Really Awful Movies

The killer here has an axe to grind – and an axe to swing. However, Silent Night, Bloody Night is decidedly not a stalk-and-slash.

Rather, this 1972 production combines elements of the Gothic, mystery, Giallo, and hell, the supernatural too, and the different elements delight, for what is more than meets the jaundiced eye of a typical horror hound.

We are in a small New England town, East Willard, which harbors a dark secret: a sprawling stately home with bad mojo. It’s owned by the Butler family, whose scion, Jeffrey, has entrusted his lawyer to go over matters regarding his grandpa’s estate. Apparently, developers want to bulldoze it and young Californian Jeff wants to immediate turn the family homestead into equity for reasons unexplained.

His legal counsel and paramour have a Bizarro Fellini-esque meet-and-greet with the town’s bigwigs, all of whom from the mayor, his communications advisory, and the chief of police, seem to be consumed by something and are acting all kinds of weird.

Soon, a mysterious black gloved killer objects to the lawyer and his mistress, hacking the twosome to bits while they sleep in the sordid mansion. With his lawyer no longer answering the phone, Jeffrey drives into East Willard to check into what’s going on.

He then meets the mayor’s daughter, Diane (the wonderful Warhol starlet, Mary Woronov, of Eating Raoul and Hellhole fame) and they wander around a town which is becoming increasingly emptied of its few inhabitants.

With voiceover/exposition dumps a plenty, we learn about the home and its occupants with a very creepy and downbeat 70s-style backstory. Bonus: the viewer is also get introduced to the legendary Cecille B DeMille player, John Carradine, as a mute media magnate who communicates with an annoying tap-tappy bell a la Hector from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.

All of this makes for a very good time indeed, and the performances in Silent Night, Bloody Night, are fun, even if the flick has all the pacing of small town life.

*** (out of 5)

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.