The egg nog’s been consumed, all rounds dashed with nutmeg inside my glass Marty Moose glass (as you see in Christmas Vacation), a few with added rum. I’ve had the Christmas horror offerings on spin, ala the first Silent Night, Deadly Night, Krampus, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Tales from the Crypt episode “And All Through the House” (even if the source material EC comic book story came via Vault of Horror issue number 35).

Yes, there’s been more innocuous holiday viewing material spread on the tube like A Mickey Christmas Carol, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Jingle All the Way, Christmas Vacation, A Charlie Brown Christmas, the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas and many of the old Rankin Bass stop-action animation holiday gems I grew up with and still love. You know, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Year Without a Santa Claus.

Y’all know me well enough to know it’s the horror section which satiates my desire for dark delights. It’s been a while since I sat down with the original 1974 Black Christmas, and my opinion remains the same. There’s some genuinely terrifying stuff, especially the premise taken out of true crime events in Canada. Despite Margot Kidder and John Saxon checking in with some of their earlier roles and the finest Juliet on film, Olivia Hussey, Black Christmas always feels like it was missing something. Yet that final frame pulling away from Clare’s remains left undetected by the town in the upper window is creepy as AF and for me, is the film’s legacy. That, and knowing director Bob Clark would go back to the holidays less than a decade later and win immortality with A Christmas Story.

Even with two future remakes, the ’74 Black Christmas retains its dank intrigue and place in horror history as one of the first true slasher films.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.