Satan Claus

Satan Claus (1996)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely low-budget horror film has a psycho going around in a Santa outfit chopping up various people. The NYPD are baffled by the case (perhaps because they never actually look for clues) as more and more bodies begin to pile up. Satan CLAUS has a rather catchy title but it's certainly a long ways off from the classic SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. As far as psycho Santa films goes, this here really doesn't offer too much but at the same time it's certainly far from the worst thing out there. I say that because with some better equipment I think the film could have been more entertaining. I'm not sure what type of equipment was being used but the entire film is just way too dark and there are times where you can barely see what's going on. Just check out all the scenes inside the police station and you'll be wondering if the city just forgot to pay the electric bill. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this with some coming off decent with others coming off poorly. The special effects aren't much as most of the violence is seen after the fact. We get some decapitation heads and other body parts removed but nothing too graphic. The appeal of a film like this is going to be limited but it's mainly going to be for people who enjoy non-Hollywood, low-budget stuff.

This is a hilariously bad spaghetti horror santa slasher.

Like...worst of the worst bad.

Everything in this seems to be purposefully horrible...the writing, the acting, the directing, the outdoor scenes, the gore...but particularly the acting.

The whole thing seems to have been made as some sort of vendetta, by the writer, for not having been considered a good enough actor for the screen.

In the story, a series of seemingly random murders are carried out on Christmas Eve, by a maniac in a santa costume.

We follow two friends- themselves dressed up like santas- as they are tending a charity donation booth...when they witness the murder of their friend's boyfriend.

The police have no leads...despite being toyed with by the killer...who has even killed the lead detective's wife.

Ultimately leading to the final twist of the film, which makes literally no sense whatsoever.

In fact, it's not even possible...if you consider anything that happened earlier on in the film.

Making it one of those so bad it's funny (not good, in any stretch) films that will have you laughing at the sheer stupidity of it all.

The best parts are the self reflexive elements of Steve's storyline (where the writer has the character poke fun at his lack of acting talent); how everyone was cast below and forced to act under Steve; and how they tried to justify the bizarre and simply impossible twist...by saying the killer's voice was going back and forth from being male and female (when it was always a male voice).

Also, the whole thing is quite literally dark.

So dark, sometimes, you can't even see what the hell is going on.

But that is probably for the better anyways.

Cause the gore sucks.

Like everything else in this atrocity...which is only fit for cinemasochists.

2.5 out of 10.

A serial killer dressed as St. Nick chops people up with an ax on Christmas Eve. Wait, didn't Silent Night, Deadly Night do that about a dozen years earlier? and didn't Tales From The Crypt do it about a dozen years even before that?

"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to slay a slaying song tonight" sings the slash-happy Santa in the barely lit opening sequence, as he endlessly drives to, ... somewhere. Apparently the producers found this scene to be so well done that they even reused it several times throughout the course of this film.

Originality certainly isn't this film's strong point, (nor is lighting, as the majority of this 67-minutes long movie looks as though it was filmed at nighttime, using only ambient lighting and Christmas tree lights; perhaps the crew broke into buildings to film it and didn't want to switch a light on to alert anyone of their presence, choosing instead to work under the cover of darkness?) Scenes held for too long are this film's specialty, as the filmmakers padded out the brief run-time with lengthy scenes of people walking down darkly lit streets, and mumbling inaudible dialogue.

Barely lit, barely audible holiday hackfest, kind of funny just because it is so inept; were it not for the photograph on the wall of Bill Clinton, one could say it looks as though this was actually filmed several years earlier, and then sat unreleased until 1996. At one point in time we can actually hear the camera's own zooming function, before the film's supremely confusing ending.

1/10 is too high of a score for this... movie? I don't think we can even call it that. I have seen joke videos made by some of my friends that had better production qualities. Note to the (long defunct) studio - if you have no lighting, maybe do NOT shoot at night?

The movie is incomprehensible. We can barely see black blobs moving at a black background, sometimes the camera auto-zooms on faces though so we can at least see who was that blob. Audio is no better, much of the dialogue is inaudible mumbling.

The plot is nothing to write home about, maniac who laughs a lot murders random people.