Black Christmas.

A Holiday classic. Now heralded as a seminal work and a foundational text of the slasher genre, Black Christmas was originally characterized as low-class garbage by male film critics, the most hated subspecies of the masculine gender. The actresses were characterized as desperate suckers and fame seekers being exploited for a buck.

The movie is in fact brimming with feminist themes and is a pretty fantastic exploration of patriarchal dynamics. Young women are terrorized and harsssed by a stalker. When they go to the men of their lives, their designated protectors, they are often not taken seriously. Their intelligence and honesty is treated with suspicion by incompetent police and angry, controlling lovers. Even when protection is offered to these women it always under the auspices of male power. Women are granted the (false) promise of safety in exchange for the acceptance of male authority

Women are given a chance to be funny in this movie without being polite or cute. The housemother Mrs Mac is an alcoholic icon rivaling any frat boy character of the following decade. The movie manages to be genuinely funny in a way a lot of its contemporaries fail to be.

Much of the movies horror plays out in a well lit house, but we know where things are. Much like your own home that you know so well, when your fear is triggered by an unexpected bump from the shadows, suddenly every corner and curtain is obscuring a potential intruder.

It is not wholly original. Its iconic ending is itself a classic urban legend. But this movie succeeds in pretty much every way a slasher should. If you don't possess a brain or you have the misfortune of being a brain damaged male film critic from the 70s this movie is about nothing other than women being butchered. Otherwise, it's an undeniable work of artistic genius.