Not only the original Christmas horror film but the original slasher film full stop, Black Christmas provided the rough blueprint that would be perfected with John Carpenter's Halloween not long after and then spawn a whole subgenre that would go on to dominate horror films for decades after (at least until found footage became a thing and ghosts came back into style again). Obviously it also got remade in the early noughties, as is the fate of all slasher films, but you can't hold that against it. Especially because the remake is so naff, and because the original is so good. Well, good by standards of horror films, which demand to be held by a different standard that basically any other film. The Citizen Kane of horror still isn't going to be as good as Citizen Kane. Black Christmas doesn't even try for such cinematic heights, and why should it? It's a horror film based on the THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE urban legend and having a murderer strangle people with fairy lights. Black Christmas is very humble in its ambitions, hoping to bring to life the pulpy horror of those urban legends and generally trying to bring the festive tradition of the holidays down into the gutter with a slasher who menaces a sorority house first with gross phone calls, and then with actual murdering. Sometimes with a unicorn ornament. Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous a lot of the time. In the remake somebody dies from an icicle falling through their eye, though. The killer doesn't even do anything.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
