The great thing about finding a film that counts as both a Halloween AND Christmas flick is that from now on I have the excuse to watch this twice every year. What an absolute banger of a time. Surprisingly one of the most brilliant takes on domestic abuse I've seen to come out of a horror movie, let alone a slasher! The cinematography is so playful and the editing could not be more perfect. There's a specific scene that uses a Christmas carol that is just...muah! AND its genuinely terrifying!! No better feeling than letting out an unintentional "Oh!" in the last 20 minutes of a film. Ugh!!

Don't take what I'm about to say too seriously, but horror seems…

Black Christmas is the best slasher ever made.

Every character is their own, there are no interchangeable sorority sisters, Barb [Margot Kidder] is so well-defined that when she's drunk at dinner with Mr. Harrison, at first glance you may dismiss her defiance as another drunk/comedic moment, but just a few scenes earlier we see Barb disappointed that her mother won't be around for Christmas, she lashes out at Mr. Harrison's daughter Clare, and then at Clare's concerned & present father, in a fit of painful jealousy.

Barb's pain is felt throughout the entire film because Black Christmas is permeated with a chilling loneliness. This movie is a mood, perfectly capturing what it feels like to be alone at Christmas, in the…

If Bob Clark's Black Christmas doesn't make you want to Deck the Halls and sing Jingle Bells; you must be a Grinch Scrooge.

Black Christmas has so much holiday cheer! There's a cool pussycat, plastic baggie fun, way way underage drinking, rad PoV kill vision, crazy Canadian humor to offset the absolute psychological terror tension, prank calls, high-tech phone tracing, a swearing Santa, turtle fucking, shag carpet, Juliet without her Romeo, classical music destruction, a fella with a mink coat who's straight pimpin', old lady drunkenness, Creepy Christmas Carolers, the Neighborhood Watch, a smart cop, a dumb as rocks cop and a killer that doesn't give a flyin' fuck!

God Bless, Bob Clark! He gave us Porky's, A Christmas Story,…

one of my personal favourite slashers. love the frequently moody compositions, patient camera moves, artificial glow of the christmas lights and quaint lived-in quality to its performances (actually quite funny with a crowd!) that really makes you notice the silence of its eventual bare soundscape when the girl's start disappearing. the sheer quiet intensity of its cross-cutting, split-diopters and POV imagery nearly send christmas caroling and ringing phones into the realm of the metaphysical. it is also one of the scariest movies about navigating male rage. the way the film intertwines the unseen killer's sexually-motivated violence and barely-repressed freudian trauma with the abusive boyfriend's increasingly unhinged spiraling after realizing he cannot control jess (both his vision of her and her…

Black Christmas (from A Christmas Story director, Bob Clark) is not only one of the greatest Christmas-themed horror films of all time, it is one of the most gorgeous and brilliant films I have ever seen.

Not only is it striking with fantastic, chilling transitions just melting into one scene to the next, the camera work is close to revolutionary giving us point-of-view shots from unbelievably creative and memorable angles.

Understandably Black Christmas is one of the most influential films when it comes to the slasher genre which blew up only a few years later, a proto-slasher giving us a new spin, transforming a typical whodunnit into a haunting and relentless visual experience with a glimpse into what would soon…

Part of Buddy the Elf, What's Your Favorite Color?

“Agnes, it's me, Billy.”

I adore Christmas. For all the eyeroll-inducing cheese and the schmaltz that the season can bring, it truly is my favorite time of year. I love Christmas music (good Christmas music, that is, not the treacle piped in over the PA system at the mall). I love buying just the right present and wrapping it carefully. I love trimming the tree. I love all of the Yuletide food and drink (especially tamales which, if you’re from Texas, are mandatory). I love spending time with family and friends. I love the chill in the air. I love watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and White Christmas and “Rudolph the…

Silent Night, Evil Night. Moody, dread infused atmosphere thickening in tone with each disgusting phone call or POV shot... and featuring one of cinema’s most unseen deranged wild mouthed lunatics lurking the perfectly lit sorority house—all disorientingly soundwaved by reverberating strings from hell that crawl right the under my skin. This movie... it’s like some sort of Canadian giallo thrown into the holiday aesthetic and dialed in hard and I love it so much. Taught, highly effective, and scary... legitimately scary.

My favorite kind of slow burn... dark as can be, oozing with tension, loaded with intricate, likable characters (and a crybaby piano smashing asshole), beautiful camerawork, excellent lighting, and hair raising murder setpieces spewing out bursts of intensity that…