IAN-Cinemaniac Review of Black Christmas

Black Christmas (1974)

It's actually as good, if not better than all the reviews that made me see it

[10/10 · 5 December 2005]

I am a huge movie fanatic and horror is one of my favorite genres. Horror films from the 70s to the present are my favorite, but it's usually quite difficult to find the good ones amongst all the junk. I had gotten to the point to where I thought I had seen all of the great horror pictures of this time period...including...THE CHANGELING, AN American WEREWOLF IN London, THE DEAD ZONE, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, EVIL DEAD 2, THE THING (1982), HALLOWEEN, THE SHINING, SUSPIRIA, THE DESCENT, DEAD-ALIVE(aka BRAINDEAD), THE EXORCIST and THE BROOD...to name a few, so obviously I was skeptical that this film BLACK Christmas that had passed me by for almost my whole life could actually be as good as all my fellow IMDb reviewers were stating. But being a huge fan of Bob Clark's A Christmas STORY, I took a chance and purchased this DVD right out and to my surprise all of the hype didn't even begin to do this film justice. It's been compared to HALLOWEEN and John Carpenter's film is certainly one of the best of the genre but BLACK Christmas...dare I say it...is actually better..scarier and more original. First of all I was impressed by how good the film looked for its age. BLACK Christmas is a class act, with pretty fine actors, a great script and an excellent crew behind the camera. It's hard for a film to scare me after all the films I've seen but my wife and I were often creeped out by BLACK Christmas. There is very little gore and you don't see much of the killer which proves sometimes less is more...WAY MORE in this case. BLACK Christmas is now in my top five of all time horror flicks. See it if you like a good scare. BOO!