There’s a scene in Bob Clark’s “Black Christmas” where sorority house bad-girl Barb (played by Margot Kidder), in the midst of talking to a clueless cop about her missing housemate, slips in a subtle joke about oral sex. The cop doesn’t get it, but Barb’s friends, and the audience, do. It’s a moment that only Clark could convincingly pull off: a spot of humor that alleviates, just for a minute, a sense of building suspense. Clark was an inveterate collector of stories, and most of his films are full of moments like this that seem culled from his and others’ funny anecdotes and experiences, as if he’s whispering to the audience, “Hey, did you ever hear the one about …?”

Clark died in a car accident earlier this month at the age of 68. He’s best known for directing “A Christmas Story,” that slice of holiday nostalgia that’s grown so popular in the last 20 years that TNT plays the movie for 24 hours straight each year on Christmas But before he was filling audiences’ heads with visions of Red Ryder BB guns and leg-shaped lamps, Clark was primarily known for his horror films. His first major film, 1972’s “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” was a low-budget Romero homage, more comedic than horrific, but still infused with a certain amount of suspense. In “Children,” a troupe of actors (lead by frequent Clark collaborator Alan Ormsby), venture to a secluded island off the coast of Florida. They’re there to stage a production, but Alan has other plans—namely, conducting a faux-Satanic ritual that is supposed to raise the dead. Despite his bungling, the dead do indeed rise, and Alan and his thespian buds quickly become dinner.

“Children” isn’t that great, but thanks to Clark’s directing and some decent, if hammy, acting, the film is better than it has any right to be. But then Clark followed “Children” with “Deathdream,” a shockingly good zombie flick that’s also a polemic against the Vietnam War. In it, Andy (Richard Backus) returns from Vietnam a brooding, surly loner with a penchant for angrily killing family dogs and attacking others for their blood. Andy’s dad senses something is amiss, but his mom, who had desperately wished for her son to return home alive from the war, is willing to go to any length to protect him. “Deathdream” doesn’t soften its message about the war or the damage it did to returning soldiers. Legendary effects artist Tom Savini cut his teeth on “Deathdream” before becoming famous for working on Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.”

Clark followed “Deathdream” with 1974’s “Black Christmas,” one of the first modern slasher films—it beat “Halloween” into theaters by four years. Eerie and suspenseful, with a sort of off-beat sense of humor, “Black Christmas” remains pretty creepy to this day. Aided by an excellent cast, including Kidder, John Saxon and Kier Dullea, “Black Christmas” is full of small twists and turns and, surprisingly, a small amount of gore. That’s another thing about Clark’s horror films—he always favored the subtle over the excessive. “I find it more challenging to be subtle,” Clark said in a 2004 interview with Videoscope magazine. “‘Black Christmas’ has one scene where you see a small statue plunged into flesh, but other than that, it’s all done with cuts, and I think it is more intelligent for being done that way.”

“Porky’s,” his second best-known film, soon followed, and it wasn’t long before Clark was a big-studio director, if only momentarily. The box office success of “Porky’s” opened the door for Clark to shoot “A Christmas Story,” a project he had long wanted to complete. After “A Christmas Story,” Clark’s career became fairly scattershot. A “Porky’s” sequel did well, but “Rhinestone,” a mess of a film starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton, earned Clark a nomination for a “Worst Director” Razzie award, a dubious distinction he earned again in 2004 for “SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2.”

How does one go from “A Christmas Story” to “Baby Geniuses 2”? Clark was never shy about being a journeyman director, nor was he ashamed of his eclectic run. His career was like most of his films—a story that starts out one way and winds up venturing down unexpected paths.