DVD Review: Christmas Evil

Just in time for the beginning of the festive season, 80’s Christmas slasher, Christmas Evil has finally got a DVD release. Culture Vulture’s Leo Owen reviews it …

Director/writer: Lewis Jackson

Release Date: November 12 2012

Running Time: 90 mins

Certificate: 15

Starring: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull

Director/Writer Lewis Jackson only ever made the one feature back in 1981 and has since renamed You better watch out as Christmas Evil. At a tender age, Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart) discovers Santa is not real when he sees his father stroking his mother’s thigh dressed as Santa. Scarred by this experience, he becomes obsessed with the festive season and Saint Nick legend.

Jackson’s debut begins with a very twee narrator falsely setting us up for a traditional Christmas flick: “It was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature stirred…” The year is 1947 and it is the Christmas Eve a young Harry makes his discovery. Two creepy-looking children watch Father Christmas come down the chimney supervised by their mother whose perma-grin is equally unnerving. There are sleazy close-ups of Santa’s leg caresses, a smashed snow globe and a child self-harming.

Propelled into the present, it’s 55 days until Christmas and we see how Harry’s early experience has affected him as an adult. He wears Santa pyjamas, does his morning stretches to Christmas music and lives in a house permanently decked out in Christmas memorabilia with its own toy-making workshop – there’s even a dolls’ house kitted out with mini decorations. As if all this is not suggestive enough of his insanity, Jackson has Harry constantly humming “Santa Clause is coming to town” and practising “ho ho”s with accompanying belly wobbles in front of the mirror. Eerie flashbacks to him cutting himself in 1947 are spliced with shots of him spying on local kids to see if they’re naughty or nice.

Maggart avoids poking fun at Harry, preferring a po-faced delivery that is at times slightly surreal and always menacing. “Come on – where are my little darlings?” he says monitoring the behaviour of his neighbours’ kids. Watching a little girl playing with a doll, he logs “just a little darling” in his “nice” book but notes young Moss has “impure thoughts ”and negative body hygiene” in the “naughty” book.

For much of the film Jackson builds tension by revealing very little. Harry merely snapping a pencil, watching the Christmas parade on TV and sewing himself a Santa suit are somehow all equally disturbing images. Jackson makes it clear he is a distracted man whose behaviour is somewhat bizarre but we’re never sure what Harry is capable of.

Once his Peeping Tom antics are revealed, the action moves away from his home to his workplace and childhood home to explain Harry’s peculiarities. At the toy factory, Jolly Dream, he’s walked over by co-workers more junior than him, forced to do a factory line shift by a colleague who “needs” to leave early who is later overheard slating him. His brother, Phil, bullies him, calling him an “emotional cripple” and being warned by his wife to “leave Harry alone”; It’s clear Harry’s going to snap but never made obvious when.

Moving from the build-up to Christmas to Christmas Eve and the big day, Harry’s behaviour becomes more peculiar as he goes from his work’s Christmas do to gate-crashing a party and joining a conga line. He leaves a death mark on a house with black hand and face prints and is shown bagging up earth but Jackson seems to forget about these inexplicable acts, instead concentrating on festive shots that are all given a sinister vibe – a street of lit-up snow men, the roundabout in a Christmas fair, an evil-looking Santa poster, a laughing monkey toy… Jackson’s disconnected dialogue adds to the unease while also highlighting how socially awkward Harry is and painting an extremely cynical picture of a world full of heartless hypercritical people.

Christmas Evil fails to carry through some of Jackson’s ideas, instead seemingly trying to cram in as many distorted festive images as possible. It’s not very gory and it’s certainly not played for laughs but there are occasionally funny moments. As Harry passes a small boy he’s logged as naughty for picking his nose and throwing rocks at girls, the child says: “I wish I had a lifetime subscription to Penthouse Magazine”. Equally unexpected is the preposterous moment the deluded lead tries to fit down a chimney and gets stuck.

John Waters once described Christmas Evil as the “greatest Christmas movie ever made” and it’s easy to see why Jackson’s creation appealed to him. The dreamlike quality of Christmas Evil is not so-far removed from the bizarre characters he writes. Harry may be a killer but he’s desperate to make Christmas spirit a reality. Sick of badly made toys, he kills colleagues using Christmas decorations as weapons but also visits a Children’s ward to leave a van load of toys he’s stolen from the factory. He’s a killer but one with good intentions and is Jackson’s vehicle for a spot of social commentary – a detective investigating his first killings reflects a bad Santa may be good for children to teach them that rewards must be earned.

Although there aren’t nearly enough deaths to justify its awesome tagline (“He’ll sleigh you”) and scene transitions are sloppy at times, in the context of when it was made, it certainly has some merits. Maggart does unnerving well with lots of random chuckling assuring we know he’s unhinged. There are some amazing 80s’ hairstyles, an awesome 70s’ sounding Funk and Soul Christmas soundtrack and the ending is suitably surreal.

Special Features:
Audio Commentary with director, Lewis Jackson and lead Brandon Maggart
Audio Commentary with Lewis Jackson and John Waters
Interviews with Lewis Jackson and lead Brandon Maggart
Deleted scenes
Original story-board sequences
Rare audition tapes
Collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by critic and author Kim Newman, John Waters and a new introduction by Lewis Jackson, illustrated with rare stills and images from the personal files of Lewis Jackson
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys

One comment

Comments are closed.