With the holiday season upon us, the time is right to take a look back at Bob Clark’s groundbreaking chiller BLACK CHRISTMAS. In a scenario that became a popular convention of the horror genre, a deranged killer calls from inside a house, threatening to murder its inhabitants; to this day, fans passionately argue that this movie was the inventor of the slasher genre, a precursor to John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN by four years.

With the recent passing of Dino De Laurentiis, the opportunity arises to look back at one of the films in his long-lasting legacy. In 1986, the legendary producer backed Michael Mann’s uniquely stylish thriller, MANHUNTER, based on RED DRAGON, the first Hannibal Lecter novel by Thomas Harris. The focus here is on retired FBI profiler Will Graham, who takes on merciless serial killer Francis Dollarhyde, nicknamed by the tabloids as “The Tooth Fairy.”

By 1989, the slasher genre was declared officially dead. The idea of a deranged killer going on a killing spree had been done to death, and fans and critics alike were bored. However, it was at this point that a little slasher film was released that, unfortunately, fell through the cracks. HELL HIGH, directed and co-written by Douglas Grossman, is one of the more original examples of the subgenre; it follows the specific criteria, but at the same time adds new ingredients to the mix.

It’s 1962, Halloween, and the placid town of Willowpoint Falls is as perfect as it ever was. LADY IN WHITE follows young Frankie Scarlatti’s (Lukas Haas) journey of understanding that his small world isn’t the carefree, safe place he once knew it to be. The film is both a murder mystery and one hell of a ghost story.