Fröhliche Weihnacht

"Another Santa is slain," is the quote one person says early in this movie and that about sums it up for the outline. Set in London, England during the Christmas holiday season, someone killer is going around killing anyone dressed as Father Christmas, while two astonishingly stupid Scotland Yard detectives track him down and dither. Most of the abundant splatter is nothing new here as we see one Santa after another get either shot, stabbed, speared, burned, cleaverd, electriuted and even castrasted. Gore and splatter fans will not be disappointed. But here the victims are not the sympathetic bunch as every Santa victim is either a derelict, drunkard, drug user, or loser we most wish the killer would get. Edumond Purdom who directs and stars as the lead detective, Inspector Harris, who's in charge of investigating the murders, serves up some potential suspense and a fair amount of black humor, but the script plays it very straight.

As for the rest of the plot, although we know that Inspector Harris is not the killer, he appears to know a lot more of what's going on with the killings than the other characters, one of whom is a woman who wants the killer brought to justice since her own father was one of the many victims. The rest of the movie is not as amusing as it sounds, but one can't completely dismiss a horror film like this that piles up more victims than a room full of attorneys. Pop star Caroline Munro even makes a musical cameo appearance as herself during one of the stalking/killings which adds a fairly nice touch to such nonsense.

Contents: 14 killings; lots of messy looking corpses; a masked psycho; costumed victims; slight suspense; mediocre mystery; not bad as usual. With Pat Astley as the model who keeps removing her top.

This movie is pretty lame, but not unwatchable. The acting is cheesy and the killing scenes are ultra cheese, but I did like the killer, his face (mask) was cool and when he talked to the girl he chained up his voice was great. It was an interesting concept but the makers didn't maake it solid enougth, a lot of loose ends, and holes in the plot. The story is Somebody with very little Christmas spirit is killing anyone in a Santa suit one London holiday season, and Scotland Yard has to stop him before he makes his exploits an annual tradition. It's a very cheesy flick, special effects arn't great but a good watch if you like 80's slashers.

One of the most troubled and delayed productions in horror cinema history is about a killer on the loose in London killing anybody wearing a Santa Claus suit.

One of the most cruel and mean spirited films ever made with a lousy ending and no payoff what-so-ever for sitting threw 90mins. of explicit murders with no plot, lousy direction (rumor has it three directors worked on this) & awful acting (watch for a silly cameo by Caroline Munro). Also film suffers from not knowing what it wants to be, a seedy sex thriller, a detective movie, or a drive in thriller. Rated R; Extreme Graphic Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

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.

It's refreshing to know that Americans aren't the only ones who can turn out crappy slasher movies. The same British team that did this one also made one of the more idiotic American slasher movies of the 1980's ("Slaughter High"), but here they abandon the stateside setting and the faux American accents to embrace their inherent Britishness while still making a movie that is every bit as inept and pathetic as their "American" effort.

In the seedier parts of London a mad killer is slashing men dressed as Santa Clause. Why? Believe me, you don't want to know, but never has there been a greater collection of drunken, lecherous reprobates than the Santa victims in this movie (Don't they screen their prospective Santa Claus candidates in London?). Between the drunks, potential child molesters, and garden-variety creeps, there isn't a unworthy victim among them. And if there is a mad Santa killer on the loose, why do they all insist on going everywhere dressed in their Santa duds? One sap even wears his costume into a peep show where (in a scene that, I think, is meant to be funny) he tells the stripper that he's not "the real one." Then there is nude fashion model who takes a guy out in the alley for a quickie dressed only in a Santa coat, and of course, meets the killer who luridly runs his knife down her nude body. (I'd complain about the gratuitous misogyny here, but it's one of the best scenes in the movie). On the gore side, we have an grossly overweight pervert Santa who is castrated in a urinal (a metaphor for the movie as a whole perhaps?)

Aside from the aforementioned gore and crumpet, this movie is mostly just boring. I'd term it as a London-based X-mas version of "The New York Ripper", but it's much more dull than tasteless. The only good thing I can say about it is I don't regret having watched it (mostly because it came as part of a dirt cheap 50-movie DVD compilation I recently bought). Don't go too far out of your way for this one though.