Which is scarier?

I decided, half way through the movie I was watching Saturday night, to wait and review the two films to be watched over the weekend. The reason being, a funny questioned occurred to me: Which is scarier - a horror film or Bette Davis in, well, anything?

Saturday night I watched The Letter, an old B&W film set in the Philippines, starring Bette Davis. In it, Davis' character kills a man whom she says tried to "make love to her;" a euphemism for rape back then I would imagine. She is married to a very busy business man, and they are both friends with a lawyer. The lawyer defends her for free, but as he starts to dig deeper, he discovers that things are not exactly what they appear.

I had never seen this film before, and was not sure what to expect. Though I love classic films, and especially love Bette Davis, more often than not in the past two weeks I have been striking out on films I've watched. I was pleasantly surprised by this. Bette Davis gave a superb performance here, reminding me at times of Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. For the most part, the movie was great fun to watch, with an ending I didn't really see coming.

About ten minutes into the film, I started laughing, and about 45 minutes in my husband joined me. Our laughter had nothing to do with how bad the film was, because it wasn't; it was just so much fun watching Bette Davis. More than any other actress in movie history, she was capable of playing an absolutely cold, calculating and overall terrifying woman. She had these eyes that scare the crap out of me to this day. The movie is in the old style melodrama, for which Davis was perfect. It delighted me to no end to see how absolutely evil she looked at times.

Another reason I was laughing while watching Bette Davis was because I knew that tonight I was going to watch a horror film. It made me question whether anything in the horror film could be scarier than watching Bette Davis.

That brings me to tonight's movie: Black Christmas. A Canadian movie filmed in 1974, this pre-dated all the American slasher films like Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth. This was clearly a low-budget film, but it made the most of what it had, its minimalist style heightening the tense atmosphere. There is extremely little gore, only a bit of blood, and you don't really see anything. Even so, it is quite scary, and in just the way I like. I have reached a point where I don't want any gore or gratuitous sex. Seeing a horror film that is scary while showing next to nothing was satisfying.

The film makes excellent use of shadows, and there are scenes that the recent film The Strangers (on my list) clearly borrowed. There is an extended scene where the killer's shadow can be seen behind the protagonist, who is talking on the phone. I thought it was one of the scariest points of the film. This was a fairly slow film with more plot than scares, but as a big horror film fan, I think it has a lot going for it.

A side note: this film was clearly not an American film. A few Canadian accents aside, the main plot has to do with a sorority sister that is pregnant and wants to have an abortion. She and her boyfriend argue about it through much of the film. There is also an old lady who swears a lot, and one of the characters makes some very raunchy jokes. While this movie did all right here in the US when it was released, I cannot see any American filmmaker wanting to make a horror film that deals so frankly with abortion as this film does.

Actors note: There are several actors here that are unknowns but go on to have great careers. Margot Kidder of Superman fame is here, as is Andrea Martin. John Saxon plays the police officer in charge. He later played pretty much the same character a decade later in A Nightmare on Elm Street (and one of the sequels).

Overall, I had a great time watching the two very different films this weekend. I think these two are definitely a keeper.