“Ho, Ho, Horrifying: A Christmas Slasher Film List to Check Twice”

There may not be a more satisfying subgenre to horror fans than the Christmas Slasher. The combination of words possess a certain splendor –  a juxtaposition of ideas about what the holiday season can represent. For most of the protagonists on our list, the glow of Christmas lights around your living room does not represent a warm refuse from which to escape the cold, but rather an invitation to invade and kill. 

Unlike most popular American slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s – notably Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980) – which feature killers who are faceless and whose only personality traits are displayed through the creativity of their kills, the Christmas Slasher killer of this era usually plays a central role in developing the plot. This distinction brings to mind the tradition of Italian Giallo filmmakers who paved the very road American slasher films drove to dust toward the end of the ‘80s by bastardizing the evocative and stylish Giallo-centric killer (whose identity was always revealed in the end) into a mindless instrument of death. 

Of course, almost none of the films on the following list come close to matching the mastery with which most influential Giallo films were made. Although, they do speak to a certain edge that dominated American sensibilities around the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, as an economic recession loomed, crime rose, and the nation began to digest the syndicated, senseless violence of the Vietnam War. It stands to reason that cinema fans were primed for a cathartic ride on demented ol' Saint Nick's sleigh. So, heat up the cocoa and turn out the lights. It's time to find out who's been naughty and why it feels so nice. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984, Charles E. Sellier, Jr., Dir.)

Silent Night, Deadly Night was released during the height of the American slasher movie craze, and just before its downfall. In fact, one might suggest that films such as SN,DN aimed to exploit the genre’s monetary success and added to audiences' growing impatience with vapid story lines and cheap special effects. However, at the heart of SN,DN’s undoubtedly hasty production lies a story with more genuine angst than first appears.

After visiting his demented grandfather who tells him that Santa Claus “punishes” naughty children, five-year-old Billy witnesses the murder of his parents at the hands of a carjacking Santa Claus. After growing up in a Catholic orphanage, where he is repeatedly punished for acting on compulsions that are rooted in his trauma (like drawing really cool/disturbing pictures of Santa Claus getting stabbed a bunch), Billy finally snaps when he is forced to wear a Santa Claus suit at the toy store where he works as a teenager. 

The conflation of sex and violence is the genisis of Billy’s evolution into the rampaging killer. When his childhood self sees the brutal, sexualized assault that leaves his mother dead, the seeds of psychosis are planted in images of bare skin, cheap red velvet, and the mirror-like cold steel of the killer’s knife—all objects which Billy will be drawn to again in his life. Indeed, it’s as if slipping into the ubiquitous red suit completed his transformation into the thing he feared the most; the thing he was always destined to be, thanks to two contradictory symbols of sanctity in SN,DN: Santa Claus and nuns. 

Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984, Edmond Purdum, Dir.)

Although not the lowest-budgeted film on our list, Don’t Open Till Christmas was produced with the cheapest intent. Its high body count and creative murder sequences make for a bloody-spirited romp through the streets of London, minus the requirement to follow anything resembling a sensible plot. It’s the type of slasher movie that makes one wonder just how many spiked eggnogs the director tossed back before calling action, and, likewise, has one hoping they don’t run out of their own supply before the credits roll. 

Don’t Open is centered around an unknown masked assailant who roams the streets with a razor blade, slashing downtrodden and alienated Santa impersonators. One kill scene that delivers a more pointed message depicts the castration of a Santa while using a public urinal just after ogling a young woman in a shopping mall. In another, an inebriated Santa evades a gang of leather-bound delinquents by ducking into what audience members are left to assume is a Medieval torture device museum, only to find himself on the wrong end of a very large, ornate sward. 

Aside from the cheap thrills only slashers such as Don’t Open can provide, the most compelling aspect of the film is the performance given by Alan Lake as Giles, the creepy reporter covering the murders. Lake’s edgy, deadpan delivery evokes that of another indie actor from across the pond, Tom Noonan, who also made a career of harnessing an unsettling energy for his performances. 

Because the killer is revealed to be a part of the main cast in the end, Don’t Open is a unique blend of traditional Giallo storytelling and American Slasher sensibilities, and, thanks to Lake (A.K.A. British Tom Noonan), manages to present a rather gritty depiction of the lethal anxieties that reveal themselves around the holiday season.

Blood Beat (1982, Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos, Dir.)

Blood Beat, from Fabric-Ange Zaphiratos, is what happens when you place a French first-time (and only time) writer/director, whose father produced cheap, erotic thrillers like Les Nymphettes (1961) (released in America as The First Taste of Love), in rural Wisconsin, where hunting deer is considered a spiritual experience. Though, even without knowing the backstory of this hidden gem, Blood Beat is as hypnotic as a sleigh ride on acid, stretching the boundaries of what can be considered a Slasher film to the hallucinogenic, unnerving edges of the genre. 

Zaphiratos merely uses Christmas as a plot device, gathering the tight-knit family at the center of Blood Beat in order to put their conservative moral values to the test as they are hunted by a supernatural ancient Samurai warrior conjured by one of the family members’ sexually-repressed girlfriends. As if the setup wasn’t wild enough, the direction, editing, and soundtrack of Blood Beat combine to create a unique kind of cinematic naivete that is rarely effective, but, in the case of Blood Beat, keeps its audience on their heels and crawling out of their skin. 

During one 10-minute sequence, as the family’s matriarch engages in telekinetic battle with the ghostly samurai, Zaphiratos overlays the sound of a rapidly thumping heart that he claims mimics his own while writing parts of the film under the influence of heavy psychotropic drugs. In the end, the mother, played by Helen Benton, whose character bares a curious resemblance to Shelly Duval's Wendy Torrence in The Shining (1980), defeats the samurai slasher killer with the help of her children and gives our list a rare happy ending that reaffirms the power of family unity during Christmas. 

Christmas Evil (1980, Lewis Jackson, Dir.)

As Harry Stadling stands in front of his full length mirror in admiring his homemade santa claus costume in Christmas Evil, one can’t help but be reminded of Travis Bickle zipping up his now-iconic green army jacket in front of his own mirror before a string of murders and attempted murders through the depraved streets of 1970s New York City. Although Christmas Evil’s writer/director, Lewis Jackson, conceived of his story 4 years before the release of Martin Scorese’s film – apparently while laying in bed one Christmas night in Greenwich Village, smoking a joint, as visions of “a Santa Claus holding a knife” danced through his head – Jackson admits: “My reference point would be Taxi Driver… Harry is delusional and clinging to something he feels has emotion and a utopian view of life.” 

In Christmas Evil, Harry – whose obsession with Santa Claus is rooted in his prepubescent witnessing of his mother being fondled by jolly fat man himself – is humiliated by his boss and colleagues at the toy factory where he works. Eventually, resentment turns to rage and Harry sets out on Christmas Eve night, dawning his immaculately constructed Santa suit (complete with superglued-on beard), delivering stolen toys to the good boys and girls, and painting the town red with the blood of those who’ve slighted him.

Christmas Evil and Taxi Driver may not share equal notoriety among cinema fans, but both films seemed to cultivate elements that truly set the them apart within their respective genres. Even the ending of both films share a fantastic quality. For Bickle, he gains not infamy but praise for his gruesome, cold blooded killings. For Harry, his escape from a mob of angry, torch-wielding parents by magically flying through the sky in his cargo van – just like Santa Claus himself – signifies a full descention into delusion after his own murderous rampage. 

Black Christmas (1974, Bob Clark, Dir.)

It’s hard to believe that one of the most cherished and re-watched pieces of holiday filmmaking shares a significant distinction with one of the most twisted and unflinching Christmas slasher films of all time. Of course, I’m referring to director Bob Clark’s one-two punch of festive delight: A Christmas Story (1980) and Black Christmas (1974). Both films are celebrated year after year, as friends and loved ones gather ‘round the television; when families are allowed to quell their differences in exchange for the pure delight of sharing the common language of cinema. No other director in the history of film has done this more effectively than Bob Clark. 

It’s also hard to believe that Clark’s Black Christmas predates perhaps the most well known—and certainly most well-made—Slasher films of all time. There’s no doubt that the director of Halloween (1978), John Carpenter, had absorbed the influence of Black Christmas before crafting his masterpiece. Still, Clark’s innovation of the slasher genre remains overshadowed by more popular franchises like the aforementioned Halloween, Friday the 13th (1980), and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). 

In Black Christmas, a sorority house is harassed by an obscene serial caller who soon graduates to hunting and murdering the young women inside while hiding out in their attic. Clark cultivates motifs later to become staples of the American Slasher genre, such as heavy breathing when the camera adopts the POV of the killer, and a slasher killer with no clear motive—the latter of which defines characters like Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and dozens of knock-off killers of the early ‘80s as seen in films like The Mutilator and Prom Night. 

Most significantly, Black Christmas innovates the use of social anxieties around the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early ‘70s as fodder for allegorical plot lines. Take for instance Jess (serving as the “Final Girl” and played brilliantly by Olivia Hussey) and her willful decision to have an abortion despite the wishes of her boyfriend. This kind of independent, intellectual thinking by women in the slasher genre would, time after time, serve both as their reason for being hunted and for ultimately surviving through the end of hundreds of slasher films to follow Black Christmas. 

Of course, the most sinister aspect of Clark’s film is the fact that there suggestively is no Final Girl. In the last scene of the film, Jess’ safety is placed in jeopardy one last time when she is abandoned on Christmas Day by policemen and doctors in the very house that she was just attacked. Soon, the familiar heavy breathing of the slasher killer fades in as the credits roll over one of the most poignant shots in Christmas slasher history: the exterior of a large house, quaintly decorated for Christmas, sitting in the crisp stillness of winter. Through its windows is a darkness blacker than the night sky – a darkness most would be lost within, yet a darkness that the Christmas Slasher killer finds most warm and cozy.