Director – David Hess (Last House on the Left)
Starring – Jennifer Runyon (Carnosaur), Forrest Swanson, and Linda Gentile
Release Date – 1980
Rating – 2/5
Tagline – “You’ll scream ’til dawn”
Last year when I was looking for Christmas themed horror flicks, I came across a few sites that recommended this slasher film. I looked around amazon and ebay and quickly discovered that this movie never had an official DVD release and the VHS copies I found were extremely expensive.
Not wanting to pay that much for a movie, I moved on and found other movies to replace it. When December rolled around this year I thought I would try to give it another go. There still is no DVD release, unless you count the VHSPS.com’s VHS transfer, so I decided to check out Netflix and YouTube to see if I could at least watch it. I was able to find it on YouTube but in piss poor quality.
**Spoiler Alert**The film opens with a young girl falling to her death at Calvin Finishing School for Girls. Two years later the young girls go on as if nothing had happened. As everyone prepares to go home for Christmas a select few stay behind with their house mother-type cook (Black Christmas much?).
The girls slip the housemother a little somethin-somethin to knock her out and wait for some guys to fly in on their private jet to give them a little p in the va-g. These girls are super sluts and want to be rode hard and put up wet. However, there is a deranged killer running around killing people in true slasher fashion while wearing a Santa costume.
After a few people turn up missing and they find the corpse of one of their friends, the police get involved. That following night the remainder of the group continue to die until it is down to three. When they start finding the bodies of those that are missing they come face to face with the killer Santa. After one of the group is picked off and the only male alive runs off to hide, the final girl discovers that the killer Santa is actually two Santas and they are the young girl that fell to her death’s mother and father, the housemother and cop. After a shitty fight scene the housemother is knocked unconscious and the guy shoots the cop with a cross bow. **Spoiler Alert**
I love slashers and I should have took the hint that if it was not good enough to be released on DVD then it is because there wasn’t a big enough fan base to make a profit, therefore it has to be a shitty movie. I really wanted to like this movie. I love Silent Night, Deadly Night and the original Black Christmas and was hoping this was on the same level.
This movie is the directorial debut of actor David Hess. Hess is known for playing crazy psychopaths in some classic horror and exploitation films. Like many actors he tried his hand at the other side of the camera. The acting is so-so. Some of the cast did a decent job, while others are horrible to watch. In fact, most of the cast has no other acting credits.
The special effects are the standard early 80’s low budget slasher film effects. The deaths are nothing special and most take place off camera. Many are your typical stabbings and strangulation, however, there is a death by airplane propeller, which is different. The story is your typical revenge slasher and the twist ending was similar to the first Friday the 13th which was released four months after this one. I am in no way saying that Sean Cunningham ripped this film off but the ending is similar. As most of you know, in Friday the 13th the killer is actually Jason Vorhee’s mother and in this flick it is the young girl’s mom and dad.
My biggest complaint about the film is the pacing. The movie is so slow to get started that it was almost a chore to finish it. Movies are made to be fun and it should not be a task to finish it. Overall, this movie is just your typical slasher that offers nothing special for the sub-genre and is almost painful to watch. If you want to watch a slasher I’m sure it would be easier to pick one of the thousands that are readily available instead of trying to find this shitfest.
