Before Freddy, before Jason, hell, even before Michael, there was Billy, the crazed, unseen killer of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, the Canadian prototypical slasher film that dropped on fine fall day in 1974. Arguably well ahead of its time, Black Christmas created the template for the suburban teen slasher film, while also avoiding many of the cliches that its followers and imitators would fall prey to as the genre grew into maturity.

As winter break begins, a group of sorority sisters, including Jess (Olivia Hussey) and the often inebriated Barb (Margot Kidder), begin to receive anonymous, lascivious phone calls. Initially, Barb eggs the caller on, but stops when he responds threateningly. Soon, Barb’s friend Claire (Lynne Griffin) goes missing from the sorority house, and a local adolescent girl is murdered, leading the girls to suspect a serial killer is on the loose. But no one realizes just how near the culprit is. Along with some great comedy from an excellent supporting cast, Black Christmas is the holiday haunt you’ll want to check in on year after year.

Join Clay, and Amanda as they unwrap the gifts of sexy phone line exchange designations, Jeffrey Dahmer’s phone sex hotline, questionably policing, an objectively amazing fur coat, questionable townie-based sexual politics, hidden toilet booze, casual hockey, casual misogyny, analog phone line tracing, and questionable parenting!

October 11, 1974 might be the most important date in modern horror film history, as it saw the release of the two bedrocks of what was to become the “slasher” genre: Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas. One obviously went on to much renown, and the other, Black Christmas, became more of a hidden gem, albeit no less crucial to the creation of the genre. So get some Christmas cookies, dunk them in your hidden toilet booze, put on your ugliest Christmas sweater, and answer our call…if you DARE!

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