Just saw it a few days ago & wow what a weird movie. Creepy as hell & all that but the ending was so incomplete with so so many questions & no answers at all. Wth?! It was hard to fully enjoy it because of this & those phone calls were crazy lots of rambling. The movie needed a sequel badly by someone, anyone.
shareThat was a common feature of many 70s movies and not only horror. Many of them contained an indeterminate ending which does not give complete closure to the story. It's especially effective to create an unsettling vibe at the end--that the evil hasn't been contained after all and is still out there lurking. "Halloween", which adopted many of "Black Christmas"'s conventions, has a similar ending. Did you really need to see "Billy" unmasked after Keir Dullea's character is revealed as a red herring? Why was it necessary for you to see "Billy" graphically defeated onscreen? I think the film has gotten under your skin if it has you wondering what happens after the end. That is what it is striving to do.
shareNot saying the killer has to be stopped or not but to see who he is, is so very important to me & probably lots of others. And what kind of connection did the killer have to all those girls in the house? He seemed to kill some of them & let others live. Not sure why. Felt very weird to me.
shareThe movie is perfect. It asks you to think a little, that's all.
shareThink about what exactly? Seems to me like the director wants to fool us & stuff but it sort of comes off annoying & weird though.
shareLooks like the movie wasn't meant for you. Stuff like Forrest Gump is more on-the-nose, that might be more your thing.
shareNo no no the movie is weird & so very interesting but nothing gets solved in it so I feel kind of cheated in ways. There are so many questions & no answers & I don't know why it's like that.
shareAh, I see.
shareI hated the ambiguous ending the first time I saw it, but now it's one of my favourite movies.
The ending makes it more sinister, in my opinion. If the killer has some connection with the girls in the sorority house, it instantly becomes less scary. Evil always seems worse when there's no reason or justification for it. In this film, we don't even know who the killer is. (Other than he mentions that his name is Billy, and refers to a never seen character called Agnes.) But that's what makes it so great. The unknown is always scarier.
Each to their own though. I don't know if you know, but there's a 2006 remake of this. Without spoiling anything, the characters have more back story in it.
You have to watch it at least four times to really appreciate it.
shareGood grief 4 times?! I saw the remake & it's nothing special at all. They always making movies like the remake but the original is so original & different. After first seeing it I was so sure the piano guy was the killer because he has the same exact sweater on but how can that be if his girlfriend killed him at the end & the killer kept calling anyways. Weird!
shareHe's right though, it gets better every time you watch it. Requires a few watches to appreciate it.
Once you're over the idea that Peter is the killer, you start noticing more.
I was exactly the same as you on my first watch, now it's one of my favourite horror movies.
I watched it again & realized that the whole baby drama talk really sent the killer over the rails. I also noticed that the killer has knowledge of the house's layout & stuff & he knows the telephone number! The killer used to live there I'm sure. I really like the movie but just wish the ending was a little more tied up.
shareNo the ending didn’t need anything different. The fact that it left the viewer unaware of who the killer is or whether if anything he said on the phone was true. The mystery made the ending much scarier and more powerful
shareYea okay but he knew the house number so he used to live there. Nobody here seems to understand that!
shareGoddamnit, this generation that needs an explanation for fucking everything...
shareYea we do need an explanation for how the killer knew the number? There's gotta be this connection with probably the girls or that old lady that oversaw everything or something. I just know it! Gonna watch it again.
shareThat's how you end a film!
See The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) & Halloween (1978) as further examples.