PLOT: A psycho serial killer escapes a mental institution and returns home to wipe out a gaggle of sorority sisters.

Bah humbug and Scrooge you, Christmas creeps. That is the message embedded in writer-director Glen Morgan's nasty little holiday horrorfest.

It does not open in theatres until Christmas Day.

While it counts as a U.S.-Canada co-production, this is essentially an American remake of the still eerie, still creepy and still effective Canadian flick of 1974. Bob Clark, shooting at the University of Toronto, really scared us.

The original featured Margot Kidder (pre-Lois Lane), Keir Dullea (after Malcolm McDowell said no), Olivia Hussey (Romeo And Juliet, this ain't) and Andrea Martin (who returns in the remake as the sorority den mother).

Clark's movie had us squirming because, working from Roy Moore's screenplay, he tapped into primal fears, including the notion that no one is safe, even in your own home. Killer Billy lived inside the walls and attic of the Victorian manse where he once murdered his evil mother and step-dad. Once it became a sorority house, Billy popped out to make his own sicko merry at Christmas.

The remake presumes that Billy has been holed up in a mental institution for years. But this Christmas, he finally escapes and returns to the same house to kill again.

Morgan, who uses screwed-up Freudian flashbacks to muck around with Moore's backstory, ramps up the intensity and senselessness of the violence in the remake.

Instead of being a psychological terror movie, with some splatter elements, it is Santa's slasher flick. No holds barred and no eyeballs uneaten. Buckets of red blood deck the halls. There are some ludricrous plot twists. And everyone on screen is drop-dead stupid, literally in most cases.

You can't blame the cast, although they're all bad. Among them is Martin, who has the thankless job of trying to wrangle a posse of unruly, rude college girls.

Among them is Kate Cassidy, David Cassidy's daughter; Michelle Trachtenberg, who saw better days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Crystal Lowe from Morgan's Final Destination 3; and Lacey Chabert, best known for TV's Party Of Five. Among the males, Oliver Hudson (Goldie Hawn's son and Kate Hudson's brother) plays an idiot loser who tries to play hero.

The new Black Christmas actually kicks off in the right spirit, as a campy slasher flick that knows how bad it is and revels in it.

But that sense of "fun" soon dissipates as the movie slides into its formulaic routine. The killing spree becomes repetitive and tiresome. The movie drowns in its own blood.

BOTTOM LINE: Even for slasher and splatter horror fans, Glen Morgan's Americanized remake of the 1974 Canadian horror classic is a disappointment.

(This film is rated 14A)
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