MARIO GAUCI
Following on from the previous decade's BLACK Christmas (1974; easily the best of the bunch), SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1973) and Christmas EVIL (1980), the Eighties also saw a proliferation of Yuletide horrors like GREMLINS (1984; a Yuletide perennial during my childhood days) and the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT franchise; this troubled production was the British contribution to that cycle. The three uncredited directors, collectively dubbed "Al McGoohan", included screenwriter Derek Ford (whose most notable work was done in the 1960s for director Robert Hartford-Davis), editor Ray Selfe and director Alan Birkinshaw (of the reportedly just-as-abysmal KILLER'S MOON {1978} fame)! Rather than the expected 'murderer dressed in a Santa costume', here we have the annihilation of the persons dressing up as Father Christmas – a modus operandi that is, needless to say, triggered by a childhood trauma (involving a man in a Santa outfit who is obviously not his father shagging Mommy). Given the dearth of admirable qualities on display here (it is considered the cinematic equivalent of a Christmas turkey dinner!), there remains little for me but to describe the copious murders: from the very first sequence, we have a Santa done in through the window of his car where he is smooching his girlfriend: she, too, foolishly but predictably rushes out of the car to her death; a reluctant Santa Claus is impaled through the mouth with a spear during a Christmas party by the murderer wearing a gruesome mask...but, apart from a weak scream, none of the witnesses make any kind of reaction – not even his daughter nearby!; a street-side Santa is strangled, has his face pushed against a stove and subsequently set alight!; in the re-edited version I watched, the fifth murder – where a Santa has his brains blown away with a gun, has been removed and replaced by the later tenth(!) one of a Santa castrated with a razor in a urinal!; another Saint Nick (a lonely, middle-aged soul) unwisely takes a break from his Christmas duties to go check out a peep-show and gets his in the neck to the horror of the teasing tit-flasher in the booth (when the murderer returns to kill her, she subsequently runs out into an incongruously deserted London street!); another is stabbed in the gut via a knife-wielding shoe!; a Santa – who has taken shelter in the London Dungeon (which I visited on my first trip to the British capital in 1999) – gets it in the neck too; another receives a machete to the face and turns up on-stage during a musical performance; the heroine is strangled but subsequently found all bloodied(!?); an investigating police officer is electrocuted; the killer's mother dies in a fall in a flashback sequence; the villain himself is thrown off the stairs at the top floor of the stripper's flat…who predictably comes back to life when she goes to check up on him!; finally, the Police Inspector on the case (though his lack of productivity eventually gets him taken off it) dies in a slow-motion bomb blast, which effectively concludes the film, when committing the titular act (why he never doubted the contents of the package is anybody's guess)! While the killer is seen having no qualms about stabbing a couple of females, he is clearly taken aback when a would-be Santa victim turns out to be a nude model to whom the hero had taken his bereaved girlfriend to uplift her spirits by taking part in a saucy shoot (WTF?!). The daughter of the second murdered Santa and her callous boyfriend subsequently become the relative protagonists of the piece; however, during the latter stages, it is the stripper who takes centre stage (especially since the nominal heroine is herself bumped off) – she is eventually kidnapped by the killer who intends offing her on Christmas Day (earlier, she had told the cops she might be able to recognize the murderer if he smiled at her!?). It is idiotic to have people keep turning up everywhere in Santa outfits when they are likely to be targeted by the murderer for it – neither do the local authorities issue any order to refrain from doing so for safety's sake; in any case, the Police put Santa decoys in an effort to apprehend the killer but they only end up among his death-list, one of them messily losing an eye to him! For no very good reason (except that her husband was behind this production), Caroline Munro appears as herself to warble a tacky song. Persistent journalist Alan Lake turns out to be the killer and Purdom's insane brother (the heroine comes to know of his monthly visits to the ostensibly committed sibling but she is not given the opportunity to do anything about it), taking care to implant the seeds of suspicion into the mind of the latter's direct subordinate (though he misconstrues the situation by thinking Purdom himself is the guilty party); tragically, the actor committed suicide before the film's release as a result of the death of his wife, iconic British star Diana Dors earlier in the year! The film (which, apparently, was not even officially released, going straight-to-video instead!) has been recently released as a SE to little fanfare on R1 DVD by esteemed cult label Mondo Macabro. For the record, it shares its producer with that of the equally execrable PIECES (1982), also featuring Purdom; the latter, then, appeared in the following horror-related films throughout his European wanderings: THE NIGHT THEY KILLED RASPUTIN (1961), Sergio Corbucci's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1966), Pupi Avati's THOMAS AND THE BEWITCHED (1970), THE FIFTH CORD (1971), LUCIFERA: DEMONLOVER (1972), Riccardo Freda's TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972), FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1974), THE NIGHT CHILD (1975), Joe D'Amato's ABSURD (1981), the aforementioned PIECES and FRACCHIA CONTRO Dracula (1985; as the Count!).
Bezenby
2016 slight edit:This film is great to be honest. It's far from scary, but it's a top line cheesy eighties slasher film, full of quirks and the usual madness that makes films like Pieces so great. Plus, it has a brain damaging ending. What else can you ask for? A killer is targeting people dressed as Santa. It's up to Edmund Purdom, who's a cop, to stop whoever it is. This isn't your usual slasher flick. There's no teenage annoyances here, and most of the film is set in Soho, London. The list of suspects isn't that huge either(although I did get the identity of the killer wrong) and the 'final girl' isn't who you'd expect it to be.Quirks? There's a musical number (Warrior of Love) by Caroline Munro that's almost the best part of the film (and comes out of nowhere) a bit of gore, some of the most bluntest nudity you'll see, heaps of sexism, daftness, and, as I mentioned, the ending will have you weeping tears of laughter. I loved it. This IS the perfect companion piece to...er... Pieces. Purdom is just as daft here as he was in Pieces, but this time he directs also.
ofumalow
The only movie directed by 1950s Hollywood costume hunk turned Euro-exploitation regular Edmund Purdom (at least partly--someone else is credited with directing "additional scenes," probably including the nudity inserts) is a typical 1980s slasher involving disco, sexually active youth, and crudely done gory deaths. I saw it in a budget packet of "Drive-In Movie Classics" that clearly used a 3rd-generation VHS dupe--so I can't fairly judge the film's visual presentation, which seems professional enough. It's odd that at age 60 Purdom suddenly decided to try directing, let alone on such an obviously cheesy project. This being a British film, the performances are competent despite the script's utterly shallow depths--no doubt everyone was conservatory-trained. At times the film feels jumpy, as if scenes (or just violent bits) were coarsely edited out. Even so, one murdered Santa is garroted, then thrust face-first onto a sausage grill. It's a Brit giallo that's not all bad, or as utterly formulaic as many slashers from the era, but it sure isn't inspired.
