BLACK CHRISTMAS

Director: Bob Clark
1974

John Carpenter's "Halloween" may have marked the birth of the modern slasher, but the template that who knows how many other movies have lifted over the past three decades was actually defined four years earlier in Toronto. Director Bob Clark helmed a disturbing tale about a psychopath stalking the sisters of a sorority house near Christmastime, and all of the genre's mainstays are scattered around in here somewhere: camerawork that puts the audience in the killer's eyes, an unflinchingly ruthless murderer pitted against a strongwilled, resourceful young woman, a sense of isolation and claustrophobia as so much of the movie takes place in a single setting, and, of course, the backdrop of a holiday.

Black Christmasnot only set the template for the glut of slashers that'd flood theaters and video store shelves throughout the '80s, but it outclasses virtually all of them. Its script is sharp enough not to require stupid people to do stupid things just to keep the plot rolling along. Even more than thirty years later, Black Christmas still ranks as one of the most intense, atmospheric, and effective entries in a genre it essentially created.