Bob Clark's Black Christmas Deserves as Much Praise as Halloween

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Bob Clark's 1974 Holiday Horror Movie Deserves as Much Praise as Halloween

By Gaius Bolling

Published Dec 13, 2023

While John Carpenter's Halloween gets most of the credit, Bob Clark's Black Christmas perfected slasher movie tropes four years earlier.

Warner Bros.

Black Christmas, released in 1974, is now recognized as a defining film of the horror genre, alongside Halloween.
The film pioneered many slasher movie tropes, including the use of a killer without an identity and the calls coming from inside the house.
Both Black Christmas and Halloween are atmospheric and use their respective holidays to add to the terror, making them highly influential in the genre.