Gilda Radner / Michael Putland/GettyImagesīlack Christmas’s cast is a mix of already established stars (Hussey and 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Keir Dullea among them) and future stars (Margot Kidder, for example, had not yet starred in Superman), and that’s also reflected in the people who were almost in the cast. The role was offered to screen legend Bette Davis, but she ultimately turned the role down. The role is vividly played by veteran actress Marian Waldman, but Clark originally had a bigger named in mind. Mac, was loosely based on one of Clark’s aunts, who also had a habit of hiding liquor bottles throughout the house. Bette Davis was asked to play the house mother. Arbeid replied that he hoped she was right. Since Black Christmas was being filmed in Toronto, she believed it to be the film the psychic was referring to. Hussey took the part, and when she showed up on set, she apparently had a rather interesting reason for saying yes.Īccording to co-producer Gerry Arbeid, Hussey told him that she’d been informed by a psychic that she would be involved in a film in Canada that would make a lot of money. To that end, he reached out to Olivia Hussey, then best known for her work on Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, to play the role of “final girl” Jess Bradford. A psychic convinced Olivia Hussey to star in the movie.Ĭlark wanted to make Black Christmas as sophisticated as he possibly could, and pursued top-tier talent to elevate his script. Moore eventually came around, and the film’s now-famous mysterious killer concept stuck. Clark also introduced the idea that the film would never actually show the killer to the audience, something Moore-the film’s sole credited writer-“didn’t want to go along with” at first, according to Clark. The director dialed back the murder sequences, believing they were “too violent,” and added various dialogue to “emphasize the adultness of college students,” including the scenes in which Barb (Margot Kidder) is drunkenly ranting about turtles having sex. The script, then retitled Stop Me, underwent yet another evolution in Clark’s hands. That concept was tweaked by writer Timothy Bond to include a collegiate setting, and eventually made its way to director Bob Clark, who’d made a working home for himself in Canada after kickstarting his film career in the United States with low-budget films like Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. Black Christmas went through several script evolutions.īlack Christmas began life as a screenplay by Roy Moore called The Babysitter, which riffed on the now-familiar urban legend of a babysitter tormented by a killer who turns out to be making phone calls from inside the house. Here are a dozen facts about the film, from creepy voices to the actors who almost joined the production. Nearly a decade before he made A Christmas Story, director Bob Clark made another holiday classic of a different color: The story of a sorority house decorated with Christmas lights, an unsuspecting group of young women, and a mysterious killer lurking in the attic.īlack Christmas is one of the most important Canadian horror films of all time, and is now considered a classic of both the Christmas and the horror genres, as well as an important benchmark on the road to slasher films as we now know them.
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