Christmas Evil (1980)

Every year I sit down with a friend for a night of Christmas Horror, and although the good ones may be few and far between (Black Christmas [1974] remains by far the best) we were still very much looking forward to sitting down to Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989) after watching the previous iterations the last two years. To our horror, we couldn't find any way to view it, bar spending £26 on a DVD so we settled for this 1980 chiller, starring Brandon Maggart (Fiona Apple's Dad no less) as a man who watches Santa Claus, er, show his Mother a good time as a young boy, and years later lose the plot over the whole thing and embark on a Christmas Evil kill spree. His rampage must involve the wearing of a Santa Claus outfit of course, and as you might expect the whole thing is aptly insane; any sympathy we might have for Maggart's Harry in his wanting to impress the true meaning of Christmas on everyone evaporates swiftly whilst witnessing his creepy hobby of keeping notes on local children as he watches them through binoculars, scrawling in 'naughty' or 'nice' books. What's surprising about Christmas Evil is the very interesting way it's shot and edited; there's several shots at strange angles which although not convincingly deliberate, give an effective scratchy slasher feel to proceedings, enhanced by a truly bonkers score. In the end the whole thing is pleasingly ridiculous in a way that will never see the light of any 'best of' lists, but with the constructive (and bizarre) use of camera and sound, it means that it just about extracts itself from essentially being Silent Night, Deadly Night 3. 6.0/10