Santa Claws

I had pretty low expectations for this. On paper this seems like a typical cheap B-grade slasher-horror film. In reality it's even worse.

It is cheap and a slasher-horror but calling it B-grade would be flattery. The plot is very basic and what there is doesn't make much sense. Production values are incredibly poor. Direction is woeful: some of the scenes seem more like a slapstick comedy than a drama.

Dialogue is laughable and, allied with this, performances are poor. Worst of all is the guy who plays the slasher-murderer. So bad you'd think it is a comedy.

Nothing positive at all about this movie except than it is quite short (83 minutes) so at least the pain of watching this is over quickly.

His Slay Bells are Ringing! Have Yourself a Very Scary Christmas! The Christmas horror movie that everyone forgot. I loved it! The plot makes no sense (boy kills mom and fat lover on Christmas, grows up crazy and obsesses over neighbor Scream Queen, so he kills all the people in her life) but it's just a quick lil fun movie with horrible acting (except for Debbie Rochon, she was great) and tons on T and A.

The kills are dull and the cover art is misleading, but nothing stopped me from loving this sleazy lil movie. The killer was over the top and the script was ridiculous at times (Hard to think this was from the Writer of Night of the Living Dead- orig and remake, and Return of the Living Dead. Hm... maybe he should stuck to zombie flicks).

So if you wanna pass the times with some cheese, sleaze, and tits- pops this in!

Despite my life-long romance with the horror genre, then I had never seen this movie before, nor actually ever heard about it. But as I stumbled upon it here in 2024, by random luck, I opted to sneak it into my Christmas movie marathon, yes of sappy romantic Christmas movies, just to break the string of endless sap.

However, I have to say that the movie's cover didn't exactly paint writer and director John A. Russo's 1996 movie as a particularly great movie. And in all honesty, I harbored zero expectations to the movie. But then again, maybe writer and director John A. Russo had something grand up his sleeve.

The storyline in the movie was nearly non-existing. So it wasn't as if I had been missing out on a particularly grand horror movie experience here. Writer John A. Russo failed to deliver anything impressive with the script and storyline.

Essentially, the movie felt like little more than a sad excuse for John A. Russo to show off naked ladies.

The only performer on the cast list that I was familiar with was Debbie Rochon, and it is only because I've seen sufficiently many low budget movies. The acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact of the actors and actresses having a simplistic script to work with.

The special effects in the movie were exactly that, special. The gunshot wounds were laughably bad, as were the rake puncture wounds. It was essentially nothing but fake blood placed in circles at where the wounds were supposed to be. For a movie made it 1996, it was incredibly amateurish and ridiculous to look at.

"Santa Claws" was a movie that snuck in under the radar unnoticed, and it will just as quietly fade into oblivion and never be seen again.

My rating of writer and director John A. Russo's 1996 movie lands on a two out of ten stars.

John Russo nearly hits rock bottom with this disastrous cheapie misleadingly promoted as another killer-dressed-as-Santa-Claus-movie.

Raven Quinn (Debbie Rochon) not only has to deal with a cheating husband (John Mowod) but also with trouble from women's groups and her in-laws when she accepts the lead role in the racy movie "A Scream Queen Christmas." If things couldn't get any worse, Raven also becomes the target of an obsessed psycho, her next-door neighbor Wayne (Grant Kramer), who has a shrine to her in his home, drugs her kids, messes around with a mannequin and kills cast and crew participating in the movie with a three-pronged garden claw.

There's virtually no gore or violence, but there are long scenes of young women with large silicone knockers stripping out of glittery costumes to pad out the running time. Debbie Rochon is easily the best this film has to offer in terms of good-looking babes and the only one of the bunch I found to be really attractive. (She's also pretty fun to watch with her clothes on, as well). It's also fun spotting Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Bill Hinzman and John Russo (all of whom appeared in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) in small roles here. Otherwise this is a complete waste of time.

Russo also made the T & A tie-in tape SCREAM QUEEN NAKED CHRISTMAS featuring Kramer, Rochon, Christine Cavalier (from W.A.V.E. Productions) and others from this movie reprising their roles (and removing their clothes).

Score: 3 out of 10 (thanks mainly to Debbie)

What Blood Shack was to Ray Dennis Steckler, Santa Claws is to a collective best refered to as "the makers of Night of the Living Dead, whose names weren't George A Romero". Its insultingly bad as an actual movie, but exerts a morbid curiosity as a kind of pseudo-documentary on the lives of those involved. If you want to see Night of the Living Dead actors decades after their brush with fame, Santa Claws trots out Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Bill Hinzman and John Russo, in scenes that look like they were shot in their own Pittsburgh homes and places of work. The younger cast is represented by lots of wannabe scream queens, and John Mowod, the male lead from Hinzman's Flesh Eater/Zombie Nosh. Mowod is chiefly memorable for his resemblance to both Paul McCartney and Sylvester Stallone, and should have probably sought out a career as a celebrity impersonator rather than an actor. Its all basically an excuse to publicize 'Scream Queens Illustrated' Russo's horror themed T&A mag that promoted the boobs, bums and careers of various Scream Queen actresses of the time. Santa Claws is mainly set at the Scream Queens Illustrated offices, where you get to see Hinzman and Hardman at their day jobs, shooting jerk off material for the magazine. Natch' the setting also allows for lingering shots of various Scream Queens Illustrated and Night of the Living Dead merchandise.

Occasionally Santa Claws remembers it is meant to be a horror film, and begrudgingly tears itself away from the T&A and self-promotion, in favour of focusing on a lackluster killer dressed in a Santa outfit who murders various secondary characters at the Scream Queens offices with a gardening fork. Barely anyone appears concerned by how sleazy and third rate they are portraying themselves as. The only possible exception being Scream Queen Debbie Rochon, whose role has the feel of a good publicity exercise. Not only is Rochon's character, Raven Quinn, portrayed as a scream queen with a heart of gold, but she is also a single mother whose life is being made a misery by her scumbag ex-husband (played by the Macca/Rambo lookalike) yet always makes herself available to even the most 'needy' of her fans. A credibility straining aspect to the film that also provides its biggest laugh. If you thought the Caroline Munro/Joe Spinell romance in Maniac was a little hard to swallow, here Rochon's character not only lets an unkempt, obviously obsessed, anti-social weirdo into her private life, but lets him babysit her kids as well !!!