There’s just something about Santa Claus that is so creepy when you look at it. He’s an omniscient omniprescient person who is immortal and is able to travel around the world like The Flash (or Quicksilver for the MCU fans) and deliver presents. Popularized in A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore, he’s been called several names (Kris Kingle, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, The Big Guy, Mr. C.), but he’s a mythical figure. The old man grandfatherly look makes him pleasant and inviting.
Yet, young children are afraid of him. And for good reason. My great granddaughter was terrified when she saw him at about 18 months old. We should teach children to be worried about strangers. In Miami, a young girl said she doesn’t want to sit on his lap and the man playing Santa respected her decision. Silent Night, Deadly Night dealt with a young man who watched a criminal dressed as Santa murder his father and then sexually assault and then kill his mother. He was forever traumatized by this memory along with the brutality of a Mother Superior at a Utah orphanage who used corporal punishment as often as Bob Ross would beat the devil out of his paint brushes.
When that movie opened in November of 1984 during the peak of the slasher subgenre, it was met with numerous protests from critics and parental groups. It was pulled from theaters by the then up-start studio TriStar Pictures. Yet, it still managed to make $2.5 million off a $700,000 budget and get better reviews than other movies of the time. In the decades since, it’s become more favored movie with people like Quentin Tarantino praising it.
But Christmas Evil, which featured a former actor from Sesame Street, came and went in the Fall of 1980 without much of a peep from anyone. It’s possible that it was still an early time for the slasher craze. Friday the 13th had just come out in May of that year. Both had come after To All A Good Night, about young teenage girls at a finishing school being terrorized by a killer in a Santa outfit. The movie opened on Jan. 30, 1980 after all the Christmas trees had been taken down. It was directed by David Hess of Last House on the Left fame and starred a young Jennifer Runyon, who was on the first season of Charles in Charge and played the student Bill Murray flirts with in Ghostbusters.
Maybe it was because there weren’t too many movies already jumping on the slasher craze yet after the original Halloween had premiered, even though they were coming down the pike. In the 1972 anthology movie Tales From the Crypt, Joan Collins plays a murdering housewife who is terrorized by a psychopath dressed up as Santa in a short “…And All Though the House” which was based on a Vault of Horror comic from the 1950s. It was the first episode of the popular TV show also called Tales From the Crypt but Mary Ellen Trainor is now an American wife. And Larry Drake of L.A. Law, Dr. Giggles and Darkman fame was the killer Santa.
Christmas Evil, or You Better Watch Out as it is also known, follows the basic slasher format. There’s a prologue set in the past where someone is traumatized. In this case, on Christmas 1947, brothers Harry and Phillip Stradling, only kids, watch their father dressed as Santa arrive through the chimney and drop off presents, eat cookies and look jovial. But their mother is very aroused by seeing her husband as Santa. After the kids go to bed, Harry sneaks back down but sees his father groping his mother. Thinking that Santa has fondled his mother, he runs up to the attic and cuts his hand with glass from a snowglobe.
Thirty-three years later, Harry (Brandon Maggart) is a middle-aged bachelor who lives the life of a creeper in New Jersey. He checks up on all the young people around his neighborhood keeping tabs on them. He’s decorated his home in Christmas decor but outside of his home, his life isn’t so great. Harry has been promoted to an office job off the assembly line at Jolly Dreams toys, but the co-workers still treat him like a “schmuck,” even going as far as getting him to pick up a shift so one can spend the night with his friends at a bar. Harry discovers this walking home from work.
Phillip (Jeffrey DeMunn), who’s younger than Harry but seems to be more successful and grounded as a happily married man of two sons himself to his wife, Jackie (Dianne Hull), has become upset with his brother’s more erratic behavior. Harry doesn’t come to Thanksgiving dinner as the family is expecting him. Harry also becomes more upset with his supervisors as they are willing to take the ideas of a younger executive trainee over more valued employees.
The company is planning to donate toys to a nearby children’s hospital but Harry decides to take the toys himself to the hospital on Christmas Eve dressed as Santa. At this point, Harry has gotten to the idea that he actually is Santa as well as he’s received by the children and the hospital staff. Hower, he realizes it’s also time to punish those that have been bad.
Unlike most slashers, there’s not a real mystery to what’s happening. This is more of a look into how someone can turn criminal. The warning signs are there but everyone chooses to ignore him. His job treats him poorly even when he becomes a supervisor. Philip rightfully vents his frustration with his brother but in 1980 this type of behavior wasn’t taken as seriously. While he is spying on the children in the neighborhood, he does manage to get back at one, Moss Garcia (Peter Neuman), whose mother is played by Home Improvement‘s Patricia Richardson, who in a total 180 degree role, believes in hitting a child rather than listening to them.
For his credit, writer/director Lewis Jackson does manage to keep the violence/gore at a minimum. It’s more of a character study than the standard Dead Teenager format of movies that followed. However, it is slow at times in the middle until Harry dons the Santa suit. I’m guessing a lot of these scenes come from the low budget. And some of the special effects look cheesy include one obvious scene of a fake snow sheet.
But Maggart manages to convey the perfect performance of a man who is pushed too far until he begins to push back. And this was the time in the American economy when union jobs were starting to fade and employers cared more about profits than they did their products and especially their employees. It’s also a commentary on society during the holiday season as Philip has the ideal nuclear family. The employers attend a Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with other well-to-do people. And Harry is eventually invited to a party attended by people in the neighborhood (one of which played by actor Mark Margolies), when they think he’s a harmless Santa impersonator. He isn’t accepted until he fits their goal of acceptance.
Personally, it’s not the best movie of the genre. I like Silent Night, Deadly Night better. But they’re two different types of movies. Filmmaker John Waters has called it one of his best movies and the best Christmas movie. So, it’s for a certain audience. If you’re expecting jumpscares and other things to be lurking in the shadows, you won’t find it here. I’ve even heard some people say it’s more of a dark comedy.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 