Rish Outfield's reviews
This film is famous for being controversial and misogynistic. It also got me in trouble with my mother for watching it as a kid. I guess I should feel embarrassed, then, that I really enjoyed it. In fact, my one complaint isn't how violent it was, or how offensive, but how slow-moving it was.
Okay, back in ‘71, little Billy saw his parents brutally killed by a guy dressed as Santa Claus (this was after his deranged grandpa told him Santa was coming to punish the Naughty). He is sent to an orphanage where the sadistic Mother Superior further scars him mentally. It's not until he's 18 and is forced to portray St. Nick at a toy store that he snaps and goes berserk. He's got this neat little idea that Santa should punish people who are naughty, and pretty much everyone is naughty, come to think of it. So he kills and kills and kills and gives a box knife to a little girl and kills and kills some more. And that's about it.
Even though Billy is the Bad character here, they bend over backwards to make us understand him and sympathize. In fact, the Mother Superior is much more evil than Billy ever gets, and she has no parental slaughter experience to excuse her actions. For as controversial as this was (and a killer Santa is no original thing, the old EC comic "Tales From the Crypt" had one back in the Fifties!) and as hated as it is by critics (Leonard Maltin called it "worthless"), it's actually pretty good, and definitely entertaining. The acting is alright. The violence is extreme and quite graphic, especially toward women. Nice snowy Utah scenery makes this movie feel colder and more realistic than Hollywood backlot versions do. Unfortunately, there is a lengthy buildup to Billy's killing spree, where every imaginable help is given to push him past the brink. I think, after this much impetus, Mister Rogers would begin slaughtering his neighbours.
I'd Recommend It To: Tough slasher fans with no holiday plans.
Note: Another odd thing I noticed was the conspicuous absence of traditional Christmas music. In its place, are mostly original songs, including one that is not only unbelievably morbid ("Santa's watching, Santa's waiting..."), but is repeated THREE times!

The tyranist's thoughts
Santa doesn't scare me. Clowns do but Santa doesn't and when he is portrayed as sympathetically as in this movie, then I don't think he will scare anyone. In fact, the hitler-esque nun that ran the orphanage scared me more than Santa. The strange and repetitive Christmas songs scared me more than Santa.
This is one of the few movies that explores the killer's motives from beginning to end, rather than the victim's fight for survival, that I really liked. It wasn't a great movie, but it had a few really neat moments and some great death effects. The scenery was nice and the characters interesting. Even the all but forgotten police subplot was kind of nice for a change. I've never seen the rest of the movies, so I couldn't judge how it places in the series, but I genuinely liked it. And Santa is the killer.
You don't have to see this one, but for my money it's the best purely Christmas themed horror movie out there. And it has a cool cover to boot.