Zittrer, Carl - Black Christmas

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Silent Night	12:47

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Evil Night	13:07

Photos

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Information/Write-up

Directed by the late Bob Clark and released in 1974, BLACK CHRISTMAS follows a group of sorority sisters who are receiving threatening phone calls while being stalked and murdered during the holiday season. It is discovered that the murders are carried out by a deranged killer hiding in the attic of their sorority house.

BLACK CHRISTMAS is a classic horror film that has stood the test of time, and pre-dates what is commonly known today as the "slasher movie".

The haunting, dissonant score composed by composer Carl Zittrer (PORKY'S, A CHRISTMAS STORY) makes its release for the first time in any format via Waxwork Records. For decades, the score to BLACK CHRISTMAS never receive an actual official release. The score masters were thought to be lost or destroyed for 40 years. Waxwork Records collaborated with composer Carl Zittrer to research and track down these original masters. After locating them, Zittrer constructed a cohesive BLACK CHRISTMAS film score experience. Full album artwork created by Ghoulish Gary Pullin.

Many of the holiday movies we consider classics or cult favorites today did not seem destined for such glory when we first reviewed them. Some we panned. Others were flops. Others just weren’t particularly holiday-focused.

We dug up 10 of those reviews from our archives, which we’ve rounded up here, along with info on where to stream them. Below is how the critic A.H. Weiler reviewed “Black Christmas” for The New York Times on Oct. 20, 1975:

“Black Christmas,” which landed on local screens a year after its release in Canada where it was produced, is a whodunit that begs the question of why it was made.

The answer is hard to come by. This moody depiction of the Christmas slayings of university sorority sisters and their housemother, among others, is as murky as the script, which dotes largely on obscenities that are no more pointed than the violence, dull direction and pedestrian performances.

Why this skulking psychopath is driven to making explicitly obscene phone calls in a variety of crazed voices to the girls before dispatching them remains a fairly foggy business. The slightly comic, alcoholic housemother, Marian Waldman, and Margot Kidder, who is also a drunk and as blatantly outspoken as the killer, and Andrea Martin and Lynne Griffin as the other victims, are obvious in perfunctory portrayals.

Olivia Hussey, as the pregnant, sole survivor, is properly confused and terrified by the bloody events. But Keir Dullea, the neurotic music student-lover she rejects, does little but rant about the prospective child she doesn’t want and smash his piano in a fit of rage.

After several witless murders, John Saxon, the film’s unflustered, if perplexed, detective, cynically asks a dumb cop, “Don’t you think we ought to look into it?” Considering the ersatz tension and plotting, “Black Christmas” is hardly worth the efforts of all concerned.
-The New York Times, December 11, 2018

All Music composed, conducted, arranged and produced by Carl Zittrer

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