Today's Feature: Christmas Evil (You Better Watch Out!)
A toy factory worker suffers a nervous breakdown and embarks on a Yuletide killing spree.
It's Christmas Eve, 1947, and the Stadling boys, Harry & Phil, are hiding on the stairs of their suburban New Jersey home watching Santa Claus emerge from their living room fireplace with glee. The jolly old elf happily samples the milk and cookies laid out for him, then he digs into his magic sack for Harry & Phil's gifts, carefully nestling the glimmering parcels under the Christmas tree. Harry can't help but laugh in delight, and Santa takes notice, winking at the beaming boy before taking his leave, back up the chimney in a flash.
Later that night, Harry & Phil are arguing in their shared bedroom. Younger brother Phil doesn't believe in Santa Claus and tells Harry that the man in the red suit downstairs was just their father playing dress-up, but Harry refuses to believe him, sneaking back downstairs after Phil falls asleep, hoping to catch another glimpse of Santa before morning. As luck would have it, Harry does find Santa Claus downstairs, on his knees before Harry's smiling mother, sensually caressing her stocking-clad thigh in front of the Christmas tree.
As far as psyche-destroying, Christmas-related traumas go, this doesn't seem so bad, really. It's nothing compared to, say, watching a madman dressed up as Santa Claus murdering your mother and father before your very eyes at a tender young age, like what happened to poor Billy in Silent Night, Deadly Night. Little Harry doesn't even see anything truly explicit occur between his mother and "Santa Claus", aside from a little mutual playful fondling. He witnesses no nudity and no penetration, and yet this innocent moment between two consenting adults basically shatters Harry's fragile mind, as the story of Christmas Evil clearly illustrates. I'm not calling Harry a pussy, per se; I'm just saying it took a lot more than a little heavy petting to break Billy.
Thirty-three years later, and we're introduced to Harry as an adult, played brilliantly by actor Brandon Maggart, adrift in a Christmas-colored delusion. He works in a toy factory named Jolly Dreams and his apartment is cluttered with Christmas paraphernalia, dominated by a general Santa Claus theme. He sleeps in Santa Claus pajamas every night, and is awakened each morning by the jingling of a festive alarm clock adorned with rotating reindeer. Now that's all a little weird, but it's not exactly the behavior of an unhinged individual.
He also spies on all of the children living in his neighborhood from the roof of his building, watching their every move with a pair of binoculars and obsessively noting every good and bad deed he witnesses them committing in large journals labeled "naughty" and "nice" that he keeps in his apartment. This is a hobby he's been keeping up for a little while, as previous volumes of the "naughty" and "nice" journals from years past can be spotted on his bookshelves. Harry has a particular dislike of a neighborhood boy named Moss who likes to peruse back issues of Penthouse magazine in his bedroom when he's home alone. That kid's entry in the "naughty" book is pretty extensive.
At work, it's made pretty clear that none of Harry's co-workers really like the guy. Harry isn't the type for small talk, and he seems to have trouble socializing with others. Besides, the scope of his interests is quite narrow; if it doesn't involve Christmas, toys, or children, Harry really can't be bothered. He's never joined the guys from work for a drink down at the corner bar, or even tried to communicate with any of them regarding any non-work-related matters, so Harry doesn't really have any friends, which is how he seems to prefer things. He keeps himself busy at home making toys of his own, sturdy toys that will stand up to heavy play from children, toys that will stand the test of time, not like the plastic junk churned out at the factory.
Harry is clearly mentally ill, but thus far in his life he's been able to maintain a day-to-day routine, at least for the most part. It's implied that Harry's slipped a few times in the past, nothing violent, but something troubling enough that his brother Phil (Jeffrey DeMunn, in a painfully realistic performance) has had to step in more than once to help keep Harry from completely falling apart. Phil has been looking out for Harry since they were children, and now as a married father approaching middle age, he's growing tired of being his brother's keeper. He understands that at this point it's unlikely that Harry's just going to wake up one day and be "okay", but he resents being the only responsible figure in his brother's life, and with his increasingly erratic behavior as of late, Phil sees a breaking point in their relationship on the horizon.
At his office Christmas party, Harry is surprised to learn via TV news broadcast that the president of Jolly Dreams has announced a program to encourage the factory workers to donate their time to build additional toys in order to donate them to a local hospital for mentally disabled children. He knows the workers are all selfish louts who won't spend a single second after quitting time on the factory floor building any additional toys, no matter who they're for. A newly-hired junior executive confides in Harry that the whole thing is just a PR stunt he came up with to earn points with the boss, and that he has no intention of enforcing the program with the workers, so the poor children at the hospital are unlikely to receive any of the gifts promised them on the 9 O'Clock News.
This disquieting example of corporate greed is the last straw for Harry, who goes home and cobbles together his own Santa Claus costume, returning to the factory on Christmas Eve and stealing every toy he can find on the factory floor, delivering them personally to the children's hospital as an act of seasonal goodwill. As he stands in the cold, waiting for the security guard to fetch the hospital staff, Harry keeps repeating the phrase "Merry Christmas", trying to find his voice as Santa Claus. He has trouble at first, until a miraculous snowfall begins and Harry finds himself infused with the spirit of the season, grinning widely as he bellows "Merry Christmas" to the delighted doctors and nurses on the night shift at the hospital, revealing the bounty of toys in the back of his ersatz sleigh, a festively painted white van.
After performing this selfless act, Harry's next stop for the evening's festivities won't exactly put him on anybody's "nice" list. Arriving at a local church just after Christmas Eve mass, Harry, still in full Santa Claus regalia, stands outside, waiting for the junior executive who thought up the plan to advertise the bogus hospital toy drive to drum up some free publicity for Jolly Dreams to exit the church, fully intending to kill him on the front steps in full public view. A pair of yuppies begin accosting Harry before he can get to the executive, and he just snaps, brutally murdering both of them along with an innocent bystander who just happened to be standing too close when Harry started swinging his hatchet.
Fleeing the scene in a panic, Harry leaves behind a tableau of carnage and confusion among the church parishioners as they struggle to comprehend what horror they just witnessed. Now you're probably expecting me to tell you that this is only the beginning of Harry's murderous rampage, but it's really not. He only kills one more person before the movie ends, a fellow employee at the factory who consistently treated him like dirt in front of the other workers named Frank. He kills Frank in his own bed, first trying to smother him with his bag of toys before growing frustrated and slitting his throat with a golden star from atop his family's Christmas tree. The kill is sloppy and panicked, not the work of some manic slasher villain; rather the vindictive lashing out of a nervous amateur trying to settle a score.
That's the big difference in Christmas Evil. It's not a slasher movie. Harry isn't out roaming the streets trying to rack up an impressive body count. He only specifically set out to kill two people: one who, in his eyes, failed underprivileged children on Christmas, and another who repeatedly belittled and took advantage of him. His first target escaped due to Harry's own frenzied response to being confronted by a pair of white collar bullies, but he cornered Frank in his own home and managed to settle that account. He also left some toys for Frank's children underneath their Christmas tree, because although he thought their father was deserving of punishment, he believed the children were innocent of their father's perceived crimes.
Harry didn't want to go on a bloody killing spree; he just wanted to settle a few scores on Christmas Eve. He had no plan for what might happen afterward, because he didn't think of what might happen afterward. Harry experienced a complete mental breakdown the night he donned the Santa Claus costume, much like the psychotic break Billy experienced in Silent Night, Deadly Night. The primary difference being that Billy didn't want to become Santa Claus. For him, Santa Claus was a figure of terror and death, and being forced by his boss at the toy store to wear the costume to fill in for the regular guy who played Santa transformed Billy into the one thing he hated and feared more than anything in the world: the monster who destroyed his family. Becoming Santa Claus for Billy was becoming a fiend that exists to brutally punish the wicked, no matter what form they may take. For Harry, becoming Santa Claus was his fondest wish.
Harry saw Santa Claus as something pure and good, something greater than himself, a figure of boundless kindness and generosity. When he sees himself in the mirror, wearing Santa's long white beard, he unravels, finally becoming that thing that he has always truly desired to become. For Billy, becoming Santa is an act of destruction, being consumed by the costume until there's nothing of him left to be saved. For Harry, becoming Santa is an act of transcendence. As such, Harry has no plans for anything beyond Christmas Eve. Nothing else matters beyond that.
There's a heartbreaking scene where Harry calls his brother Phil late at night, trying to explain to his brother that he no longer has to worry about him. He's finally got it all figured out, and he thinks he's going to be okay. Phil's on the other end of the phone, voice cracking as he pleads with his brother to talk to him, to try and make some sense, but Harry's not really there, anymore. In his own way, Harry was calling to say goodbye. What happens beyond that point I won't divulge, suffice to say it involves an actual torch-wielding mob of bloodthirsty parents. No, you really need to see Christmas Evil for yourself, because it has one of the most bizarrely memorable endings you'll probably ever witness in a movie of this ilk.
In fact, I'm pretty sure 2015 Best Picture Academy Award Winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) actually ripped off Christmas Evil's ending, which I haven't heard anybody of note mention. But if you've seen both films, the parallels between the final moments of Christmas Evil and Birdman are unmistakable. Now being a "serious artist", I highly doubt Birdman director Alejandro Iñárritu would ever admit to cribbing from such a lowly film as Lewis Jackson's Christmas Evil, but I've been troubled by the similarities between these two films since I first saw Birdman, and I'm frankly shocked that I haven't even seen any notable horror bloggers bring this up in the interim, since Christmas Evil has enjoyed something of a recent resurgence in popularity in the past few years, at least among cult cinema aficionados. Here's my hot take: Christmas Evil is a better film than Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance). Stuff that in your stocking, respectable film journalists.
Many of Christmas Evil's detractors like to attack the film's languid pacing and occasionally amateurish visual style, citing these aspects of the production as decidedly negative, but I've always taken them as part of the film's charm. It's rough around the edges, to say the least, and despite running just over ninety minutes in length without its end credits, the plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, unbothered by many of the constraints of a traditional narrative. For example, a pair of police detectives are introduced after the church murders, played in wonderfully sardonic fashion by veteran character actors Raymond Barry and Robert Lesser, but their one major scene, discussing the unfolding carnage during a Santa Claus-themed police line-up, doesn't pay off later in the film.
The intrepid detectives are never seen during the climax, hunting Harry down in the dark of night after receiving a crucial lead, which is the kind of thing we've come to expect in movies like Christmas Evil, but Christmas Evil doesn't play by those rules. Instead, the detectives are never seen again. In fact, the police presence after this scene is relegated to a more generic looming threat for Harry during the film's third act, characterized as an occasional wailing siren in the cold distance, driving a fearful Harry onward through the dark Christmas night. This isn't a flaw in the narrative, but rather a small piece of a fascinating greater picture.
There's also a wonderful sequence that takes place shortly after Harry visits the church, when he happens by a neighborhood Christmas party and is invited in after being spotted by a pair of adult revelers. Once inside, the hesitant Harry sees nothing but an innocent holiday revel, and he lets his guard down, happily playing the part of Santa Claus for both the adults and children, singing and dancing and handing out presents for a good long while. Everyone is delighted by Harry's animated performance, and Harry is overjoyed to find himself finally accepted by these merry strangers after a lifetime of awkward rejection by seemingly every adult he's ever met.
This amazing, dream-like scene could have been cut out of the film entirely before its release and no viewer would have ever noticed its absence in the narrative, but it's completely necessary to the story Lewis Jackson is telling, because it stands as an idealized representation of what Harry has always dreamed he could become, the Santa Claus costume he lovingly constructed acting as a key that opens the door to a world he never dared he could actually be a part of, a world where he is allowed to simply love and be loved without reservation. Delivering the toys to the children's hospital as Santa Claus makes Harry happy, but joining the neighborhood party as Santa Claus makes Harry finally feel accepted, if only for a moment, which is something he's never really known before, not even with his brother Phil, who increasingly sees Harry more as his cross to bear than a loving member of his family.
The addition of the torch-wielding mob of hysterical parents in the climax is completely hyperbolic, and this is by design. Director Jackson has compared Christmas Evil more to such films as 1931's Frankenstein than anything in the slasher genre, and he included the murderous mob of parents pushed to their breaking point by a madman cutting down seemingly innocent people while masquerading as Santa Claus as an homage to that horror masterpiece about a hunted, misunderstood yet nonetheless dangerous "monster". Like Frankenstein's creation, Harry is a creature capable of great violence and great tenderness, made a monster in the end by both inflicted cruelty and a lack of internal tools to deal with the harshness of the outside world. This does not excuse Harry's actions in the film, but we are made to empathize with this very human monster.
Lewis Jackson spent a decade trying to get Christmas Evil made, and he poured his heart and soul into the production. It is a labor of love, and there's a reason John Waters called it "the best Christmas movie ever made".
In fact, I'm pretty sure 2015 Best Picture Academy Award Winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) actually ripped off Christmas Evil's ending, which I haven't heard anybody of note mention. But if you've seen both films, the parallels between the final moments of Christmas Evil and Birdman are unmistakable. Now being a "serious artist", I highly doubt Birdman director Alejandro Iñárritu would ever admit to cribbing from such a lowly film as Lewis Jackson's Christmas Evil, but I've been troubled by the similarities between these two films since I first saw Birdman, and I'm frankly shocked that I haven't even seen any notable horror bloggers bring this up in the interim, since Christmas Evil has enjoyed something of a recent resurgence in popularity in the past few years, at least among cult cinema aficionados. Here's my hot take: Christmas Evil is a better film than Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance). Stuff that in your stocking, respectable film journalists.
Many of Christmas Evil's detractors like to attack the film's languid pacing and occasionally amateurish visual style, citing these aspects of the production as decidedly negative, but I've always taken them as part of the film's charm. It's rough around the edges, to say the least, and despite running just over ninety minutes in length without its end credits, the plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, unbothered by many of the constraints of a traditional narrative. For example, a pair of police detectives are introduced after the church murders, played in wonderfully sardonic fashion by veteran character actors Raymond Barry and Robert Lesser, but their one major scene, discussing the unfolding carnage during a Santa Claus-themed police line-up, doesn't pay off later in the film.
The intrepid detectives are never seen during the climax, hunting Harry down in the dark of night after receiving a crucial lead, which is the kind of thing we've come to expect in movies like Christmas Evil, but Christmas Evil doesn't play by those rules. Instead, the detectives are never seen again. In fact, the police presence after this scene is relegated to a more generic looming threat for Harry during the film's third act, characterized as an occasional wailing siren in the cold distance, driving a fearful Harry onward through the dark Christmas night. This isn't a flaw in the narrative, but rather a small piece of a fascinating greater picture.
There's also a wonderful sequence that takes place shortly after Harry visits the church, when he happens by a neighborhood Christmas party and is invited in after being spotted by a pair of adult revelers. Once inside, the hesitant Harry sees nothing but an innocent holiday revel, and he lets his guard down, happily playing the part of Santa Claus for both the adults and children, singing and dancing and handing out presents for a good long while. Everyone is delighted by Harry's animated performance, and Harry is overjoyed to find himself finally accepted by these merry strangers after a lifetime of awkward rejection by seemingly every adult he's ever met.
This amazing, dream-like scene could have been cut out of the film entirely before its release and no viewer would have ever noticed its absence in the narrative, but it's completely necessary to the story Lewis Jackson is telling, because it stands as an idealized representation of what Harry has always dreamed he could become, the Santa Claus costume he lovingly constructed acting as a key that opens the door to a world he never dared he could actually be a part of, a world where he is allowed to simply love and be loved without reservation. Delivering the toys to the children's hospital as Santa Claus makes Harry happy, but joining the neighborhood party as Santa Claus makes Harry finally feel accepted, if only for a moment, which is something he's never really known before, not even with his brother Phil, who increasingly sees Harry more as his cross to bear than a loving member of his family.
The addition of the torch-wielding mob of hysterical parents in the climax is completely hyperbolic, and this is by design. Director Jackson has compared Christmas Evil more to such films as 1931's Frankenstein than anything in the slasher genre, and he included the murderous mob of parents pushed to their breaking point by a madman cutting down seemingly innocent people while masquerading as Santa Claus as an homage to that horror masterpiece about a hunted, misunderstood yet nonetheless dangerous "monster". Like Frankenstein's creation, Harry is a creature capable of great violence and great tenderness, made a monster in the end by both inflicted cruelty and a lack of internal tools to deal with the harshness of the outside world. This does not excuse Harry's actions in the film, but we are made to empathize with this very human monster.
Lewis Jackson spent a decade trying to get Christmas Evil made, and he poured his heart and soul into the production. It is a labor of love, and there's a reason John Waters called it "the best Christmas movie ever made".
VERDICT: JOHN WATERS IS ALWAYS RIGHT
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