Santa Claws

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.

I recently watched Santa Claws (1996) on Tubi. The storyline revolves around a horror scream queen and soft porn star navigating a divorce while juggling the challenges of parenting and work. With support from her neighbor, who harbors a crush on her, she embarks on a new chapter, all the while hoping to mend things with her ex. As the plot unfolds, mysterious deaths occur both at home and work, adding an unexpected twist to the life of our scream queen.

The film, written and directed by John Russo (Midnight), features performances by Debbie Rochon (Slime City Massacre), John Mowod (FleshEater), Marilyn Eastman (Night of the Living Dead), and Karl Hardman (Night of the Living Dead).

Despite a promising premise, Santa Claws suffers from weak acting, subpar dialogue, poorly constructed sets, and a mediocre soundtrack. The film includes numerous sex scenes featuring women with "enhancements," adding a redeeming element. While the female cast are gorgeous, the kill scenes lack quality, though they offer occasional humor. Notably, the killer's interactions with a sex doll resembling the main character provide amusement and kept my attention.

In conclusion, Santa Claws is a flawed blend of slasher and soft porn genres that may appeal to those seeking such a combination. With bad acting and dialogue, along with inconsistent production quality, I would give it a 3/10. However, if you have specific expectations for a mix of slasher and soft porn, it might be worth your time.

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.

I watched this film and found it to be somewhat ok, and even better than some big budget multimillion dollar films.

YES, it does have problems, many...infact.

The modelling scenes were just boring annd bland, even for T&A gratuity shots and served no purpose.

Wayne's character was poorly created and developed, but somewhat funny.

Love Rayven...maybe it's the name...but over all, for a movie that was filmed with less than the cost of a new minivan, this is an ok film, *considering it was free to watch...I certainly wouldn't have paid for this.

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!