Ah, December 25th, with its hour or two of presents around the fireplace starting at 7 AM or so, plus also some stuff about Jesus, maybe? Assuming you’re into the Jesus, that carries you until about noon. And now you’re left with a big long day full of a holiday feast, maybe some football, and not much else. Also, everything is closed. Everything except the movie theater! Which explains why just about everyone in three cities was piled up in front of the theater a block from my house. The part that warms my heart is that the majority of them were trying to see Black Christmas. Sure, it was only on one screen and long since sold out. But whether they got to see it isn’t especially my point. Just that they wanted to. Plus, no picketers trying to take back Christmas from those bad, bad people who are trying to destroy it by filming a movie set during the time of year. (But, y’know, with blood. And a few boobies.) Of course, by 10 at night, most such picketers are home in their beds, aren’t they?

Anyway, nothing to boycott here; they may as well have called it Black Holiday, for all the Christmasness that is explicitly involved. I mean, trees and presents, sure, but approximately nothing to do with Jesus. Of course, then they’d have to boycott the movie for having not been named Black Christmas, due to the War on Same. And I’m pretty sure even these people might spot that irony.

Well, okay, technically there are things to boycott, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t approve of sorority girls being murdered in a variety of increasingly gruesome ways and occasionally taking showers, or of bizarre families where the mother murders her husband, locks her son in the attic because of his rare liver disease (symptoms include yellowing of the skin, requiring a diet rich in eyeballs, being unnaturally hard to kill, and passing the latter trait to offspring), and eventually… well, that would be a spoiler. But let’s just say there’s such a thing as bad nudity and leave it at that.

The best was the deadly icicle, and the worst was the goofy chase through the drywall. But it completely knew that it was supposed to be a funny teen slasher movie, and it delivered admirably. I’m so, so glad this stuff has come back. The ’80s, after all, were finite.