It's Twilight week which means I'm doing what any sane adult would do and staying way the hell away from the local multiplex.  A swarm of hundreds of teen girls dreaming of being swept away by the handsome undead?  It's like an Evanesence video gone horribly, horribly wrong so no thanks.  So what's a self respecting film geek to do with himself this week?  Well, with the festive season rapidly approaching I suggest getting into the season with a good dose of Black Christmas.

Now wipe that smirk off your face!  I'm not talking about that Black Christmas, not the one that Glen Morgan is going to have to answer for in the afterlife right after he's done explaining how he managed to screw up The X Files so badly.  No, I'm saying you should get out there in support of the home team and check out the original Bob Clark 1974 version, a task made oh so much easier thanks to a brand new standard def DVD release of the film from Anchor Bay, soon to be followed by its appearance on BluRay in early December.

For those unfamiliar with this, here's the quick and lowdown.  In 1974 Bob Clark - who would later go on to acheive a certain amount of fame for directing Porky's and A Christmas Story, among others -  directed a little film that slipped by without a lot of notice at the time but has since gone on to be recognized as a legitimate genre classic and is now widely considered to be the first modern slasher film ever produced.  Now, while Clark wasn't Canadian himself the large majority of his films were, particularly in his early career, when Clark was one of many who took advantage of loose Canadian tax laws to churn out a quick series of low budget horror films.  And while Clark would go on to work in other genres and in other countries he'll always feel like one of our own to me and I honestly believe it's hard to overstate his influence on the Canadian film scene of the time.  Hell, Porky's alone spent years as the top grossing Canadian feature of all time.

Anyway ... Black Christmas.   The film takes soon-to-be-famous Canucks Andrea Martin and Margot Kidder and drops them into the middle of a sorority house that becomes the target of a vicous, implacable killer.  It's a nasty bit of work, one that stands up remarkably well, and while most looked to Halloween as the slasher template for years the actual fact is that Black Christmas established all of the now-familiar slasher tropes a solid four years earlier than Carpenter got to it.

So, go on kids.  Die Hard may be well established as the genre flick of choice for celebrating the birth of Baby Jesus but why not let Bob give Bruce a bit of company this year.  Throw another log on the fire ...