As far as cult Christmas movies go, Christmas Evil (1980) is the gift that keeps on disappointing. Four decades on, it hasn’t aged well, as this early 80's Santa Claus slasher movie tries to mix festive cheer with madness while stumbling through a muddled plot, with acting so dry it could double as firewood.
It's the campy Christmas horror that barely seems to get anything right. It all begins on Christmas Eve 1947, when pint-sized Harry, buzzing with excitement, sneaks downstairs to catch Santa delivering presents. But ho-ho-horror! He catches the jolly old “fat man” in a lip-locked smooch with his mother. This incident shatters his rosy holiday image, planting the twisted seeds of a lifelong, increasingly unhinged obsession with Christmas.
Missing the Mark on the Making of a Killer Santa
Leap to the present, and there’s adult Harry, played by Brandon Maggart, ticking off the days to Christmas, excited like a kid in a candy store with too much sugar. By day, he slogs away at the Jolly Dream Toy Factory, a grim irony for a man whose childhood holiday dreams were crushed like a gingerbread house. Harry is on a one-man mission to save Christmas, whether it wants saving or not and no matter who stands in his way. His goal is to restore what he sees as the true spirit of the holiday: pure, joyful, and untouched by the cynicism of adulthood.
At this point, Harry’s supposed to be in his forties, but writer and director Lewis Jackson opts not to bother showing his gradual slide into crazytown until one day his coworkers’ teasing pushes him over the edge. It’s clearly meant to be a traumatic breaking point decades in the making, but it’s executed with such oddball melodrama that it borders on parody. Instead, we’re left playing armchair shrink, piecing together how his psyche must have slowly unraveled from childhood disillusionment to full-blown madness, which feels like the most pivotal part of the movie.
Trust us, Harry’s not that exciting and sadly, it’s the Harry show, folks. With no real supporting cast to spice things up aside from his brother Phil (Jeffrey DeMunn), who remains more of a background figure than an active participant throughout. The movie puts all its eggs in one basket, relying on Harry’s flat, underdeveloped arc to hold the spotlight.
Santa Gone Wrong as Comedy Reigns Over Horror
You’ll be twiddling your thumbs for nearly an hour before the movie finally dares to unleash its “horror.” Even by B-horror standards, everything lands like punchlines in a bad holiday skit, turning this supposed Christmas slasher into something that borders on comedy. If that was the goal, we’d tip our Santa hats, but as a horror movie, it’s hard to call it anything other than a festive flop.
Harry is a peeping tom with a Santa complex, somehow managing year-round surveillance as he prowls the town, playing a jolly, yet twisted, judge of “naughty” and “nice,” meticulously jotting his judgments in a book.
Harry’s unhinged St. Nick persona hits on Christmas Eve, but we’re already bored. Dressed in a Santa suit with a glued-on beard, he rolls through town in a sleigh-painted van, grumbling about “naughty” folks who need a lesson. The kills are pure cartoonish, as he swings a toy axe so comically tiny it belongs in a dollhouse, unleashing blood gushes so absurdly over-the-top they feel straight out of Looney Tunes, leaving you smirking instead of gasping. Christmas Evil delivers precious few thrills, only briefly sparking some intrigue near the end, but sadly never coming close to generating enough cheer or fear to earn a spot under the tree.
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