10 Terrifying Movie Characters You Never Actually Got To See
5. Billy - Black Christmas
The 1974 Black Christmas (still suppressing memories of the 2006 Michelle Trachtenberg abomination) holds the title of being one of the earliest slasher movies ever made, and inspiration for John Carpenter's genre legend, Halloween. Despite being released 40 years ago, Black Christmas has not lost any of its absolute horror, and a large part of that is never really seeing the murderer. The viewer knows exactly where (presumably) he is, and as you follow his point-of-view camera climbing up into the attic of a sorority house unseen you are aware that he is going to be a serious threat to the residents within. This theme pervades the film, and you never actually see the killer whilst he picks off members of the sorority house as they cross his path. He terrorises the girls with foul and mostly incomprehensible phone calls which are unsettling, but provide no clue as to who he could be. Nothing is shown of the antagonist until very late on in the film. One of the sorority girls is told to go to sleep, and is then attacked in her room with a unicorn statue. When someone comes to check on her, you see the killers eye through a crack in the door staring out in one of the tensest scenes that cinema has ever had to offer. In the end you never find out who the killer is, nor whether our protagonist actually survives in the end, marking Black Christmas as one of the most frightening and ambiguous slashers ever made.
