As sure as there's an “X” in “Xmas,” Grindhouse Film Fest presents its seasonal mind-shattering double bill of Black Christmas and Silent Night, Bloody Night. The first film, directed by the late Bob Clark — who also directed its opposite number, A Christmas Story — stars Margot Kidder and staunch stone-faced John Saxon in the story of a maniac loose in the attic. No one seems to be able to find him, no matter how many strange noises in the night they hear, until people wind up dead and hidden. In the second, Mary Woronov and John Carradine deal with their own maniac-on-the-loose winter wonderland. Both films are gloomily luminescent examples of post-Vietnam cinema, a time in which illusions of safety came under attack and nothing seemed certain, which is why movie endings from the early '70s onward tend to be real bummers.

Tue., Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m., 2010

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