This is what happens when Brits try to make a holiday horror (like Halloween) but don’t have an appropriate holiday to use as a backdrop. You get an extremely funny,sleazy and above all cheesy slasher film.
It is a Christmas costume party in one of the London’s night clubs. Center of an attention is Santa Clause, of course. Guy dressed as a Santa Clause, to be more accurate. Naturally, there are many various interesting people dressed as their favorite characters. But among them one clearly catches your eye. A guy dressed as the Darth Vader. Only that is not actually a Darth Vader costume. That costume was actually meant to represent the Grim Reaper but someone at costume store did an half ass job. So, ashamed by lame mask, Death sneaks into corner of the room and from hat spot throws a spear (instead of Death’s traditional tool – scythe) across the room and impales dancing Santa Clause. Later we find out that is 3rd Santa killing in last couple of weeks. Christmas is spreading fast.
Ho, Ho, Homicide!
In the typical British fashion Kate gets mildly annoyed but the untimely and gruesome death of her father. Her boyfriend seems completely unaffected. Also, misterous (and suspicious) reporter called Giles calls the police supposedly offering information on the killer but the police blows him off. Her boyfriend runs into an old friend and decides the best thing to two the second day of Christmas is joining him that evening. Unfortunately it turns out that he invited them to cheer him while he photographs naked lady in the Santa Clause costume. As you can guess Kate wasn’t delighted about it, (losing her father in that costume just last night and all). She runs away and tries to follow her by menages to be even bigger asshole by almost hooking up with the almost naked Christmas Ho.
Naughty or Nice?
Things take an unexpected turn when a young working girl seemingly learns the serial killer’s identity by witnessing first- hand the slaying of the Santa (pun intended). Strangely police lets her go incredibly fast and doesn’t really show any interest in keeping her alive. And of course she is soon chased by the killer who decided to finish the job.
Santa having a merry time…
Strangely all life forms from generally busy London mysteriously disappear at that time (it was tea time perhaps?) and only two of them remain of the street. Despite all of her efforts the murderer catches up to her and easily brings her to his lair (that was just around the corner) and then chains her up on a mattress. Also mysterious Giles again visits the police officers to warn them but again to no avail. After the murders keep piling up our depressed detective finally gets off the case. Just when he seems ready to off himself his luck changes and lady decides to take up on his offer and visit him. They have a somewhat romantic dinner but she still decides to go straight home. And there somebody’s waiting for her- GILES!!! She figures out that Giles is in fact Inspector Harris’s psychotic younger brother. Listening of his brother’s exploits as a policeman he decided to give him the case he couldn’t crack. Also he’s got a traumatic relationship with Christmas that involves his room, his father in a Santa Costume, young whore and bizarre, accidental death of his mother(yep, all of that in that order).
I guess this is what she wished for this Christmas
He finally kills our heroin (strangles her and impales her on a knife just good measure) just as Scotland Yard figures out that the murderer was in front of their noses the whole time. By the time they reach the scene of the crime Giles is back in his lair trying to feed young girl some pastry.She uses that opportunity to go for it and escape but Giles is not giving up so easily. He attacks her with a large chain but it gets caught in the banisters she uses it to propel Giles from the stairs to the early grave. Or did she? We are treated with nonsensical flashback of the Christmas that destroyed his young, feeble mind and than movie cuts to his brother Detective Harris waking up from the nightmare finally figuring everything up. Yep, he was so gloriously incompetent that he let all those people die (including a girl that he fancied) before he figured out his own deranged brother is behind the holiday killings. YOU ONLY HAD ONE JOB…
Verdict: The slasher formula doesn’t really work if you don’t have an interesting Holiday theme, somewhat developed (at least well defined) characters and actual scary atmosphere. This movie menages to miss all of those marks and most by something like a mile. The killer is revealed in first 15 minutes of the movie and script writers were so lazy they didn’t even try to mask it with a twist or a two to lead us in the other direction. Scotland Yards are bunch of incompetent buffoons that wouldn’t catch a killer even thou he practically hangs out in their offices. And the killer’s motivation is so beyond absurd that all those nonsensical Jason Varhees movies seem completely rational compared too it. The indescribable absence of the most basic knowledge of realistic human behavior in this movie leads me to believe that the movie was ghost-directed by our old friend…
Worsemovies 