By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: A killer Santa Claus.
When he’s only 5-years-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) has a very traumatic experience. It starts when he and his family are visiting their grandfather (Will Hare) inside a senior living facility. While his parents and younger brother are temporarily out of the room his grandfather, who usually never says a word, suddenly speaks by warning him about Santa Claus and how he punishes those who’ve been naughty. On the car ride home, his family is attacked by a gunmen dressed as Santa (Charles Dierkop) who has just robbed a liquor store. Both his parents are killed by the man, but Billy manages to escape by running out of the vehicle and hiding behind some bushes. Things now flash forward to the year 1984 where Billy (now played by Robert Brian Wilson) is 18 and still suffering from the dark memories of the event as well as the abusive upbringing inside the orphanage he was sent to that was ruled by a tyrannical Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). Working as a stock boy at a nearby toy store, he gets asked to fill-in as Santa when the man who usually plays him calls-in sick. Playing the part though brings back up all the repressed emotions of what happened years earlier causing him to have a mental breakdown and turning him into a killer.
This film ended up becoming quite controversial and it all started when producer Scott J. Schiend accepted story submissions from the public to help him decide what movie project he’d like to finance next. One of those submissions was short story written by a recent college grad named Paul Caimi entitled ‘He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’, which involved a killer Santa. Schnied became intrigued by the concept and hired Michael Hickey to write a full-length screenplay around the premise. Once completed the script was shopped around until Tri-Star Pictures decided to pick-it-up and finance it as well as act as its distributor.
Since there were already two other films that had been released that dealt with a killer Claus including the 1972 horror anthology Tales from the Crypt, and the 1980 slasher You Better Watch Out! no one behind-the-scenes was expecting this one to create much controversy since neither of those had. However, mainly because of an aggressive marketing campaign, it soon caused the ire of many parents who felt based off of the TV-ads that this film would tarnish the image of Santa Claus and make children fear him and thus a movement to have the movie removed from theaters was created. Even Siskel and Ebert got in on it by focusing an entire episode of their show to it and reading out the names of the cast and crew in order to ‘shame’ them for having worked on the production. The movie was soon pulled after having been in theaters for only a week, but the controversy ended up having a Streisand effect as it garnered it more attention than it would’ve otherwise, and it made a hefty profit at the box office and ultimately became a cult hit that spawned 4 sequels as well as a reboot.
It seems to me that most people that protested the movie didn’t actually watch it because if they had they’d realize that it’s made very clear that the guy doing the killings isn’t really Santa nor does he even look much like him. The kid who plays him doesn’t even bother putting the beard on and his own face is constantly exposed while he does the butchering, so at no point does the viewer ever see him as being anyone other than a troubled teen with severe mental issues. I actually wished the part had been played by Dierkop who portrays the initial Santa during the hold-up and puts far better energy into the role and genuinely looks more like the classic Claus both in his age and physical build.
The movie puts a lot of effort into showing how Billy became the way he does, but for me that was a problem as it gets too plodding and seems to take forever for the carnage to get going, which for a slasher fan is what you really want to see. Would’ve been better had it started out right away with this guy Santa killing people, maybe even one of the kids who sits on his lap at the store, and with no reason why he was doing it, and then through intermittent flashbacks allow his back story to be revealed versus having the background painfully elaborated from the start, which takes away any mystery, or surprise. There’s also the issue of young Billy having prominent brown eyes, but when he reaches adolescence his eye color suddenly turns to blue.
Spoiler Alert!
My biggest complaint though is with the Mother Superior. Chauvin plays the part quite well making the nun scarier than the killer and somebody you really love to hate, but she’s never killed off, which is a huge disappointment. Many people who grew up going to a strict Catholic School might’ve enjoyed seeing a disciplinarian nun get hacked and it might’ve been cathartic and thus having it not occur doesn’t give the film a sufficient payoff.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: November 9, 1984
Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr.
Studio: Tri-Star Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video
Scopophilia 