8. Black Christmas
The Setup: A sorority prepares for Christmas break while unbeknownst to them a psycho killer has his own festivities planned.
What Goes Wrong: With this outing, director Bob Clark delivers a different kind of Holiday classic than he did with A Christmas Story. Horror fans typically cite John Carpenter's 1978 feature Halloween, another psycho killer horror movie centered around a holiday, as being the prototypical slasher film that invented the formula of a psycho killer killing off a group of teenagers one by one but Clark's production beat it by four years and includes all of the tropes that would later become slasher film clichés. Being a slasher movie, you can imagine how quickly this yuletide tale becomes a fiasco. As they are preparing to leave for the holidays, the sorority gets obscene phone calls from an anonymous, heavy-breathing man who threatens to kill them. Naturally, they ignore these death threats in favor of getting the sorority house in shape for the holidays because everyone has so much on their plates during Christmas who has time worry about whether a lunatic will make good on his threats to kill you? The sisters are picked off one by one while the alarming incompetent police department ignores their missing persons reports because they have better things to do (presumably getting last minute Christmas gifts). Eventually, once the body count has reached a sufficient number, the police get their act together long enough to kill off a red herring and leave the sole surviving sorority sister unguarded while the psycho remains upstairs.
The Moral of the Story: Don't let your excitement for the holidays cloud your judgment and if an obscene phone caller tells you he's going to murder you, you should probably heed the warning.