In Bob Clark’s “Black Christmas” (1974), the gleeful Christmas spirit is upended and replaced with a dread: a dread of living and negotiating with a society that is baying for the blood of women. Released a year after the Roe v Wade judgment, the horror is not simply that of a killer in hot pursuit of its prey, but the bearings of the transgressions on women’s bodies that stay long after the act has taken place. The film’s economical choices, from the confined setting to a restricted timeline, underscore the ‘everydayness’ of the horror.
Black Christmas (1974) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis:
It is Christmas Eve, and the Pi Kappa Sig sorority house is brimming with the season’s cheer. As the girls enjoy the party, a man whose identity is unrevealed shows up on the front lawn and finds his way to the back. He climbs up into the attic and keeps an eye on the movements of the women of the house. Jess Bradford answers a phone and instantly identifies the caller as ‘The Moaner.’ The girls gather around the phone and listen to the caller with horror as he launches an obscene tirade.
One of the girls, Barb, retorts to the caller, and the caller threatens to kill her. Barb gets into an argument with another girl, Clare, who expresses her concerns over the possibility of the caller being a rapist. That is the last time the girls see Clare. She retires for the night and goes up to her room to wrap up her Christmas packing. The stranger in the attic gets to her and lures her into the closet. There, he suffocates her using a plastic bag and drags her body back to his hiding place, the attic.
The next morning, Clare’s father arrives at the university to pick up his daughter. As she fails to show up at their decided meeting place, he heads to the sorority house. Mrs. MacHenry, the housemother, receives him and directs him to the fraternity where she might be with the others. However, Clare has disappeared into thin air, no traces whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Jess meets her boyfriend, Peter Smythe, a distraught music student. She reveals that she is pregnant but does not wish to give birth to the child. This angers Peter, and he, in turn, threatens her. In town, Mr. Harrison, accompanied by Barb and one of the other girls, Phyllis, goes to the police station to report Clare as missing. On the other hand, Jess informs Clare’s boyfriend, Chris Hayden, about her sudden disappearance. They learn about the disappearance of another young girl, Janice.
After putting a drunken Barb to bed, Mr. Harrison, Chris, Jess, and Phyllis accompany the police in their search for Janice in a nearby park where she allegedly disappeared. They continue searching for her with the faint hope of coming across traces of Clare. Meanwhile, as Mrs. Mac prepares to leave for her sister’s home, she becomes a prey to the man in the attic. She discovers Clare’s body in the attic, but the killer throws a crane hook into her face and hangs her to death.
Jess returns to the sorority house after the police find Janice’s disfigured body. Back at the house, Peter shows up and coaxes her to consider marriage, which infuriates Jess even more. Another obscene phone call makes Jess finally decide to report the incident to the police. Lt. Kenneth Fuller appoints Bill Graham, a telephone company employee, to bug the telephone.
A group of choir children arrives on the house’s stoop to sing Christmas carols. This distracts Jess, and she fails to hear Barb’s cries for help as she is mercilessly murdered in her room by the killer. After the children leave, Jess receives another phone call. The words of the caller cause Jeff to go into shock as he seems to be privy to the conversation she had with Peter. Lieutenant Fuller thinks that Peter could be the one behind the calls, due to the caller’s knowledge of the argument and his disturbed state. However, Jess does not seem to agree. On the other hand, Phyllis is killed by the man in the attic.
Black Christmas (1974) Movie Ending Explained:
Who is the man in the attic?
The next phone call gives out more information: it ambiguously alludes to a transgressive act between two children, Billy and Agnes. The length of the call gives Graham enough time to trace it. He informs back to the police, Lt. Fuller, that the call is originating from inside the sorority house. Fuller instructs Sergeant Nash to ask Jess to step out of the house without giving the information out to her completely. When Nash calls and asks her to leave, Jeff does not understand. Despite Nash’s warning, Jess leaves upstairs to rescue the other two girls. Jess arms herself with a poker and ventures upstairs. However, she is met with the visual of Barb and Phyllis’ gruesome bodies.
The killer gets a whiff of Jess and starts pursuing her through the house. Jeff tries to ward off the man and hides in the basement. Meanwhile, Peter comes looking for her, and she spots him trying to get a look at the inside of the basement. He smashes the window and breaks into the basement. Jess, completely convinced of Peter’s culpability in the crimes, bludgeons him to death using the poker.
When the police arrive, they find Jess unconscious with Peter’s dead body on her lap. The police leave Jess at her bed to continue to dwell on the cases. By stationing a policeman outside to guard Jess, they leave without recovering the bodies in the attic. The end reveals that Peter was never the killer. The unidentified man in the attic remains unidentified and slinks out of his hiding place as Jess sleeps in her room.
The telephone in the room rings yet again. As the camera zooms out from the attic and presents us with a long shot of the sorority house, an enormous sense of dread engulfs us, perhaps a dread germinating from the fact that the truth, like Clare, has been snuffed out before finding the light. The film does not reveal the identity of the man in the attic. The spectators are conditioned to feel the same dread that the characters in the filmic world feel.
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