The simple premise finds a sorority house around the holiday season whose girls are receiving bizarre, threatening phone calls from a multi-personality (as presented in his wide range of unsettling voice-changes...) pervert. The viewing audience is made aware that the mysterious caller is actually hanging out in the attic where he is hiding the body of one of their friends, who was just the first to be murdered...
"Black Christmas" is definitely high in atmosphere and contains quite a few notably unnerving scenes - predominantly the glimpses into the (mostly) unseen killer's crazed meltdowns in the attic and a few effective - yet relatively non-gory - death scenes. I always loved the movie's "fuck you" attitude to the viewer as to the identity of the killer - which leads you on with a 'sure thing', but pulls the rug out from under it in the end, just leaving you hanging. Can't help but appreciate that shit. That said, there's a quite a few scenes that drag on WAY too long - namely some drawn out 'baby-mamma-drama' and shit having to do with John Saxon tracing the creepy phone calls, which really makes the movie feel slow in spots. Regardless of the more 'laggy' sections, I always loved drunk, in-your-face bitchy Margot Kidder, crystal unicorns being used as deadly killing tools and a genuinely unsettling 'tone', overall. Many may be a bit divided on "Black Christmas", but it's on my "good list".
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