Hanging on the Telephone

Annette Andre as Jeannie Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

Black Christmas (1974)

I'm not really a big fan of slasher movies but that's actually because nine out of ten are derivative pap with Hollywood churning them out in a manner somewhat akin to wringing out an old dishcloth. But when they're done properly, such as here in and the first Halloween (the latter often considered the daddy of the slasher genre though this film actually predates it by four years), they're really rather enjoyable. 

Now granted, Black Christmas is utterly predictable right from the off, but what makes this surprisingly shoestring budgeted Canadian chiller so effective are some truly striking cinematic sequences and the overall atmosphere of the piece. Writer A. Roy Moore and director Bob Clark take the much-repeated (and subsequently adapted) urban legend of 'the babysitter and the man upstairs' and plant it firmly in the festive season, capturing that unnerving, sinister essence that has often gone hand in hand with Christmas (and used to great effect with the traditional ghost stories of the season) yet hidden beneath the tinsel, baubles and the notion of goodwill to all men. 

Olivia Hussey's Jess is bathed in a red glow from the wreath on the sorority house door as she watches the carol singers and its an image and a colour that is redolent of both the warmth and kitsch of Christmas and the bloodbath of the horror itself. The subversion of the festive themes make Black Christmas the perfect candidate for an alternative festive movie, not only in the notion of the horror being set at Christmas but also in the mischievous disregard it has for the season: Margot Kidder's Barb plies a child with drink at a party, and house mother Mrs Mac (Marian Waldman) is hardly ever seen without a bottle of booze - they both know the true 'spirit' of Christmas! And where does our infantalized killer hide out? Why in the attic naturally, the space for abandoned and forgotten toys. 

Also in the film's favour is the fact that the script never once treats its female characters like idiots. Yes they can be a little obnoxious (hello Margot Kidder) but they are astute and convincing as intelligent young college students, who are allowed to discuss and joke about sex, drink and smoke and be independent enough to not only know that they have such rights but to actively insist upon them too, as evinced by Hussey's decision to have an abortion and her refusal to consign her own career and ambitions to the scrapheap because her selfish and highly strung boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea) has failed in his own. These are female characters who are far from the dumb, highly sexualised objects of lust that often populate such examples of the genre. There's no denying that Hussey in particular is a very striking, attractive young woman, but these characters possess an everyday, natural beauty that no longer exists in such a genre these days as the women simply look like they're in a film. 

With its emphasis on suspense from a telephone landline, it would be easy to write off Black Christmas as rather dated now. However nothing could be further from the truth. The basic ingredient of an unknown monster lurking in the shadows, harassing, stalking and terrorising young women continues to be topical and all too relatable  when you consider the online misogyny of trolls. And sadly, just like anyone who has had to fight to get their harassment acknowledged online, it takes our heroines a hell of a long time to be taken seriously by the police or indeed the community at large.

Hanging on the Telephone

Samantha Morton

Hanging on the Telephone

Kylie by Anton Corbijn.

Hanging On The Telephone

John Gordon Sinclair and Carly McKinnon in 1999's Gregory's Two Girls, the belated and somewhat ill advised follow up to Gregory's Girl

Dial M For Murder (1954)

When it comes to Hitchcock, I always seem to be out of step. Vertigo is often proclaimed to be 'the greatest movie ever made', but I've never rated it. I love Rope, and apparently that's not always held in huge esteem among Hitch aficionados. I love his early films in the UK and believe them to be terribly underrated simply because of the great critical and commercial acclaim he achieved in Hollywood. I can agree on Psycho being excellent however.

But even Hitchcock himself hated Dial M for Murder. And watching it on BBC2 at the weekend, I'm struggling to see why.

The film based on a successful play by Frederick Knott, and Hitchcock took on the screen adaptation to fulfill his contract with  Warner Brothers before making the move to Paramount. He was, as he said to Francois Truffaut in the French filmmaker's A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, "coasting, playing it safe" He believed he phoned in his direction and that the action wouldn't have been any more exciting if it was set within a phonebox. But I wholeheartedly disagree. Whatever Hitchcock's issue with the film, I know other directors would kill to make just one movie like Dial M for Murder - his 45th film.

Ray Milland stars as former tennis-pro Tony Wendice who, fearing he is about to lose his wife, Margot (the utterly divine Grace Kelly) and her money to Robert Cummings' American crime writer Mark Halliday, whom she has had an affair with, hatches a plan to have her  murdered so he can collect on her life insurance policy. Wendice  blackmails an old university friend, Swann (Anthony Dawson) to do the dirty deed, using a boys' night out with Halliday as his alibi. Inevitably, it all goes wrong and Margot kills her would-be killer, leaving the slippery and quick-witted Wendice with no alternative but to improvise.

The cast is absolutely first rate; Milland is a wonderful mix of the urbane and the devious as Wendice, portraying the kind of man who is used to falling on his feet. This is in stark contrast to his hapless patsy Swann - was there ever a better actor at portraying this type of dishonourable gentleman as Antony Dawson? With his sports jacket and pencil moustache he's like the living embodiment of some public service warning about not cashing just anyone's cheques. There was always something about him, something in those wild eyes, that suggested that, beneath the clubbable affability there was more than a hint of the cornered animal. 

Grace Kelly, acting here for Hitchcock for the very first time, is very convincing as Margot and of course utterly flawless too. But it's worth mentioning her acting chops in her final scenes; washed out, haunted, wounded and confused. There's a lovely, near scene-stealing performance from John Williams as Hubbard, the detective on the case that's a joy to behold too. Admittedly Cummings is the least interesting in the cast, but that is perhaps because he has the least to do with the role of the pure and virtuous good guy determined to saved his loved one from the hangman's noose. The fact that he's an adulterer doesn't factor into the characterisation or performance.

Like Rope and Rear Window, Hitchcock places the vast majority of the action within one single set, in this case Wendice's flat. Such a decision, whilst totally faithful to Knott's original play, could lead to charges of staginess on the big screen, but Hitchcock neatly averts these by offering up some wonderfully tricksy camera work, most notably in the scene where Wendice explains his plan to Swann - the camera rising up to the ceiling to point down over our plotters in a way that foreshadows the space as a crime scene in waiting. Equally the setpiece of the attempted murder is just as impressive; wrought with tension, Dawson strangles Kelly with a silk scarf as she scrabbles wildly for something - anything - that can save her life. When her hand grasps a pair of scissors, we're instantly relieved...only to be totally sickened a second later when she plunges them between Dawson's shoulder blades, getting further embedded as he falls to the floor.

Dial M For Murder possesses all the great strengths of Hitchcock, it is suspenseful, dark, stylish and blackly comic. He may have believed he was coasting, but it's further proof that, even on a bad day, he was utterly unique.

Hanging On The Telephone

Suzy Parker, 1953

Hanging on the Telephone

 

Catherine Deneuve

Hanging On The Telephone

Joi Lansing

Silent Sunday : All You Need Is...

Hanging On The Telephone

Noel Neill as Lois Lane

Hanging On The Telephone

Jane Fonda,

Klute (1971)

Hanging On The Telephone

Jose Read, Blue Murder At St Trinians (1957)

Hanging On The Telephone

Toni Lamont

Hanging On The Telephone

From Shop Girl To Campaign Star

The glorious Paloma Faith, the Agent Provocateur shop girl turned chanteuse has returned to her former employer - this time to front their latest lingerie campaign in a series of wow modelling shots entitled Knickers Forever!

Hanging On The Telephone

The Honeywell designed briefcase telephone/computer for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as modelled by Chela Matthison

Which gives me the excuse to post some more images of the stewardesses in the film. Here's a poster featuring Penny Brahms and Heather Downham 

I loved the Pan-Am stewardess costume design

Edwina Carroll

Two of Penny Brahms

Heather Downham

Hanging On The Telephone

Felicity Hayward

Hanging on the Telephone

Sue Baloo

Hanging On The Telephone

Jacqueline Bisset, Casino Royale