Many Reasons For the Season

So I queued up Red Christmas via Netflix because hey! I like a good seasonal horror flick. With Christmas looming, why not devote that Monday to a new yuletide slasher?

Then I slogged through the mean-spirited coal that was Red Christmas and thought to myself, you know Emily, this year has been ugly enough without ending it on such a negative, punishing, anti-choice, mixed garbage statement of a movie. Let's find a happier note to play, something seasonal but positive.

So here are a few random things to love about horror movies during the holidays. And if nothing here works, just screw it all and queue up The Muppet Family Christmas for the 9,00th time. No judgement here. 

The Crypt Keeper Singing Holiday Jingles

Easily the best item ever to be purchased in the '90s by a teenage Emily at the Spencer's Gifts, this album (originally on cassette tape, natch) includes a dozen holiday tunes with the lyrics rewritten to be more fitting of the singer, John Kassir's pun-wielding, tale-spinning Crypt Keeper. Can't get your Walkman working? Revel in the kindness of strangers with YouTube accounts.

The Very Fact That There Exists Not One But Two Killer Snowman Movies

And yet, the unrelated but weirdly similar Michael Keaton family film of the same name is somehow far creepier

The Choice to View Christmas Evil As a Magical Tale of a Lonely Santa-Loving Man Ascending to Angel Status

My (and John Waters) favorite holiday genre film can be viewed as a lot of things: a an early entry into the slasher Santa trend, tragic tale of mental illness taken to extremes, the chance to spot a way-pre-Home Improvement Patricia Richardson in a tiny role. For my money, it's something even more special (that's also all of those things). The key to keeping Christmas Evil on the right side of your heart is to make the conscious decision that SPOILER ALERT! Harry Stadling's van doesn't crash and burn after his killing spree is over, but rather, transcends into the heavens, transforming into a magical sleigh and changing our sad sack factory worker into the real deal Santa. 

Margot Kidder In Black Christmas, Goddess

Easily on the top five list of Film Characters I Want To Lost a Drinking Game To. She. Is. Divine.

Vincent Cassel's Insanity In Sheitan

The movie itself? Somewhat insufferable. The MAN himself? 

A god. Or, well, technically agent of the devil. 

The Most Feel-Good Pop Montage In the Least Feel-Good Slasher

I've said it again and I'll say it an estimated 781 more times before I die: Silent Night Deadly Night is memorable for a bevy of reasons, but none more so than the weirdly placed, tonally mismatched "The Warm Side of the Door" sequence, wherein a sweet country tune cheerfully plays as our soon-to-be-mass-murderer learns about friendship, work ethic, and the joy of having alcoholic bosses.

Eric Freeman's Case For The Academy Awards Adding a Category for Best Performance By a Pair of Eyebrows

I mean...

Clint Howard's Phallic Coven Mask

Everybody forgets Silent Night Deadly Night Part 4 because it doesn't have The Warm Side of the Door or eyebrows, but you what it does have? Murderous roller blades. Also, this:

Ray Wise & Lin Shaye In Dead End

A good but flawed little Christmas Eve ghost story, Dead End deserves to be seen more, mostly because, you know, Ray Wise and Lin Shaye. 

Disco Cameo Greatness

Don't Open Til Christmas is filled with a lot of wonderful things, among them, a smily plastic mask, Halloween costume holiday parties, charmingly innocent peep show conversations, a sleazy male flutist, and insanely slow motion overwrought flashbacks. But you know what REALLY makes it exciting? That it has Caroline Munro randomly performing a disco number. Because if that's not the real reason for the season, what is?

Slaughterhouse Santa

Words don’t express how sad I am that I’ve gone 27 December 25ths without seeing Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas, but that’s what Mill Creek 50 packs were made for. And along with the soon-to-be-purchased boxed set of Silent Night, Deadly Night 3-5, I now have a new film to add to my annual yuletide viewing. Good thing the Muppet’s 2008 holiday special was rather lame. Not lame enough for Santa to be killed by a pocket-knife wielding psycho, but just under the bar set by Michael Kane, a Fraggle crossover, and Scooter in a go-go cage for Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas to claim its place under my tree.

Quick Plot: There’s a murderer on the loose in London and his targets laugh like a bowl full of jelly, sometimes while chit chatting with sex workers or humorously riding bicycles. An unnecessary and rather inconsistent prologue follows a young necking couple parked in public in the middle of the night (no shot of the street sign reading Lovers’ Lane) as they meet their end by a guy seeming to hold a knife and camera. It’s actually an impressive feat of balance, although the fact that throughout the film, the killer only stalks Santa Clauses and this opening murder makes absolutely no sense in context is something we’ll brush aside in the name of prologue.

Meanwhile, the coolest people I’ve ever seen on film are having a total Halloween-esque costume party to welcome the Christmas season, but sadly, festivities are cut short when the host is stabbed in the back of the head in front of all to see. A few more polyester white beard clad impostors are knocked off in a grab bag of styles, including gunshot, shoe knife slices, castration while urinating, and, in a stroke of true Kris Kringly genius, face roasting on an open fire (previously used to warm chestnuts, of course).

Now, I realize there was no widespread Internet in the 1980s as Al Gore had not yet sought a patent, but I’ve seen my share of spinning newspaper reels to know the general public should have been fairly aware that a serial killer was hungry for a very particular type of victim. So. Why, oh why, would one continue to travel the streets in a red velour jumpsuit? Is the call of St. Nick stronger than that of the Pony Express? It’s an unanswered question in a film that doesn’t really demand anything, so I’ll let this go because, you know what? I loved this movie, and an informed public would imply less dead Santas.

Our main heroine is the rich daughter of the first slain St. Nick, although she gets some stiff competition from Experience Girl (or so the IMDB listing credits her; I'd love to harp on the insanity of this naming, but then I'd forget that Kelly Baker was also in Slaughter High , so we'll move on) who works in what I guess is an old time nudie booth, here portrayed as a store window with prison-style phones for chatting and the option of boobs. There’s also Cliff, (Gerry Sundquist), a flute playing fashion photographer and (according the the trailer) Number One Suspect, and the skeevy Inspector Harris, played by director Edmund Purdom (clearly a man of many talents). We don’t have any reason to like any of them, but by the time the killer reveals his tormented self, the audience is having more fun than a spangly dressed elf gulping eggnog on a strobe-lit disco floor.  

High Points

Am I getting soft, or was the first shot of the plastic mask somewhat unnerving?

The final flashback, wherein we discover the motive for our killer’s hatred of all things tinseled, is absolutely incredible. By that, I mean it makes the death of Billy’s parents in the original Silent Night, Deadly Night look like Citizen Kane...which is sooooooo much less exciting than the intense use of slow motion and echoed sound cues utilized by Purdom here

You have to love a film released in 1984 that still managed to sneak in a complete disco number, performed, no less, by genre fave (and also Slaughter High graduate) Caroline Munro

Low Points

It’s hard to really spot them since this is the kind of movie where all the “bad” aspects (such as the humorously overdramatic score) make it so much fun to watch. I suppose the biggest annoyance is the fact that for the first hour, the only murdered victims are total strangers and thus, we’re less invested in their deaths than we are shopping for a Secret Santa in the office whose name we’re lucky to remember

A somewhat suspenseful and drawn-out cat-and-mouse chase with a gang-fearing Santa Claus in a toy factory has a rather humbug payoff

Lessons Learned

Models should never be photographed too much for fear of being overexposed. This may have been a cute dumb blond pun, but it doesn't really work when the actress has a lower IQ and sense of wordplay than the dumb blond she's portraying

Men with perms do not instill fear upon a 21st century audience

When expressing that you’re “bloody furious,” it's far more effective when you show the slightest trace of emotion in your voice

Murderous Christmas-hating psychotics have mastered the art of smizing (trademarked by Tyra Banks for “smiling with your eyes”)

Time flies really fast when you’re being chased by a serial killer. It can go from night to sunny daylight in the snap of your finger!


Most women are surprisingly not excited by the idea of sapphic photo shoots in Santa suits (particularly when they're mourning the murder of a family member while he happened to be dressed as such)

Repeated Confirmation of a Previous Theory

Staircases are the most lethal type of architecture one can encounter in everyday life...at least in the movies. I’ve fallen up and down many a stairway in my life, so either I’m doing something right or film characters are incredibly brittle.

Winning Line

“They’ll think we’re a couple of gays!” worries the male lead when his lady friend, dressed festively with no underthings, tries to make out in front of teenagers in a dark alleyway. Yes, that’s far more horrifying than the known madmen loose on the streets whom you’ve already witnessed kill a man.

Rent/Bury/Buy

I would never advise someone to spend more than, I don’t know, hot dog money on this film but I enjoyed the Christmas bells out of it. It’s bad in an epic way that’s incredibly watchable, with impressive and creative gore spilled throughout. I’m lucky enough to have it in my Mill Creek Drive-In Classics movie pack, which means you can probably find a copy for peanuts. Is it worth it? You’ll know how you feel about his film based on the tagline:

...t'was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring...they were all dead!

True merriment at its best.