Jessy - The stairs to death
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Jessy - The stairs to death |
| Original title | Black Christmas |
| Country of production | Canada |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bob Clark |
| script | A. Roy Moore |
| production | Bob Clark |
| music | Carl Zittrer |
| camera | Reginald H. Morris |
| cut | Stan Cole |
| occupation | |
| |
Jessy - The stairs to death (Original title: "Black Christmas") is a Canadian horror film from 1974 . The film is about a group of college students who are threatened by a psychopathic killer in their dormitory. The production, which has achieved cult status among horror fans, is considered to be the trailblazer for the slasher film of the 1980s.
action
During a Christmas party on the eve of the festival, a stranger gains access to a student dorm and hides in the attic. While the rest of the residents celebrate, Clare retreats to her room, where she is surprised and killed by the intruder. The perpetrator hides Clare's body in the attic.
When Clare's father and several fellow students report the young woman missing the next day, the police remain inactive. In the meantime, resident Jessy has an argument with her boyfriend Peter; she is pregnant and, unlike her boyfriend, does not want to keep the child. After the two have left the house, the housemother, Mrs. MacHenry, also falls victim to the psychopathic stranger who also hides her corpse in the attic. Jessy, who returns to the home after a while, does not notice the absence of Mrs. MacHenry and receives an obscene phone call.
On the same evening, the body of a young girl was found near the dormitory, so that the police took the disappearance of Clare and the increasing number of obscene calls in the home seriously and installed an interception circuit. Shortly afterwards, Barb is murdered by the stranger in the house. A short time later, Phyl, who wanted to check on Barb, is also killed by him. Since Peter has been acting strange since the argument with Jessy, the suspicion falls on him first.
Jessy is now, unknowingly, the last survivor in the dormitory when one of the obscene calls can be traced. It turns out that the call is coming from the home itself and the killer is in the house. When Jessy discovers the corpses of her roommates, the killer watches her through a crack in the door. She knocks the door against him and flees into the cellar. At the same time, Peter forcibly enters the basement and is killed by Jessy, who now also considers her boyfriend to be the killer. When the police arrive, the danger seems over. But while Jessy is recovering from the shock in her bed and the police are busy with their investigations in the house, the camera pans up to the attic again in the last scene, where the killer is still hiding.
background
The film was shot on 35mm film in Toronto within eight weeks in the autumn of 1974 and was released in Canadian cinemas on October 11, 1974. In the USA it was launched on December 20, 1974 under the title Silent Night, Evil Night . The title was later changed to Black Christmas and again to Stranger in the House for TV broadcast .
influence
The film by director Bob Clark has achieved cult status among genre fans, which is v. a. developed in the years following its publication. Jessy - The Staircase to Death is one of the first slasher films , along with Im Blutrausch des Satans (1971) , whose popularity peaked in the early 1980s after the sensational success of John Carpenter's Halloween - The Night of Horror (1978) . Clark's film introduced a number of themes that would later become standard themes in slasher films. One of them is the frequent use of subjective camera shots, so-called point-of-view shots , from the killer’s point of view, as they are later quoted in almost all slashers. Another motif is the serial killing of young girls by an unknown psychopathic murderer, which became the main theme of the modern slasher film. In addition, Jessy - The Staircase to Death made a convention to set the action of slashers on a special day or holiday, such as Christmas in this case. The film created the image for the first time of a killer hiding in the victim's house and calling from there. This topic was taken up again in later films such as The horror comes at 10 (1979). The character Jessy, who is the last survivor at the end of the film and faces the supposed killer, can be described as one of the first final girls of the modern slasher film.
Remakes
The film was remade twice. The first remake, Black Christmas , was made in 2006 and directed by Glen Morgan.
In 2019 produced Blum House Productions with Black Christmas another remake, directed by Sophia Takal .
Reviews
The film received mixed reviews after its premiere in 1974. Edward Jones described the plot as dragging on, arguing that the film offered nothing new, but contained enough action not to be a failure. Variety magazine, on the other hand, judged the film to be bloody, pointless and clumsy.
It was only in the course of the popularization of slasher films in the late 1970s that the film received more attention and from then on received largely positive to downright glorifying reviews. E.g. from the Internet film platform Film Threat , on which the author Heidi Martinuzzi described the film as innovative and above all praised the portrayal of the two main actors. Film critic Roger Ebert also mentioned the film alongside Wes Cravens The Last House on the Left as a positive example of the slasher phenomenon that emerged in the 1970s and called it trend-setting in this context. The film currently has an average rating of 7.2 with a maximum of 10 stars on the IMDb film database .
Awards
- 1976: nominated for best film
- 1976: nominated for best horror film
Web links
- Jessy - The stairs to her death in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Jessy - The stairs to death in the German dubbing file
- Information and photos about the locations of the film (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ BlairWitch.de : Black Christmas - Blumhouse announces remake! Theatrical release later this year on June 13, 2019
- ↑ Variety : Blumhouse Remaking Cult Hit 'Black Christmas' With Imogen Poots Set to Star from June 13, 2019
- ↑ cf. Edward Jones in Horror Cliches: Up From The Dead, And Still Fun , The Free Lanced Star. June 10, 1975 - Retrieved December 20, 2009.