Black Christmas (1974): B

Pioneering many now-familiar slasher film tropes a good five years before John Carpenter’s seminal Halloween (with which it shares an opening POV shot from a murderer’s perspective), Black Christmas corrodes jolly yuletide cheer with some cruel prank calls, sexual tension and sorority girl slayings. Director Bob Clark works through his grisly premise – part When a Stranger Calls, part Slumber Party Massacre – with deliberate sordidness, the most vulgar (and frightening) example of which involves an insult-filled conversation between Margot Kidder’s slutty alcoholic and a shrieking, squealing telephone pervert that ends with the calm-voiced promise, “I’m going to kill you.” A head wrapped in a plastic bag, a homicide laced with penetrating coitus imagery, and a horrendous haircut sported by the unbearably overacting Keir Dullea (2001) all contribute to the film’s nastiness, and it’s surprising how much mileage the director gets out of his gore-free set pieces and schizophrenia-plagued killer’s incoherent phone tirades. Ultimately, though, Black Christmas is a somewhat uneven holiday horror treat, its scares having aged reasonably well but its intriguing gender warfare dynamic – found in the contentious relationship between pregnant (but abortion-craving) Jessica (Olivia Hussey) and frustrated pianist (and wannabe daddy) Peter (Dullea) – a victim of woeful underdevelopment.