20 Best Christmas Horror Movies You NEED To Watch
18. Black Christmas (1974)
Though John Carpenter's Halloween is widely credited with launching the slasher genre, it's important not to ignore a film that predated it by four years - Bob Clark's incredible Black Christmas.
Focused on a group of sorority sisters who find themselves preyed upon by a serial killer over the Christmas period, Black Christmas is a proto-slasher that helped set the very template that's still successful today. But while the title might suggest that Clark's film is an exercise in campy schlock, it largely dares to take itself seriously and, better yet, actually succeeds.
In addition to the brutal death scenes, there's some ahead-of-its-time social commentary on a woman's right to choose, and Olivia Hussey's Jess is still one of the greatest Final Girls ever.
More than 50 years on, Black Christmas remains a genre classic that's never quite gotten its flowers, perhaps in part because, despite its commercial success, it didn't spawn the expected glut of sequels.
Just be sure to avoid the 2006 remake and especially the 2019 "reimagining."