Holiday Hell

Holiday Hell is like a sack of presents on Christmas morning: some stories are as entertaining as a new Commodore 64 computer game (yes, I'm old); others are the equivalent of a jumper hand-knitted by an auntie (multiple colours, slightly too large with uneven arms). It's a mixed bag, for sure, but with a fun performance by horror icon Jeffery Combs, and some gore and nudity, it's still worth delving into.

Combs plays the proprietor of a curiosity shop, who tries to help last-minute customer Amelia (Meaghan Karimi-Naser) to choose a gift for her sister. As Amelia deliberates over several potential gifts, the shopkeeper tells her the story behind each of them.

In the first story, a mysterious killer wearing a doll-mask murders a group of youngsters partying in an abandoned house. It's a really uninspired way to kick things off, with very little to offer beyond its trite premise, but fortunately things get better with the next tale...

A young Jewish boy, Kevin (Forrest Campbell), is given an old, one-of-a-kind rabbi doll by his parents, who leave their son in the care of babysitter Lisa (Amber Stonebraker) while they spend the weekend in Germany. Not long after his parents have gone, Kevin overhears Lisa talking to her boyfriend Trey on the phone: the pair are planning to empty Kevin's home of its valuables. When Lisa catches Kevin listening, she locks him in his room, but Kevin's doll comes to the rescue when the boy reads from an old scroll hidden in the toy's box. Springing to life, the creepy wooden rabbi ensures that Lisa and Trey get their just desserts. A murderous living doll might not be all that original, but this is a well-handled story with a decent pace and a smattering of gore.

Talking of gore, there's more in the third story, which centres around a blood-stained Santa suit. Owner of the initially pristine costume is down-trodden pharmaceutical company office-worker Chris (Joel Murray), who is overlooked for promotion and then sees his wife Susan (Ailsa Marshall) cheating on him at the Christmas office party with his work rival Tom (Jeff Bryan Davis). Hitting the bottle at a nearby bar, and hoovering up some of his company's experimental tablets, Chris turns homicidal, visiting a local hardware store before returning to the party. Gratuitous nudity, drug-taking, and a nail-gun to the crotch: sophisticated it isn't, but it sure is fun.

The final tale sees a young woman, Anna (the lovely McKenna Ralston), renting a room at a farmhouse, and finding work in the nearby town, only to discover that the locals are murderous moon worshippers. It's a fairly blood-free story, but benefits from an eerie atmosphere and solid performances, and ends in a shocking manner that successfully segues back into the wraparound story, where Combs' shopkeeper turns out to be far less amiable than he seems.

With such an uneven movie, rating it as a whole isn't easy. I'd give the doll-face story 2/10, the rabbi doll 6/10, the killer Santa 6/10, the moon worshippers 5/10, and the book-ends 4/10. That's a total of 23, averaging out at 4.6/10, which I'll round up to 5 for naming Chris's tablets Black Sunshine, which I assume is a reference to Jeff Lieberman's Blue Sunshine (1977).

This low-budget, indie horror film has some genuinely impressive filmmaking in it. I'm not a horror aficionado, but I know the tropes and these film-makers clearly have had some fun playing with them. Yes, there's some questionable dialogue, and the "don't go into the basement" (in a suburban split-level, ha-ha!) moments are schlocky, but there's definitely thought put into this, and some admirable and hilarious twists. As in many indies, the acting is a bit uneven, however, there are notable exceptions, and Joel Murray's performance is outstanding, by turns poignant, funny, terrifying. Jeffrey Combs is perfect as the smarmy owner of a creepy little shop of horror stories. And a special shout-out to Meaghan Karimi-Naser as the young woman seeking a last-minute gift for her sister. Karimi-Naser plays the slightly-too-innocent/what's-going-on-underneath role with wonderfully hinted-at layers. There's also a fantastic pay-off to her performance. (Whatever you do-stay for the last frame. You may know something's coming, but I promise, you are not going to guess the exact form it takes!) I hope to see more films by this group of indie filmmakers.

Holiday Hell (2019) is another holiday gem I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a morbid shop keeper closing up for the night on Christmas Eve when a persistent shopper comes in to buy a girl for her sister. As the shopper finds various interesting things in his store, the shop keeper tells her the short story behind the item and he how he acquired it.

This movie was created by four directors and stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), Jeffrey Arrington (All Too Human), Mandy Baker (The Alliance), Lisa Carswell (Z Nation), Lisa Coronado (Z Nation) and Forrest Campbell (Mr. Bleachers).

Jeffrey Combs was awesome in this from beginning to end with great narrations, storytelling and as an overall performance. As with any short story anthology some are better than others. The first story with the mask wasn't that great, the second story with the doll was pretty good, the Santa storyline was awesome and the final story wraps up the movie perfectly. There's inconsistent gore in these but the better stories obviously have the better kills.

Overall this is far from a classic but a worthwhile holiday horror short story anthology. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it at least once.

I think a 12 year old boy wrote this! It's really stupid and NO ONE talks like that! It's so bad, I can't tell if the stories are even good! 2 thumbs down! 👎🏼👎🏼

I watch movies so often that I'm running out of options and often look for new stuff on streaming apps like Netflix, Tubi, Crackle, Hulu, ect... Anyways, I don't understand people's ratings. I just watched Last American Horror Show on Tubi, and it was flat out TERRIBLE! How does that have a 6 and yet Holiday Hell is in the 3ish range? I must be watching something different than these people? Perhaps I'm partial, because anything with Jeffrey Combs gets an automatic 5 or above... Sure, this is low budget, but at least there is some work put in. I say it's a fun little anthology that doesn't look like a student project as some others do. Plenty people love Tales From The Crypt (including me), so I don't see how this is so different other than the lack of comic drawings and skeleton host. There is dark humor, the tales revolve around twisted morality, cheesiness, and some naked breasts. That's the good ol' formula for horror anthology to me.