The Killer in the Viewer, and the Killer in Black Christmas

Before John Carpenter opened Halloween (1977) with a continuous tracking shot that squinted through the eyes of a murderer, Bob Clark directed Black Christmas (1974) with the same opening, but when Carpenter gave evil a body and exposed the moving killer to viewers, Clark created a monster that would never be exposed to the viewer, literally.

Where John Carpenter named Myers The Shape (the inevitable force of evil), Bob Clark starts the circle with a killer that is ultimately evil. The killer of Black Christmas lives in the attic of a sorority house and kills without warning; blood is easy for him, and anything is a weapon. He prank calls the girls from within the house and exhales sounds like Mike Patton on a John Zorn project. The attic is filled with toys and the killer’s madness is at that level: he seems to have the shortness and grunt of a hyperactive child. Anytime the killer is in a scene, we experience him through a 1st person shot. The most impressive thing about this ambiguous monster is the fact that he is never seen. The killer of Black Christmas may be one of the most interesting characters in slasher horror, but no one knows what he looks like. Should we assume he looks like a camera because that is how we associate with him as voyeurs; well, is the killer us. Bob Clark may be exploring Alfred Hitchcock’s ideas of film as a medium that makes the viewer a spectator and participator of good and evil; after all, we can press the stop button or close our eyes. This may be why the horror film has been such a popular genre, because like its forefather the Greek Tragedy, horror is supposed to create a catharsis that causes the viewer to realize he/she may be guilty of enjoying evil a little too much. The horror film is a test to find the true psychopaths among us, and Black Christmas lets us know that we will never discover the primordial forms of evil, because the killer of the cult classic slasher is never caught by the police or the true creeps--the viewers.

The Beast Kills in Cold Blood
With the red herrings in place and the psychedelic, dissident score surrounding, 1971’s The Beast Kills in Cold Blood is a wildly ambiguous addition to the giallo library. The film begins, and we follow a mysterious, masked character through the halls of an ancient castle. The figure is presented through crooked camera angles, as the camera rapidly cross cuts from the front to the back of the stalker (cross cutting will be a remarkable trick throughout the film, which will even make titillations uncomfortable). Although the viewer watches this opening and becomes lured into the atmosphere and tone, the killer does not strike; as he comes to his destination with an oversized, medieval axe (it should be noted that the viewer may be led to believe this story is taking place in the Dark Ages), the lights flash on, and modern doctors appear as the villain scurries away. This opening is a thesis for the remainder of The Beast Kills in Cold Blood: everything, including the strangely short front door of the castle; the obviously drugged doctors--one is played by Klaus Kinski; the rich, sex crazed women who are put in the mental institution because they are trying to escape their lashes of feminine normalcy; and the murderer’s slaughter of four young girls as they squirm in the corner, is an hazy tour through a world of fantasy and contemporary terror.