Santa has always been the ultimate movie star. Forget White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life and all the other hackneyed trash. Go for the classics: Silent Night, Bloody Night, Black Christmas or the best seasonal film of all time Christmas Evil ("He'll sleigh you"). This true cinematic masterpiece only played theatrically for a few seconds, but it's now available on videocassette and no holiday family get-together is complete without it. I t's about a man completely consumed by Christmas. His neurosis first rears its ugly head as he applies shaving cream to his face, looks in the mirror, hallucinates a white beard and begins to imagine that he is Santa Claus. He gets a job in a toy factory, starts snooping and spying on the neighbourhood children and then rushes home to feverishly make notes in his big red book: "Jimmy was a good boy today," or "Peggy was a bad little girl." He starts cross-dressing as Claus and lurks around people's roots ready to take the plunge. Finally, he actually gets stick in a nearby chimney and awakens the family in his struggle. Mom and Dad go insane when they find a fat lunatic in their fireplace, but the kids are wild with glee. Santa has no choice but to kill these Scroogelike parents with the razor-sharp star decorating the top of their tree. As he flees a neighbourhood lynch mob, the children come to his rescue and defy their distraught parents by forming a human ring of protection around him. Finally, pushed to the limits of Clausmania, he leaps into his van/sleigh and it takes off flying over the moon as he psychotically and happily shrieks, "On Dancer! On Prancer! On Donner and Vixen!" I wish I had kids. I'd make them watch it every year and if they didn't like it, they'd be punished.
From Crackpot by John Waters
This holiday horror was directed by Bob Clark, who
also directed one of the best Christmas family movies 'A Christmas Story'. Black Christmas is a stark exersise in suspense that turns everyone's favorite time of year inside out. An ill-fated handful of sorority sisters are celebrating the season when an obscene phone call interrupts the festivities. The caller rings off with a death threat, which proves all too real. No one knows who the killer is. And no one can stop the deadly calls preceding the attacks.
This is an anthology film with 5 different stories. The first episode(DEAD OF NIGHT) is based around the holidays. It stars
Joan Collins as a murderess who neatly and systematically
kills her husband on Christmas eve while her daughter sleeps
upstairs. Well, as is the tradition with Tales From the Crypt,
poetic justice will not let the deed go unanswered! A homicidal
maniac escapes from a local asylum. Dressed as Santa Claus,and he
has targeted her house.
A killer snowman movie! A convict is in a car wreck on the way to death row and splattered with some fancy high-tech formula. It bonds his atoms with the snow, causing him to be at one with the white stuff. Soon, a killer snowman is stalking a small town,
stalking the policeman who sent him away. There is a cool
beheading and a scene where a woman is turned into an impromptu Christmas tree, to name a few. The opening scene where a man tells a girl a twisted story that leads into the movie is great.
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