One Hell of a Christmas

Right, well this is a movie from my home country, Denmark, and I must say that I was cringing throughout most of the movie because of the awful thick Danish accents everyone had as they tried passing off as being Americans. It was just embarrassing.

The quality of the movie was altogether fairly bad. The picture quality looked like something that was filmed with a remnant camera from the 1980s. And the dialogue was just horrible and mostly delivered in an atrociously bad way.

"One Hell of a Christmas" (aka "The Claw") is one of the most boring and awful movies that I ever had the misfortune to suffer through. It was so bad that I had to give up an hour into the movie. Everything about this movie was just awful, from the script to the acting.

This movie is a wide swing and miss from director Shaky Gonzalez. And it is most definitely a movie to give a wide berth if you are looking for a properly entertaining movie. As I mentioned above, I gave up an hour into it, and now the DVD will just sit on the shelf and collect dust. I am not even going to bother coming back for the last half hour.

I saw this film and liked Angel of the Night a LOT more. However, this is far from the worst film I've ever seen, but being from Denmark myself, I find the actors' accent horrifying. Most of them sound like we did learning the language in the fifth grade. I like seing Danish actors and directors doing English languaged film - BUT, please - work on those accents!!! To me it more or less ruined the enjoyment of the film

I keep giving Fangoria movies a chance and keep being let down. This is it. I decided to give this one a chance because it is by the same maker as Angel of the Night which I thought was pretty good. No more, if Fangoria has their name on it I will steer clear. This movie SUCKED!!!! They may have a great magazine but they should think twice before putting their name on crap like this. AVOID at all costs!!!!

ONE HELL OF A Christmas (1 outta 5 stars) And 1 out of 5 stars is being GENEROUS! Dismal low budget hodge-podge of a zillion horror movie clichés... and even some Latino gang movie clichés added in for good measure. Our "hero" Carlitos (Tolo Montana... trust me, you are never gonna have a reason to remember this guy's name) is a just-released convict doing a bad imitation of Al Pacino from "Carlito's Way". (Maybe his name is some sort of "homage"? Oh, who cares already!) Anyway, he meets up with his pal Mike (Thure Lindhardt... a bargain basement version of Jason Mewes), who has just gotten hold of some kind of stolen talisman that gives the owner incredible power (except, I guess, the power to not have his talisman stolen... which seems to happen with great frequency). Carlito says he wants to go straight and lead a clean life and win back his estranged wife and child... but insofar as Mike and Carlitos are back into the drugs and whores on his first day out of prison... I don't think that's gonna happen. So, there is also some kind of mysterious body-switching guardian who goes after whoever has the talisman to kill, maim, hurt, whatever. Terrible acting, terrible special effects, terrible story, terrible plot. This one dead prostitute who comes back to life to fight Carlitos is almost scary-looking... but the effect is outdone by this terrible cartoony voice they dubbed in for her. Another winner from the people at Fangoria Magazine (whose mag is almost as bad as the movies they endorse... almost). Avoid this trash (located in a Wal-Mart bargain bin near you).

I rented this movie expecting to hate it and/or to fall asleep during it. I was pleasantly surprised by the actors (altho a couple of the voices were annoying) who I felt did a very good job considering the material they had to work with. Can me wierd, but I found Mike (Thure Lindhardt) strangely sexy despite his bad teeth. Hmmmm, what does that say about ME?

The storyline was, of course, fairly predictable but enjoyable nonetheless.

All in all, I give it a 2.5 on the Leonard Maltin 'Bomb to 4-Star' rating.