Yellow in Horror – Black Christmas (1974)

Chapter 14

On a special holiday edition of my yellow in horror series, I would like to discuss the original Black Christmas. The bleak 1974 Bob Clark directed film which is not to be confused with either of the lackluster remakes. It was released during the height of the Giallo Italian horror boom of the 70’s and the inspiration taken from those films is all over this sorority house horror masterpiece. The use of bright greens, blues, reds, and yellows in both wardrobe and setting. The faceless killer. The police officer investigating. And Black Christmas uses these inspirations well, but I’m going to concentrate specifically on the color yellow.

Olivia Hussey’s character Jess wears a yellow costume – a yellow collared shirt under a black sweater – when we first meet her. The yellow shirt establishes her as innocent, or in better context of horror films of the 70s and 80s, the final girl. She isn’t pure in a virginal sense since we later find out she is pregnant and wants to have an abortion. The boyfriend involved is upset by this and is later set up as a red herring killer. This yellow shirt is one she wears repeatedly in the film, including when she reports the obscene phone calls the house has been receiving to the police.

The house itself is covered in yellow patterned wallpapers, bedding, and curtains. The first girl murdered, Clare Harrison, has her entire room covered in such wallpaper. As he packs her clothing for the trip home for the holidays, she does not notice the man hiding behind the plastic clothing bags in her closet right away.

These wallpapers were popular at the time, but in this film they show the moral rot of the house and it’s residents. Sorority girls are rarely portrayed as innocent, and the wall papers here show the moral rot that come with those reputations. Clare ends up in the attic overlooking a window encased in one of those plastic bags. The girls wonder where she went to and her father shows up looking for her. She is lit by nothing but yellow candlelight and the dim light from outside. The police never end up finding her body because they never check the attic.

As Clare’s father leaves the house with the foul mouthed House Mother who runs the sorority, he leaves in a yellow car. Through the very window his deceased daughter sits next to in the attic, the camera shows the man getting into the car with the House Mother. A sad shot, especially when the ending arrives and Clare still isn’t found.

John Saxon plays to police officer who leads the investigation in this film. You’ll remember him from A Nightmare on Elm Street and several Giallo films in which he always seems to play some kind of law enforcement. Like I said, lots of Giallo inspration here. He sets up a wire tap and spends time investigating the calls going into the house. At one point, he sits in a yellow room while he works. This sets him up a pure, a man of the law. The savior these women need before its too late even if the red herring boyfriend of Jess is assumed to be the killer.

I want to talk about Margot Kidder’s character, Barb, for a second. Barb is sarcastic and blunt. A bit of a drunk. But her honesty through hostility is actually endearing defense mechanism. She says what no one else will, and I love her for it. Her character never really uses yellow in any capacity in large part because her sarcasm is her mask. Her bedroom is covered in purples (it was Giallo inspired, remember) and adorned with glass figurines of swans and unicorns. This woman may seem strong, but she is as fragile as the decorations in her room. While Jess stands at the door listening to carolers, Barb is passed out in bed and is stabbed with her own glass unicorn by the killer. The sarcasm couldn’t save her after all.

The shots of the killer always mask his face in shadow or just show his shadow as he looms over his next victim (the hand above is one of my favorite shots in the film). Whether it is just a slit of an open door only allowing his eye to be seen or just shadows falling on his face, the killer remains a mystery as yellow casts him in rotted, festering light to match what he is going through internally.

Eventually his calls to the house become traceable and the police realize he is calling from inside the house. Poor Jess is the one fielding the calls, having to listen to all the disgusting gibberish he says into the phone. When the officer tries to contact the cop car he left outside the house, we find out that the officers on duty have been killed and he demands that Jess be warned to get out of the house. That yellow wallpapered house with Jess in her pure yellow shirt worried for her friends who won’t answer her from upstairs. She is too good a person to just leave them behind. Our Final Girl goes looking for Barb and her other housemate and finds the killer.

Jess’s boyfriend appears and he and Jess have an altercation in the cellar that leaves him dead. The police feel like they have cleared the house without checking the attic (after all, they believe the boyfriend was the killer). They give Jess drugs to help her sleep INSIDE the house on that sickly yellow patterned bedding that was apparently popular at the time. Clare’s body is still waiting to be found in the attic. The bloody broken glass from Barb’s decorations littering the floor of her room. The killer is still inside the house. Hiding. Waiting for the right moment to attack defenseless Jess with no one left to save her. Her parents won’t arrive for a couple hours and the police start leaving.

Sometimes the bleakest of endings is the best one. Sometimes, in our darkest moments, the holidays can be nightmares. To quote Barb, isn’t Santa naughty? Merry Christmas, horror fam.