ONCE UPON A TIME AT CHRISTMAS (2017)

 

(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).

THE PROWLER (1981)

 

(a.k.a. ROSEMARY’S KILLER; a.k.a. THE GRADUATION; director/producer: Joseph Zito. Screenwriters: Glenn Leopold and Neal Barbera, with additional dialogue by Eric Lewald.)

 

Review

June 28, 1945. Avalon Bay, California. On lover’s lane, away from the “Class of ’45 Graduation Ball,” Francis Rosemary Chatham (Joy Glaccum) and her amorous new boyfriend are stabbed with a pitchfork by someone in a mask and military gear. A red rose is left in her hand. Their killer disappears─it’s thought that Francis’s war vet ex-boyfriend did the deed.

Thirty-five years to the date pass without a dance in Avalon, but the collegiate class of 1980 is getting theirs. Pam MacDonald, one of the graduates, helps set up the ball along with her friends. The night of the ball, a prowler in a nearby town has been reported, and Pam worries about her boyfriend (Deputy Mark London) who’s acting sheriff while his boss, George Fraser (Farley Granger, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, 1951) goes on a fishing trip.

Murders begin immediately, committed by someone wearing the military garb and wielding weapons of the 1945 killer. This prowler also leaves roses in the hands of his female victims. Pam (Vicky Dawson) and Mark (Christopher Goutman) quickly realize what’s happening, although the shadowy slayer’s identity is a mystery. Suspects are everywhere, from the kind-of-goofy Otto to the unsettling, possible-puppet-master Major Chatham, father of killed-in-1945 Francis.

If you’re looking for a film with well-developed key characters (with their backstories and motives spoken aloud), this might not be a movie for you. If you’re looking for a film that gives you just enough─if you pay attention─information to suss out who’s likely done/doing what and why, PROWLER might be your slow-kill jam.

PROWLER, shot in Cape May, New Jersey, is solidly written and tightly edited, with a running time of eighty-nine minutes, many of its key terror shots reminiscent of FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980), not necessarily a bad thing, as PROWLER has its own look and feel. (It was director Joseph Zito’s work on PROWLER that got him hired for FRIDAY THE 13^th: THE FINAL CHAPTER, 1984.) Editor Joel Goodman’s choice cuts pace PROWLER’s dreamlike, gritty work in a suspenseful way, its distinctive mood aided by cinematographer João Fernandes’s intense use of light and shadow (Fernandes, billed as Raoul Lomas, was Zito’s cinematographer for FRIDAY THE 13^th: THE FINAL CHAPTER, 1984). Composer Richard Einhorn’s effective, sometimes playful score brings together the best elements of Bernard Hermann’s PSYCHO (1960), Harry Manfredini’s FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980), and other terror flick scores without ripping them off. And Tom Savini’s FX, occasionally over-the-top, complement the overall feel of the film and add to the brutish nature of the spree killer’s (or spree killers’) deeds.

Among its notable players: a frail-looking and barely seen Lawrence Tierney (BORN TO KILL, 1947) as the wheelchair-bound Major Chatham; Cindy Weintraub (HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, 1980) as Lisa, Pam’s flirtatious friend; and Thom Bray (PRINCE OF DARKNESS, 1987) as Ben, one of the graduate-boyfriends.

This deep-dive into multilayered horror (a ghostly town, PTSD, etc.) is especially dark and distinctive, from its dirty realism, raw, lingering-shot kill scenes, lull-then-sharp score, and overall feel, its closest thematic-companion film perhaps MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981). Both are worth watching and owning if you’re a fan of grit-and-gore Eighties slashers.

CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980)

 

(a.k.a. YOU BETTER WATCH OUT; a.k.a. TERROR IN TOYLAND. Director/screenwriter: Lewis Jackson.)

Storyline

A toy factory employee goes on a killing spree after a Christmas-related meltdown.

Review

CHRISTMAS is a unique, excellent entry in the Santa’s-on-a-rampage genre, a work that did not get the box office and critical kudos it deserved when it came out. It has since become a cult classic, helped by the fact that John Waters lavished love on it, going so far as to provide an audio commentary for Synapse Films’ 2006 Special Edition DVD of the film.

What sets CHRISTMAS apart from Claus-has-got-a-blood-dripping-bag flicks is that the main character, the gone-murderous Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart) is not simply seeking revenge for a personal wrong. His motivations stem from the holiday chasm of people’s professed “goodwill towards men” and what they’re doing to those around them. His co-workers at the Jolly Dreams toy factory play tricks on him and call him a “schmuck” behind his back; his boss’s publicized charity is a sham; everybody around him, even his concerned brother (Phil, played with equal intensity by Jeffrey DeMunn) is a Christmas naysayer in Harry’s eyes.

Then, of course, there’s the traumatic realization of thirty-three years prior, that Santa Claus isn’t real, revealed when Harry─then a young boy─saw his mother have sex with his father while his father wore a Santa suit. This impels Harry to preserve the Christmas spirit, lest it die at the hands of corrupt, unfeeling others.

Once Harry snaps, he reels from one surreal event to another: he kills somebody, and a few minutes later, finds himself the awkward toast of a Christmas party (where people don’t notice the blood on his Santa suit); not long after that, more violence occurs, and the last fifteen minutes of CHRISTMAS intentionally plays out like much of the ending of James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), replete with torch-wielding New Jerseyites. Some people might be put off by the offbeat, occasionally lagging (drama) pacing of CHRISTMAS, which is not a hyper-focused slash-and-kill horror flick, and that’s fine─every film is made for a certain audience, and CHRISTMAS has deeper message than the usual, jump-cut-edited killer-on-the-loose flick, and film geeks might recognize Rutanya Alda, billed as Ratanya Alda, who played Theresa─Alda later appeared in other films, including AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION (1982).

The ending is atypical of the genre, a finish that leaves Harry’s fate open to interpretation. Since the tone of the film is sympathetic to Harry’s point of view, I have my own take on it, a mix of what really happened and how Harry sees it, but others might view in a less forgiving or more fantastic, holy-cow light. Either way, this one of the most original Santa slasher-mixed-with-social-commentary flicks ever made, one the viewer likely won’t forget, like it or hate it.