You're covering a Christmas movie in June?O Wop of Magnitude,have you finally descended into pure madness?You might be saying something like that right now if you were unfamiliar with tonight's entry,probably the prototype for all slasher films that followed,arguably the apex of the amalgamation,teeming with psychological terror,forever laying the disconcerting groundwork for the horror subgenre born out of it.We've covered a lot of "Bob" here at the Wop,but tonight,we'll scrutinize his finest piece of genre work,simplistic in its approach,effective in its delivery,and magnificent in its result.Cynics,take note:If you've never watched this movie before,and doubt the potentcy of its horrific brilliance,simply screen it all alone,late at night,in the dark.Chances are,a lot of what transpires will stay with you long after the lights have come back on,and possibly well into when you turn them off again.My tastes in film,though mostly unchanged since the lifelong love affair began all those years ago,have matured to a degree,and intuition tells me that the movie in front of us tonight,is the ultimate of its class.When you've seen this,like examining strands of horror dNa under a microscope,you instantly see the origins of what made something like Halloween(1978)so effective.In the director's chair,Clark plays a maddening game of cat and mouse with the viewer's deductive reasoning,clouding the film's simple,chilling truth until the bitter end with narrative worthy of a Hitchcockian whodunit,relentlessly applying layer upon layer of moody atmosphere to each frame like a master baker,with ample performances from his cast,which includes John Saxon,Olivia Hussey,Keir Dullea,Margot Kidder,and Nick Mancuso,who combined vocal talents with up to five other actors(including Clark himself)for the unforgettable crank calls from the killer.Due to differences in personal tastes,I can't say for sure whether or not you'll love the movie(probably the only one ever) pulled from prime-time network television for being "too scary" for network audiences,but it'll stay with you.Maybe longer even than you'd like.
Jess(Olivia Hussey),that's the wrong type of wreath,honey.Funeral wreaths...
Late one night,while a sorority house hosts a Christmas party,an unbalanced individual shows up outside,climbs up the trellis,and in through an open attic window.Inside,Jess(Hussey) receives another in a series of obscene phone calls,peppered with a strange mix of whines,groans,obscenities,impersonations,and multiple voices, from someone she's dubbed "the moaner".Meanwhile,Clare(Lynne Griffin)retires to her room to finish packing to go home for the holidays,and gets herself asphyxiated with a sheet of plastic from the closet.The homicidal stranger retreats back to the attic with the spoils of his hunt and props her up in a rocking chair with a window view,the plastic still wrapped around her head.The next morning,Clare's father(James Edmond) arrives to pick up his daughter,only she's nowhere to be found.At the same time,Jess visits her boyfriend,Peter(Dullea),a maladjusted schizoid with dreams of pounding piano keys with his ham fists for a living,with news of pregnancy.When she returns to the sorority she receives another crank call.Barb and Phyl(Kidder and Martin)accompany Mr. Harrison to the local constabulary to file a missing persons report,but when the desk sargeant(Doug "Porky's" McGrath)slags off their concerns with ideas of Clare shacking up with a secret boyfriend on the side,Barb gives the sorority phone number to the obtuse officer with the new exchange...fellatio.Nash is clueless,as the other cops derive great mirth from his ignorance.Jess informs Clare's boyfriend Chris(Art Hindle)of her disappearance,and when he becomes enfuriated at the police's indifference,he storms the station house,demanding the attention of Lt. Fuller(Saxon),whose hands are already full,searching for a missing schoolgirl,and enlisting the concerned collegiates as a search party.Back at the house,Mrs. Mac(Marian Waldman),the girls' binge drinking den mother, investigates noises in the attic she attributes to her cat,and instead finds her face on the wrong end of a crane hook.
The psychiatrists that told Billy(Albert J. Dunk)he was a little nuts,lied.He's a lot nuts.
The search party discovers the mutilated body of the young schoolgirl in the park,and Jess returns home in time for an even more disturbing phone call,after which Peter shows up to discuss plans for their lovechild,offering to give up his career in music to care for the expectant mother,who stuns him with plans to abort it instead.He storms out,in a blind,furious rage.Barb,stuck at the house for the holidays,drinks past the point of anebriation,and after retiring to her room to sleep it off,is stabbed to death with an ornate glass unicorn from her night table,while Jess listens to a group of door-to-door carolers.Jess decides to report the obscene calls to the police,with Lt. Fuller and a technician installing a bug tracer to the phone,directing the terrified girl to keep the caller on the line as long as possible so they can trace his whereabouts,and place an officer in a squad car outside to guard the house.When Phyl later goes up to check on Barb,her fate is all too similar.When Jess receives more calls,this time using Peter's direct quotes from their argument,Fuller is convinced Peter is behind the calls,further reinforced by the discovery of his thoroughly trashed piano in the work room.Finally the crank calls are long enough to be traced and the lawmen fall upon the horrible truth:the calls are coming from inside the sorority house.Nash informs the girl of this over the phone,telling her to retrieve her girlfriends and vacate the premises immediately,but Jess,armed with a fireplace poker,instead discovers her friends corpses upstairs and is attacked by the unknown killer,before barricading herself in the cellar.Peter arrives and breaks a window to gain entry and corner his girlfriend.When the police arrive on the scene,they find their officer slumped dead in his cruiser,with his throat cut,and in the basement,a hysterical Jess clutching the same fireplace poker,next to the lifeless body of Peter,who she beat like a redheaded stepchild.Believing the case is closed,the police and doctors leave the girl sedated and sleeping in her room,and go outside to deal with the media blitz.Up in the attic,Clare and Mrs. Mac's corpses remain undiscovered,and as the killer starts to let himself down from the attic,introducing himself with a whisper,"Agnes,it's me,Billy.",the phone begins to ring.
Always a stickler for freshness,Billy packs Clare's(Lynne Griffin)head in plastic.
Even the list of people who didn't make it into tonight's film for one reason or another reads like a who's who of Hollwood:Bette Davis,Edmund O'Brien,Gilda Radner,Malcolm McDowell.Also released as "Silent Night,Evil Night"(to avoid being mistaken as a blaxploitation flick...put yo weight on it,mothafuckas!),and "Stranger in the House" for television,the story was inspired by real-life murders that took place in Canada during the holiday season.Imagine Olivia Hussey's surprise when Steve Martin told her she was in one of his favorite films of all-time,and it wasn't Romeo and Juliet(1968),but tonight's review instead,which he claims to have seen 20 times(I've sat through it that many,easy).Studio execs approached Clark about changing the ending to have Jess wake up alone with Claire's boyfriend Chris revealing his true nature with the line "Agnes,don't tell them what we did." before killing her.Thank the gods he stood his ground on that one.Naturally,in 2006,the makers of Final Destination released their remake of tonight's entry,which was naturally depressingly awful on all levels,and bereaft of everything that makes the original a classic(Notice a pattern here,Hollywood?).Jaundiced cannibalistic siblings?Seriously,lay off the crystal meth,retards.We won't be covering that particular commode cake here anytime soon.At the moment,I honestly think this entry is the finest example of the slasher movie,to date,and as such deserves the highest scale rating possible,and the full recommendation of yours cruelly,to boot.
What lies within this eye signifies demise is nigh.
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