{"id":7748,"date":"2024-10-30T22:48:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T02:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7748"},"modified":"2024-10-30T22:48:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T02:48:50","slug":"christmas-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/30\/christmas-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Christmas Evil<\/strong> (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pan American Pictures\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, frightening scenes, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Jackson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lewis Jackson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Don Christensen, Joel Harris and Julia Heyward\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ricardo Aronovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1980\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull, Andy Fenwick, Brian Neville, Joe Jamrog, Peter Neuman, Patricia Richardson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0Also known as You Better Watch Out, Christmas Evil<\/strong> is a stinker by any name. With an awesome title like that, I should have known the movie would not follow through on this promise. Sure enough, it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It predates Silent Night, Deadly Night by four years. I suspect the producers of the infamous 1984 slasher took a look at the earlier movie and made all necessary improvements. The idea of a killer Santa Claus is only natural, especially when you consider all of the other holiday-themed slasher movies that came out around this time. Sadly, there\u2019s precious little slashing going on in Christmas Evil<\/strong> (only 4 murders). It\u2019s mostly about some creepy guy who slowly experiences some kind of mental collapse around the holidays. He\u2019s already nuts, but things happen that push him over the edge right into a full-fledged delusional state. If I wanted a character study about a disturbed individual, I would have watched Taxi Driver or Bad Lieutenant. With a title like Christmas Evil<\/strong> (or You Better Watch Out), I want a freaking bloodbath! I want some major mad slasher action! I want a body count that reaches double digits! This movie delivers none of that; consequently, I sat there growing more irritated by the moment. A good friend of mine once said that the most unwatchable kind of movie is a comedy that isn\u2019t funny. I see the logic in that statement, when you\u2019re not laughing at something that is supposed to be funny, time seems to drag. In the case of a boring splatter flick, time appears to stop altogether.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Christmas Evil<\/strong> opens, predictably, with some poor kid experiencing some kind of Christmastime trauma. This time, young Harry Stadling sees Mommy getting felt up by Santa Claus (it\u2019s really his father) and it messes him up for life. 33 years later, Harry (Maggart, Dressed to Kill) is a barely functioning adult who works at the Jolly Dreams toy factory. Even though he\u2019s just received a small promotion, his colleagues don\u2019t respect him. One guy, Frank (Jamrog, United 93), bullies Harry into working his late night shift on the assembly line so he can hang out at the local bar.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Outside of work, Harry sees himself as Santa. His apartment is full of Christmas decorations and toys. He sleeps in his Santa suit and spies on the neighborhood children to see if they\u2019re being naughty or nice. He even writes down the names of bad children in a book labeled \u201cBad Boys & Girls\u201d. His younger brother Phil (DeMunn, The Green Mile) is losing his patience with Harry, especially after he calls to tell him he will not be coming for Thanksgiving dinner.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After an office Christmas party at which Harry learns of the owner\u2019s intention to donate toys to the children at the state hospital if production increases sufficiently, he realizes everybody thinks he\u2019s a joke. Something snaps and he becomes convinced that he is<\/em> Santa Claus. At this point, you would think that Harry would go on a killing spree dressed as St. Nick, yes? Well, he goes out dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve. He steals a bunch of toys from the factory and delivers them to the hospital. He scares the hell out of a \u201cnaughty\u201d child he saw reading a dirty magazine earlier. He also leaves a bag of dirt on his doorstep. He leaves a bunch of makeshift toys under his brother\u2019s tree for his nephews. Oh yeah, Harry also kills four people. To be fair, the killings are pretty gory, but it doesn\u2019t compensate for the lack of gore in the rest of the movie. In any event, Harry\u2019s bloody mini-rampage makes the local news and he finds him being pursued by an angry mob bearing torches. Only in New Jersey, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0According to Wikipedia, Christmas Eve<\/strong> has developed a small cult following over the years. Its fans include director John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) who calls it \u201cthe greatest Christmas movie ever made\u201d. Even though I respect this filmmaker in all his glorious weirdness, I think he may be a tad off base here. Maybe even more than a tad. Christmas Evil<\/strong> is definitely a weird movie, but not in that endearing way that makes titles like Repo Man and Liquid Sky such a pleasure to watch. As I sit here writing about it, I want to see what its fans see, but I just can\u2019t seem to do it. I can\u2019t get past the whole broken promise thing. It really should have been more of a bloodbath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I also can\u2019t past the fact that I remember Maggart primarily from the 80s sitcom Brothers where he played a not-too-bright character named Lou. He was very funny on that show and it\u2019s hard to see him as a psychopath. Maggart just doesn\u2019t strike me as particularly menacing. None of the other performances in Christmas Evil<\/strong> are particularly remarkable either. Simply put, it\u2019s a really lame movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m sure I must have seen the box for this movie on the shelf at the local video store back in the day, but I just never bothered with it. I doubt I would have liked it any better as a teenager anyway. I\u2019m wondering if Christmas Evil<\/strong> is one of those movies that deserve a second chance. Now that I know what it\u2019s really about, maybe I can rewatch it with no raised expectations? Maybe I\u2019ll do that next Christmas (I don\u2019t have time this year). For now (based on my first impression), I don\u2019t recommend watching it at all.<\/p>\n

P.S. I did watch it a second time and I still don\u2019t like it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas Evil (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pan American Pictures\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, frightening scenes, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Jackson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lewis Jackson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Don Christensen, Joel Harris and Julia Heyward\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ricardo Aronovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 1980\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull, Andy Fenwick, Brian Neville, Joe Jamrog, Peter Neuman, Patricia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7797,"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-7748","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\/10\/Christmas-Evil-PIC.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\/7748","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=7748"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7799,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions\/7799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}