There are just too many Santa slashers. So Don’t Open Till Christmas, which turns the tables by making the fat man in felt the victim rather than the perp, is a welcome change.
This fraught British production was long in the making and it’s evident in the finished product. But it’s a wild one.
Two lovers lane types, including one in a Santa hat are parked in a cul-de-sac. Before too soon, they’re going before coming and both dispatched as dizzying camera work swings around their ride.
We’re then in a bumpin’ nightclub, where the Santa emcee, instead of Christmas cheer, gets a Christmas spear – right through the eye.
The once-jolly elf in question is the father of a London local, Kate, who soon finds her beau Cliff at the centre of an almost giallo-esque police investigation.
You see, Cliff is in the crosshairs of Scotland Yard for being the last one to see a scantily clad Kris Kringle beauty before she’s attacked in an alley.
It’s the nod to multiple genres that makes Don’t Open Till Christmas so weirdly fascinating – procedural (both police and journalism), sex farce, straight up slasher, and hell, even a protracted, almost Gothic scene in the tourist trap, London Dungeon.
While silly and uneven, Don’t Open Till Christmas, like the recent and gorgeous standout, Last Night in Soho, makes amazing use of its London locales. You get the West End theatre district, Piccadilly Circus, and yes, Soho peep shows too. Of course, you get less than amazing London too in the form of repeated, tedious exterior shots of New Scotland Yard, the predictable result of this one being filmed over the course of nearly three years and being overseen by >1 director.
Nonetheless, with a sleazy antagonist making quick work of St Nicks all over London, the flick provides nonstop entertainment value, especially when chestnuts aren’t the only thing roasted on an open fire.
Don’t Open Till Christmas is nicely naughty.
***1/4 (out of 5)
For a fuller discussion, please listen to the Don’t Open Till Christmas podcast discussion.
Really Awful Movies 