Canadian sorority house (eh?) is inundated with creepy phone calls from a sicko who then starts bumping people off for three days, starting from Christmas Eve onwards. Olivia Hussey is our virtuous (but surprisingly not virginal, she’s pregnant) leading lady, John Saxon is the investigating cop, Margot Kidder is a boozy, foul-mouthed lush sorority sister, Marion Waldman is the Shelley Winters-esque house mother, Keir Dullea is Hussey’s volatile musician boyfriend, Douglas McGrath is a clueless desk cop, and a young Andrea Martin plays one of the sorority sisters.
This effective, somewhat underappreciated 1974 Bob Clark film is arguably the originator of the slasher pic, being made several years before the much more popular John Carpenter flick ‘Halloween’, the film many credit to having started the subgenre (not to mention ‘When A Stranger Calls’, which is said to be a rip-off of this film). The film’s central mystery is both intriguing and creepy (there are several credible suspects), with the killer being a true whackjob.
The film has numerous unsettling moments (especially the truly bizarre phone calls- said to include the voice of a young Nick Mancuso which are sometimes unbearable to endure, not to mention the fact that the film uses a similar killer POV device to ‘Halloween’, albeit a less fluid use of camera), but without giving away what is in my view one of the best endings to any movie ever, the ending is indeed the film’s show-stopper. It’s a quietly creepy moment that hasn’t been equalled since. Actually, the film’s tagline is great too: ‘If This Movie Doesn’t Make Your Skin Crawl- It’s on Too Tight!’. The acting is a tad uneven, with Dullea living up to at least the first part of his last name, but Kidder, Waldman, and McGrath are great comic relief (Kidder, especially seems to be having fun).
Having said a lot of positive things about the film, the one thing that prevents this often unsettling Canadian flick (eh?) from being in the same league as the aforementioned flick, is that it is overall not really a horror film (Some will find it slow-moving). This is more of a killer thriller, and a very effective one indeed.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Not really a slasher film, yet is just about the only other film even remotely like a slasher film, to give ‘Halloween’ a run for its money. And, remember, it was made before that film. Creepy stuff well worth checking out for the uninitiated.
