A CHRISTMAS FANTASY (1950)

 Two little kids fall asleep and then a creepy Santa, who kinda resembles Leatherface, shows up in this holiday short that's mercifully only a little over 5 minutes long. This really plays more like a holiday music video than a proper movie of any sort. I first encountered this with the Rifftrax fellows goofing on it which is probably the optimal way to view it. A good one to add to your weirdo Christmas playlist. 

 There's both black and white and color versions floating around.

 

VIOLENT NIGHT (2022)

  Appropriately enough I watched this at a Christmas Day gathering. I can't say I gave it my undying attention for most of the opening segments but luckily this isn't the sort of film that you really have to invest much energy in watching. It's basically a mobster film where our action hero is Santa Claus who's not afraid of getting quite violent with those who are naughty. Fairly predictable for most of it's runtime it's at least a mildly entertaining series of bloody wacky kills. Also Santa here has a Viking origin and uses a big hammer like Thor so that's kinda unique. Also he looks like Hacksaw Jim Duggan so old-school wrasslin' fans can enjoy that.

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL (1949)

 There are so many different versions of this story put onto film that it's hard to say which one is my favorite. This one has 2 things going for it, one is that it's narrated by Vincent Price and hearing his voice is always awesome, second is that it's only 24 minutes long but still manages to hit all the plot points. It does seem that ol' Scrooge is transformed from a miserly prick into a Christmas-loving maniac really fast but it gets the message across either way. Check it out if you aren't a Christmas-hating commie.

 

A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY (2015)

 This starts out with cgi snowflakes. Perhaps this is where I shoulda turned it off. What a shitty way to start your movie. From there we get William Shatner as a DJ. His inserted bits are amusing even though at times they just reminded me of those Priceline commercials that he did. Then it's on to the main stories in what's sort of a modernized version of a CREEPSHOW anthology deal. It's a brand-new horror film so of course 90% of it deals with stupid ghost-like things happening, possessions and a shaky camera. The best of these stories, to me, was the main wraparound one which consists of Santa himself battling it out with a bunch of zombified-elves and that evil German-Santa Krampus character who is uber-popular this year for some bizarre reason. Of course even this one has a bunch of really awful cgi-fx thrown in that takes you right out of the experience and places you abruptly in video game land. The other main problem with this is, unlike something like CREEPSHOW which shows the stories sequentially, this jumps from one tale to the next right in the middle of the action. I assume this is supposed to feel fresh and innovative except it comes off as disjointed and a little jarring. It worked for PULP FICTION because there was some excellent editing involved and characters that you cared about. Not so much here. If you are starving for holiday horror entertainment give it a look. Just don't expect anything mind-blowingly great despite how overly-hyped this seems to be getting.

SANTA CLAUS (1959)

The legendary K. Gordon Murray brought this weird Mexican holiday film to America and would release it theatrically for many years right around Christmas throughout the 60's and 70's. I have vague, half-remembered memories of actually being taken to see this in a theater by my mom but I was so young at the time that it possibly could have been some other holiday travesty that I saw. This is the story of Santa who lives in the clouds with a bunch of little kids that he uses as slave-labor, a giant telescope to peep on children and his sidekick Merlin The Magician. He also has some creepy wind-up reindeer. Pretty much everything in this movie is creepy including Santa's nemesis Pitch who's a rather effeminate demonic character in a devil costume who encourages kids to do naughty stuff like vandalize storefronts and shoplift. This is such a strange, surreal(African kids wearing bones in their hair and a computer with big Rolling Stones-lips and a dick-nose included) movie that I can't help but give it a watch almost every Christmas even though it's a really bad movie made even worse by the fact that a big chunk of it features a bunch of kids singing terrible songs. Still it might be the weirdest holiday movie ever made with only stuff like SANTA AND THE ICE-CREAM BUNNY or SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS even coming close. Check it out if you're a weirdo.
 Luckily there is a Mystery Science Theater version of this out there for added laughs.
 Amazingly this was directed by Rene Cardona who also gave us the super-gory NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES and many other Lucha-Libre Mexi-classics.


 

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

 While Christmas movies, children's films and musicals are some of the worst things ever created by the human race this one here at least has the decency to be full of kitsch value, bizarre elements and it appears to have been filmed by maniacs who tried to throw everything into the film that a kid of the early 60's could want(besides maybe some monsters which would have been fantastic).  Of course you get the titular Martians who are just idiots with their skin painted green wearing stupid hats with antennas on them, a possibly insane Santa Claus who laughs uncontrollably at nothing, a guy in a ragtag polar-bear suit and a guy in a shitbox robot suit who both terrorize some annoying little kids.  There's also a bumbling Martian who acts like Gilligan and Pia Zadora(who would go on to get very naked in NC-17 rated films when she got older) as a little Martian girl.  While this film is extremely stupid with dumb sci-fi elements it's at least stupidly mildly amusing and not even close to the worst when you dig into the holiday crap that's out there. I also appreciate that they kept the music part down to just one awesomely obnoxious song about Santy Claus that should have become a seasonal classic.




                                                           This inspired a comic-book:

                                                 
                                          and my favorite punk band of all time:

SANTA CLAUS STORY (1945)

 This starts out as just another pro-Christmas propaganda short with old Santa Claus telling some sneaky ass little obnoxious 40's kids the story of Christmas then  after a few minutes of that this crazy old(presumably drunken) fuck starts babbling about how monkeys celebrate the holiday just like us people do.  To prove this point we are treated to some stock footage of little nutty monkeys goofing around eating pretzels and bananas and whatnots.  Then the holiday portion of our narrative takes us to a monkey Christmas where one little gentleman is dressed as Monkey Claus and the other fellows jump around a tree and play with some toys.  It all ends with more pseudo-religious talk from this fat weirdo.  Judging solely from this film the 40's musta been a very strange time to be alive and have half a brain.  Worth a look if, like me, you're a fan of oddball simian cinema.

SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1972)

 I've owned this movie for years on a cheap-ass dollar DVD and just now managed to make it through the whole movie without falling asleep. I think maybe I should get a medal for this. If you haven't figured it out yet this movie is really slow going. On the surface it has a lot of things going for it. Some of the greatest horror and exploitation films ever came out of the the 70s and this one seems like it should fit into this category(for some reason though it was filmed in 1970 and not released until 1972?). Another positive is Mary Woronov who is in a ton of great Roger Corman flicks and is one of my personal favorite actresses. But even her greatness, along with John Carradine, who doesn't really do much here, don't really make this film worth seeking out. Also for a good half of the movie she seems to be reading her lines very stiffly for some reason. I will give the film credit for creating a really creepy atmospheric mood and if you watch it alone at 3am it does give you a bit of a spooky feeling thanks mostly to the whispering murderer here. There's also a couple of giallo-esque moments with a black-gloved killer who gets a couple of bloody kills in but it's all kind of spread out among a bunch of boring and confusing dialogue scenes.
 I've seen people give this movie credit for inspiring Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS which I guess is based on the phone calling killer's weirdness but it seems kind of stupid to say one was copied from the other since they both came out around the same time and even if this is true Clark made a way more entertaining film.  Check that one out for a real holiday slasher classic and only watch this if you're a cheap DVD buying gentleman like myself. AKA DEATH HOUSE

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT PART 2 (1987)

Caught this last night in a cramped little theater in Brooklyn full of loud obnoxious drunken and/or pot-smoking hipsters and mutants and that's probably the best way to watch this sequel to the notorious controversial holiday classic. Almost half of this movie is comprised of a bunch of flashbacks to the first movie so watching them back to back is probably pretty pointless. It's also pointless trying to understand how Ricky, the little brother of the original Santa Claus-killer, who's telling us these tales, knows exactly what happened since he's not even present in most of the flashback stuff. The new material is also pretty similar to the first since it's just little brother Ricky going nutso, finding a Santa suit, murdering attempted rapists, his girlfriend and her creepy ex-boyfriend and ironically enough, for me anyway, a guy who talks loudly in a movie theater. The main difference is that it's supposed to take place in December but everything looks very Spring-like outside.
 The most memorable scene, and popular YouTube clip, has our hero/villain shooting some suburban slob putting out his garbage cans while yelling "garbage day!" that delighted the weirdos and brought the house down last night. So if you think you would enjoy a stupid 80's Christmas slasher flick where overbearing nuns are just about equally as naughty as serial killers then have a couple of beers so you can drown out the worst acting you've probably ever seen and check this out.



Happy Garbage Day everyone!:

BLOODY CHRISTMAS (1999)

A stupid but amusing short French flick about a Christmas tree gaining sentience and seeking revenge on an unlucky fellow.  It's all in French but that doesn't matter because you would have to be a complete imbecilic moron to not understand this movie.  There's a sequel out there also.  There's also a similar but way better and way gorier Canadian short film called TREEVENGE about chopped-down Christmas trees getting their vengeance that may have been influenced by this.  You should definitely check that one out if you dig this at all.


"Bloody Christmas" by silviasegarra

TREEVENGE (2008)

Before he made HOBO WITH  A SHOTGUN director Jason Eisner did this silly, but gory as hell, short about Christmas trees getting revenge for being chopped down, stuffed in people's stupid homes and decorated in a gaudy fashion.  It's filled with really obnoxious people you can't wait to see knocked off and a liberal use of the theme from CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.  There's gratuitous eye-violence, tree on man rape, baby killing and all the things that would make Christmas movies more enjoyable to your average gore-hound.  Of course it's all really dumb and absurd but because it was shot so well it works for me.  Watch it at your next family gathering this holiday season, I'm sure they'll love it.

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT (1984)

OK, here's my late X-Mas entry. This film is ridiculous, but in that purely exploitation way that I personally love. What happens in the film doesn't make sense in any kinda real-world logical way but that doesn't take away from the entertainment aspect for me. Little Billy sees his parents murdered by a guy dressed as Santa so by the logic of this film he grows up to become a kooky nutso guy who freaks out at the site of Santa. That part would actually make sense, it's the next part where he's forced to play Santa by his boss and flips out and becomes a holiday-themed Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees that turn up the wacky factor. Of course it's not just the plot that makes one scratch his head at the wonderful goofiness of it all. There's crazy old grandpa who gives one of the best speeches on Santa ever and that amazing montage when Billy gets his job at the toy store that just screams 1980's cheesiness. As a bonus you get to see Linnea Quigley's perky little boobs and lots of little kids being traumatized. I remember watching Siskel & Ebert trash this movie back when it first came out for being mean-spirited and anti-female. Comparing it to those torture flicks that are around today this thing looks pretty quaint in retrospect. Of course that's just my jaded opinion. Oh yeah and PART 2 is even better and, if you can believe it, more wacky. Just remember kids "punishment is good!".