Film / Black Christmas (1974)

He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake...^note  Alternatively: He kills you when you're sleeping, he chokes you when you wake...

"Remember those idyllic scenes out of your childhood? Crisp winter nights, star bright, sleigh bells, crackling yule logs? Candlelight glistening off of shimmering Christmas trees, chestnuts roasting over open fires, carolers beneath snow-covered window ledges? Remember those. Remember them well. After Black Christmas, they'll never be the same again."

— Original Trailer

A 1974 Canadian horror film, and one of the Trope Makers for the Slasher Movie genre. Loosely based on a series of real-life killings, it also borrows a few elements from the urban legend "the babysitter and the man upstairs".

The story involves a group of sorority girls who are staying over for Christmas break. Each is dealing with her own problems, and things are about to get much worse, as unbeknownst to any of them a psychotic killer has taken up residence in their sorority house's attic, and soon begins taunting the girls with terrifying phone calls before bumping them off one by one...

Directed by Bob Clark, who's probably better known these days for directing a very different Christmas-themed movie. The cast includes Margot Kidder as Barb the bad girl, Olivia Hussey as Jess the nice girl, Andrea Martin as Phyl the nerdy girl, Keir Dullea as Jess's long-haired boyfriend Peter, and John Saxon as police lieutenant Fuller.

Remade twice, in 2006 and 2019. Not to be confused with Silent Night, Deadly Night, a completely different Christmas-themed slasher flick. (The fact that Warner Bros. released this one under the title Silent Night, Evil Night in some markets doesn't help.)

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"If these tropes don't make your skin crawl, it's on TOO TIGHT."

• '70s Hair:
  • Phyl has an afro, Peter has a long Beatles-inspired hairdo, Chris and Lt. Fuller have noticeable sideburns, and there's a blonde sorority sister with her ends feathered.
  • Even in the brief glimpse we get of Billy, we can see a mop of curly '70s hair.
• Abortion Fallout Drama: A rare example where the abortion hasn't happened yet, and it's technically still left ambiguous whether Jess gets an abortion or not. Peter insists that abortion is murder and gets extremely upset about the prospect that Jess might have one, an emotional breakdown that slowly convinces Jess that Peter might be the killer and leads her to kill him.
• Accidental Murder: Jess beats Peter to death with a fireplace poker, thinking he was the killer.
• The Alcoholic: Barb drinks quite a bit in the film, and Mrs. Mac has a truly staggering number of booze stashes hidden around the house.
• Alone with the Psycho: In the climax, Jess realizes that the two friends left in the house are also dead, and she suspects Peter of being the killer. After killing him, she's left alone in the house, and we discover that the killer is still there with her.
• Ambiguously Bi: Barb mentions having been with men but can be seen reading a Playboy magazine. According to Word of Gay, she was indeed intended to be bisexual.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Phyl has a very Semitic appearance with a 'Jewfro', though her last name Carlson is Swedish in origin. (Her actress, Andrea Martin, has often been mistaken for Jewish, though she's Armenian.)
• Ax-Crazy: Billy has decided to start murdering the sorority girls for no reason at all, in addition to harassing them over the phone with crude taunts. There's also a scene where he randomly trashes the attic.
• Bad Santa: Patrick swears in front of kids while dressed in a Santa suit.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jess is a perfectly normal Nice Girl, but if she feels that her life is in danger and knows that her friends have been killed, she will defend herself with a fire poker. Even if she wasn't in any danger.
• Big Bad: Billy, the Ax-Crazy murderer terrorizing the sorority.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mrs. Mac makes jokes at other people's expense, but never to their face.
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • The murders of Mrs. Mac and Barb have very little (if any) blood seen.
  • For a truly spotless yet graphic murder though, we have Clare's death: asphyxiation by plastic garment bag.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Mistaking him for the killer, Jess kills Peter. Then we find out that Billy is still alive and in the house, and Jess' fate is left up in the air.
• Book Safe: Mrs Mac has a bottle of whiskey hidden in one of the books in the house.
• Brick Joke: Barb trolls dimwitted Sgt. Nash by giving him "Fellatio" as a new telephone exchange. Later, the detectives are shown cackling with laughter after one of them looks at the number, and it becomes clear that Nash has no idea what the word means.
• Bros Before Hoes: Female version. It's mentioned that Phyl was originally going to spend Christmas with her boyfriend but has changed her plans to go skiing with Barb and Jess to make Barb feel better about her mother abandoning her over the holidays.
• Bullying a Dragon: Lampshaded; when Barb insults Billy during his first phone call, he replies that he's going to kill her, and hangs up. The other sorority girls reprimand Barb for provoking someone who's potentially dangerous and unstable. Billy later makes good on his promise to kill Barb.
• Butt-Monkey: The incompetent Sergeant Nash is the butt of most of the verbal abuse and jokes in the movie.
• By the Hair: Jess is grabbed by her hair at one point when running from the killer.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Billy, during his attack on Barb.
• The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: The Trope Namer and Trope Codifier. After spending the third act trying to trace where Billy is calling from, much to Jess's horror, the calls are traced back to the very sorority house she's in (using Mrs. Mac's phone, which is on a separate line). Of course, the audience is aware from the start that Billy is already inside the house.
• Cat Scare:
  • We hear Barb screaming in panic, suggesting Billy has got her. It turns out she's just having an asthma attack.
  • Peter surprises Jess (and by extension the audience) immediately after she receives one of Billy's phone calls. As added bonus, Peter is one of the suspects.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: The police arrive when Jess is the only living person in the house left.
• Chekhov's Gun: There are a couple of scenes in which Mrs. Mac struggles to get in the front door, referencing how it jams easily. The door jams when Jess tries to run from the killer, forcing her to go to the basement.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Phyl's boyfriend Patrick swears at every available opportunity. Barb as well — she is the most foul-mouthed of the girls.
• Cop Killer: Billy slashes the throat of the officer assigned to watch and protect the sorority girls.
• Country Matters: Billy's first onscreen call has him calling the sorority girls "cunts". Word of God has cited modern viewers asking if they redid the audio track for that, in disbelief that such language was used in the '70s.
• Crappy Holidays: Even before the murders start happening, it's clear that the girls' Christmases aren't going to be jolly. Barb in particular is spending Christmas in the sorority house, thanks to implied problems at home.
• Creepy Doll: Billy leaves one with Clare's corpse.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast:
  • Clare and Mrs. Mac die looking for Mrs. Mac's perpetually lost cat, Claude.
  • Phyl is killed after spotting someone entering Barb's room.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Barb doesn't take Billy's obscenity-laden threats seriously and tells him to "stick [his] tongue in a wall socket". This leads to Billy delivering a death threat to her that he latter makes good on.
  • Mrs. Mac makes jabs at people behind their backs.
• Death by Irony: Hard-drinking, promiscuous Barb is murdered with a crystal figure of a unicorn — two symbols of purity.
• Death of a Child: A plot point in the second act of the film is the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl named Janice, who turns up dead later.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jess decides to tell Peter she's a) pregnant and b) going to get an abortion, right before an important audition that he's been losing sleep preparing for. Had she waited even a few more hours to break the news...
• Downer Ending: Jess mistakes Peter for the killer and kills him. The actual killer is still in the house and now has a prime opportunity to kill the lowered guard Jess, though it's deliberately left ambiguous whether it indeed happens. Not to mention that the two bodies of the first victims are still hidden in the attic and they're not even known to be missing yet.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The audience knows from the start that Billy is inside the house, while the girls are oblivious.
  • Even once Jess suspects the truth, she runs upstairs out of desperation to save Phyllis and Barb. The audience knows that both are already dead.
• Everytown, America: There are conspicuous American flags in the police station to make the film look like it takes place in a generic American town. This was standard practice for Canadian films at the time; in the hopes of having more success abroad. That being said, a lot of the accents, the use of snowmobiles in the search, Chris playing hockey, Barb drinking from a king can of 50 and the University of Toronto standing in for the college immediately make it recognisable as Canada to those who know the difference.
• Eagleland: This Canadian-produced film makes sure to remind you that it's set in America by plastering U.S. flags all over the police station.
• Evil Phone: As soon as the girls realize the caller is the killer, this trope comes in full force.
• Exact Eavesdropping: The killer eavesdrops on one of Jess's conversations with Peter, in which her abortion is compared to "like having a wart removed". He uses that line on the phone later, which leads her to falsely believe Peter is the killer.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge:
  • After doing poorly at his recital, Peter smashes his piano.
  • Billy smashes random objects in the attic during an emotional breakdown.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The film begins the night of a party in the sorority house and finishes up the next night. The majority of the plot takes place over one evening.
• Face Framed in Shadow: This is the closest the audience gets to seeing Billy's face.
• Faint in Shock: In one of the final scenes, Mr. Harrison faints over the news that everyone in the house is dead.
• Final Girl: Of the sorority house people, only Jess is alive by the end of the film. She doesn't fit all of the usual aspects by having an active sex life and plans to abort a pregnancy. Note, of course, that Final Girl was very much an Unbuilt Trope when this movie was made. Clare — as the most modest and shyest of the girls would fit the trope more — but she's the first victim! And there's a very real possibility that even Jess will be killed soon after the film credits are over...
• First-Name Basis: Chris calls Lt. Fuller by his first name Ken, implying they know each other.
• Flipping the Bird: Mrs. Mac, behind Mr. Harrison's back. A picture in the house also depicts an old lady giving it.
• Four-Girl Ensemble: Phyl is the wise, caring Team Mom. Barb is the tomboyish, abrasive one. Jess is the glamorous one. Clare is the naive youngest of the lot.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In one scene where Jess is talking with a detective about one of the phone calls she just had, Billy's shadow can be seen in the background.
  • Mildly, you can see that Barb has stuck a Christmas wreath on her door and stuck empty wine bottles in it.
• Freudian Excuse: It's hinted that Billy has one. They should never have left him alone with Agnes!
  • On a milder scale, Barb's drinking problem and generally abrasive personality are implied to come from her unhappy family situation.
• Genki Girl: Barb, in a drunken, promiscuous way.
• The Ghost: Despite Billy ranting about her during his phone calls, we never see her or understand why Agnes is significant to Billy.
• Giallo: You could call this movie a kind of bridge between the earlier Italian giallo films of the '60s and '70s and the slashers that would follow in the later '70s and throughout the '80s. Psychosexual themes, a somewhat secluded location, and a dwindling cast of characters are all present, but the big innovation of Black Christmas is its subversion of another of the hallmarks of the giallo: The Reveal. A typical giallo follows the structure of a murder mystery (albeit an especially violent one), and the killer will usually be revealed as one of the established characters; contemporary audiences would have expected "Billy" to turn out to be an alternate persona of Peter or maybe Chris. Instead, shockingly, the killer turns out to be a total stranger to his victims. The slasher movies that followed in Black Christmas' footsteps would run with this to the point where the whodunnit angle was dropped entirely and it became assumed that the killer was usually a total outsider to his pool of victims, leading to the more monstrous, barely-human characterization of the '80s slasher.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Barb does this a few times.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Peter firmly believes this, insisting that Jess shouldn't get an abortion. Overall, the movie is a defiance of this trope, however, as Jess is generally treated very sympathetically.
• Good Parents: Mr. Harrison may be intrusive, judgmental, and a bit stuffy, but he's clearly devoted to his daughter. He also works to help find a missing girl and keeps most of his opinions to himself.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Barb being stabbed with the unicorn figurine isn't directly shown.
  • The dead body of the 13-year-old girl is not shown, but given how other characters react, we can infer it's pretty bad.
• Harassing Phone Call: Billy constantly calls the girls with dirty language and wants to do perverted things to them. It annoys the ladies until the kills start to pile up.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Barb is the life of the party at the beginning and continues to drink over the course of the film.
• Harmful to Minors: Patrick and Barb swear like sailors in front of young children — Patrick even does it while dressed as Santa. A little while later, Barb gives one of the kids alcohol.
• The Heart: Phyl. The other girls aren't too concerned about Clare's father, as they just assume she's fine, but Phyl bursts into tears, realizing she's dead and feeling horribly for her father. She also tries the hardest to help find Clare and is always willing to be at another girl's side to lend support.
• Hell Is That Noise: Billy's phone calls are horrifying to listen to, replete with horrible wailing and animalistic moaning. It can be kind of hard to understand what he's saying some of the time, which makes his hinted-at backstory all the more mysterious.
• Honor Before Reason: After Jess learns that the villain is inside the house, she could make an easy exit to safety, but instead frantically refuses to leave Phyl and Barb behind and goes upstairs to find them.
• Hooks and Crooks: Mrs. Mac's death involves her getting a swinging hook thrown into her head.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: One of many slasher films to take place on Christmas.
• I'll Kill You!: After Barb insults him over the phone, Billy calmly states "I'm going to kill you", before hanging up.
• Improvised Weapon: A unicorn figurine for the killer and a fireplace poker for one of his victims.
• Internal Reveal: The movie shows that Billy is inside the house from the start, but none of the characters are aware of this until one of Billy's calls is traced.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Billy sings Daddy's Gone A-Hunting to Clare's corpse.
• Irony:
  • Minor example. Mr Harrison is displeased at the environment at the sorority house, sniffing that he didn't send her here "to be drinking and picking up boys". Clare just has one boyfriend and is the Token Wholesome of the girls, with Phyllis later telling Lt Fuller she barely even drinks (despite there being a glass left in her room).
  • Jess realizes that they've left all the doors and windows unlocked and locks them all, not knowing that the danger is already inside. This means that when Billy attacks, she has nowhere to run to. Peter, presumably hearing her screams from outside, is unable to get in the front door and has to break in through the cellar window, unaware that he's a prime suspect.
• Jerkass: Barb is mean when drunk.
• Jerkass Has a Point: One time Peter somewhat has a point is that Jess chooses a particularly bad time to tell him she's pregnant and planning to abort it — right before a recital he's been practicing insanely hard for and has gotten barely any sleep. It's no surprise that he botches the performance.
• Karma Houdini: Billy, the killer, is still alive at the end of the movie, and remains uncaught.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: From what we see of Clare, she's a very sweet girl who gets a brief moment cuddling Claude the cat.
• Kill the Cutie: Clare is the youngest of the group, and more modest than the others. She's also got a sweetheart personality and is the first one to die.
• Lady Drunk: Mrs. Mac always has a bottle handy, but she tries to have at least a little more class than some of the girls she watches.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: When Lt. Fuller uncovers Barb's 'fellatio' prank on Sgt. Nash, the latter obliviously says that one of the girls gave it to him. Fuller smirks and replies "She gave it to you, huh?" — even though he knows it was a prank.
• Laughing Mad: Billy laughs creepily and for no apparent reason during some of his phone calls.
• Man of a Thousand Voices: During Billy's phone calls, there are times he imitates the voices of women and children. Clare even wonders if it's just one person.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Billy's backstory and identity are never confirmed — the film having been inspired by an urban legend — and it's a mystery how he's able to sneak around so much and avoid detection. He could simply be a normal psycho who's very good at hiding, or he could be a supernatural figure. Bob Clark came up with a backstory for him that leaned towards the former (and the 2006 remake ended up using it), but he left it open for people to interpret as they would.
• Misplaced Accent: It's not entirely clear why Jess, an American college student, would have actress Olivia Hussey's English accent. The accent itself is never commented upon in the film proper, and as such it isn't entirely clear whether her character is intended to be an English expatriate, or if the actress simply isn't bothering with an accent. A throwaway line says that it will take her parents two hours to get to the sorority house, implying that she's living in America anyway.
• Missing Mom: Barb's drinking problems are caused by her distant mother.
• Mistaken for Murderer: Peter is killed after Jess assumes he's the killer.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The first Harassing Phonecall gets drawn out so long and is so over the top that the viewer might start to chuckle, especially as Barb tells off the caller... until.
    Barb: You fucking creep!
    Billy (flatly): I'm gonna kill you. (He hangs up.)
  • At one point the movie transitions from a comical scene of Sgt. Nash is made fun of by Peter and Jess having an argument about her decision to have an abortion.
  • The other way around later on. After confirmation that poor Janice, the missing thirteen-year-old, is dead — the cops discover Barb's 'fellatio' prank on Sgt. Nash and collapse laughing in the station.
  • Clare's murder is juxtaposed with the sorority girls getting Mrs. Mac a tacky nightgown as a present and begging her to put it on.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Filmed on location in Toronto, there are plenty of characteristic 'Ehs' and 'Aboots' to go around. Chris also plays hockey, for seemingly no other reason other than it's in Canada. As noted below, the beer Barb is seen drinking and the use of snowmobiles later place this movie's setting in Canada.
• Murderer P.O.V.: The audience gets to see Billy's view multiple times, most notably when he has a complete breakdown and trashes the attic.
• Never Found the Body: By the end, the police haven't searched the attic of the sorority house, where Clare and Mrs. Mac's bodies are. They don't even know about Mrs. Mac's death either, since she told Phyllis that she was going to her sister's and won't realise that she's missing for likely several days.
• No Name Given: The cop who laughs at the fellatio prank and the other cop getting shot in the ass is just credited as "Laughing Cop" — though Lt. Fuller calls him Buchanan in the latter scene.
• Noodle Incident: Billy keeps mentioning an incident with a person named Agnes. Who Agnes is and what happened between her and Billy is only alluded to in the film. The 2006 remake fleshed out this entire backstory, which fans of the original generally agreed was a mistake.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Lt. Fuller shows that he's got a sense of humor when he can't help but laugh at Nash's incompetence. And again later when one of the cops comes to the station having been Shot in the Ass.
  • Jess too has a handful of scenes where she laughs with her friends, such as at the beginning when giving Mrs. Mac the present.
  • Mr. Harrison puts up with the wild behavior of the sorority girls with emotionless stoicism, but when he's told that everyone in the house is dead, he faints from shock at the news.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • We're never shown or told exactly what Billy (if it was him) did to Janice, the little girl.
  • The very ending, in which Billy continues to call a sedated Jess as the camera pans away from the house. It seems to be building up to a scream from the house where Billy makes his final strike, only it never happens. Instead, the credits roll in complete silence, save for the phone continuing to ring.
  • Billy himself is never directly seen in the movie. The closest we get is a few shots of his face framed in shadow.
• Novelization: It's◊ rare as Hell.
• Oh, Crap!: Lt. Fuller's reaction to learning the calls are coming from inside the house. Jess has a similar reaction upon getting the news.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Clare's father and the mother of the little girl who goes missing fear (correctly) that their children have been murdered. In fact, in the final scene (when Clare still isn't accounted for), Mr. Harrison goes into shock and just faints.
• Parental Abandonment: In the opening, Barb gets a phone call from her mother, in which she's informed that for Christmas, she'll be taking off with a new boyfriend and leaving her daughter alone.
• Parting-Words Regret: Barb has a drunken rant in which she accuses people of believing she drove Clare away with her harsh words, mocking her for being wary of Billy's harsh phones. The truth is that this is what she (Barb) thinks, but doesn't want to admit it to herself. In some ways, she is right; Clare goes upstairs to pack because of this and is left alone to be the first kill.
• Phone-Trace Race: When the calls get creepier, they decide to trace them. This means that Jess has to stay on the line with Billy for as long as possible.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Mrs. Mac and Barb, when they're drunk. Sgt. Nash's dimwittedness also provides laughs.
• Police Are Useless: Double subverted. When Clare is first reported missing, Sargent Nash is largely dismissive of it and insinuates that she's run off with a boy. Likewise, when Jess reports Billy's obscene phone calls, he's equally dismissive. When Nash's superior, Lt. Fuller, gets wind of this, he chews him out for it and takes the reports completely seriously. He has the sorority's phone lines tapped in order to trace the calls and posts an officer outside the building for their protection. Billy dispatches the officer posted outside without incident, and by the time the police realize that he's been in the house all along, it's too late for them to prevent Jess from getting attacked or her killing Peter in a panic. At the film's end, they not only fail to move Jess to a safer location, they put her to bed in a house that should be under thorough investigation as a crime scene. This in turn leads to them neglecting to check the house's attic, leaving the bodies of Mrs. Mac and Clare undiscovered and causing Billy to get away with the whole thing and possibly kill Jess.
• Pun-Based Title: It's a subversion of the song White Christmas, here black not standing for African-American (or perhaps African-Canadian, given where it was filmed)^note Although it was released as Silent Night, Evil Night in some markets for fear of it being mistaken for a blaxploitation film, but for evil... or for utter despair.
• Reaction Shot: The camera gets a few of these from the uncomfortable group as they listened in on Billy's obscene phone call at the start of the movie.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Billy is revealed to have them in two particularly creepy scenes.
• Red Herring:
  • Peter is assumed to be killing the girls as revenge for Jess deciding to abort their baby. It turns out that he's innocent.
  • Chris was viewed as one by American distributors, who tried to get Bob Clark to reveal him as the killer at first. He's never established as having any particular motive, but he's a prominent enough character that the viewer does naturally suspect him, due to the Law of Conservation of Detail.
• Refuge in Audacity: Barb trolls the incompetent Sgt. Nash by telling him that the number to the sorority house is 'fellatio' and it's a new exchange. It becomes increasingly clear that Nash has no idea what the word means.
• Riddle for the Ages: So who exactly is Billy? Who’s Agnes for that matter and more importantly why is he targeting the sorority?
• Ripped from the Headlines: The film was released just a year after Roe v. Wade made abortion fully legal in the U.S., putting the subject in the forefront of a lot of people's minds.
• Say My Name: The killer calls Barb "Agnes" before he kills her.
• Scare Chord: The film employs a couple of these in shots featuring Clare's corpse.
• Screaming Woman: When Janice's body is found.
• Secret Squatter: Billy has been hiding in the sorority house for an unknown period of time (implied to be a few weeks, since the women said the calls started then), making obscene calls and then escalating to murdering them (and hiding some of his victims' bodies in the attic).
• Serial Killer: Billy is implied to have committed other murders and rapes prior to the ones featured in the film. The character was at least partly inspired by real-life Canadian serial killer and rapist Wayne Boden.
• Shifting Voice of Madness: In his phone calls, Billy often alternates between voices and personalities, often mentioning someone named Agnes ("You left Billy alone with Agnes?!" "Where's Agnes?" "Dirty Billy!"). In addition, he has a habit of screaming randomly and squeaking like a pig.
• Shot in the Ass: A paranoid farmer shoots a police officer in the ass after spotting him skulking around on his property.
• Shout-Out: The film's setting of Bedford is an Homage to It's a Wonderful Life.
• Sinister Suffocation: The first victim is Clare, who is ambushed from her closet and suffocated with plastic by the killer.
• Sinister Silhouettes: Right before the killer offs Barb in her bed, she catches a glimpse of the killer standing over her while remaining hidden in the shadows with only one his widened eyes being seen.
• Slashed Throat: Officer Jennings is found with one.
• Spoiler Cover: The cover depicts Clare's corpse after having been killed by Billy. Of course, since she dies in the first ten minutes, it's not that much of a spoiler.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The Christmas carolers during Barb's murder.
• Staircase Tumble: In fleeing from Billy, Jess at one point tumbles down the stairs.
• The Stoic: Mr. Harrison puts up with the wild behavior of the sorority girls with emotionless stoicism. It finally catches up to him in the last scene, where he faints from shock.
• Team Mom: Mrs. Mac, who is literally the house mother. Also Phyl, to a lesser extent.
• Tempting Fate: After the girls are spooked by a knock at the door, and answering it are greeted by two members of the search team looking for the killer of the child in the park, Phyl jokes "I'd rather face the killer!". Billy ends up killing her only minutes later.
• Third-Person Person: In all of his phone calls, Billy speaks in the third person, and in fact seems to be talking as if he were other people talking about him.
• Too Dumb to Live: Jess makes a few poor decisions during the climax. When the police finally realize that the calls are coming directly from the house, the dispatcher calls Jess and tells her to quietly leave as soon as possible. Instead of listening, she refuses and demands to know why. When he finally relents and tells her the truth, she still doesn't leave the house, even after he urgently demands her to leave and instead tries to wake everyone up to get them to all exit, catching Billy's attention as he's already killed everyone else still in the house.
• Token Wholesome: Clare is the one girl in the sorority house who isn't sexually active or promiscuous and is uncomfortable with Barb's attempts at provoking Billy. Lt Fuller asks if she's known for drinking, and Phyllis endearingly says "hardly at all".
• Town Girls: The main three sorority girls — The snide, snarky, chain-smoking and hard-drinking tomboy Barb, the pretty, soft-spoken and long-haired Jess and the geeky bespectacled Nice Girl Phyl.
• Trashcan Bonfire: Clare's father, Jess and Chris are warming up to one when the little girl's body is found in the park.
• Trope Makers: For Slasher Movies. This was a first for many, including the Final Girl.
• Tsundere: Barb is mostly drunk and abrasive but has a soft side and does care for the girls. In fact, when Sgt. Nash trivializes Clare's disappearance, Barb is inspired to Troll him.
• Tuneless Song of Madness: Billy sings "Daddy's gone a-huntin" while rocking a chair in which he has placed the corpse of a girl he murdered.
• Twisted Christmas: If you couldn't tell from the title, Billy's murders are happening on Christmas.
• Unbuilt Trope: This movie has a lot less in common than one would think with all of the slasher movies that followed it. The killer does not wear a mask or have any particular "gimmick" to his crimes, the killer is not a silent murderer but a talkative, perverted creep, the police respond reasonably effectively, there's much less Gorn and fewer overall murders than in many other slashers, we learn absolutely nothing about the killer's motivations, backstory, or appearance, and the Final Girl is definitely not a virgin, nor does anyone die due to having sex.
• The Unfought: As Peter is a Red Herring, Jess never has a confrontation with Billy beyond seeing his eye through a keyhole.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Claude the cat seals Mrs. Mac's fate when she hears him purring up in the attic and goes to check on him. She was literally about to leave in a taxi and would have been safe from Billy otherwise.
• The Un-Reveal: We never learn who Billy is, why he's murdering people (other than it might be somehow related to the unknown "Agnes"), or even what he looks like.
• Vader Breath: At the very beginning, as Billy closes in on the sorority house.
• Vague Age: Peter is implied to be older than the others; he mentions being at the Conservatory for eight years, meaning he could be as old as thirty. His actor was thirty-eight during production.
• Vasquez Always Dies: Downplayed. Barb establishes herself as outspoken and fearless by talking back to Billy over the phone. She dies halfway through the film, leaving the much meeker Jess to face him. Downplayed because the other sorority sisters die as well.
• Voice Changeling: Billy changes his voice quite a bit during his phone calls. On two occasions he also mimics the house cat, Claude, in order to lure in his victims.
• Wham Line:
  • The first comes from Billy to Jess, repeating what she said to Peter about getting an abortion and seemingly revealing Peter to be the killer.
    "JUST LIKE HAVING A WART REMOVED!"
  • Two in-universe examples come when the police trace Billy's telephone call, revealing his location to the characters.
    Sgt. Nash: He says the calls are coming from 6 Belmont Street.
    Lt. Fuller: For Christ's sakes, Nash, you got it wrong. That's where the calls are going into.
    Nash: That's where they're coming from too, sir.
    
    Nash: Jess, the caller is in the house. The calls are coming from the house!
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The fate of Claude, the cat. While his meowing is used to lure more than one character to their deaths, we never actually find out what happened to him.
• Would Hurt a Child: A little girl reported missing and is found dead later. It's heavily implied that this is one of Billy's victims. It's also implied through his insane ramblings that it may not have been the first time he hurt a child, as he keeps referring to a baby and something horrible happening between himself and a person named Agnes.

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