9 Classic Horror Films That Spawned Countless Imitators

From the late 1970s through the 1980s, the slasher genre was all the rage, and there’s one movie that can be thanked for that: Black Christmas. Although Halloween brought slashers into the mainstream, John Carpenter has said that he was heavily inspired by Black Christmas, released four years earlier.

This was the first movie to introduce so many of the elements you’d associate with a slasher movie today. It has a mysterious killer who goes around offing the leads, there's a high body count, the murderer makes threatening phone calls complete with the “the call’s coming from inside the house" gag, and the film even features the prominent use of POV shots.

While Halloween would become famous for putting viewers in Michael Myers’ eyes as he stalked his prey, a trick later copied by Friday the 13th and many others, Black Christmas was the first to do it. You never know who the villain is because you see things through his perspective.

It’s a genius and innovative film that might seem generic now, but that’s only because it inspired so many filmmakers. Nearly every slasher that followed in the next 10 years owes a lot to it. Plus, it introduced the idea of horror films centred around a specific holiday, and these days, pretty much every holiday in existence has had its own killer.