Black Christmas

A Christmas party at the Pi Kappa Sigma sorority house is interrupted by an obscene phone call — a chorus of voices, screams and obscenities the sisters have come to call "the moaner." House mother Mrs. Mac dismisses it. Unseen, the caller climbs a trellis to the attic and slips inside through a window.

Soon after, freshman Clare Harrison goes upstairs to pack for her father's visit. The intruder kills her in her bedroom, suffocating her with a dry-cleaning bag, then carries her body to the attic and seats her in a rocking chair by the window, the bag still over her head.

The next day Clare's father arrives at the sorority house and finds her missing. Sisters Jess, Barb and Phyl, along with Mrs. Mac and Clare's boyfriend Chris, report her disappearance to the police, but desk sergeant Nash is dismissive. The same day, a young girl named Janice goes missing from a nearby park; Lieutenant Fuller takes over and begins to take the cases seriously. Meanwhile Jess tells her boyfriend Peter, a high-strung music conservatory student, that she is pregnant and intends to have an abortion. Peter is devastated and increasingly volatile, threatening her and smashing a piano during his recital audition.

As the search for Clare and Janice intensifies, the killer murders Mrs. Mac with a hook in the attic while she searches for the cat, and strangles Barb in her bed with the curve of a glass unicorn while carolers sing at the front door, drowning out the sounds. The obscene calls keep coming. Fuller orders a tap placed on the sorority line.

Janice is found dead in the park. That night the killer phones again. Fuller's officers trace it — and the call is coming from inside the house. They radio Jess and tell her to get out immediately. Jess goes upstairs first to wake Phyl, finds her murdered, and is attacked. She flees to the basement and locks herself in. The killer pursues. Through the door she hears a voice: Peter, calling her name. Convinced he is the killer, she lets him in and beats him to death with a fireplace poker.

The police arrive and find Jess alone with Peter's body, the case apparently closed. Fuller has her sedated and put to bed upstairs. The house empties. The camera drifts up to the attic, where Clare's plastic-wrapped corpse and Mrs. Mac still sit in the rocking chair. The phone begins to ring. Outside, snow falls on the silent house. The killer — never seen, never named, never caught — is still inside.