2.8 /10 1 Votes
14% Rotten Tomatoes Initial release 25 December 2006 (USA) Initial DVD release 3 April 2007 Screenplay Glen Morgan | 4.6/10 IMDb 22% Metacritic Director Glen Morgan Box office 21.5 million USD | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cast Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michelle Trachtenberg, Andrea Martin, Katie Cassidy, Lacey Chabert Similar Christmas Day movies, Teen movies, Horror movies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Black Christmas is a Canadian-American horror franchise that consists of two slasher films, a novel and merchandise. The films have collectively grossed over $25 million at the box-office worldwide.
Contents
The franchise began with the 1974 film Black Christmas which was directed by Bob Clark and starred Olivia Hussey, John Saxon and Margot Kidder. Based on the urban legend "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs" and a series of real murders in West section of Montreal, Quebec, the plot focuses on a mysterious deranged stranger sneaking into a sorority house where a group of sorority sisters reside in, and begin to receive threatening phone calls by the stranger before getting murdered one by one inside the house. Receiving a positive reception and generally considered to be one of the earliest slasher films that would later inspire Halloween, it has since gained a cult following and received a novelization in 1976 written by Lee Hayes.
In 2006, the remake of the same name was released. It was directed by Glen Morgan, produced by Bob Clark and starred notable actors including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Katie Cassidy and Oliver Hudson. Unlike the original film, the remake instead focuses on the killer named "Billy" (that was more ambiguous in the original film), and included much more gore and violence than that of the original. Upon its release, its reception was much more unfavorable.
Overview
In the original film, during Christmas break, a group of sorority sisters begin receiving strange anonymous phone calls. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don't express much concern. Meanwhile, Jess Bradford is planning to get an abortion, but her boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park and set up a wiretap to the sorority house. It is revealed that the obscene phone calls are coming from inside the house. Jess discovers the dead bodies of her friends and has a confrontation with the killer, Billy, and flees to the basement. The film ends with Jess killing the person she mistook for the killer.
In the remake, the film focuses more on the background of Billy. It is revealed that he was abused by his mother as a child. His mother locked him in the attic and he killed her years later when he managed to escape. Years later, a group of six sorority sisters consisting of Kelli, Dana, Lauren, Megan, Heather, Melissa and their house mother, who now live in Billy's childhood home. They are soon harassed by threatening and intimidating obscene phone calls during Christmas Break. As one of the girls goes missing, they soon begin being murdered by Billy.
Novel
In 1976, Lee Hayes wrote a novelization for the first film. This book is currently out of print and hard to find.
Merchandise
In December 2016, Scream Factory released a Collector's Edition Blu-Ray of the original film.
