small town strangers. Wariness, and deep suspicion, especially of those hippy types, was now the order of the day in 1974 and whether intentional or not, no movie captured that moment of change in American culture better than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Oh but the significant metaphors don’t end there. While the ending of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is arguably the single most iconic image in horror history, the dinner scene at the start of the 3rd act is nearly its equal. At this point, Sally Hardesty has been captured and tied to a chair at the head of a horrific layout from the Sawyer family, the family of Leatherface including his nameless, hitchhiker brother, his frightful father, Old Man (Jim Siedow) and his corpse-like grandfather (John Dugan). 

What’s missing from that group? What role is Sally being forced to play as she is being menaced and tortured? It’s a mother, of course. There hasn’t been a female presence in the Sawyer home in decades. The lack of a mother character reflects the moment of 1974, a time when women were shaking off traditional gender roles and were moving into the workforce. In their wake were a group of angry and confused husbands and sons bereft, in their minds, of the comforting presence of a woman at home. 

That’s not to say that violent men are the result of the absence of women, the point is not to blame women. The satire of this moment in Texas Chainsaw Massacre is on the male characters. It’s a reflection and deconstruction of the misogynist mindset that women belong in a certain role in a man’s world and what happens if they are not in that traditional role. 

In this case, the lack of a female presence leads to filth and violence, the most extreme behaviors standing in as the best kind of satire of old school male mindsets regarding women leaving home for the workforce. It’s hard to see this metaphor today with women so well ingrained into the modern workforce but in 1974 this image was frighteningly powerful and potent and the dinner scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre captured it brilliantly. 

On top of being thick with metaphor, the scene is remarkably scary. Tobe Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl and editors J. Larry Carroll and Sallye Richardson put this series of shots together remarkably well. The scene is shot and edited with remarkable care with the camera doing as much as the scenario to build the gripping horror of Sally Hardesty’s dire situation. As the shot moves closer and closer to Marilyn Burns’ eyes the horror turns the tension like a screw tightening in your mind. It’s incredibly powerful and would be even without the thick metaphor to give it meaning. 

Then there is that iconic ending. Sally Hardesty runs through a field, covered in blood, screaming and being chased by Leatherface who is carrying a violently loud chainsaw. As Sally flags down a passing truck and climbs inside she is a near perfect reflection of America having survived the previous 10 years screaming and covered in blood, behind us a fearsome swirling tornado of terror that represents what we’re coming out of, escaping from. 

There is Sally in the back of that truck, bathed in the blood of rioters, assassinations, Altamont, Kent State, Vietnam, staring back at the incredibly frightening recent past and looking toward an uncertain but surely less fearsome future. By the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, if you're like me and Sally, you are spent. You’ve been through the ringer of a horror movie that isn’t merely a visceral, gut wrenching exercise in slasher formula, but one of the most thoughtful and terrifying movie experiences of all time.