The holidays are upon us again, and with them, a load of holiday movies. It's just not Christmas without the annual viewing of movies like Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, The Bishop's Wife, and others. But those aren't the only Christmas movies out there. For those of you who like your holiday a little darker than most, for those who enjoy a Santa Claus with a psychotic gleam in his eye and a butcher knife in his hand, here are some movies you might want to watch this Christmas.

If you're the type of person who enjoys a bad movie from time to time, you might want to check out Silent Night, Deadly Night, a Christmas slasher flick about a young psycho who dresses up like Santa Claus and slaughters naughty boys and girls. I recommend this movie only for its Christmas theme ‹ its budget is minuscule and its production values sub par. But if you can tolerate that, and you're in the mood for a killer Santa, this is the movie for you. When it was released in 1984, there were protests outside theaters all over the country by parents and moralists upset by the idea of a homicidal Santa. Tri-Star pulled it from theaters quickly. But it spawned four straight-to-video sequels: Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, SN,DN 3: Better Watch Out!, SN,DN 4: Initiation, and SN,DN 5: The Toy Maker, costarring, believe it or not, Mickey Rooney.

Another demented Santa Claus stalks Joan Collins in 1972's Tales From the Crypt, directed by the great Freddie Francis. It's a British anthology movie with five stories taken from the controversial '50s comic books, Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror. In the first story, "All Through the Night," Joan kills her husband on Christmas Eve, then busily works to cover her traces while an escapee from a nearby hospital for the criminally insane, dressed in a Santa Claus costume, tries to get into the house. With very little dialogue and to the accompaniment of Christmas carols playing on the radio, this is a tense holiday vignette.

In the 1984 hit, Gremlins, goofy inventor Hoyt Axton gives his son an unusual Christmas present: An adorable, cooing little gremlin named Gizmo. But it comes with a few rules ‹ keep it away from bright light, don't feed it after midnight, and whatever you do, don't get it wet. As cute as Gizmo is, the other gremlins who eventually join him are anything but sweet, and they raise all kinds of hell in the small postcard town of Kingston Falls. Director Joe Dante mixes It's A Wonderful Life sensibilities with monster-movie shocks and cooks up a movie that's funny, at times creepy, and a lot of fun.

1958's Bell, Book, and Candle is a holiday romantic comedy with a supernatural twist. Jimmy Stewart plays a publisher engaged to be married on whom a gorgeous witch, played by Kim Novak, casts a spell. Director Richard Quine conjures up some great atmosphere at times ‹ particularly in the Zodiac Club, and at Mrs. de Passe's house when she cooks up an antidote potion for Stewart to drink ‹ and the supporting cast is stellar, including Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, and Hermione Gingold as Mrs. de Passe.

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas blends Christmas with Halloween in a brilliantly imaginative animated musical for kids and adults alike. Jack Skellington tries to highjack Christmas by kidnapping Santa Claus and lots of charming strangeness ensues. The songs are pleasant, but the movie is a visual feast more than anything else, with plenty to keep your eyes busy.

In his song A Christmas Carol, Tom Lehrer refers to Christmas as a time when we "drag out the Dickens." And drag it out we do, every year. Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol must be one of the most enduring and filmed and copied and spoofed pieces of literature ever written. We've become so accustomed to it, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that it's a full-blooded horror story. There are some truly chilling moments in Dickens's tale. I honestly can't tell you how many times it's been filmed. In my opinion, one of the weakest is the 1938 MGM version with Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge ‹ I think any adaptation is only as strong as the actor playing Scrooge, and I found Owen unsatisfactory. A better movie was made for TV in 1984 with George C. Scott excellent as Scrooge. One of the very best and most faithful adaptations, and my personal favorite, is from 1951, with Alistair Sim as my favorite movie Scrooge ‹ his elation near the end when he wakes up and realizes he hasn't missed Christmas is delightfully contagious. There's an adaptation with the Muppets, another starring Mickey Mouse. There's a rousing musical version from 1970 starring Albert Finney. In 1988, director Richard Donner made Scrooged, a cynical and hilarious update starring Bill Murray a heartless TV network head who gets the Dickens from three very unsubtle ghosts. Pick one of your favorite adaptations this year and pay close attention to the story ‹ it's a classic horror tale of painful loss, confrontation with Death, and finally, redemption, that will remain powerful for generations to come.

For my money, the granddaddy of Christmas horror movies is 1974's Black Christmas. John Carpenter's Halloween usually gets the credit for starting the slasher flick fad, but Black Christmas came first. Director Bob Clark (who also gave us Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, the haunting Deathdream, and the aforementioned A Christmas Story ‹ "You'll put your eye out!") steadily builds the tension as sorority girls are knocked off one by one. At the same time, someone is making obscene phone calls to the sorority house. These aren't just any phone calls ‹ these are the scariest phone calls I've ever heard. They're reminiscent at times of some of the sounds and babbling that came from Linda Blair in The Exorcist and I promise they'll give you chills. The strong cast includes Olivia Hussey as Jessy, who's pregnant and planning to have an abortion, Keir Dullea as her high-strung boyfriend Peter, Margot Kidder as the crusty, hard-drinking Barbie, horror movie veteran John Saxon, Marian Waldman as the tipsy Mrs. MacHenry, and SCTV's Andrea Martin. Like Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas is the kind of movie that leaves you feeling like you've seen more blood and gore than you really have. It's the first movie to use a device that originally showed up in an urban legend and was used again in the inferior 1979 picture When A Stranger Calls. It's a nail-biter, and it's available on DVD now, so there's no excuse for missing this holiday classic.

Thank you for reading my movie musings in this column -- I am grateful for your attention. I hope your Santa is a sane, stable, and generous one this holiday season, and I wish you all the best in 2004.