Fans of recent horror will likely know the name Joe Begos, who wrote and directed a couple of well-regarded flicks in the last few years, including 2019’s awesome action horror VFW, and the acid-trippy Bliss, released the same year. If you’re into the look and feel of those films—super saturated neon lighting, characters who drink and swear incessantly and spend all their time in seedy dives, and a pretty obvious John Carpenter influence—then it’s likely that you’ll really dig Begos’s holiday horror film Christmas Bloody Christmas, which got a limited theatrical release in early December of 2022 and then arrived on Shudder, where it still lives today.
Like his earlier films, CBC has a definite “hangout movie” vibe for the first half of its brief, eighty-seven-minute runtime, so if that’s not your bag, then you might want to give this one a pass, depending on how you feel about the characters (who I really liked and related to, but your mileage may vary). Once the rubber hits the road, though, this thing is pure Christmas carnage, with gory axe murders, car crashes, and explosions galore, and a badass final girl who gets the shit kicked out of her over and over again, but never gives up.
Originally conceived as a remake of the 1984 holiday slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night but ultimately rejected by producers as not being close enough to the original, Begos instead chose to take the spirit of that horror classic and go a different way with it, essentially turning it into a Christmas-specific version of The Terminator, with a bit of Assault on Precinct 13 mixed into the stew as well.
At the beginning of the movie, we get a few funny fake commercials meant to suggest flipping through the channels on late-night TV back in the 80s or 90s, with a holiday malt liquor called Slim Jenko that’s good for the whole family (even the kids!); a movie called Killed on Christmas: The Lester Lord Story; Santa shredding on a guitar, playing live at the Civic Center; some holiday weed cookies and Christmas creampies; and finally, an ad for a nifty robotic Santa that’s been modified from Defense Department technology. No more worrying about those “degenerate” mall Santas possibly groping your kids; now we have RoboSanta+! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, a lot, as it turns out, because shortly after this, there’s a news broadcast insinuating that some of these robot Santas may or may not be reverting to their original programming. Yes, this is a killer Santa movie, but in this movie, he’s a killer robot Santa, an unstoppable (yet jolly) murder machine.
We then settle in with our two main characters, record store owner Tori (Riley Dandy) and her employee/friend Robbie (Sam Delich). These two are getting ready to close the shop down on Christmas Eve, and Tori tells Robbie that she’s set up a Tinder date because all she wants is to get laid on Christmas rather than spend it alone. After teasing her mercilessly about her prospective hookup, an earnest singer-songwriter he refers to as Emmett Eyeliner who also has four kids, Robbie is able to finally persuade Tori to blow off her Tinder date and spend the evening hanging out with him instead. It’s quite evident that Robbie has some real feelings for Tori, and maybe she does for him too, but their constant flirting and banter has never previously gone anywhere, as Tori seems reluctant to get involved with an employee who also seems to be her best friend.
The pair drink a prodigious amount, walking the snowy streets and getting into humorous arguments about the best Christmas songs (Lemmy’s “Run Run Rudolph” is Tori’s pick, and she will brook no disagreement) and the best horror sequels (Tori goes to bat for both Alien: Covenant and Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, much to Robbie’s chagrin and exasperation).
Along the way, Tori and Robbie stop in at a toy store where their friends, a married couple named Lahna (Dora Madison) and Jay (Jonah Ray of Mystery Science Theater fame) are planning to stay overnight and bang. If you ever wanted to see MST’s beloved Jonah eating out the ass of a woman in a Santa hat and black lingerie, well, this is the movie for you!
Anyway, the toy store has one of the RoboSanta+ models installed, and Lahna says she’ll be glad when they remove it after Christmas because it’s pretty annoying, yelling “Ho Ho Ho!” at odd intervals and just generally looking kinda creepy. She and Jay do make jokes about the Santa joining them in their sexual escapades, however. But after Tori and Robbie leave for another bar, the Santa actually does start walking around on its own, grabbing an axe from the firebox in the store and hacking Lahna and Jay to death right in the middle of their Christmas coitus. Tori and Robbie, passing the toy store later during the murder, hear screams but assume they’re shrieks of ecstasy.
Tori asks Robbie to come back to her place so they can finish up the whiskey bottle they’ve been working on, but she makes it clear that they won’t be having sex. They have no idea, as they drunkenly head towards home in Robbie’s shitbox car, that the killer robot Santa has stepped out of the toy store, axe in hand, and is intent on a bloody rampage.
When the couple gets back to Tori’s place, she tells Robbie that her sister Liddy (Kansas Bowling) and her brother-in-law Mike (Graham Skipper) are staying over for the holiday, but have passed out so hard that it would probably take an atomic bomb to wake them. Tori and Robbie drink even more and smoke more weed, and argue even more about music (Metallica and the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack album are name-dropped), before ending up in bed, having what seems to be an excellent time predicated on the skillful movements of Robbie’s tongue.
Unbeknownst to them, though, the robot Santa has entered the house next door and is in the midst of a grisly holiday massacre. Tori happens to glance out her kitchen window while getting a whiskey refill and is horrified to see what appears to be a man in a Santa suit axing a little boy to death in her neighbor’s living room.
After this point, the movie shifts into high gear as Tori, Robbie, and a handful of other characters try to escape the relentless St. Nick, who seems bound and determined to slay each and every person he comes across and also appears unable to be stopped.
Christmas Bloody Christmas is pretty much everything you want in a killer Santa movie, but ramped up to eleven. The kills are gruesome and great, the lighting is retro and festive and over the top, and the premise keeps it simple and fun. The score and soundtrack are also pretty awesome, so that’s another point in its favor. While I did see some reviews complaining that the first part of the movie, which is basically just Tori and Robbie hanging out, went on way too long and/or that their characters were irritating or unlikeable, I didn’t personally find that, as I felt the performances of the two leads were really naturalistic, and reminded me a lot of drunken conversations I’ve had with my own friends over the years. Maybe people who are into old punk, post-punk, and metal and love hanging around in shitty bars will vibe more with the characters, I dunno, but I found all of them pretty entertaining, so I didn’t mind just chilling out with them for forty-five minutes before the bulk of the killing spree began. I also liked the feeling that absolutely no one was safe, because spoiler alert, almost everybody gets killed in this movie, and in excessively violent ways.
While I’m not sure if this will become an annual Christmas classic for horror fans, it is a really solid entry in the killer Santa subgenre and should please aficionados of 80s horror in a John-Carpenter-filtered-through-retro-wave kinda way.
Until next time, keep it creepy (and Christmassy), my friends.
The Scare Salon 