A couple of months ago I attended Film Geeks San Diego’s Secret Morgue where they presented a 13-hour horror film marathon. The titles were undisclosed and that made a game of showing trailers before each feature that hinted at the film they were about to screen. Before the Ozplotation movieTurkey Shootstarring Olivia Hussey they played the trailer for Hussey’s horror film Black Christmas a movie I had zero experience with. Recently I discovered the film available on streaming through Shudder and decided to give it a go.

Black Christmas, stars, in addition to Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder of Superman, Kier Dullea of 2001: A Space Odysseyand John Saxon of well John Saxony things. Directed by Bob Clark, who gave use the timeless holiday magic of A Christmas Story, the movie is about a sorority house of young ladies that are terrorized by an obscene phone caller and stalked by homicidal maniac. Through the course of the film victims fall prey to the unknown killer as the mostly incompetent police fail to deal with the escalating crisis. This sounds fairly standard for any number of movies that followed in the wake of the phenomenally successful Halloween; oh I’m sorry I didn’t get that title correct, John Carpenter’s Halloween. Except there is a wrinkle here, Halloweenwas released in 1978 and Black Christmas hit theaters in 1974.

While Black Christmasdid quite well at the box officer, netting over 4 million dollars on a budget about $600,000 it certainly did not explode into public awareness nor did it drive a sea change in horror films that followed. I cannot explain this and no one really can, that is part of the risk and eternally unknowable intersection of art and commerce. Of the pair I consider Black Christmas, possessing better realized characters and a more active plot, to be the better film and yet it is Halloweenthat spawned sequel after sequel, and scores of pale imitations.

In the end no artists can know what will strike fire and what projects will sink without a ripple. The best creative artists can do is work on what fires their passion and not worry about the rest.