Ho, ho, ho. Don’t ya just love them ho’s! ‘Tis the season where the ideology of a poor skinny hippie meets the unrepentant consumption that a fat man in a red suit can inspire.
So how better to enjoy the holidays than to cozy up with some Christmas horror flicks, that for better or worse, turn the expected joys of the season on their f*cking heads.
Now this list is slightly hamstrung by the fact that there are barely ten Christmas horror pics worth mentioning, but we’ve put the AITH braintrust together to come up with the most awesome reasons to give Kris Kringle the finger we could think of.
Spit bullets below on your favorites, or just offer up some Christmas cheer to your fellow Arrowheads!
WARNING – HOLIDAY HORROR AHEAD!
10. Don’t Open Till Christmas
Make no mistake, this is pretty terrible movie. Some might even accuse it of being unwatchable. Shoddy camera work, scenes that don’t fit, a plot that would be laughable if it wasn’t so…meh. So why the inclusion? Because if you want to watch a wide variety of men dressed as Santa get killed in a wide variety of ways, this is the movie for you. If you think Jolly Old St. Nick is a prick, you’ll enjoy watching him get killed over and over again (including one Santa who loses his “sack” – you’ve been warned).
9. Jack Frost
As you can see in the photo above, Shannon Elizabeth gets raped to death by a psychotic snowman in this movie. That statement either ensures you will rent this tomorrow, or that you will avoid it like the plague. If you’re one of those who are already pulling up your Netflix cue, then this is a fun B-movie with plenty to enjoy after a bowl or two of eggnog has gone down. Please note this is NOT the Michael Keaton movie of the same name, though the general concepts are surprisingly similar, and equally ridiculous.
8. Santa’s Slay
Lots of smaller budget horror flicks unintentionally tred the comedy line, but purposeful and effective horror comedy is hard to come by. The tone of Santa’s Slay falls flat for some, but I think it’s a helluva a lot of fun. Evil Santa played by Jewish wrestler? Check. Massive damage? Check. One-liners straight out of a Schwarzenegger flick? Check. The last block ends up feeling like a too familiar sleigh ride, but up ’til then it’s a very merry Christmas.
7. Silent Night, Deadly Night
What’s better with sugar plums than some nice wet plasma? The sheer brutality of SNDN lifts it above the fray. Not really enough to have inspired the protests that got it axed from the big screen back in the day, but certainly enough to give you a jolly feeling this holiday season. Plus we understand why Billy is a homicidal nutball, so that makes his red suited reign of terror the perfect stocking stuffer.
6. Christmas Evil
Silent Night Deadly Night, as much fun as it is, is Friday the 13th to the Halloween that is Christmas Evil a/k/a Terror In Toyland a/k/a You Better Watch Out. The plight of tragically put upon Harry Stadling and the lengths to which he’ll go to remind people of the true meaning of Christmas has a disturbing and unexpectedly complex psychological component to it. Definitely a flick that will have you appreciating the true meaning of Christmas.
STAY TUNED FOR PART 2!