{"id":10274,"date":"2024-12-12T00:08:07","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T05:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10274"},"modified":"2024-12-12T00:08:07","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T05:08:07","slug":"nightmare-on-34th-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/12\/nightmare-on-34th-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Nightmare on 34th Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> (2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wide Eye Releasing\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 135 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (graphic violence, language, drug use, suggestive material, children in peril)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Pete Coleman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 5, 2023 (UK)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pierse Stevens, Jude Forsey, Adam Thomas Wright, Eloise Henwood, Dani Thompson, Jeff Kristian, Tony Fadil, Sonny Denham, Mark Beauchamp, Barnaby Jago, Jon Vangdal Aamaas, Bibi Lucille, Angus Foulkes, Gillian Broderick, Denise Wilton, Maisy Crunden, Rafi Wilder, Lucy Pinder, Marc Zammit, Petra Bryant, Verity-Rae Martin, Orion Jackson-Rose, Jaire Russell, Olivia Hespe, Jim Mannering, Ben Greaves-Neal, Adam Greaves-Neal, Karl Hughes, Mirabel Stuart, Robert Lowe, Cathy Treble, Harbour Carew Bellamy Clark, Katherine Hurley, Joe Neary, Archie Grant, Brooke Norbury.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have to say it. Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> is a great title for a Christmas horror movie. It ranks right up there with It\u2019s a Wonderful Knife. If only the movie was as awesome as the title. It falls short of greatness, but it\u2019s still worth a look for those demented souls who love a good bloody Christmas story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a matter of fact, the British-made Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> serves up four tales of holiday terror plus a wrap-around featuring a guy in a Santa suit (Stevens) relating the blood-soaked stories to a little boy (Forsey) while he lies in bed on Christmas Eve. The first, \u201cToby and Chloe\u2019s Christmas Nightmare\u201d, has the titular girl (Henwood) witnessing the slaughter of her family by a trio of escaped lunatics dressed as an elf, a snowman and Santa. Instead of killing her, they take her in as one of their own. We learn this when the group returns to the same house, now occupied by a new family, a few years later.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The second segment \u201cThe Ventriloquist Who Stole Christmas\u201d deals with a failed ventriloquist named Henry (Beauchamp) and his puppet, a snowman named Dr. White. He inherited it from his dad (Aamaas), a popular children\u2019s entertainer back in Norway and a serial killer. It would appear the pear didn\u2019t fall from the tree. Already mentally unstable, he snaps and goes on a killing spree. The next story \u201cMerry Krampus\u201d centers on a kid (Wilder) from a broken family who\u2019s convinced they\u2019ll be visited by Krampus this year. He might not be wrong.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The fourth and final tale \u201cThe 12 Kills of Christmas\u201d is about the past sins of a priest coming back to haunt him. Father McShane (Kristian), now suffering from dementia, did some bad things involving members of his boys\u2019 choir. His daughter and primary caretaker Maria (Hespe) is also on the hook because of her repressed memories from that time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Then we have the wrap-around. No surprise, this Santa is a psycho too. He\u2019s a disgruntled ex-mall Santa who racks up a nice body count before he commences storytime.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The good news about Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> is that none of the stories suck. The bad news is none of them are especially great either. They\u2019re all varying degrees of pretty good. My personal favorite is the one about the ventriloquist although I wish writer-director James Crow (Curse of the Witching Tree) made clearer the connection between the man and his puppet. It speaks by itself sometimes, but nobody makes a big deal of it. Is it all in Henry\u2019s head? Is it possessed by something evil? I think the former is the more logical explanation, but it would have been cooler if Crow left the viewer wondering. The Krampus story is okay. It has a twist that most viewers will see coming. 12 Kills is good enough for a full-length feature of its own. There\u2019s a lot of story to tell there. Toby & Chloe needs a bit more development, especially where the killers are concerned.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a whole, Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> is decent even if does spiral near the end. Crow loses control in the final moments. It gets a little convoluted. Also, I would have liked to see more blood and gore. Yes, there are some cool kills and most of the victims deserve it. There\u2019s not enough splat and splatter. The visual FX are pretty good for a low-budget horror film. It doesn\u2019t look cheap, but you can tell Crow didn\u2019t spend a lot of money on it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose you\u2019re all wondering if Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> is scary. No, not really. I wouldn\u2019t even say it\u2019s particularly suspenseful. It held my interest well enough, but it never kept me on the edge of my seat. The overlong running time certainly doesn\u2019t help. It could use some tightening up here and there. As for the acting, it\u2019s about what you\u2019d expect from a movie like this. It\u2019s adequate. Some performances are better than others. There\u2019s some overacting and some underacting. There\u2019s not much else to say about that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong> doesn\u2019t excel in any way, but it\u2019s watchable. It\u2019s a mixed sack of weird and twisted tales that should please holiday ghouls looking to celebrate the dark side of the Christmas season. Besides, who can pass up a title as cool as Nightmare on 34th<\/sup> Street<\/strong>?\"\"<\/p>\n

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Nightmare on 34th Street (2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wide Eye Releasing\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 135 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (graphic violence, language, drug use, suggestive material, children in peril)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Pete Coleman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Crow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 5, 2023 (UK)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pierse Stevens, Jude Forsey, Adam Thomas Wright, Eloise Henwood, Dani Thompson, Jeff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Nightmare-on-34th-Street-PI.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10274"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10379,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10274\/revisions\/10379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}