So, Poland, where I live, is a pretty Catholic country and here Old Saint Nick (or Mikołaj as he’s locally known) doesn’t come on Christmas Eve, so much as on St. Nicholas Day (December 6th), often referred to in English as Santa Claus Day. With that in mind, I can think of no better day to kick off the Holiday season with a short, blurby look at two of the best Killer-Santa movies that don’t involve Linnea Quigley being impaled topless on antlers or “Garbage Day!” I got to check out both of these last year on Shudder’s “Joe Bob Saves Christmas” special and I think they’re still there if you want to check them out.
Deadly Games – AKA – Dial Code: Santa Claus (1989)
Chris Columbus swore that he hadn’t seen this fun French thriller before making Home Alone one year later and while anything’s possible, one could certainly be excused for having doubts. Here is the story of a young boy left alone on Christmas Eve, who has to fight off a deranged killer dressed as Santa Claus through the use of his inventive traps and tricks seemingly inspired by Bugs Bunny cartoons. The tone is darker, and sure, Macaulay Culkin was never attacked by a killer Santa, but much of the rest of the spirit seems so similar that it seems a big coincidence if that was somehow just the Zeitgeist that year.
Anyway, it’s weird. It’s fun. The killer is sufficiently creepy and the kid is sufficiently precocious. This boy is immensely rich and lives in a giant mansion filled with secret, toy filled passages and has access to all kinds of surprising automation, surveillance equipment, and early internet connectivity, but at the end of the day, he’s a little kid, scared and alone, who has to get really creative and be really brave to defend himself against a very real threat. It’s a really good time.
It seems in the beginning that things will be a bit on the lighter side, a whimsical romp. But the killer Santa is really off in an interesting, unpredictable way. He is deadly, but he is also so obviously broken and it means that you just can’t get a read on what he will or won’t do at any given moment. It adds an edge. The boy, Thomas, starts the film as a kid with more money and toys than he knows what to do with, obsessed with action stars ala Stallone. But by the end, he really has to stand up and become the fighter himself, and it’s duly exciting as he does. And it really works because we never lose sight of his genuine vulnerability, isolation, and fear.
Christmas Evil (1980)
This is a special, if flawed seasonal slasher. There have been more than a few killer-Santa movies, but this is undoubtedly the most heartfelt, touching, and grounded. The set-up is boilerplate nonsense—a young boy sees Santa making out with his mother and is somehow scarred for life. He grows up to be a kinda sweet shlub working at a toy factory, still utterly obsessed with Christmas.
He tracks the comings and goings of the neighborhood children, listing them in either his naughty or his nice book. He makes himself a really beautiful Santa Costume and paints his van to look like a reindeer pulled sleigh. Then he steals a bunch of toys from work and sets out to reward the deserving and punish the wicked. Orphans get gifts and co-workers who have belittled him get murdered.
But all along the way, there is such sweetness as he tries so hard to spread the holiday spirit in a broken world where everyone’s just looking out for number one. He gets pulled into a random work Christmas party and lights up the place with joy (before he threatens all of the children with bringing them something ‘truly horrible’ if they’re bad.) He brings a surprise shipment of toys to a sad orphanage, delighting the staff and kids alike. He hilariously and pathetically gets stuck in a chimney on the way to kill his boss. And at the end, he drives his van off into the sky to carry on his magic ways, or he drives into a river and drowns, depending on how you read the moment.
And the violence is brutal and difficult and sloppy, bringing to mind George Romero’s Martin. Ultimately, you never feel Harry is a bad guy, but he is crazy, and he is not coming back, making the whole thing much sadder than scary, but sometimes horror should be sad. This sweet putz, so obsessed with the idea of the holiday, becoming a killer is a wholly horrific turn, but there is so much warmth throughout the whole endeavor as well. Truly a holiday classic!
So, why so many Killer-Santa movies?
Really, it’s interesting that this is its own little subgenre. Other than the above referenced Silent Night, Deadly Night and its direct sequel (referred to in the intro above), a quick internet search finds results for at least 20 other films of this type. Why is this such a thing?
On one level, it just seems obvious. We have a beloved holiday character who is always watching you and judging you and who then comes into your home under dark of night to leave you something and maybe take something away. It’s all a bit creepy. Also, I think that we all invest a lot of trust in the idea of Santa, and the actual human actors portraying Santa, with our kids. Go to the mall and put your infant on a stranger’s lap. While you put your trust in him, I think there could be some trace concern, fear, apprehension, just waiting to be filmically expressed.
Past that, I think it’s just that Christmas looms so large on the cultural landscape. In western culture, even among the non-religious, or people of other faiths, Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year. It lasts for at least a month and is just omnipresent. It is natural that successful horror can be made from inverting this warm, family holiday which has such cultural saturation. It’s no surprise that there are far fewer (though certainly a non-zero quantity of) killer Easter Bunny or Thanksgiving Turkey movies.
Finally, it’s just really good press when the PTA tries to have your movie yanked from cinemas, which is just another reminder for those complaining about “Cancel Culture” that a) in the past it was far more common for things to get literally cancelled and b) it was often (though not always) kinda good for building cult-status-notoriety. Just sayin’.