Imagine, as a filmmaker, being able to brag about creating not one classic Christmas movie, but two must-watch holiday staples? That's Bob Clark's reality. A Christmas Story is the title most audiences associate with Clark, given how it marathons on syndication for 24 hours every December. But what about his knockout on the other side of the naughty or nice spectrum? Before Clark went on to direct Porky's, A Christmas Story, and Baby Geniuses, he helped popularize the slasher subgenre by introducing viewers to the snow-dusted impurity of 1974's Black Christmas.
Clark's ho-ho-horrific Canadian masterpiece isn't just the best Christmas-themed slasher; it's on the Mount Rushmore of classic slashers. What's achieved through noose-tight tension and unrelenting dread informs an entire subgenre of horror that, in turn, would misunderstand the strengths of Black Christmas and devolve into cheap sleaze. Clark's ability to sustain frigid suspense using perverse phone calls, voyeuristic peeping Toms (inspired by Peeping Tom), and the sorority slasher mold does not relent. Black Christmas is a horrific testament to fear and paranoia, before the slasher genre predominantly became male-gazey skin flicks and sloppy gore romps.
