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| "Well, Willie, I understand you've been a bad boy this year!" |
Let's state right off the bat that scary moviemakers have pretty much covered all the bases when it comes to slashing up a calendar's worth of holidays. All these corresponding titles are legitimate...
New Year's Eve gave us 1980's "New Year's Evil," a lukewarm slasher film starring Roz Kelly (best known as Fonzie's girlfriend "Pinky" Tuscadero on "Happy Days") as a punk rock DJ whose institutionalized husband escapes confinement and promises to murder someone for each New Year celebration in the four time zones.
For Valentine's Day, the 1981 Canadian slasher movie "My Bloody Valentine" featured a masked killer in a coal miner's getup wielding a pickax. The film was rebooted in 2009 as the box-office smash "My Bloody Valentine 3D."
This might be a stretch, but we're giving Presidents Day to a pair of pictures released in 2012, the sizably budgeted "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and the direct-to-video cheapie "Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. " As for Abe's fellow Presidents Day honoree, admittedly he helps Slumberland sell mattresses every Presidents Day, but George Washington was never in a horror movie. Oops! We were wrong. In 2007, as part of Showtime's anthology series "Masters of Horror," "The Washingtonians" posited that the Father of His Country was the leader of a secret society of cannibals.
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| From rail splitter to head splitter, vampire hunter Abe Lincoln was portrayed by Benjamin Walker, best known for his title role in the stage musical "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." |
For St. Patrick's Day, take your pick of any one of the original six films in the "Leprechaun" franchise, featuring Warwick Davis ("Willow") as the greedy, horrific imp.
On April Fools' Day, you could watch another slasher picture from the Great White North, 1986's "April Fool's Day" (what, no "April Ghoul's Day"?), a lame wannabe-spoof in which, according to critic Dennis Schwartz, "A bunch of jokey annoying Vassar college students vacation on the weekend of April Fools' Day on a private island's isolated mansion to celebrate the birthday of their neurotic college friend and family mansion owner Muffy." Invariably, like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the undergrads mysteriously disappear one by one.
For Mother's Day, we suggest "Psycho" - just kidding! Troma Entertainment, a production company known for cranking out cheesy horror and exploitation flicks, presented "Mother's Day" in 1980. Not unlike Little Red Riding Hood, three attractive women wander into the wrong neck of the woods, where they are abducted and tortured by a pair of repugnant brothers for the amusement of their demented mother. Two of the girls escape and exact a brutal revenge only to be foiled by the inevitable twist ending.
Cinco de Mayo offers the self-same titled 2013 slasher parody, filmed on a bare-bones budget on-location in Modesto, California, and featuring a killer in a Mexican Day of the Dead mask (pictured below).
Scary movie ideas for Easter Sunday include "Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!" and "Easter Casket." The first film, from 2006, concerns a killer in an Easter Rabbit mask variously armed with a knife, a hammer, a power drill, a circular saw, a broomstick, and a shard of glass. The movie's closing line is a gem: "Now what do you say we clean up these dead bodies and start a family, huh?" Shot on an incredible budget of $3000, 2013's "Easter Casket" (pictured below) tells the tale of a vindictive Peter Cottontail (a "hyperactive puppet," in the words of one online reviewer), who raises bloody hell when the Catholic Church orders the banning of such secular symbols of Easter as rabbits and eggs.
For Memorial Day, the 1999 slasher movie "Memorial Day" is set on the holiday weekend at Memorial Lake Campground, which might as well have been called Camp Crystal Lake since, just like "Friday the 13th," the lake is the site of a tragic drowning years earlier, and a masked killer (in a papier-mâché mask instead of a hockey goalie's mask) systematically slaughters unfortunate interlopers utilizing, in lieu a machete, a gun, a spear, a knife, a red-hot rebar, razor blades, nails, and fish hooks. One web-based reviewer dubbed the picture "backwoods crap that does feature a nice set of boobs."
Appropriately for Father's Day, Troma Entertainment co-produced 2011's "Father's Day," a tongue-in-cheek throwback to grindhouse exploitation cinema of the 1970s in its depiction of a one-eyed hermit who teams with his stripper sister, a priest, and a male prostitute (fittingly called to track down the sadistic "Father's Day Killer."
Fourth of July gives us 1996's "Uncle Sam," a horror comedy from writer Larry Cohen and director William Lustig, the filmmaking team responsible for the cult horror "Maniac Cop" trilogy of the late 1980s and early '90s. A soldier named Sam, who was killed by friendly fire in Operation Desert Storm, returns from the dead after punks burn an American flag above his grave. Donning an Uncle Sam costume and mask (pictured below), the reanimated GI dispatches those he deems unpatriotic, including a former draft dodger, a tax cheat, and a crooked congressman. The eclectic cast boasts veteran movie heavy William Smith, Bo Hopkins (leader of the greaser gang The Pharaohs in "American Graffiti"), musician Isaac Hayes (Chef on "South Park"), Timothy Bottoms ("The Last Picture Show"), P.J. Soles (The Ramones' fan Riff Randell in "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), and Robert Forster (Oscar nominee for "Jackie Brown").
Labor Day gets off easy when it comes to horror pictures, while Halloween, of course, offers the original eight movies in the "Halloween" franchise, as well as heavy metal singer-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie's remake of the first picture and its sequel, along with the recent direct sequel to the original "Halloween" which disregards all other films in the series.
Thanksgiving dishes up the black-comedy horror of 2008's "ThanksKilling," described succinctly on the Internet Movie Database thus: "A homicidal turkey axes off college kids during Thanksgiving break." The $3500-budgeted picture opens with a depiction of the first Thanksgiving, where a Pilgrim woman, topless for no apparent reason, is killed by a tomahawk wielded by a demonic turkey who exclaims, "Nice tits, b***h!" and ends in modern times with a reanimated roasted turkey declaring, "Do I smell sequel, biatch?" Indeed, writer-director (and voice of the bloodthirsty bird) Jordan Downey made the sequel in 2012, titled "ThanksKilling 3" (there never was a "ThanksKilling 2").
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| Actual dialogue: "Now that's what I call fowl play!" |
Hanukkah, whenever that falls in December, is the centerpiece of the (as yet unreleased) 2018 same-titled picture "Hanukkah," featuring genre favorite Sid Haig (familiar as the patriarch of the sociopathic Firefly clan in Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses," "The Devil's Rejects," and the upcoming "3 from Hell") as Judah Lazarus, a serial killer known as the "Hanukiller" (pictured below).
"Hanukkah" stars standup comic-actor Charles Fleischer (best known as the titular voice in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), with P.J. Soles, who was, incidentally, the fifth and final victim in the original "Halloween" ("Totally!"), and Dick Miller, as Rabbi Walter Paisley (the name of the demented sculptor Miller played in Roger Corman's "A Bucket of Blood" as well as the name Miller used for his characters in "Hollywood Boulevard," "The Howling," "Twilight Zone: The Movie," and "Chopping Mall"). The music for "Hanukkah" is composed by Harry Manfredini, best known for his recognizable and much-imitated scores for nine "Friday the 13th" pictures.
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| "Scared, ain't ya? You should be. Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!" - "Silent Night, Deadly Night" |
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| In "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2," Ricky picks up (the axe) where older brother Billy left off. |
Actually, it was 1980's "Christmas Evil" that started the sub-genre of jolly St. Nick as a psycho slasher killer. Harry is a sad-sack drudge working at the Jolly Dream toy company whose childhood was scarred by news that Santa Claus wasn't real. He snaps when he's ridiculed for dressing the part to deliver toys to needy children at a local hospital. Harry's normal brother Philip is played by Jeffrey DeMunn, best known for his roles as E Block guard Harry Terwilliger in "The Green Mile" and as RV owner Dale Horvath in early episodes of "The Walking Dead."
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| Trying to identify the killer Santa in "Christmas Evil"... |
Also in 1980, David Hess (familiar to genre fans as Krug Stillo, the leader of a brutal gang in Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left") directed "To All a Goodnight," in which a group of female finishing school students and their boyfriends are terrorized at a Christmas party by a maniacal murderer in a Santa Claus costume. The movie starred Jennifer Runyon, who played Cindy Brady in "A Very Brady Christmas" and had a small but memorable role as a college student being tested for ESP by Bill Murray in "Ghostbusters" (pictured below).
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| Jennifer Runyon's husband, Todd Corman, is the nephew of B-movie mogul Roger Corman. In 1993, Runyon starred in Roger's production of "Carnosaur." |
In a reversal on the killer Santa theme, the 1984 London-set thriller "Don't Open Till Christmas" depicts a killer targeting men who dress up as Santa Claus during the holiday season. The film stars Edmond Purdom as a Scotland Yard inspector. British actor Purdom was groomed for Hollywood stardom when he was cast in the title role of the historical epic "The Egyptian," featuring Hollywood heavyweights Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, and Peter Ustinov. The Hollywood career never took off, and Purdom eventually ended up starring in Italian movies. "Don't Open Till Christmas" was his only stab (no pun intended) at directing a feature film.
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| British sexploitation starlet Pat Astley is unfortunately draped in a Santa Claus costume in "Don't Open Till Christmas." |
Caroline Munro, a fan favorite for her appearances in horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema, has a cameo in "Don't Open Till Christmas" as herself, performing in an incongruous rock 'n' roll production number
Truth be told, the notion of a crazed killer on the loose dressed as Santa Claus goes back to a March 1954 issue of EC Comics' "The Vault of Horror" with the story "...And All Through the House," written and drawn by Johnny Craig. After murdering her husband on Christmas Eve, a woman is terrified by a radio news bulletin about a homicidal maniac escaping from an asylum and killing four women. Wearing a Santa Claus costume, the fiend is reportedly in her vicinity, but she can't notify the police without exposing her crime. In the tradition of EC Comics, the tale ends with a macabre twist.
The second episode in the first season of the HBO anthology series "Tales from the Crypt" presented a version of the same story. Fred Dekker, a screenwriter and director known for the tongue-in-cheek horror films "Night of the Creeps" and "The Monster Squad," wrote the teleplay for director Robert Zemeckis, known for, among many others, the "Back to the Future" trilogy and "Forrest Gump." Larry Drake (best known as developmentally challenged Benny Stulwicz on TV's "L.A. Law") portrayed the escaped mental patient in a Santa Claus suit (pictured below).
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" opened the door for a number of variations on the killer Santa trope, ushering in films with wannabe clever titles like "Santa Claws," "Satan Claus," "All Through the House," "Christmas Cruelty," "Christmas Slay," and "Santa's Slay," a dark comedy from 2005 which features former professional wrestler Bill Goldberg as a demonic Santa Claus, who opens the film by bursting through the bricks of a fireplace and slaughtering a wealthy, bickering family. The quibbling clan includes James Caan, Fran Drescher, and Chris Kattan.
The supporting cast in "Santa's Slay" featured Robert Culp, SCTV's Dave Thomas, Saul Rubinek, and Tommy "Tiny" Lister.
Wrapping up the sub-genre of "jolly St. Nick as a psycho slasher killer," 2012's "Silent Night" was a very loose remake of "Silent Night, Deadly Night." The small sheriff's department in a remote Midwestern town races against the clock to find a killer in a Santa Claus suit and mask, dead set on reducing the local citizenry. The sheriff was played by Malcolm McDowell (pictured below), who took over Donald Pleasence's character of Dr. Loomis in Rob Zombie's "Halloween" reboot and "Halloween II" in the 2000s.
Santa's little helpers have not been overlooked by horror filmmakers. In 1989's "Elves," an ancient demonic elf is at the center of a neo-Nazi plot to establish the master race Adolf Hitler had envisioned conquering the world. Seemingly, it wasn't purebred Aryans Hitler had in mind as the superior race but instead a crossbreed of humans and elves. Television's "Grizzly Adams," Dan Haggerty (pictured below), starred in the movie directed by Jeffrey Mandel, who was a writer for and supervising producer of the syndicated early 1990s TV series "Super Force."
The consensus from viewers of 2017's "The Elf" is a universal thumbs-down, targeting poor writing, inept acting, and technically challenged production values. It's a sad case when the movie's poster looks better than anything in front of the camera.
The story of "The Elf" involves a young man who is troubled by nightmares stemming from a murder he witnessed when he was younger. He conveniently inherits an old toy shop, where he comes across an elf doll sealed inside an antique chest, along with a "naughty list" containing his family's names. He discovers that the doll, armed with a tiny knife, is a channel for evil, unleashing a supernatural killing spree just in time for the holidays.
In 2018, "The Elf" writer-producer-director Justin Price produced a sequel titled "Elves," in which a group of friends find another ancient chest holding elf dolls and the proverbial naughty list. They add themselves to the list, thinking it's part of a game, only to become possessed by a curse that causes them to want to kill each other or themselves. While the main focus is on possessions, murderous elves eventually show up, but this time, they're not the pint-sized variety. Again, this might be another case of a poster looking better than the advertised movie (pictured above).
The 2011 slapstick dark comedy "A Cadaver Christmas" was originally called "Zombies at Christmas," an appropriate title for the sub-sub-genre of Yuletide walking dead cinema, of which there only seems to be three entries. After making a grisly discovery in a college science lab, a blood-spattered janitor goes to a local bar and recruits the bartender, a drunk, a student security guard, a cop, and his perverted perp (who had sex with a goat) to save the world from cadavers reanimated by the university's science professor. In the view of one online critic, a highlight of the deliriously madcap movie is a "gloriously inspired" fight in which the janitor and the drunk contend with "hordes of twitching and jerking zombie cadavers using only Christmas decorations and janitor supplies to the tune of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.'"
Speaking of glorious inspirations, 2015's "A Christmas Horror Story" was an imaginative anthology picture which juggled four stories, jumping back and forth between each tale. William Shatner bookends the segments as the gradually drunken DJ Dangerous Dan. An infectious outbreak that transforms the elves into flesh-eating zombies concludes the anthology (pictured below), as Santa slays one elf after another in the toy workshop before contending with Krampus, the monstrous anti-Claus, if you will, in an epic battle.
As an example of political correctness-gone-wrong, this is how pussyfooting Walmart and Kmart marketed "A Christmas Horror Story"...
And yet, here are their print ads...
But we digress. The third Christmas walking dead picture movie has rightfully been touted as the first Scottish Christmas zombie musical comedy. Written by Scotsmen, directed by a Scot, and filmed in Scotland, 2017's Anna and the Apocalypse was described by RogerEbert.com's Monica Castillo as "an odd coupling of death, destruction, high kicks and high notes." Based on an award-winning 2010 short film titled "Zombie Musical," the film stars British actress Ella Hunt (pictured below) as a high school senior in Scotland looking forward to taking a year off before starting college when, wouldn't you know it, the zombie apocalypse happens. Peppered with spunky musical production numbers, "Anna and the Apocalypse" owes more than a little to director Edgar Wright's breakout zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead." "Anna" director John McPhail even throws in some frenetically cut camerawork inspired by Wright.
Admiring the picture's "playful spirit" and catchy pop songs, critic Monica Castillo called "Anna and the Apocalypse" "a gift for the midnight movie crowd that's just as liable to break out into song as to celebrate each major zombie kill. It's one of those rare horror movies to leave you with good holiday cheer."
Now it's time to peer into Santa's grab bag of the weird, the wondrous, and the whatsits.
"Treevenge" is 16 bizarre minutes of a short film, proposing that Christmas trees, cruelly hacked down in the woods and torn from their families and friends, are sentient beings who talk to each other, unheard by humans. When the firs have had enough, they turn on their abductors in bloody revenge. This is one of those threadbare-budgeted affairs marked by expectedly horrendous overacting by nonprofessionals who shout their lines and by cheesy, blurry special effects, although the outrageous dispatching of a bawling infant by a tree trunk to the skull was an unexpected jolt.
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| (Above) Fran Drescher is set ablaze before Santa Claus puts the fire out by drowning her in a serving bowlful of egg nog, while (below) James Caan is impaled on a turkey leg in "Santa's Slay." |
The supporting cast in "Santa's Slay" featured Robert Culp, SCTV's Dave Thomas, Saul Rubinek, and Tommy "Tiny" Lister.
Wrapping up the sub-genre of "jolly St. Nick as a psycho slasher killer," 2012's "Silent Night" was a very loose remake of "Silent Night, Deadly Night." The small sheriff's department in a remote Midwestern town races against the clock to find a killer in a Santa Claus suit and mask, dead set on reducing the local citizenry. The sheriff was played by Malcolm McDowell (pictured below), who took over Donald Pleasence's character of Dr. Loomis in Rob Zombie's "Halloween" reboot and "Halloween II" in the 2000s.
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| "Our job in this film is to scare people and also make them laugh," Malcolm McDowell said in a 2012 interview. "It's entertainment. It's not to be taken serious...there are not people dressed as Santa going around flame-throwing people. It's just a fun ride. It's like a video game." |
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| "I need to know the connection between the elves and the Nazis!" - Dan Haggerty in "Elves." |
The consensus from viewers of 2017's "The Elf" is a universal thumbs-down, targeting poor writing, inept acting, and technically challenged production values. It's a sad case when the movie's poster looks better than anything in front of the camera.
The story of "The Elf" involves a young man who is troubled by nightmares stemming from a murder he witnessed when he was younger. He conveniently inherits an old toy shop, where he comes across an elf doll sealed inside an antique chest, along with a "naughty list" containing his family's names. He discovers that the doll, armed with a tiny knife, is a channel for evil, unleashing a supernatural killing spree just in time for the holidays.
In 2018, "The Elf" writer-producer-director Justin Price produced a sequel titled "Elves," in which a group of friends find another ancient chest holding elf dolls and the proverbial naughty list. They add themselves to the list, thinking it's part of a game, only to become possessed by a curse that causes them to want to kill each other or themselves. While the main focus is on possessions, murderous elves eventually show up, but this time, they're not the pint-sized variety. Again, this might be another case of a poster looking better than the advertised movie (pictured above).
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| "We are not going to stay here and be eaten by zombies!" "Cadavers!" - "A Cadaver Christmas" |
Speaking of glorious inspirations, 2015's "A Christmas Horror Story" was an imaginative anthology picture which juggled four stories, jumping back and forth between each tale. William Shatner bookends the segments as the gradually drunken DJ Dangerous Dan. An infectious outbreak that transforms the elves into flesh-eating zombies concludes the anthology (pictured below), as Santa slays one elf after another in the toy workshop before contending with Krampus, the monstrous anti-Claus, if you will, in an epic battle.
As an example of political correctness-gone-wrong, this is how pussyfooting Walmart and Kmart marketed "A Christmas Horror Story"...
And yet, here are their print ads...
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| Why not "Holiday Ad Match" or "After Holiday Sale & Clearance"? |
Admiring the picture's "playful spirit" and catchy pop songs, critic Monica Castillo called "Anna and the Apocalypse" "a gift for the midnight movie crowd that's just as liable to break out into song as to celebrate each major zombie kill. It's one of those rare horror movies to leave you with good holiday cheer."
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| "Stop yelling! You are scaring the saplings!" - "Treevenge" |
"Treevenge" is 16 bizarre minutes of a short film, proposing that Christmas trees, cruelly hacked down in the woods and torn from their families and friends, are sentient beings who talk to each other, unheard by humans. When the firs have had enough, they turn on their abductors in bloody revenge. This is one of those threadbare-budgeted affairs marked by expectedly horrendous overacting by nonprofessionals who shout their lines and by cheesy, blurry special effects, although the outrageous dispatching of a bawling infant by a tree trunk to the skull was an unexpected jolt.
Jason Eisener, the writer-editor-director of "Treevenge," went on to direct the 2011 cult film "Hobo with a Shotgun," starring '80s action hero Rutger Hauer (pictured below).
At age 50, Debbie Rochon, a so-called scream queen, is the veteran of over 250 films, mostly grade-Z direct-to-video exploitation and sexploitation titles. She starred as a terrorized B-movie actress in the 1996 slasher offering "Santa Claws." In 2009, Rochon was featured in "Bikini Bloodbath Christmas," the final entry in what the moviemakers themselves proclaimed "one of the stupidest film trilogies in history," preceded by "Bikini Bloodbath" and "Bikini Bloodbath Car Wash." Besides what one reviewer described as "copious amounts of boobies," the slasher gore in all three efforts was supplied by a character called Chef Death, who has a penchant for a claw hammer. When one regards any film with the words "bikini" and "bloodbath" in the title, the notion of an actual plot seems inane, but suffice it to say that "Bikini Bloodbath Christmas" follows the escapades of a recent bikini-clad college graduate, played by former Playboy model and standup comic Rachael Robbins, who, alongside her bikini-wearing friends, works at Bikini Bong Shoppe, which is embroiled in fierce competition for holiday business with a deli across the street. A deli?
Sinterklaas, a beloved figure in Dutch legends based on the 3rd and 4th century Greek bishop and patron saint of children, Saint Nicholas, was the primary inspiration for Santa Claus of later folklore. He was traditionally depicted as a stately man with a luxuriant white beard who wore a long red cape or cloak over a bishop's white alb, a red mitre atop his head and a ruby ring on a finger, and holding a golden crosier (bishop's staff) with an ornately curled top, usually mounted on a white horse.
In the 2010 satirical horror "Saint," written and directed by Dick Maas (a Dutch filmmaker renowned for the acclaimed horror pictures "The Lift" and "Amsterdamned"), St. Niklas is made over as a cruel tyrant who terrorized the locals and plundered their villages until he was burned alive by an angry mob on December 5, 1492. On that date (which is actually Saint Nicholas Day in the Netherlands), every 23 years, when the moon is full, the evil saint, accompanied by his gang of soot-faced Zwarte Pieten, returns to Amsterdam to slaughter as many adults and children as possible.
At one point in the dark fantasy of 2010's "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale," a Finnish boy reads a book that suggests Santa Claus was a horned brute who whipped misbehaving children and boiled them in a cauldron. In Helsinki-born writer-director Jalmari Helander's horror film, Santa Claus is unearthed from a 1600-foot deep pit near the mountain Korvatunturi in the Finnish province of Lapland. Soon after, children start disappearing. The boy and his father, with the help of fellow hunters, set out to capture Santa Claus, facing off against elves (who look like old, naked men) determined to free their leader (pictured below).
There are elements in the story of "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" that are remindful of the Central European folklore surrounding Krampus, also known as the "Christmas Devil," a legendary half-goat demon with one cloven hoof and one human foot who accompanies Saint Nicholas and punishes misbehaving children, while his companion rewards the well-behaved with gifts. In the illustration below, from an 1896 Austrian newspaper, Krampus upstages Saint Nicholas during a visit to a Viennese home. And that brings us to the last stop on our Yuletide slay ride.
The origin of Krampus, who should customarily be offered a drink of schnapps, is unclear, but some folklorists and anthropologists have speculated it as having pre-Christian Alpine beginnings. Europeans have exchanged greeting cards featuring a menacing Krampus, usually with the message "Greetings from Krampus," since the 1800s. The cards are called Krampuskarten (pictured below).
Curiously, considering Krampus is a storied figure dating back at least 400 years, it wasn't until the mid-2010s that filmmakers finally capitalized on his presence. From 2013 to 2018, no less than eight pictures were released with "Krampus" in the title. Probably the biggest production was simply titled "Krampus" from 2015 (pictured below), with a cast that included Toni Collette (Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for "The Sixth Sense"), Conchata Ferrell (best known as Berta the housekeeper on "Two and a Half Men"), comedic actor David Koechner (sportscaster Champ Kind in the "Anchorman" movies), and the voice of Seth Green (who performs as Chris Griffin on "Family Guy").
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| "Hobo with a Shotgun" is based on a fake movie trailer Jason Eisener made for Robert Rodriguez' 2007 movie "Grindhouse." |
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| Rachael Robbins (beside Santa Claus) poses with friends, including Monique Dupree, an actress and professional wrestler often referred to as the First Black Scream Queen. She is the sister of actor Tony Todd, best known for his title role in the "Candyman" horror trilogy. |
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| In the hands of "Saint's" Niklas, the bishop's sharp-edged staff is wielded as a weapon. The movie's poster won an annual Dutch award for "Best Cinema Poster of the Year," as voted on by Dutch audiences. |
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| Dutch actor Huub Stapel, as the centuries-old St. Niklas, grimaces for the camera alongside director Dick Maas. |
There are elements in the story of "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" that are remindful of the Central European folklore surrounding Krampus, also known as the "Christmas Devil," a legendary half-goat demon with one cloven hoof and one human foot who accompanies Saint Nicholas and punishes misbehaving children, while his companion rewards the well-behaved with gifts. In the illustration below, from an 1896 Austrian newspaper, Krampus upstages Saint Nicholas during a visit to a Viennese home. And that brings us to the last stop on our Yuletide slay ride.
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| "It's Christmas. Nothing bad is going to happen on Christmas!" - "Krampus" (2015) |
Curiously, considering Krampus is a storied figure dating back at least 400 years, it wasn't until the mid-2010s that filmmakers finally capitalized on his presence. From 2013 to 2018, no less than eight pictures were released with "Krampus" in the title. Probably the biggest production was simply titled "Krampus" from 2015 (pictured below), with a cast that included Toni Collette (Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for "The Sixth Sense"), Conchata Ferrell (best known as Berta the housekeeper on "Two and a Half Men"), comedic actor David Koechner (sportscaster Champ Kind in the "Anchorman" movies), and the voice of Seth Green (who performs as Chris Griffin on "Family Guy").
As mentioned earlier, the highlight of 2015's "A Christmas Horror Story" is a gladiatorial showdown between Santa Claus and Krampus (pictured below).
As for his "Horror Story" opponent, Santa Claus was portrayed by George Buza as a no-prisoners badass. Heck, he already handily dispatched a toy workshop-ful of ravenous, zombified elves.
With that, we say "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night" the German way: "Gruß vom Krampus!" ("Greetings from Krampus")...
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| "A Christmas Horror Story's" Krampus was portrayed by bodybuilder-stuntman Rob Archer, who played the iconic role as, in his words, a "Marvel character with an animalistic nature." In 2018, Archer, in fact, joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Knox in "Ant-Man and The Wasp." |
As for his "Horror Story" opponent, Santa Claus was portrayed by George Buza as a no-prisoners badass. Heck, he already handily dispatched a toy workshop-ful of ravenous, zombified elves.
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| George Buza is best known as the voice of Beast in the 1990s Marvel Comics-inspired "X-Men: The Animated Series." |
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