Horror Double Feature: Black Christmas & The Prowler

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will have to somehow survive obscene phone calls, a psycho killer, pitchfork murders and Tom Savini FX! It’s Black Christmas and The Prowler!

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1975)

Before I sat down to watch Black Christmas for the first time, director Bob Clark had been two for two with me. I had loved his previous two flicks – the zombie gut-muncher Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and his living-dead Vietnam vet horror comedy Deathdream, both from 1972 – and so was very stoked to see Black Christmas, a film with a great rep and a loving cult behind it. Now that I have finally seen the film, I’m aware of what this cult has known for decades: This movie, besides being highly influential, is also intelligently scripted, well acted by all, deliberately paced and, ultimately, extremely suspenseful. Concerning a psychopathic nutjob who not only makes obscene phone calls to a sorority house (possibly the creepiest phone calls in screen history; you’ll be thanking heaven for modern-day “caller ID”), but who also hides in the attic and does some occasional butchering, the film is the template for a raft of more famous slasher flicks that followed. Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin and especially the gorgeous Olivia Hussey (I just love the way she says “Hello”) are all very fine, and John Saxon, here playing a police lieutenant, gets a chance to show how very appealing he can be when NOT playing coldhearted dirtbags. I must confess that the first time I watched this film, the open-ended finale left me a little annoyed (I guess I needed a bit more closure); I didn’t mind this ending the second time I watched the picture, however, and even thought it kinda cool and freaky. To make things even better, the “Special Edition” DVD that I recently watched comes with almost two hours’ (!) worth of interviews, plus other features. It is truly a godsend for all members of the Black Christmas cult.

THE PROWLER (1981)

The 1951 film noir The Prowler, starring Van Heflin and directed by Joseph Losey, contains genuine suspense arising from realistic situations, characters who are recognizable and believable, and a completely lucid story line. The 1981 teenage/slasher film The Prowler, directed by Joseph Zito, has, well, none of those attributes. I realize that I’m swimming against the tide of popular sentiment here, but Zito’s film, fun as it is in parts, strikes me as being only slightly better than a generic juvenile slice & dicer. In the picture, a jilted GI, wearing fatigues and a combat helmet, goes homicidally berserk at a 1945 graduation dance in Avalon Bay, NJ, and then picks up where he left off (as well as picking up a nonstandard-issue pitchfork!) at the next dance, 35 years later. A reasonably fun setup, to be sure, but sadly, many problems crop up. For one, Tom Savini’s vaunted special gore FX just don’t seem that special here, especially since most of the killings take place in darkened rooms or in the shadows of night, and are thus hard to make out. The film’s only clearly defined kill, the shower sequence, IS effective, but its impact is of course diminished after a certain little B&W shocker from 1960. The film boasts only two recognizable star names, Farley Granger (who receives perhaps 2½ minutes of screen time) and noir tough guy Lawrence Tierney (who is only seen briefly twice and has nary a line of dialogue!). The picture has WAY too many false-alarm scares (you know the kind I mean) and some interminably slow stretches (such as TWO dull explorations of the Tierney character’s darkened house). I amazed myself by guessing the killer’s identity early on, but then had to watch the picture’s ending twice to make sure that the killer’s distorted face was indeed the one I had been expecting. Throw in some plot holes, some unexplained happenings (just what WAS the deal with Tierney’s Major Chatham character?) and some unsatisfying turns (why no slaughter of the two teens in the school basement?) and you’ve got yourself a real mixed bag, at best. This film made me wonder whether I was perhaps tiring of the whole slasher subgenre, until I saw the awesomely well-done The Stepfather a few days later, which made me realize that I can still love these kinds of films, when they are done right. So do see Zito’s film, but don’t expect overly much … and DO try to track down the Losey noir one day, for some real thrills…

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Mia Farrow, a butchering maniac, Hayley Mills and Bernard Herrmann! It’s See No Evil and Endless Night, in the Shocktober Double Feature #10…