I’m Staying Home

WITH A NETFLIX QUEUE still overzealously frontloaded in October’s
horror glut, it’s already time to start your inevitable segue into that
other cinema-sick holiday—so let’s assume that you want to
make the transition seamlessly this year. Please have your sleigh/slay
puns ready.

Gremlins (1984)—When I was five, my favorite
movie was Gremlins. In addition to undoubtedly being my only
justifiable claim to kinship with Lil Wayne (no homo), my relationship
with this surprisingly cynical little fable also managed to color most
of my subsequent holidays with a sense of creeping, uncanny macabre.
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” still gives me chills. Additional fright
fact: adorable puppet protagonist Gizmo was voiced by Howie Mandel.
Gross.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)—With its
evocatively oversized video box launching a million adolescent
nightmares, the first film in the Silent Night, Deadly Night pentalogy is perhaps the most well-known entry in the surprisingly
crowded homicidal Saint Nicholas subgenre (see also: Christmas
Evil, Santa Claws, Santa’s Slay, etc.). Faced with
unprecedented controversy upon its theatrical release, this thoroughly
undeserving film is also responsible for perhaps the least ominous
slasher utterances of all time: the gruff, monotonous, and staggeringly
unmenacing “Pun-ish!”

Black Christmas (1974)—The only film on this
modest list that I can recommend without qualification, the original
Black Christmas is arguably ground zero of the slasher
genre—essentially establishing all of the modern precepts:
sorority house slaughter, heavy-breathing POV stalker, a strangely
puritanical ethical compass, and a classic “the call is coming from
inside the house!” premise. Margot Kidder, you are so pretty!

Jack Frost (1996)—Released roughly two years
prior to Michael Keaton’s creepy family film of the same name (and,
come to think of it, strikingly similar premise), Jack Frost is
more winking grotesquerie than genuine horror film. And while that’s
all fine and good, there’s just something about a supernatural snowman
raping a woman to death with his carrot nose that kinda cripples the
old funny bone. But maybe that’s just me.