Yuletide Crap: Psycho Santa & Satan Claus

I'll be direct with you: these movies are simply terrible. Not 'bad funny' like your Starcrashes or your Space Mutinies. No, these are the 'oh dear God, this hurts so bad' kind of movie like Sex Medusa (more on that movie later), Idaho Transfer or Waiting for the Giants. The thing is that I pretty much expected this, but was willing to fall on the sword for all of you. How about you repay my ignoble sacrifice by clicking on my Ads? I should also mention that these films are part of a three-movie set. The third one is called The Christmas Massacre & is apparently just as bad. When you get three movies on one disc, you are not getting quality! This is a fair warning to anyone that sees as Something Weird disc and thinks 'this should be fun.' Let's get down the nitty gritty though in my review of (first)...

Psycho Santa

The film begins with a woman running around a garbage dump as a man in a Santa suit meanders after her. Hey guys, you want to explain any of this? They don't and instead jump to a man watching television- scintillating. After a bit of nagging (don't yell at me for bad writing for women), she convinces him to go to a Christmas party with her. Just because he is a 'dick,' he decides to tell her the tale of a crazy killer that murdered on Christmas. Isn't it nice to spend the holidays with the ones you love? The first tale involves a trio of women who rent a cabin to have some 'lady time' every Christmas. Again- a movie clearly written by a man. What we get as character establishment is a five minute scene in which one of them wanders around and picks up rocks, while the other takes a shower (complete with random close-ups). We get more padding in the form of a 'dance' scene with one of the women before they finally question their friend's location. As it turns out, she has been segmented and placed in the Christmas present boxes & the killer shows up. Mind you, we see none of that & merely told it by our narrator. His second tale involves a burglar duo who rob a blind woman's house, decide to drown her for no reason, but open the wrong door and die.

What killed them, you ask me? As it turns out, the killer was hiding out there. We find this out in an interrogation scene so badly lit that you can never see the cop's face! The interrogatee is the husband- who was out that night- and he explains a bit about the killer. I'll spare you it, save for the fact that he is obsessed with Christmas music. In another tale, the killer dresses up as Santa and kills a kid in a cabin (off-screen, mind you). He stabs the mother as well, who proceeds to drag her near-dead ass across the ground for over 3 minutes straight, only to unplug the phone line when she gets there! We get another related tale involving two siblings going to see the woman and child at said cabin. Their car breaks down and they wander around...and around...and around. Finally, he attacks the girl when the duo split up (always a good call!), but she runs away. This is where the credits footage comes from, by the way. He catches up to the guy, but the husband shows up, turns on a music box to make the killer freeze up & sets the house on fire. To close out the tale, the couple stops the car to check the trunk and gets attacked. The f-ing End!

Satan Claus

Another movie about a crazed man dressed as Santa? Hurray! This character begins the film by driving around and singing a Christmas song, just replacing nice words with 'blood' and 'entrails.' He randomly attacks one lady and cuts her head off, at least giving us actual on-screen gore! The woman is questioned about the attack at a police station that has a few, well, let's just call them odd things. First off, a board above the chief's desk has a picture of Bill Clinton, despite this movie claiming to be made in 2008. Secondly, and most importantly, the place has no power! At night, the police station is running off of moonlight and reflections from neon signs! How low-budget do you have to be to not be able to afford electricity?!? Anyhow, we learn that the woman was the police chief's wife and we get some ACTING! Our focus switches to a young man (read: 3o) who wants to be an actor, but all he can do is work as a Santa on the street. He also has a voodoo lady for an adopted mother, which may play a part in the story. At his job (also with no light), a friend of his is randomly-attacked by the Santa killer. He chases after him, but the film's lack of light makes it appear that he is running in space!

The killer continues his habit of taunting the cops and leaving no evidence behind. We also get to see that he is decorating his tree with human limbs. That's ho ho horrible. He kills more people, but my interest level is really not that high. The super-low production values show through in many of these scenes, including a bit where a passing train's shadow blocks the shot! We do more with the story between our hero and the woman whose boyfriend was attacked earlier. The voodoo lady gives our hero a necklace early on that is supposed to protect him from evil spirits. As it turns out, this is a good thing to have. The woman he protected, you see, is actually an evil woman who has taken a man's soul & made him into the titular killer. That man: the police chief. Of course, this movie blatantly cheats by having the Psycho Santa played by a different actor! She explains her whole plan like a bad spy movie villain before the police woman shoots her. The End.
These movie suck in every way you can think of. Psycho is a bad slasher movie disguised as an anthology film, only it is all about one person. On top of that, there is almost no blood, no plot and no direction. You think that with a narrator in the story that we would not have two people wandering around like Hansel and Gretel! The killer is silly, stupid and uninspired. The only interesting aspect of him is that he is entranced by Christmas music, but film counteracts that both times it comes up. Satan is worse in many ways, since it has the plot of a decent horror film in theory. The budget kills this movie even more than the bad acting and bad direction. Mind you, it could be argued that the money could have gone to hiring good actors, but their bigger priority should have been getting some damn light! You can do a million times better than these films and should.
Up next, an iconic 80s horror film that everybody is already talking about. Why shouldn't I join in? Stay tuned...