Billy Lenz

Billy is a fictional character from the ''Black Christmas'' film series, first appearing in '' Black Christmas'' (1974) as a deranged murderer who taunts and kills a group of college students during the Christmas season. Created by Timothy Bond and A. Roy Moore, the character was partly inspired by the urban legend "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs", in addition to the crimes of George Webster and the serial killer William Heirens.

Several members of the cast and crew portrayed and voiced Billy in the original film, such as Nick Mancuso, who performed the voices for the phone calls, while cameraman Albert J. Dunk performed Billy's POV shots and director Clark portrays both the villain's shadow and the phone voices. Neither the character nor his portrayers were listed in the end credits. In the years following the original film's release, fans and media outlets have often cited the character's name as Billy, and director Clark has himself referred to the character by that name in interviews.

Unlike later slasher film antagonists have stated that by leaving Billy enigmatic, it allowed the audience to place their own fears onto the character, forming their ideas about him and his motivations. While largely overshadowed by more popular horror or slasher film villains, Billy has also been identified by some critics and film historians as establishing many of the tropes that later became a staple of the slasher film genre, predating John Carpenter's ''Halloween'' (1978). He has been described by some writers as one of the greatest horror villains of all time and has been referenced in several other entertainment media.

Appearances

Film

Billy made his first appearance in the original 1974 film '' Black Christmas'' as a mentally disturbed man known as "The Moaner", who regularly calls a local sorority house, leaving disturbing and obscene messages. During one such phone call, Barb (Margot Kidder), one of the sorority sisters, provokes him; he responds by threatening to kill them. The caller then goes on a killing spree, murdering most of the sorority house's inhabitants, including Barb. Jess (Olivia Hussey), the lone survivor, is attacked by Billy but manages to fight him off, and after discovering the corpses of Billy's victims in Barb's room, accidentally bludgeons her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea) to death, thinking he is the killer. The film ends with Billy, still alive, talking to the corpses in the attic, before making a final phone call to the house.

In the 2006 remake, his full name is William "Billy" Edward Lenz ( Cainan Wiebe), and his backstory is prominently featured. Born with severe jaundice due to liver disease, he is physically and emotionally abused as a child by his mother, Constance ( Karin Konoval). After murdering Billy's father along with her lover, Constance rapes Billy after she is unable to conceive a child with her lover, giving birth to Billy's sister/daughter Agnes (Christina Crivici). Billy later goes insane and murders his mother and her lover, disfiguring Agnes before being caught and sent to an insane asylum. Years later, an adult Billy (Robert Mann) escapes and goes on a rampage with Agnes (Dean Friss) at their old family home, which has been converted into a sorority house. After murdering most of the inhabitants, both Agnes and Billy are killed by Kelli Presley (Katie Cassidy), the sole survivor.

Literature

In 1976, Billy appeared in the novelization of the film written by Lee Hays. Hays based the novelization upon Moore's original draft, which expands upon Billy's actions, depicting inner dialogue, and alterations to key sequences. Another novelization was published in 1983 by Campbell Armstrong, under the pseudonym Thomas Altman. While Armstrong's novelization contains similarities to the original film, the plot and characters are considerably altered. In the novel, the mentally-challenged Billy Cole is partially based on Billy, although he is revealed to be a red herring to the actual killer.

In December 2024, a third novelization written by Armando Muñoz was published. While adhering faithfully to the original film, the novelization expands upon the characters and events in the film. The novelization describes Billy as already responsible for dozens of other murders and was secretly living in the sorority house for weeks before his murder spree.

Concept and creation

Original concept and inspirations

The original concept for Billy was created by Timothy Bond and Roy Moore, with further contributions to the character by Bob Clark. During the early 1970s, Bond and Moore sought to jumpstart their careers in the film industry by writing a horror film. Hearing stories of a babysitter who terrorized children in his care, Bond and Moore began writing the script. When developing the script, Bond and Moore used oral traditions and real-world events as a basis in crafting what would become Billy. A major source of inspiration was the urban legend of "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs", which itself is based on the unsolved murder of Janett Christman, who had been babysitting for the Womack family in Columbia, Missouri. At the time of the script's development, the urban legend had become widespread in Canada and the United States, with slight variations depending on the region. The basic storyline describes a young woman who, while babysitting three children, is tormented by a madman who leaves threatening phone calls, later revealed to be coming from upstairs in the house. The legend was the basis for other films, including the 1979 film '' When a Stranger Calls'' and its subsequent remake.

Additional inspiration was drawn from serial killer William Heirens, who left taunting messages in lipstick for one of his killings, and a series of murders that occurred during the 1943 holiday season in the Westmount area of Montreal, in which 14-year-old George Webster bludgeoned several of his family members to death and attempted to kill others. Modern publications have described the crimes of serial killer and rapist Wayne Boden as an additional influence.

Name

While commonly referred to by fans and some media outlets as Billy, the character and his portrayer(s) are not mentioned in the end credits. Modern sources acknowledge Nick Mancuso as the primary voice of Billy, though he did not receive an actor's credit in the film as he was not a member of the actor's union at the time of production. The script credits him as "The Caller", while in the film, he is referred to by sorority sisters as "The Moaner". Several of the original film's cast members, including Clark himself, have referred to the character as either "Billy" or simply "The Killer" in interviews.

For the 2006 remake, he was formally named William "Billy" Edward Lenz and given a sister/daughter, Agnes.

Backstory and identity

Working on the script, then titled ''Stop Me'', Bond and Moore created a detailed backstory for Billy to explain his identity and motivations. Bond comments that the character was "very well fleshed out in the sense that we knew his entire back story". As Clark explains, Billy would have originated from a small town, where he either injured or killed his baby sister. As Clark elaborates:

He was a disturbed child, and we got a lot of tension from his behavior, was probably jealous of his baby sister and created that schism between him and women. You could write a whole history on him if you wanted, there were enough dynamics, but we never really did.

Much of his ambiguity was intended from the outset, which Bond admits that details of Billy were always meant to be subtle and never fully revealed. Once Clark joined the project, the script went through more rewrites to further develop the characters and story, adding more ambiguity to Billy. Clark was adamant that Billy should remain as obscure as possible, feeling that he was more terrifying when the least amount of information was revealed about him and his motivations. Though Billy is never fully revealed, through "his illy'sbehavior and responses".

Clark worked closely with cameraman Bert Dunk to create shots that obscured Billy as much as possible. This included using lighting techniques to "shape the shadows" cast by Billy, making him look slender in some scenes and burly in others to distort the audience's perception. Clark intentionally played upon the mystery of the character's identity, creating the allusion that Claire's boyfriend Chris was Billy, only to reveal in the film's conclusion as a red herring, with Billy still at large. Nurturing the audience's suspicion that Peter was the killer, Dullea would perform certain actions to mirror Billy's. In many scenes, Peter is framed as a silhouette and kept off-camera during his phone conversations with Jess. Once distribution rights for the film were purchased by Warner Brothers, studio executives requested that Clark make significant changes to the killer's identity, as they disliked the film's ambiguous conclusion. During preparation in 1975 for the film's American release, studio executives suggested that Clark alter the film's ending to reveal the identity as Chris in a proposed scene where Chris appears in front of Jess, the film's final girl, telling her to " ottell Agnes what we did" before killing her. Clark, however, was able to convince the studio to retain the original ending.

In Glen Morgan's 2006 remake, Billy's enigmatic nature was abandoned for a greater physical presence. Morgan had intended to rework elements of the original film that were left ambiguous or implied, such as the cryptic phone calls to the sorority house. Morgan, a huge admirer of the original film, wanted to create a more defined version of Billy, as well as reveal more of the character's traits. He also wanted to explore subplots from the original film that he felt were not fleshed out, including Billy's history and the reasons for his insanity. Morgan thus created a subplot exploring the origins of Billy, showing the connection between Billy and Agnes, the remake's secondary antagonist. Morgan was inspired by the life of Edmund Kemper, a real-life serial killer who as a child had been locked in the basement of his home by his mother, whom he later murdered. According to Morgan, he and producer James Wong had various disputes with Dimension Films executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein. In a 2014 interview, Morgan said his original intention was to have Billy as the film's only antagonist, but the studio forced him to include a second killer. Billy was originally intended to have survived at the end, with the original conclusion having Kelli and Leigh, who thought he was dead, in the hospital getting a phone call from him. Bob Weinstein, who disliked the original ending, scrapped it shortly after the scene was filmed and requested that Morgan write and shoot a new one. In the new ending, Billy is ultimately killed after being impaled on the hospital's Christmas tree-topper.

Casting and portrayals

Billy was played by multiple actors in the original film. Point-of-view shots were performed by Clark, who also contributed the voice. The scene shot from Billy's point of view, where Billy scales the house and enters the attic, was done by Dunk using a custom-made camera rig attached to his shoulder. The rig allowed Dunk to keep both of his hands free to perform the various actions during these sequences. Dunk also portrayed the character in the POV scene where Billy murders Clare, using this same technique. Scenes that required Billy to be shown on screen, an unknown actor was utilized, though members of the cast and crew have failed to recall their name. Clark himself has stated that he had no recollection of who portrayed Billy during the scene where he peers through the crack in the door. Dunk suggested that Keir Dullea, who portrayed Peter in the film, was used in the sequence and was fitted with a special contact lens; however, Dullea has denied this claim. Years later, several crew members identified Clark as Billy in most of his on-screen appearances. The cast was deliberately kept in the dark about the killer and did not know what Billy would be saying during the phone calls. Clark himself provided Billy's voice for the other actors while filming the obscene phone calls to assist with the cast's performance. While filming, Clark would shout obscenities to the cast off-camera to facilitate their reactions of surprise.

For Clark, Billy's voice during the phone calls was a substantial part of creating the character. Clark states that he wanted the calls to "sound almost supernatural". A total of five separate actors voiced Billy in various sequences, including actress Mugsey Sweeney; while the primary voices for Billy were Clark and Mancuso, the latter in his feature film debut. When auditioning for the role, Clark directed Mancuso to sit in a chair facing away from him so as not to see the actor's face. Clark then had Mancuso experiment with different voices to come up with one that fit the character, which got Mancuso the part. Mancuso spent three days during post-production recording dialogue, describing the experience as being "very avant-garde", with Clark encouraging him to improvise with the character's voice. During some of these sessions, Mancuso stood on his head to compress his thorax, making his voice sound more raspy and demented. Mancuso also redubbed some of Dullea's lines during post-production. Carl Zittrer, who composed the film's soundtrack and audio, later recalled that Mancuso brought such a 'chilling intensity' to the role while performing the voice of Billy. Mancuso later reprised the role in the 2015 DVD and Blu-ray special edition, voicing the character as a part of the release's additional commentary track.

Robert Mann was hired to portray Billy in the 2006 remake, while Cainan Wiebe was cast as a younger version of the character. Mann attended two short auditions before he was cast in the role, with the filmmakers initially questioning him on his height, size, and ability to endure small spaces and prosthetic makeup. Likening the character to a "time bomb", Mann felt that Billy harbored a long-boiling rage because of the severe abuse he suffered, leaving him incapable of expressing any emotions other than rage. Mann recalled having a lot of fun on set while filming, calling the experience "funny and surreal". Burn makeup and prosthetics for the unused alternate ending took over four hours to apply, and Mann was instructed not to wear anything over the makeup for fear of ruining it. When it came time to film Billy's death scene, Mann was strapped to an elevated back brace with the tip of the tree attached on top of him.

Characteristics

Ambiguity

Classified by behavioral scientist and psychiatrist Sharon Packer and art historian Jody Pennington as a "faceless killer", one of Billy's defining characteristics is his complete ambiguity. In contrast to many slasher film villains, Billy's true identity and motivations are never revealed in the 1974 film; his appearances are mostly offscreen. In his essay on the 1974 film, Morten Feldtfos Thomsen writes on the use of subjective camera in creating a level of uncertainty and tension while "obscure ngthe killer’s identity by excluding him from the image and confining him to a vaguely defined space outside of the frame." Lacking defining characteristics beyond his insanity, Zittrer states that the audience is then left to imbue the character with their fears and imagination. 

Thomsen argues that, as a disembodied voice, the phone calls imbue Billy with an amplified sense of uncertainty. As an unseen presence in point-of-view sequences and the phone calls, according to Thomsen, it portrays Billy as "a quasi-embodied or even disembodied entity, simultaneously on-screen and off-screen". Film historian Martin Rubin noted similar characteristics with Bruce the Shark from the film adaption of ''Jaws'', as both represent a remorseless, near-omnipresent and omniscient force.

In the absence of any clear motivations in the 1974 film, some writers have offered their interpretations. As Adam Rockoff notes, there is no backstory or clear information to "rationalize or justify his madness". Writing for the entertainment magazine and website '' Birth.Movies.Death'', Brian Collins states that the viewers are encouraged to try and solve the mystery of Billy: "we're not meant to figure anything out, but ..we can't help but try." In her analysis of the original film, Lauren Taylor of ''Bloody Disgusting'' delved deeper into the character's psychology. Billy's obsessive rambling about Agnes or "the baby", Taylor comments, hints at a real or imaginary event where the character failed to protect a loved one. Implications of a traumatic past were also commented upon by ''SlashFilm'' writer Lee Adams, who writes that, in one of the phone calls, Billy takes on the personas of a mother and father questioning him on what happened to "the baby". As Adams writes, Billy's use of the English lullaby ''Bye, baby Bunting'' and his later reference to himself as "filthy" while conversing about Agnes, Adams theorized, implied an incident where Billy had sexually assaulted a young girl and murdered her before she could tell anyone.

Alternately, Taylor comments that the motivation behind Billy's killing spree could be seen within the victims themselves, who display negative associations with motherhood, such as promiscuity, negligence, and lack of responsibility. With this, Taylor concludes that Billy's motivation could be linked to this and the holiday season itself, with his killing spree being the character's way of "ridding the world of sinners". This theory was echoed by Anton Bitel of '' Little White Lies'', who described Billy as "a dark version of Santa Claus, meting out punishments to the naughty and the nice alike."

Writer and director Morgan wanted a more defined killer for the 2006 remake, abandoning the original character's ambiguity in favor of a more traditional slasher villain. As Jason Zinoman stated, Billy's lack of backstory was altered by Morgan for the remake, with the film going "back in time" to reveal the character's identity and motivations. This iteration was negatively received by critics and fans of the original, who felt it removed most of the interest and mystery of the character.

Personality

In his original appearance, Billy was depicted as a violent, mentally disturbed, and sexually perverted young man. Earlier drafts of Moore's script describe Billy's fractured mind as he regresses from the voice of a child and woman to sounding more animalistic. In the book ''It's Me Billy: Black Christmas Revisited'', authors Paul Downey and David Hastings note this behavior as comparable to the mental disorders schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as Billy converses with the corpses of his victims: "one does wonder what he is potentially seeing in his own mind". When Billy goes on a destructive rampage after murdering Mrs. Mac, Clark depicts Billy "acting out" on his mental anguish and rage, revealing the character's inner conflict.

Writers have commented that the character was grounded in realism, as opposed to the more popular slasher villains. According to John Saxon, who portrayed Lt. Fuller in the original film, Billy had a "naturalistic basis" rather than a supernatural one, representing the darkest part of humanity "tormented and was capable of committing horrific cts. Analyzing the original film, Bud Wilkins of ''Slant Magazine'' notes Billy embodied a more realistic and human killer in contrast to what he called "the unstoppable boogeyman that Michael Myers represents." Some commentators have highlighted the believability of the obscene phone calls. Jamie Righetti of '' IndieWire'' points out that Billy's obscene phone calls, "ma eit clear that some horrors are all too common, and don't require a boogeyman in a mask."

Novelizations of the original film would expand upon aspects of the character, including his mental instability. Hays' 1976 novelization extended the film's implications that Billy suffers from some form of dissociative identity disorder, adding inner dialogue to the character. In the novel, Billy is tormented by self-loathing and feelings of remorse, revealing his infatuation with Barb after observing her from outside the house, culminating with her murder. Armando Muñoz, author of the 2024 novelization for the original film, expanded upon Billy's history and persona. Muñoz depicts Billy as a prolific murderer whose mind is so fractured that he cannot recall his past. Described as "proto-incel" by ''Bloody Disgusting'', Muñoz's interpretation of Billy explains that he views others as nothing more than toys for his amusement and manifests a deep-seated hatred towards the sorority girls after spending weeks secretly living in the house and observing them.

While the remake would retain Billy's mental instability, Morgan chose to add more details, portraying him as being born with severe jaundice, which turned his skin yellow. Billy's insanity was also explained as being the result of severe abuse at the hands of his mother and isolation, leading to the birth of his sister/daughter after being raped by his mother. Robert Mann, who portrayed the adult character in the remake, felt that Billy's abuse at the hands of his mother created a long-suppressed rage that threatened to emerge at any moment, and Billy's moments of extreme violence came from that long-boiling hatred stemming from years of abuse. Mann also felt that this severe abuse and isolation left Billy incapable of dealing with his emotions, with the anger being an expression of sadness, which Mann felt was Billy's true feelings. Morgan stated that Billy's motivation centers from a twisted interpretation of love and family, which Billy equated with violence after witnessing his father's murder and the years of maternal abuse he suffered. Morgan went on to reveal that Billy's acts of cannibalism were, in the character's view, a way of "showing his love to them".

Art and cultural historian Berit Åström explained that many aspects of the character in the remake, including his backstory and motivations, mirrored that of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's '' Psycho'', noting both characters have Oedipus complexes toward their abusive mothers. Åström further explained that both eventually committed matricide. Several critics, including admirers of the original film, have criticized the remake's exploration of the character's backstory as being generic and less frightening. In her book ''Life Lessons from Slasher Films'', Jessica Robinson argued that the remake's extensive backstory for the character was an attempt by the filmmakers to elicit sympathy for the character.

Analysis

For the original film, some writers have interpreted Billy as a representation of the feminist themes. In their book ''Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy'', R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson describe Billy as a representation of Freudian attributes, with Barb's murder with a glass unicorn a symbol of male empowerment (phallus). He is later disarmed by the film's final girl (Jess) in a form of symbolic castration, as Carol J. Clover states, "she specifically unmans her oppressor resentingthe castration, literal or symbolic of the killer at her hands". Writing for the online publication ''Thrillist'', Jourdain Searles described the character as a critique of toxic masculinity, calling the character "more metaphor than man, an unstoppable, unexplainable personification of masculine id with a singular purpose: to kill all the pretty women." Searles also notes that Billy's dialogue hinted at a deep-seated fury towards women, which seemed to emerge in their presence.

Billy's phone calls have been interpreted by writers as a symbol of the dangers of technology. The phone itself, according to film historian Marc Olivier, was an extension of the character and represented what he called "the primordial terror hidden in the device itself". Oliver further notes the parallels between the phone calls and prank calling, a view shared by filmmaker and literary critic John Kenneth Muir.

Downey and Hastings describe Billy as an example of scholar Mikhail Bakhtin's theories on carnivalesque and the grotesque body. According to Bakhtin, the "carnivalesque" is characterized by its breakdown of hierarchy, social barriers, and prohibitions, while the "grotesque body" he defines as one of degradation, unashamed excess, anathema to authority, and pious austerity. Downey and Hastings's analysis highlights Billy as "an agent of carnival process", exemplified not only through his obscene language and his mocking of Jess's unborn child but also through his behavior functioning to undermine and challenge society norms. Downey and Hastings argue that Billy is a manifestation of Bakhtin's grotesque body, commenting on Clark's portrayal of him as a shadowy presence that is "not whole" as a person, suspending the normal hierarchical distinctions and societal barriers through his abnormal behavior. A further example of Billy as the perpetrator of Bakhtin's grotesque body, Downey and Hastings note, is the display of his victims in a parody of feminist types. At the film's end, Barb and Phyl are mutilated in a fashion that depowers their sexuality, symbolically releasing them of their "socially imposed sex roles", which exemplifies Bakhtin's theory that carnivalesque "exalts the blurring and shifting of gender distinctions".

Legacy

Since his first appearance in the original film, Billy has been credited by several writers as introducing many of the tropes that later became a staple for the slasher film genre, such as the image of the "faceless killer", predating John Carpenter's ''Halloween''. Both Billy and ''Black Christmas'' itself have been described by authors as being overshadowed by more popular slasher film entries and villains. According to some critics and historians, ''Halloween'' was possibly inspired and influenced by Clark's film and its antagonist. Clark himself has stated that Carpenter might have drawn partial inspiration for Carpenter's film after a conversation about what a possible sequel to ''Black Christmas'' might look like. However, Clark also admitted that this may or may not have been the case, and Carpenter himself denied 'borrowing' anything from Clark's film, noting that ''Halloween'' was not originally his idea. Many aspects of Billy, including his threatening phone calls, were utilized in many other slasher films and characters. ''Complex''s Matt Barrone pointed out that ''Scream'' franchise's Ghostface killer, who uses the same method of phoning his victims, would not have existed if not for ''Black Christmas'' and Billy.

In 2016, ''Bloody Disgusting'' included Billy in their list of "The 10 Best Non-Monster Horror Villains", calling him "the prototypical slasher villain". Since then, the character has appeared in several lists of top horror film villains, including ''GamesRadar+'' (2017), ''Collider'' (2023), and ''Screen Rant'' (2024). Other publications have included Billy in lists of top film villains, including ''SlashFilm'' and ''CinemaBlend'', both published in 2024.

He has appeared in several unofficial parodies and sequels over the years. In the 2006 mockumentary slasher film '' Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon'', the title character was mentored by a "retired" killer named Eugene, played by Scott Wilson. According to writer David J. Stieve, the character was written as both an homage and an allusion to Billy, commenting that both characters helped "pioneer the business of fear", but were not as widely recognized as much as their successors. In earlier drafts of the film's script, Eugene was heavily implied to be Billy, but the idea was later abandoned in subsequent drafts in favor of making Eugene a combination of various slasher villains. Billy appears in Season 2 of the flash cartoon parody series '' 30-Second Bunnies Theatre'' in 2013.

Billy later appeared in the 2021 fan film ''It's Me, Billy'', written and directed by Dave McRae and Bruce Dale. The short, an unofficial sequel to the original film, is set nearly fifty years after the events of the original film. The premise centered on Sam, the granddaughter of Jess Bradford, as she visits her grandmother's old country mansion with her friends and begins to receive phone calls from Billy, who begins stalking them. A sequel titled ''It’s Me, Billy: Chapter 2'' was released in 2024, continuing immediately after the first film, as Sam and Jess fight back to survive Billy's killing spree. In both films, Billy was voiced by McRae and portrayed by Bryan Charles Peter.

Billy did not appear in the 2019 remake; instead, he was replaced by a cult of misogynistic killers. According to the film's director, Sophia Takal, Billy was symbolic of what she claimed was all the misogyny and sexism implicated against women. Wanting to further convey this theme, Billy was reinterpreted by Takal as a cult rather than a single killer. Despite not appearing in the film, co-writer April Wolfe revealed that the fight scene at the end of the film, where the protagonists use Christmas decorations as weapons, was a direct reference to Billy's murders in the original film. The decision to remove Billy from the film was unpopular both with critics and fans of the original. As one critic wrote, the "terrifying ambiguous threat" of Billy had been replaced by what they called a more "explicit and hackneyed embodiment of the patriarchy itself".

See also

* List of horror film villains

References

Footnotes

Notes

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{{Black Christmas

Black Christmas (film series)
Child characters in film
Christmas characters
Fictional cannibals
Fictional characters from Massachusetts
Fictional characters from Ontario
Fictional victims of child abuse
Fictional victims of child sexual abuse
Fictional characters involved in incest
Fictional characters with mental disorders
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional matricides
Fictional serial killers
Fictional stalkers
Film characters introduced in 1974
Male horror film villains
Unseen characters
Slasher film antagonists