{"id":11490,"date":"2016-10-26T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T01:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=11490"},"modified":"2016-10-26T13:58:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:58:08","slug":"black-christmas-1974-bob-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/11490","title":{"rendered":"Black Christmas (1974, Bob Clark)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the heels of A Bay of Blood<\/a><\/em>, here’s another godfather of slasher films. I’d heard and heard that this was good but still wasn’t anxious to watch it because sometimes the most highly recommended movies turn out to be losers (ahem, The Changeling<\/a><\/em>), but surprise, it was good. Sorority house is gradually emptying due to holidays and also because the remaining girls are being murdered and stashed in the attic, the bodies never found so the survivors don’t know to be afraid. And unusually, no crazed killer backstory – we never find out who’s murdering people, or why. So, suspense is generally higher than in most of these kinds of things.<\/p>\n

Argento covets this shot:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Kidder ain’t kiddin’:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

I was surprised when Margot Kidder was killed, but I guess Sisters<\/a><\/em> wasn’t a mainstream hit and the Superman<\/em> movies wouldn’t start for a few years. Instead, Olivia Hussey (of 1968 Romeo & Juliet) makes the last stand with her semi-crazed boyfriend Keir Dullea. Victims Ms. Mack (Marian Waldman of Phobia<\/em>) and Phyl (Andrea Martin, who’d play Ms. Mack in the remake) and Claire (Lynne Griffin of Dream House<\/em>) are dead in the attic while Detective John Saxon (between appearing in Enter The Dragon<\/em> and Mitchell<\/em> – the man had a strange career), his moron assistant Doug McGrath (Ghosts of Mars<\/em>) and Claire’s guy Art Hindle (his third 1970’s horror I’ve watched in two months, after Body Snatchers<\/a><\/em> and The Brood<\/a><\/em>) uselessly look around campus not realizing the calls are coming from inside the house.<\/p>\n

Saxon spends most of his time on the phone:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Those calls feature some of the dirtiest dialogue I’ve heard in a non-porno 1970’s movie. Also surprised by the abortion debates between Olivia and Keir, and the amount of comedy in the movie. Director Bob Clark is better known for his other holiday movie A Christmas Story<\/em> but he did a couple other 1970’s horrors I might check out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the heels of A Bay of Blood, here’s another godfather of slasher films. I’d heard and heard that this was good but still wasn’t anxious to watch it because sometimes the most highly recommended movies turn out to be losers (ahem, The Changeling), but surprise, it was good. Sorority house is gradually emptying due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,2164,155,54],"class_list":["post-11490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-bob-clark","tag-christmas","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11490"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11532,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11490\/revisions\/11532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}