(Director/co-story source: Paul Tanter. Co-story source: Simon Phillips. Screenwriter: Christopher Jolley.)
Storyline
In Woodbridge, New Jersey, a teenage girl and a police officer try to stop a serial killer couple, dressed up like Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, who are turning the town’s once-jolly holiday into a terror fest.
Review
ONCE is a solid, low budget Christmas killer film—not shot-on-video cheap but not far from it. It opens with Mrs. Claus, a tall, leggy blonde in a short-skirt Santa suit (played by Sayla de Goede, billed as Sayla Vee) in a jail cell, talking with a cop outside it. The cop, Sam Fullard (Jeff Ellenberger), tells her to give up hope that she’ll be getting out of that cell anytime soon. She thinks otherwise.
Film cuts to eleven days earlier, December fourteenth, when Mrs. Claus—not her real name—and a brown-bearded guy in a Santa Claus suit slay another guy in a Santa Claus suit. She carries a crossbow and a bat. Killer Santa, burn marks around his whitened left eye, wields a bat.
The next morning, Jennifer (Laurel Brady), a teenage girl, wakes to her parents arguing. They’re getting divorced, something she forces them to admit. Jennifer, angry, leaves to hang out with her friends, including the bitchy Courtney (Susannah Mackay).
The same morning, cops─among them Fullard and Sheriff Mitchell (Barry Kennedy)─survey the scene of the Santa murder. This seems like a senseless crime. This frustrates the older, no-b.s. Mitchell, who, over the course of the film grows increasingly frustrated, not only by the murders but corrupt, crass bureaucracy.
Days progress and more murders happen, including two teenagers making out at Turtle Dove Point. When Jennifer, following her shift as a mall Santa’s helper, sees a macabre jack-in-the-box and a note with her name on it, the mystery surrounding the motives and identities of the Christmas-iconic couple gives way to solid clues. It all leads to a Christmas Eve “Drum Fest” concert at Phil’s Bar, an event few in attendance─including Jennifer and her friends─are likely to forget anytime soon.
The kill scenes are fun and varied. If Mrs. Claus seems like she’s trying too hard to be like Harley Quinn, at least there’s a playfulness to her that provides a nice counterbalance to her spouse’s over-the-top pronouncements. Gore-wise, the kill scenes are restrained, sometimes less than convincing (not a lot of blood when peoples' throats slit)─I’m guessing this is because of budgetary constraints, not bad filmmaking.
ONCE’s virtues outweigh its flaws. While its budgetary limits, Mrs. Claus’s lacking backstory, sometimes-dumb cop stuff, the fact that Santa has teeth (he supposedly lost them), and Santa’s weird-logic speechifying near the end of the movie detract from its modest joys, there’s still a lot to be had here. It has: a tightly penned, solid-mystery and holiday-centric script; oddball psychos who are interesting (even if the actress playing Mrs. Claus sometimes grates on one’s nerves); an impressively sparse but effective soundtrack (e.g., when Jennifer finds the wind-up box, only the slowed-down tinkle sounds from “Silent Night, Holy Night” are heard); most of the actors are solid in their roles, and most of those who are bad players are only briefly seen or quickly dispatched by the red-clad, deadly duo.
ONCE’s bookend finish─cutting back to Fullard guarding the jailed Mrs. Claus─is a predictable setup, but its saving graces are that it’s logical and it leaves ONCE open not only for a sequel (often a genre requirement), but for multiple outcomes. Not a great film, this, but entertaining and well-made (for the most part)─worth watching on cable, if you see it as an option (and you’ve already seen all your other holiday-related flicks).
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