12 Days in December: Naughty or Nice
Christmas Evil (1980)
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6 out of 10 stars)
Director: Lewis Jackson
Producer: Edward L. Montoro
Starring: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull
“I see them… all the good boys and girls. And the bad ones too.” – Harry Stadling
The Review:
My dear celebrants of the macabre, step closer as we venture into a wintry nightmare wrapped in tinsel, sorrow, and the soft hush of falling snow. Christmas Evil—a title that once drove me away with promises of cheap sleaze and holiday hokum—proved to be something far more somber, far more unsettling, and, dare I say, far more sincere than its garish name suggests.
This was another film I had always avoided in the past; my assumption, based solely on the title, was that it would not be a serious attempt at horror. I was wrong. Beneath its low-budget trappings lies an earnest exploration of a fractured mind, and a surprisingly restrained descent into yuletide madness. There is a good attempt here—a genuine effort to portray a man slipping from eccentricity into obsession, and finally into delusion.
What is actually happening inside the mind of the killer remains obscured behind frost-fogged glass. Beyond the reality that he has gone mad, the film offers few answers. Instead, it confronts us with stark, sometimes uncomfortably blunt portrayals of his unraveling. The opening scenes, however, feel oddly mismatched—like a Producer’s attempt to justify the madness rather than the organic shaping of a killer’s psyche. They sit atop the film like a hurried prologue, out of tune with the quieter, more melancholy terror that follows.
No matter. Once the story settles into its rhythm—slow in places, drifting like a December evening—it becomes an absorbing watch. Equal parts tragedy and nightmare, Christmas Evil stands as a peculiar holiday horror, laced with melancholy rather than merriment. It is not joyous, nor is it jolly, but it is memorable. And in the realm of midnight cinema, that is a gift worth unwrapping.
Ho ho horror, indeed.