{"id":117530,"date":"2020-12-21T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T09:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=117530"},"modified":"2020-12-20T12:39:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T12:39:41","slug":"flashback-black-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/flashback-black-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Black Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predating John Carpenter\u2019s original Halloween<\/strong><\/em> by four years, Bob Clark\u2019s 1974 seminal slasher Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em>, with its prowling unseen perpetrator\u2019s point-of-view camera moves and creepy predominantly housebound premise, arguablay set the standard for the horror subgenre.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s loosely based on the old urban legend of \u2018the babysitter and the man upstairs\u2019, concerning a sitter who receives disturbing phone calls from a stalker who insists that she \u201ccheck the children\u201d, only for it to later emerge that the calls are actually coming from inside the house.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Clark\u2019s imaginative take on the story centres on chilling events around a busy sorority house during the festive season, where a group of girls along with their boozy house mother become the prey of a disturbed prowler who places regular obscene phone calls. Veteran character actress Lynne Griffin portrayed the unfortunate first victim Clare Harrison. \u201cAt that point in my life I did play a lot of very sweet and straight, virginal characters, most of whom did meet quite horrendous demises,\u201d she tells SciFiNow<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Griffin credits director-producer Clark for bringing much-needed levity during the production of this particularly murderous affair. \u201cBecause we were in an ensemble situation and we were actually filming in that one house, which was a real house that existed and looked exactly the way it looked, it was like being at a party,\u201d she continues. \u201cBob Clark made it seem that way and every day going to work was really fun, we all kind of sat around and laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the time, when you\u2019re working on a horror film, you\u2019re not really aware of how serious it may eventually play because you\u2019re having so much fun just re-creating it and doing the scenes. You\u2019re not really aware until you see it which is when you experience how terrifying it is.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alongside Griffin, the sorority ensemble included such equally esteemed talent as Margot Kidder (who was fresh off the success of Brian De Palma\u2019s slasher thriller Sisters<\/strong><\/em>), Olivia Hussey and Andrea Martin, along with Keir Dullea, Art Hindle and old genre reliable John Saxon fleshing out the (potentially homicidal) male love interests and local police Lieutenant, respectively.<\/p>\n

Fifty year-old character player Marian Waldman brought literal high jinks with her portrayal of drunken sorority housemother Mrs Mac, who spends a considerable amount of screen time secretly scouring the house for hidden booze.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a wonderful character performance that is,\u201d considers Griffin. \u201cNot long ago I went to a Q&A and they asked me to sit and watch the film and little did I know that they were going to show it on an IMAX screen. [Therefore] I noticed things that I never had before. This included some of the subtleties in Mary\u2019s performance and some of her subversive drunk scenes were particularly hilarious. She was just a very sweet woman and not like Mrs Mac at all. She was quite the lady!\u201d<\/p>\n

Somebody that perhaps did live up to her onscreen counterpart was the late great Margot Kidder as the foul-mouthed and promiscuous Barb. \u201cMargot Kidder, bless her heart, did take the part very much to heart and in some scenes, felt it was necessary to go kind of method and be a little tipsy to get those absolutely right in terms of character,\u201d reveals Griffin. \u201cShe had a certain looseness and ability to express herself quite fully I might say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Margot Kidder went method for her role as Barb…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite becoming renowned later on for directing Eighties sexploitation comedy series Porky\u2019s<\/strong><\/em>, Bob Clark (who passed away in 2007) was equally at home with horror. \u201cHe had a tremendous sense of humour and was an absolutely lovely man. I think we all called him \u2018Uncle Bob\u2019,\u201d remembers Griffin. \u201cI was particularly enchanted with him when we were filming up in the attic. He would sit opposite me and I\u2019d be in the rocking chair and he would be the one talking to me about what he wanted me to do. He was just so careful with me but at the same time it was all fun and experimentation. I was quite enchanted with him and his sense of humour.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, even though the character of Clare was killed off early, she still had an integral part to play as an undiscovered corpse wrapped in plastic and rocking (and no doubt rotting!) in a chair in the attic.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons I was cast I believe is that I told them I was a good swimmer so I could hold my breath for quite a long time,\u201d laughs Griffin. \u201cWhen I saw it recently I thought \u2018wow, she can really hold her breath for a long time!\u2019. So, I guess that\u2019s why I had a career often playing dead people or people who were about to [die]. However, that\u2019s probably one of the more famous dead people I\u2019ve played, no doubt due to the way they\u2019ve used that image of me so much on the film\u2019s posters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aesthetics of the sorority residence, which is arguably a character in itself, was instrumental toward building the suspense and scares. Clark insisted on finding a house that resonated both threatening darkness and Christmas joy. Apart from a characterful exterior, the interior dynamics of the architecture were crucial too; in this case, a staircase that offered voyeuristic views of the busy ground floor from a middle landing, thus permitting those creepily omniscient point-of-view shots from the stalker.<\/p>\n

As Griffin previously mentioned the house was a real location (which was situated in Toronto, Ontario in Canada) and one that she enjoyed revisiting in 2002 when she reunited with her onscreen love interest Art Hindle for the DVD extras documentary Black Christmas Revisited<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvidently, the people that own that house are quite amiable toward getting attention from others who come along and want to see where this film was made and they were very welcoming to us,\u201d Griffin tells us. \u201cI got to go back up into the attic, which is now all beautifully renovated and where I spend my time in the rocking chair with a plastic bag over my head. Of course the set decorators did wonders to that attic to make it look as creepy as possible for the film but basically all that wood work and the stairways are all pretty much the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning, I wanted to see whether I could get away with a film, and I don\u2019t think it had ever been done, where you never saw the killer,\u201d said Bob Clark in the aforementioned documentary. Indeed, perhaps an unsung hero of Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em> was camera operator Bert Dunk (aka Albert J Dunk) responsible for \u2018playing the perpetrator\u2019 by capturing those chillingly subjective shots from the killer\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

This included the virtuoso opening sequence, where the unseen predator approaches the exterior of the house, peers through the windows and eventually climbs the building\u2019s trellis to make his secret entrance into the attic, down the ladder and into the interior of the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery clearly John Carpenter was influenced by Bob Clark\u2019s work and the work of Bert Dunk; you can\u2019t speak of him more highly because he created that steadicam and its not anything like the steadicams used today, which are so wonderfully malleable and lightweight,\u201d elaborates Griffin. \u201cHe was sort of strapped into the thing\u2026 it\u2019s actually Bert with the camera climbing up the outside of the house on the trellis and it\u2019s actually Bert that strangles me in the closet too! He came through the plastic [clothes] bag and strangled me with the steadicam on him. Much of the scary work with the murders was Bert holding that camera and playing that character. He created that very terrifying cinema v\u00e9rit\u00e9 POV of who it is that\u2019s stalking you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Clark alludes to his influence on Carpenter during the DVD director\u2019s commentary. The filmmaker goes as far to claim that the basic Halloween<\/strong><\/em> storyline was in fact his idea. \u201c[John] was a big fan of Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em>. He was just beginning his career and had asked me [\u2026] whether I was ever going to do the sequel,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018no, this film was the last horror film I was going to do. [\u2026] I didn\u2019t start out just to be a horror movie director\u2019. \u2018But if you did do a sequel what would you do?\u2019 he asked. [I said] I would make it the following fall. Somehow the killer had been caught, he\u2019d been institutionalised but he escaped one night and now he\u2019s free in the community [\u2026] and I was going to call it Halloween<\/strong><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em> director Bob Clark alludes to his influence on Halloween<\/strong><\/em> on the film’s DVD commentary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whatever the truth behind their influences, both horror films would go on to become commercial hits and receive great international acclaim. Quentin Tarantino even proudly claims Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em> is his favourite movie to watch during the festive season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how many people say it\u2019s one of their annual events to sit down and watch Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em> during the holidays,\u201d says Griffin. \u201cWell, there is White Christmas<\/strong><\/em> too and one of my favourite Bob Clark films is his other film about Christmas: A Christmas Story<\/strong><\/em>. He made two very different films about the same time of year!\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps what\u2019s particularly sinister is the masterful climatic misdirection, which ultimately discloses that the emotionally unstable prime murder suspect Peter, who is killed in a violent struggle with his frightened girlfriend Jess, wasn\u2019t the perpetrator after all. It also leaves Clare\u2019s corpse still undiscovered in the attic and refuses to reveal the identity of the true killer behind the bloody slaughters, with the telephone continuing to ring ominously over the closing credits\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I know poor Clare is still sitting there and never was discovered but it doesn\u2019t say much for the police department that they never actually looked up there!\u201d considers Griffin. \u201cAlthough, judging from the other scenes revolving around the police, they didn\u2019t really create them as the most switched on bunch of people. Then again this is Bob Clark\u2019s sense of humour and I loved that Black Christmas<\/strong><\/em> touched on so many things that were funny as well as frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Christmas is available on Blu-ray<\/a> from 101 Films.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n