Black Christmas - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Black Christmas



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


​

Movie
There are two films that are credited with having HUGE influences on the slasher genre. The first is, of course, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Shot many years before the bloody slasher craze, many a film maker has been quoted as saying that it was used as inspiration for the monstrous villain stalking young women and men in order to butcher them. The second is “Black Christmas”. Bob Clark’s 1974 tale of terror was the film that kick started the 70’s and 80’s slasher phase that dominated the market for over 2 full decades. While most people remember Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and the other franchises, I feel the general public has forgotten about Black Christmas. It was a low budget Canadian film that came and went during its theatrical run without nary a thought, but it wasn’t till a few years later when the home video craze caught on that “Black Christmas” started gaining the cult recognition that it deserves. Despite several home video releases that were less than stellar, Black Christmas has remained a highly sought after release that is now not only getting the recognition that it deserves, but also the special edition release that it deserves (well, except for one issue that I’ll bring up in the audio section of the review).

It’s Christmas time and the air is filled with jolly singers and sorority girls getting ready for their Christmas break. However the girls Phi Kappa Sigma are in for a really crummy Christmas holiday. When one of the girls ends up missing the rest of the sorority are naturally upset. However, no one seems to really put much stock in the girl’s babbling until Lt. Ken Fuller (John Saxon, best known the father in Nightmare on Elm Street) decides to take them a bit more seriously. The girls had been receiving obscene phone calls for the last few days, but had thought nothing of it. Now with Clare (Lynne Griffin) the dots are slowly being connected. One by one the helpless girls are picked off as a crazed psychopath stalks his prey and kills them on the phone as he continues to call the Sorority house.

Lt. Fuller sets a wiretap on the house in hopes of catching the killer, and instructs the remaining girls, Jess (Olivia Hussey), Barb (Margot Kidder) and Phyl (Andrea Martin) to hunker down and wait for the next call so they can put a stop to him. Little does the police and the girls know, the mysterious killer is operating inside the very house that they’re holing themselves up in. Coming out when the coast is clear and grabbing his next victim. As the hunt continues, Lt Fuller and Jess work together to draw him out before there is no one left in Phi Kappa Sigma to answer the phone.

While Bob Clark’s film is widely considered the first REAL slasher of its kind, the movie almost seems like a thriller to modern audiences. The gore and wildly over the top kills that were representative of the 1980’s hadn’t been molded into popular cinema just yet and Clark had decided to make a film that relied on actual terror of WHO was doing the killing rather than enjoying kills themselves. The biggest allowance for that is in never letting the audience (or even most of the girls) see who the killer is or know why he is there. You never actually see the face of the mysterious butcher but instead rely on point of view shots as seen through his eyes or the occasional shot that focuses in on his eyes or a hand. The audience is left to sit and wonder just who this man is and why he’s there, but we DO know that he’s crazy as a loon. That much is very obvious. While most slashers tend to focus on the look and intimidation factor of Jason lumbering across the room, or Freddy jumping out and scaring you, but Black Christmas loves to keep you guessing. Which is one of the best parts of the scare. The constant confusion and wondering if you’re ever going to see the murderer.

Black Christmas is a great horror flick and one of the best in the genre when you compare it against what came next. While it is fantastic you have to look at the film as a relic of its time. The gore was fairly minimalistic and the acting was very much a “70’s” film, if you know what I mean. Horror movies are never bastions of cinematic genius or superb acting, but “Black Christmas” sports a very low budget B-movie vibe to it. The biggest claims to fame come in the form of Olivia Hussey (who was popular due to her starring in the 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet”), John Saxon as Lt. Fuller and Lois Lane herself (Margot Kidder) acting the part of the foul mouthed drunken Barb. With that being said, Clark really knows how to bring out the best in his cast. It goes to show you that you don’t need constant gore and jump scares to make something frightening. He uses light, shadow and lack of seeing who the killer is to build tension and creep the audience out in a slow and methodical pace instead of the afore mentioned tactics that seem to dominate horror movies for the last 30 years or so.




Rating:

Rated R by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

Now, according to Scream Factory, this was given a brand new scan in 2022 from the original camera negative (pretty common with Shout/Scream for their 4K releases) and it actually looks better than I was expecting. I rated the 2016 Scream Factory collector’s edition as a solid 4/5 rating, but this looks REALLY nice. The film will still be incredibly grainy due to how it was shot (especially in low light), but the burnished colors really pop with the HDR application, and the blacks are really impressive looking (outside of some crush that I just don’t think will go away no matter what resolution master we get or what meta data is included). Depth of field is really impressive, with some nice scaling for us to see, and skin tones are spot on perfect. Again, this is going to be a grainy GRAINY film, but it looks gorgeous in 4K UHD (just a heads up, the Blu-ray also shares the new 4K master used for the 4K UHD disc, so it also shows some minor improvements over the 2016 image).







Audio:

Now here’s where things get REALLY interesting. Back in the 2016 there was a whole hullabaloo about both the 5.1 audio AND the original mono track. Unfortunately Scream Factory got put under fire for using a 5.1 mix that had been altered and “updated” with modern sounding special effects, and the mono track was VERY rough due to the source elements being in poor shape. There was no access to the magnetic track to get a new audio mix, but instead only a beat up optical track that was from a rough print. Unfortunately it was VERY rough sounding (like REALLY rough) and Scream Factory recalled the discs and repressed them with the mono mix from the Critical Mass DVD, which sounded a lot better (if not heavily compressed).

With this new 4K releases comes completely restored mixes where audio tech Brett Cameron describes (in one of the special features) how they spent hundreds of hours restoring both the 5.1 and the Mono mix to get back to the original theatrical feel. The Mono mix has been completely reworked, cutting out much of the vicious hiss that has been indicative of the film since the theater, and smoothing it out a lot. The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track has always been problematic as the 5.1 mixes for home video have been altered heavily with modern sounding effects sometime in the past, which is not indicative of the theatrical sound. The audio remix pulls out ALL (or almost all) of the modern sounding effects, and splices and level balances and mixes in the original audio effects to make it sound much more like the original mono mix. Something which is VERY appealing as a purist (yes, I know, most purists will stick to the Mono mix anyways, but the 5.1 track now sounding like a 5.1 upmix of the Mono instead of being completely different is an awesome treat). It’s still got some hisses and some odd hollowness, but that’s a side effect of the 1970s audio sources that very well may never be gotten rid of. All in all, a very nice sounding set of tracks (I did notice that Scream Factory dropped the 2.0 Stereo track from the 2016 Blu-ray here, which isn’t a bad thing since it was just a 2.0 downmix of the 5.1 mix and kind of redundant when you had the mono mix)








Extras:

4K UHD Disc
• NEWLY RESTORED MONO TRACK (2022)
• NEW Restoration Of The 5.1 Audio, Restoring Missing Dialogue, Music And Sound Effects (2022)

Feature Film Blu-ray
• BRAND NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE (2022)
• NEWLY RESTORED MONO TRACK (2022)
• NEW Restoration Of The 5.1 Audio, Restoring Missing Dialogue, Music And Sound Effects (2022)
• Audio Commentary With Director Bob Clark
• Audio Commentary With Actors John Saxon And Keir Dullea
• Audio Commentary With Billy (Actor Nick Mancuso)
• Audio Interview With Director Bob Clark

Blu-ray Special Features
• 2006 Critical Mass HD Master (1.78:1) – DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Film And Furs – Remembering Black Christmas With Art Hindle
• Victims And Virgins – Remembering Black Christmas With Lynne Griffin
• Black Christmas Legacy
• 40th Anniversary Panel At FanExpo 2014 Featuring John Saxon, Art Hindle, Lynne Griffin & Nick Mancuso
• On Screen!: Black Christmas Featurette
• 12 Days Of Black Christmas Featurette
• Black Christmas Revisited Featurette
• Archival Interviews With Olivia Hussey, Art Hindle, Margot Kidder, Bob Clark, & John Saxon
• Midnight Screening Q&A With Bob Clark, John Saxon And Carl Zittrer
• Two Scenes With A New Vocal Soundtrack
• Original Theatrical Trailers (English And French)
• Original TV And Radio Spots
• Alternative Title Sequences

Final Score: ​

Black Christmas is a piece of cinematic history that is one of the most instrumental in creating my favorite horror sub-genre. The slasher has sort of fallen out of grace the last 10-15 years, but I still hold a very soft spot in my heart for the times when Freddy, Jason and Michael Meyers terrorized their neighborhood blocks, and “Black Christmas” is one of those movies that MUST be watched if you have any sort of appreciation for the genre. This this new special edition is quite the package. A brand new 2K scan of the film from the negatives and a TOOOOOON of extras. The one thing that I’ve always appreciated about Scream/Shout Factory is the sheer number of extras they are able to amass for these collector’s editions (coupled with the fantastic cover art and slip covers). Comparing to the slightly problematic release of the 2016 Blu-ray with the substandard audio, this is a very VERY nice step forward. Great video for the 4K release (and of course the Blu-ray gets the new 4K master as well) and lovingly restored audio mixes that will definitely appeal to the purists. Definite grab for us horror hounds


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, John Saxon, Margot Kidder, Marian Waldman, Andrea Martin
Directed by: Bob Clark
Written by: Roy Moore
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono (Original Restored), English DTS-HD MA 5.1 (Original Restored)
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Scream Factory
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: December 6th, 2022

Recommendation: Great Watch