Psycho Santa

I recently viewed Psycho Santa (2003) on Tubi. The storyline follows a young couple moving into a new house with rumors of a psycho Santa in the nearby woods, a plot they initially dismiss but may come to regret.

Directed by Peter Keir (Wolfika), the film stars Kimberly Lynn Cole (Body Snatchers), Eric Spudic (Creepies), Krystal Havens (Dead Clowns), Jason Barnes (Dead Clowns), and Michelle Samford (Cadaver Bayer).

This picture has a fantastic opening shower scene then takes a sharp downturn from there. While the cast, dialogue, and storyline are painfully lacking, the actresses are at least worth a viewing. Unfortunately, the horror elements, especially the kill scenes, are disastrously bad-some of the worst I've ever seen.

In conclusion, Psycho Santa is only worth considering if you're desperate for a poorly executed Christmas horror film. I would give it a 2/10 and recommend skipping it altogether.

This movie wasn't the easiest to find...however, when I did manage to track it down...it made a lot more sense as to why that is.

Mostly, because it starts off more like a porn, than it does a horror film.

The whole thing basically takes place in one long and wholly unnecessary flashback sequence, during which a man recounts the story of Psycho Santa to his unprivy wife.

And this starts off with an equally long and unnecessary introduction to the backstory of the killer, with two probable porn actresses/lesbian lovers vacationing at a cabin over Christmas holidays.

Apparently, this is all meant to lead up to some sort of relatively explosive revelation...but it ends up being so anti-climactic...it's actually quite humourous.

As we'll come to see...the filmmakers really struggle when it comes to seizing those climactic moments.

Though you can chock up the blame here to extremely poor editing...albeit the awful story and poorly developed plot structure don't help much either.

All the cuts are extremely abrupt, and poorly timed, with no attention paid to giving transitions- between the narration sequences and vignettes- any sort of nuance.

And from here, things only get worse...as the story inexplicably shifts to two men robbing a blind woman's house.

At first, it seems like this segment has no viable contextual purpose either, other than to be act as a vehicle for another nude shower scene.

To their credit, it does eventually become clear that this all plays into the backstory of Chris...the deranged son of the blind woman and her husband...who would inevitably go on to become Psycho Santa.

He had been kept locked up, and confined to a room, by his parents.

But now he has been released...and is out for blood...killing anyone and everyone he comes into contact with...

The vignettes themselves are actually not so bad, considering it's a D-grade horror that was probably made on virtually no budget.

However, the whole aspect of connecting them with the guy and his wife in their car really kills the vibe and drags the whole thing down...especially considering the transitory editing is so poorly done.

It's collection of faults aside...this isn't even close to being the worst of the Christmas horrors that are out there.

And that is even considering the fact that they kind of lead you to believe that there is going to be a "whole Psycho Santa" reveal- after toying around with partial clips of him walking around with some sort of serrated blade- before totally disappointing you with another unoppourtunistic anti-climactic moment you can't help but shake your head at.

The fact that there are scenes that are actually a bit discomforting, really makes me think this film could have had potential.

But this was really hindered by some bizarre decision making, a poor plot design, and a failure to identify what moments needed to be seized upon in an explosive way.

So i'd rank it somewhere in the mid tier of D-grade class of Christmas horror films.

And give it a solid 2 out of 10.

Psycho Santa (2003)

* (out of 4)

Pretty bad anthology film has a guy and girl driving when he announces that he can't stand Christmas. She then asks why and the guy then tells three different stories set around Christmas time. The first has two girls going to the woods to meet a friend where they get slaughtered. The second story deals with a couple thieves while another has a boy and girl in the woods with a psycho Santa. This thing clocks in at 72-minutes, which feels about 67-minutes too long. This film is pretty short but it feels ten times longer and the main reason for this is that everything that happens just goes on and on for no reason. To be fair, the story here doesn't have enough for a five-minute movie let alone one this long so to make up for this we just get a bunch of scenes that just drag on. Just take a look at the first story and you'll notice a sequence where one girl takes a shower while another goes for a walk to pick up stones. We just keep cutting back and forth between this stuff for no reason. The second and third stories also features stuff that just drags along and after a while you just feel cheated. The performances are below average, the special effects aren't memorable and in the end there's very little to check out here.

If you are looking for a genuine & bona fide Christmas horror classic, in the vein of "Black Christmas" or "Silent Night Deadly Night", then... this certainly isn't the one! But I guess you already derived that from the title, the horrible cover-art, the score here on IMDb, and the reviews. "Psycho Santa" is amateur fan-boy film making of the worst possible kind. We're talking shaky handheld camerawork, atrocious acting from people who wanted to do the writer/director a favor, a flimsy plot, zero gore or make-up effects, and endless amounts of padding footage.

When a couple drives out to their family on Christmas' eve, the man tells the story of a neighborhood psychopath who escaped from a burning asylum and - dressed as Santa Clause - killed a bunch of people. Those kills are told in flashbacks, and here's what makes "Psycho Santa" the absolute worst movie in history: the flashbacks simply exist of random filler-footage. Two girls in a remote cabin, showering and dancing for almost fifteen minutes. Two burglars breaking into the house of a blind woman and spending an enormous amount of time forcing the lock and wandering in the house. A brother and a sister facing engine trouble in the woods and walking around for another fifteen minutes. Just when the psycho is finally about to appear, the flashbacks end and it's the guy in the car who simply narrates the bloody details. What?!? "Psycho Santa" gives a whole new dimension to the term 'anti-climax'. Anyone who claims this movie is worth seeing is either bribed by the director or related to him. One extra point for the poor girls who agreed to show full-frontal nudity, and probably secretly hoped it would help their careers forward.

Traveling together to a holiday party, a couple trying to stay entertained on the way there decides to pass the time by telling the tale of a psychotic serial killer who lived in the area who dressed as Santa and attacked numerous people which causes them to wonder if he's still in the area.

This was a decent enough indie genre effort. Among the films' better features is the use of a holiday atmosphere within a solid shot-on-video indie aesthetic. It's nearly unmistakable to see the indie approach here, with the constant buzz and grain present alongside the guerilla-style shooting that takes place here even before taking into account the one-location setting which is where everything takes place. This is enhanced nicely by some fine enhancements to the holiday spirit where this one plays pretty nicely with the song being played as a controlling mechanism for the killer which is integrated rather well here. This lets the film focus rather nicely on the decent setups involving the killer coming into play at random points. The opening involving him stalking the victim through the junkyard is a fine starting point with some more suspenseful tactics than expected while the later flashbacks here to Santa taking out the girls partying in the remote cabin or the thieves breaking into the house have a lot to like. Playing up the killer's inhuman nature and some rather brutal kills, this here offers up a fine entrance point where the later encounters on the girl in her house or the siblings lost in the woods come across as solid enough scenes to bring about quite a lot to enjoy here. There are some issues here that bring it down. One of the better features with this one comes from a scattershot and discordant plotline that makes for a rather underwhelming and confusing time. Presenting the backstory of the psycho Santa killer as a series of anthology vignettes in this form as it does manage to jump around to these encounters as it doesn't need to be a closeted film in this structure. This cheap feeling is the other big drawback here, with the general lack of presence or general atmosphere with the simplistic storyline, toned-down locations, and one-take feel that really combine together to give this a short-changed feel.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, and Language.