Christmas Evil, released in 1980 - also known under the title "You
Better Watch Out" - tells the story of Harry Stadling, whose childhood
discovery of the fact that legend of Santa isn't real - in the worst way
- has disastrous consequences later in life. As a young child, Harry
crept downstairs when he should have been in bed and saw Saint Nick -
aka Dad - in flagrante with Mummy in the midst of the Christmas
presents. As an adult, Harry runs the Jolly Dream Toy Store, and suffers
the commercialistic attitude to the Yuletide season displayed by his
family and co-workers, until he can't take it anymore and snaps.
One
Christmas Harry puts on the Santa regalia and sets out into the night
to divide the naughty from the nice... which is a great idea, a cool
take on the superhero origin story and should be the jump-off point into
a great collection of horrifying, comical deaths. But, unfortunately,
the movie you actually get starts and ends as a good idea. It's hard to
tell if the sudden jumps between comedy and horror are deliberate, and
it gives the movie an uneven, sketchy tone that prevents you from
getting immersed. Suspension of disbelief can survive a mediocre script
and shoddy production values; but an uncertain, shaky directorial hand?
The
rest of the movie consists of Harry handing out delights to the nice,
to kiddies and the innocent, and slaughtering the guilty, until the
townsfolk catch on. When they do, there's a show of the film's kinship
with its early horror roots: Harry is chased down the streets by a mob
with flaming torches, inappropriate to the film's setting but utterly at
home in the scene from James Whales' 1931 Frankenstein, which the scene
is a homage to. The film is further marred by a jarringly incongruous
happy ending. It's worth checking out for major genre fans only.
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