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The 1974 cult classic Black Christmas, directed by Bob Clark, has captivated horror fans for decades and has spawned two remakes since it was released. Black Christmas paved the way for movies like Halloween and set the tone for slasher tropes everywhere. One thing that sets this iconic slasher above the rest is its roots in a popular urban legend as well as a real life murderer. That’s right all you true-crime lovers, Black Christmas is based on a real life true-crime story that took place in Montreal, Canada.
Black Christmas is about a group of sorority girls during Christmas break who start receiving threatening phone calls. These threats turn into physical acts of violence as the women try to figure out who the killer is and where he is hiding. As the women are picked off one by one, they soon discover the deranged killer is inside the house with them. Sound familiar? That’s because one of the inspirations for the script, written by Ray Moore, comes from the urban legend “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.” This urban legend later on spawned the movie When A Stranger Calls.
Just Block The Call
Moore initially wrote the screenplay with the title Stop Me and used inspirations from the urban legend to form the plot of Black Christmas. The urban legend, originally written in the 1960s, became very popular in the 1970s and featured a babysitter being harassed by phone calls from a stranger. In the urban legend, the creepy caller repeatedly tells the babysitter to “check the children”, making the babysitter unsettled enough to call the police. The babysitter keeps the stranger on the phone long enough to be traced, where they find out the stranger is hidden in the house. Moore used the basis of this urban legend to build a plot and storyline of his own to send chills down viewer’s spines.
A True Crime Lover’s Dream
Even more chilling, Black Christmas is also based around true events that happened in the city of Westmount, Montreal in November 1943. The real life crime was that of George Webster, a 14-year-old boy who bludgeoned his mother to death with a baseball in their family home. His brother, sister, and a family friend also sustained head injuries from the bat, but did not die at the hands of George. A reason for the attacks was never described, and while he was deemed criminally responsible and charged with his mother’s murder on February 28, 1944, he was declared unfit to stand trial and transferred to a mental hospital. There was some speculation that the movie was inspired by the murders of Wayne Boden, known as “The Vampire Rapist,” that also took place in Montreal but between the years of 1969 and 1971. In 2020 Nick Mancuso, the actor who played the killer in Black Christmas, confirmed with The Telegraph that it was George Webster’s crimes that were actually the inspiration Moore used.
Already being rooted in true crime, Black Christmas was almost named Stop Me. The reasoning for this possible name was to reference William Heirens, aka The Lipstick Killer, who killed three women in Chicago between 1945 and 1946. Heirens wrote “stop me” in lipstick at a crime scene and the alias stuck for him from that day forward.
Catch Up This Holiday Season
True-crime podcasts, shows, and movies are trending hard right now and have been for the last ten years or so. Horror fans and true-crime fans can rejoice this holiday season when they pop on Black Christmas and relax to the soothing sounds of an ‘inspired by true events’ cult classic. Don’t forget to pick up the 4K release of Black Christmas on December 6th. This 3 disc feature includes the original film restored, the original camera negative with audio commentary, and special features.
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