Census Bloodbath: Christmas Stalking

Year: 1984

Director: Edmund Purdom

Cast: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Caroline Munro

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Don't Open Till Christmas takes place in London during the lead-up to Christmas day. By night, a killer is stalking the streets murdering people who dress like Santa Claus. On the case are Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom of Pieces) and Detective Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones), though they might just be shown up by amateur sleuth Kate (Belinda Mayne), whose father was one of the first victims, and her boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist of the same year's Blind Date). Also on the case is Daily News reporter Giles (Alan Lake), who keeps getting under the feet of the Scotland Yard professionals.

Analysis: Even in a darker period for the slasher, producers couldn't resist getting those slay bells jingling.  In 1984, we got two entries in the hallowed subgenre of Christmas slashers, and Don't Open Till Christmas is rightfully the far less prominent title, behind Silent Night, Deadly Night. The film is from the same producers that brought us Pieces, and while it has every inch of that movie's general incoherence, it doesn't carry the same spark of charm that makes it a bad-good classic par excellence.

The film is narratively compromised to an almost violent degree, presenting a whodunit that lacks both viable suspects and a real sense of investigation. Most of the important facts of the case are discovered by Kate in offscreen moments that she then describes later, which robs the proceedings of any sense of fun. It doesn't fare much better as a formula slasher, failing to imbue any of the vast slate of victims with any sort of personality, batting away its Final Girl before the climactic third act chase scene, and making the fate of the killer frustratingly opaque rather than ambiguous in a "final shot of Halloween" kind of way. This may be a result of the fact that the movie changed hands between three different directors during production, and while I understand that, they could have just... not released the movie.

Fortunately, while the kills are disjointed, some of them do pack enough of a classic slasher punch to at least be entertaining to witness, and they come at a brisk enough frequency that the taste of the poorly lit and executed ones is washed out of your mouth almost immediately. It would take a person with more moral purity than I to complain about the fact that this movie contains an eyeball sliding out of its socket, a Rube Goldberg-esque car electrocution, a spear through the mouth, and a Santa getting his dick slashed off while he uses a urinal.

There are also some elements that are genuinely good, though those are much fewer and farther between. First off, the score incoporates a minor key rendition of "Jingle Bells" that works wonders to boost the holiday spirit of the story. There is also a general sense that the creators of the film saw the German krimi movies and decided they could make a Scotland Yard murder mystery even more hyperbolically British than those. The film also doesn't want for good locations (including a scene set in the basement of the Tower of London), though it does want for the lighting necessary to really make those locations pop and drive the atmosphere in a real way. Frankly, in general it's a piss ugly movie. If every frame of a film is meant to be a painting, the shots here look like they accidentally sat on a painting.

Don't Open Till Christmas is not exactly a miserable experience to sit through, but I could point you to a half dozen Christmas slashers that are far more worth your time, and that's just off the top of my head.

Killer: Giles (Alan Lake)

Final Girl: Sherry Graham (Kelly Baker), randomly. Her lack of overall importance to the story is indicated by the fact that she is credited as "Experience Girl."

Best Kill: A Santa has his face cleaved in twain backstage at a show and is sent onstage from beneath a trapdoor in the middle of the performance.

Sign of the Times: After rubbing up against a woman wearing a Santa coat, Cliff is worried they'll be mistaken for a couple of "gays" and get arrested.

Scariest Moment: A man comes to Sherry's peep show and begins to talk about his weird relationship with his mother, at which point he is revealed not to be the killer.

Weirdest Moment: The performance that was so cruelly interrupted by the arrival of a dead body was being put on by consummate slasher vixen Caroline Munro of Maniac, The Last Horror Film, and Slaughter High.

Champion Dialogue: "I am welcome everywhere. I am a member of society."

Body Count: 13

1. Makeout Santa is stabbed in the chest.
2. Makeout Woman is stabbed in the stomach.
3. Daddy Santa is impaled through the back of the neck with a spear.
4. Cigarette Santa is garroted with wire and has his face burned.
5. Alley Santa is shot in the head.
6. Peep Show Santa is stabbed in the neck.
7. Drunk Santa is stabbed in the gut.
8. Carnival Santa is kicked to death with a shoe that has a knife in it.
9. Silly String Santa is cleavered in the face.
10. Urinal Santa has his dick slashed off.
11. Kate is stabbed in the gut.
12. Powell is electrocuted by his car.
13. Mom is pushed down the stairs.
14. Ian Harris is exploded by a rigged music box.

TL;DR: Don't Open Till Christmas is incoherent and stupid, but it's mildly entertaining nevertheless.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 938

Census Bloodbath: Off The Shelf (Capsule Review)

Year: 1989
Director: Jeffrey Mandel
Cast: Dan Haggerty, Julie Austin, Deanna Lund
Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Plot: Kirsten (Julie Austin) accidentally unleashes a mythical Nazi elf that wants to impregnate her with the Master Race, and only a drifter who just got a job as a department store Santa (Dan Haggerty) can save her.

Analysis: The primary defining element of Elves is that it's absolutely unhinged in every possible way, down to the fact that the title is a lie and there's only one elf. The film honestly wouldn't even qualify as a slasher except for the fact that it's a different movie every 20 minutes, and one of those is a supernatural slasher set at a department store. The other options on this sampler platter include high-octane action (or as high-octane as "guy notices dynamite in car, leaps out of car instead of just throwing away dynamite" can be), bonkers family drama (Julia's mom - who is made up like a Bratz doll - wants to punish her daughter for breaking the rules and going into the forest by closing her bank account and drowning her cat in the toilet holy shit - the mom is literally so evil that there's a hilarious scene where Kirsten's friends just assume she's her stepmom), and gangster movie (the Nazis are apparently just the mafia, who knew?). 

The elf itself is at least rather scary-looking, but only when it's not in motion. They clearly could only afford to make a a shoulders-up bust of the elf, so it is never seen in full. When it is lurking in the shadows staring at its potential victims, it cuts a menacing figure with its mottled grey skin and sharp fangs. However, when it's asked to perform any action, it's clear that the mouth isn't articulated very well and it undercuts the tension something fierce. However, it's not like Elves had any tension to spare in the first place. Its ultimate charm lies in the absolute fever dream nonsense delivered by every character, setting, and object onscreen (including two genuinely funny intentional jokes, a department store display that reads "GUNS - Gift Ideas for Mom," and a professor who is teaching Dan Haggerty about Nazi mythology correcting his young son's grammar when he says "elfs.").

Killer: The Elf (not Elves, notably)

Final Girl: Kirsten (Julie Austin)

Best Kill: Poor, poor Agamemnon the cat is drowned in a toilet because Kirsten's mom is a psychopath with the makeup of a Bratz doll.

Sign of the Times: Any outfit worn in the department store scene, but particularly the purple cardigan paired with the yellow dress. Or maybe the unitard with a purple tutu.

Scariest Moment: Kirsten's little brother wakes up with the Elf trying to throttle him.

Weirdest Moment: Kirsten's little brother pervs on her while she's in the shower and insists that she's got "big fucking tits."

Champion Dialogue: "Life's a bitch, Eddie. First you're Santa and then you die."

Body Count: 9

1. Agamemnon the Cat is drowned in a toilet.
2. Coke Santa is stabbed in the crotch.
3. Blonde Guy has his head split by a Nazi.
4. Amy is shot in the head.
5. Brooke is stabbed to death.
6. Kirsten's mom has a radio dropped into her bathtub.
7. Ponytail Nazi is shot in the gut.
8. Grandpa is shot.
9. Trenchcoat Nazi is shot by the Elf.

TL;DR: Elves is reprehensible and weird and fascinating, though none of those things really add up to "good."

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 581

Reviewing Jane: It Was A Foolish Precipitation Last Christmas

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas edition!

Year: 2019

Director: David Winning

Cast: Erin Krakow, Luke Macfarlane, Kimberley Sustad 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Merry Christmas, everyone! Its continues to be that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! And to cap off this special trilogy we have the pleasure of visiting a film directed by the man who previously brought us untold Austenian pleasures with Hallmark's dog show romance Unleashing Mr. Darcy. It's Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen, the only one of the five Hallmark Austen movies not to be based on Pride and Prejudice! What a treat!

It's still brought to us by infinite white people, however.

OK, so it may not be based on Pride and Prejudice, but it's not based on any Sense and Sensibility I'VE ever read. Yes, we have the sisters Ella (Erin Krakow) and Marianne Dashwood (Kimberley Sustad) and their love interests Edward (Luke Macfarlane) and Brandon (Jason McKinnon). But in this one Ella is the flighty nymph ruled by her emotions, and Marianne is the one ruled by logic and sense, in an unmotivated switch that causes the novel's plot to crumble from underneath the film like the stone floor in an Indiana Jones adventure. Also Edward is not Ella's cousin (not complaining), but rather the cousin of Brandon, who is aged down by a good 15 years (maybe a little complaining on this one, because I'd love Hallmark to tackle a nontraditional couple and having gay people is obviously out of the question).

Also the story is now about party planning because of f**king course it is. Edward has taken over as CEO of his father's toy company, which is inexplicably called Ferris Wheel. He is being visited by French suppliers whose business will put the company in the black, but he needs to win them over with heart rather than statistics and numbers because apparently the French are terrible at business. Unfortunately, he is a cold corporate automaton, so he hires Ella (who is trying to prove to Marianne that she is capable of committing to their party planning business rather than run off to backpack across Europe or whatever for the millionth time) to plan a huge Christmas soiree for the company despite the fact that they've already had an awkward encounter where she mercilessly mocked him for having no Christmas spirit.

Will his business acumen allow her to grow into the sister Marianne needs to be? Will her free spirit allow him to loosen up, enjoy the holiday, and land the account? Will they fall in love along the way? Of course! This is a Hallmark movie!

And this is the moment where we must tragically recognize that this movie IS in fact also just a Pride and Prejudice riff, because the only thing these movies remember about that novel is that the couple doesn't get along at first, which is palpably NOT the case in Sense and Sensibility. And this movie doesn't even remember to have the sisters start off rich and then lose all their assets which is the one nugget that modern adaptations absolutely must remember to retain. P&P is the couple at odds, S&S is the poor sisters. You don't even need to read the books to get that! But Hallmark has clearly read neither, so perhaps we're better off not getting too upset here and avoiding having this caption become longer than the review.

Honestly, after watching three of these movies in a row, it's hard to even muster the strength to identify any unique attributes it has. It's simultaneously exactly like all the other Hallmark movies, and yet comes off more deeply generic and tedious than any of them. The brief thrill of recognizing Austenian names coming from the mouths of characters gives way instantly to a cookie cutter Christmas movie. And no, I don't mean the 2014 Hallmark movie literally called A Cookie Cutter Christmas that also stars Erin Krakow. They really just keep lobbing me these softballs, it's almost embarrassing.

Literally the one thing that's exciting in any way to someone who has seen more than their fair share of these (a number I have long since surpassed) is the fact that the narrative takes place entirely within The City. Specifically Chicago, as played by Vancouver. Rather than The City representing a skyscrapered purgatory of corporate greed and soulless automatons that must be overcome by the heart and humanity of Small Town Living, it's just the setting for the movie. 

How novel!

And I guess they try to get playful with the sheer lack of humanity that the character of Edward has (something that is constantly undercut by the goofy charisma of Luke Macfarlane, who is charming but wildly miscast). When he arrives at one of the many Christmas carnivals that are around every corner in the Hallmark Cinematic Universe, he can't understand why they're sipping hot chocolate and waiting for the Christmas Tree Lighting and asks "so, what's the objective?" He's not a fish out of water, he's a fish launched into the reaches of deep space. 

He understands absolutely nothing about human social behavior, and it's a shame because he doesn't seem to understand anything about running a business either, which is the one thing he's supposedly focused his life on, at the expense of learning literally anything about the world. Hallmark movies don't typically have a strong grasp on the details of office culture other than Business Meeting, Report On My Desk By Monday, Spreadsheet, etc. But the wild gaps in logic here (Ella's warm spirit inspires Edward to use children for the first time in the focus groups of his toy company) are gaping chasms that the characters can't possibly climb their way out of. Edward's a lost cause, obviously (he also announces the contract with the French company at the holiday party before they even have anything in writing), but even Ella is kind of a mess. Her plans for expanding the company include, and I quote, "more staff, expanded marketing, and loans." I'm no Business Boy myself, but you might think that the best business plans would avoid one having to owe money to people.

But beyond picking apart their business acumen, the characters have almost nothing to offer in terms of entertainment. Marianne exists only to provide easily clearable conflict hurdles, rather than participate in the romance other than a background flirtation with Brandon. And speaking of Brandon, he's stripped of absolutely every element of his character on the page. He's not even been given the gift of a different character from the novel's personality like Ella, so he phases through the movie like a ghost, making absolutely no mark.

It's not unpleasant to watch at any time, but Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen is completely comatose. If you're home with the flu and don't have the capacity to focus while slipping in and out of a fever haze, then this might be the perfect fit for your needs, but beyond that I'd recommend literally any other Hallmark Austen movie, and that's not something I say lightly, because most of them are quite dreadful.

...Merry Christmas!

TL;DR: Sense, Sensibility, & Snowmen is as bland as Hallmark gets, throwing a hideously bad Austen adaptation on top of it.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1241
Other Films Based on Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility (Lee, 1995)
Kandukondain Kandukondain (Menon, 2000)
Material Girls (Coolidge, 2006)
From Prada to Nada (Gracia, 2011)
Scents and Sensibility (Brough, 2011)
Sense, Sensibility, & Snowmen (Winning, 2019)

Reviewing Jane: I Sincerely Hope Your Christmas May Abound In The Gaieties Which The Season Generally Brings…

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas edition!

Year: 2018

Director: Don McBrearty

Cast: Lacey Chabert, Brendan Penny, Sherry Miller 

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! Its continues to be that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! This one is also based on Pride and Prejudice because it's the only novel anybody at the network or in the audience has ever read, apparently. 

 Also, I hope you like this hat, because you're going to be seeing a lot more of it.

I sure hope you weren't using this movie as an excuse not to do your reading for senior year English, because this movie is about as based on Pride and Prejudice as a Three Musketeers bar. Essentially the only elements salvaged from the wreckage of Austen's masterpiece are the character names and... yeah, no, that's it. In a saucy twist, our lead is Darcy Fitzwilliam (Lacey Chabert, a girl!), a high stakes stock market person in New York. She has been so hardened by her big city lifestyle that when she offers to open an investment portfolio for the guy who runs the coffee cart on the sidewalk even though he only has like five cents that she insists she pay for the coffee he offers her for free. Cruel witch! Oh, and she has a big client named Mark Spencer (Paulino Nunes), which is not an Austen name, but it is a British department store so shoutout to screenwriter Nina Weinman having herself some fun.

Anyway, she returns to her hometown of Pemberley, Ohio the week before Christmas to help her mom (Sherry Miller) plan the annual Pemberly League Holiday Auction. It turns out that the caterer her mom just hired is none other than her high school debate rival Luke Bennett (Brendan Penny), and they're going to be working very closely together over the next couple days. They instantly ruffle each other's feathers (She is nice and he is kind! They're too different, it will never work!), but eventually they fall in love or whatever. Shocking. Also the only person of color with a major role is Darcy's work partner Austin (Robinne Fanfair, and what a terrific name that is), a conniving jerk who wants to shove her out in the cold while she's on vacation.

Little does she know, out in the cold is exactly where Darcy needs to be right about now.

Well, this movie certainly is a Hallmark movie. It opens jingle bells a-blazing over a city skyline, the lead must move from the city to a small town and never return, and all flat surfaces in the background have every square inch cross-hatched with Christmas lights and tinsel. There's literally a shot reverse-shot conversation in a single small office and there's a fully decked-out Christmas tree in the background of both shots. That's two discrete trees in two discrete corners of one office large enough to fit one person. God, I love Christmas movies.

Hallmark is so nervous about ruining your holiday cheer that they carefully avoid any conflict more potent than a light breeze. There's a love triangle so empty I literally didn't even include the second dude in my plot synopsis, and beyond that it's just about two overly nice people in a town full of sickeningly nice people slowly realizing they're meant to be together. 

For all the sweet this movie has to offer, there is a bit of tartness present that I'm highly pleased about. Sherry Miller swoops about this film like a grand dame, giving a "curt older woman" performance that Aunt Violet in Marrying Mr. Darcy could only aspire to in her wildest Xanax daydreams. There's a blissfully camp conversation she has with Darcy where she goes from informing her that the Christmas tree designer has cancelled to making grand accusations about her business acumen in three seconds flat. And whether it be that Luke's turkey pot pie (gross) is the "best meal she's ever had" or that she'll never stop by that store again, every choice she makes is final. her snappy one-liners are full of piss and vinegar and she is a true delight whenever she tromps onscreen.

There's my angel, second from the right. (This is the only promotional photo I could find that wasn't Lacey Chabert and Brendan Penny making moon eyes at each other.)

Beyond that, what more could there possibly be to say? This is a Hallmark movie! The script is full of delightful snippets of dialogue want to appeal to octogenarians (Luke compares the gossip in a small town to "the Information Superhighway"), Darcy is obsessed with roasted chestnuts with a force no human being has ever been able to muster in human history, and the ways they paper over the gaping plot holes are hilarious and sometimes even illegal (they force a children's choir to be the waitstaff at the event when the catering company falls through at the last minute).

It's like settling into a delightful warm bath of Christmas-flavored camp. You know exactly where every scene is going so there's no need to worry, and it's never going to descend to the level of true crap because you're in the capable hands of Lacey Chabert. She's not terrific, but the movie isn't asking her to be. She's just one cog in the giant Hallmark machine, but she makes it seem like she's having a great time doing it all. And that's no small feat considering she's already been in half a dozen of these Hallmark movies (and that's just counting the Christmas-themed ones). It's all surface and no substance, but think of it like a Christmas ornament. It's completely empty on the inside, but it sure makes it feel like the season.

TL;DR: Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe has less conflict than a gingerbread cookie, but it's pleasant to bask in.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1006
Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steer, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (McBrearty, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Reviewing Jane: We Have Had A Very Dull Christmas

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen: Christmas Edition!

Year: 2018

Director: Colin Theys

Cast: Jessica Lowndes, Michael Rady, Cole Gleason

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

Merry Christmas Eve Eve, everyone! It's that very special time of year when Hallmark's endless shitty Jane Austen adaptations collide with Hallmark's even more endless shitty Christmas movies! I don't actually have the Hallmark channel, because what person under the age of 45 does? Or even pays for TV in the first place? Anyway, that's why this review has come a year late, because the network has finally released their 2018 projects upon an unsuspecting public. 

And what a miserable wait it was! A whole year without white people standing in front of Christmas trees! Imagine!

In Christmas at Pemberley Manor, we find one Elizabeth Bennett (Jessica Lowndes) in that oh-so Austenian profession of being a Big Business Party Planner. She's a party planner because all Hallmark heroines are party planners, but her work also takes place in a New York high rise with a cruel corporate boss, Caroline Bingley (Elaine Hendrix), because she needs a reason to never want to go back to the city. 

She's been hired for her first solo party planning gig by college friend George (Cole Gleason), the mayor of the town of Lambton who is so desperately, transparently in love with her that the fact she doesn't notice leads me to question that she might be a full-tilt sociopath. When the town square where they're planning a festival literally collapses into a sinkhole (if you thought they would have the budget to show a sinkhole, you are sorely mistaken), they must relocate to the only other viable spot in town: Pemberley Manor. Unfortunately the owner, William Darcy (Michael Rady), is resistant to the idea because he's only in town to sell the property and doesn't want people tromping all over the yard.

Elizabeth uses her pride in her work to melt his prejudice against the Christmas spirit and buy a lot of decorations with his credit card. He falls in love with her anyway, and the literal actual Santa may or may not show up at some point.

Also it's illegal in the Hallmark Holiday Extended Universe not to make Christmas cookies at least once.

By far the most interesting thing about Christmas at Pemberley Manor is the fact that the leading man isn't clean shaven to within a centimeter of his life. They let Darcy be a little scruffy, which actually visually accents his character in a way that allows him to have a character to the slightest degree, which is all one can hope for in one of these movies. This actually goes a long way (only on the very long sliding scale by which we're forced to measure Hallmark movies) in making him "edgy," because their prickly relationship in the beginning has literally nothing else to stand on other than him being a little bit of a Grinch. He's clearly already in love with her from square one, and the reason she finds him a bit of a pill at first is based on an almost willful misunderstanding, because one of these movies wouldn't dare have a male lead actually be mean to anyone ever.

Hallmark's aversion to romantic conflict at least gives way to Hallmark's hatred of big business, so there's a tiny scrap of tension somewhere in the movie. Mind you, it makes less than no sense, but isn't that what we're here for? Eventually after the press takes a picture of Darcy and Elizabeth together and puts a headline about him donating money to the town festival on the front page, Caroline comes to town to take over the event because it's bad for her image that an employee is succeeding apparently. It's completely wild plotting, but it is at least plotting, and I've learned not to look down my nose at an actual narrative in one of these things.

And hey, this plot point is just one nestled in a garden of insipid blooms waiting to be plucked and mocked. Here's George, who must have had his spine removed at an early age because he literally never tells Elizabeth how he feels and contents himself to a life of solitude! There's the multiple shopping scenes where sometimes "full" bags get shoved in the trunk upside-down! Here's the moment where Darcy's assistant tells him he has an email and hands him a printout! If there's anything better than Hallmark's continued refusal to learn how modern technology works, it's... well, it's that the literal Santa Claus is in this movie, but I won't spoil how. 

Nor will I need to if you've seen even the first five seconds of the movie.

Christmas at Pemberley Manor can actually be a joy to hang out with sometimes. It has its humorous moments (they joke about hanging twinkle lights on the sinkhole and it's the funniest any Hallmark movie has ever been), its aesthetically pleasing moments (mainly just every coat worn by any character), and its irresistibly daffy ones ("It's Christmas! What better time for a Christmas miracle?"). However, there are some things that sink this film like a stone.

First, the leads have absolutely no chemistry. That kind of comes with the territory in these hellishly chaste romances where the leads kiss exactly once immediately before the credits roll, but it's especially difficult because Jessica Lowndes makes absolutely zero effort not to make her Elizabeth come off as an irritating mess. Then, there's the fact that throwing a bunch of Austen-y names ("The Mansfield Press is here to interview you!") doesn't automatically lend a story gravitas.

But I think the most telling thing about the movie is that it hangs its entire script on this one line, repeated over and over again by several different characters: "The things we love are never far away." Does that mean anything to you? It sure doesn't for me, and the movie seems to think it's very profound. The fact that this line is something the movie seems to be proud of is indicative of how rotten the very foundations of this film truly are. It's fun to poke fun at, but beyond that it offers absolutely nothing of substance. And the romantic interludes which form 75% of the entire running time are exhausting and tedious to watch. If you're looking for Christmas romance, look further than Christmas at Pemberley.

TL;DR: Christmas at Pemberley Manor is cheerily dumb, but not interesting enough to ever consider a rewatch.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1102

Other Films Based On Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Popcorn Kernels: A Christmas Double Feature

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate it! In honor of the holiday, and the endless terrible movie options it provides, today I'm doling out some mini-reviews for two of Netflix's attempts to snatch the Hallmark Channel's weave.


A Christmas Prince

Year: 2017

Director: Alex Zamm

Cast: Rose McIver, Ben Lamb, Alice Krige

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A plucky journalist masquerades as a tutor to gain access to the royal palace of Aldovia in the days leading to the coronation of its playboy prince. She wants a scoop, but she might just find a heaping helping of love.

There are certain films that inspire me to hop to it and start writing. My mixed-but-positive review of The Greatest Showman just poured out of me, because I had a lot to say as I parsed out what exactly my feelings were. It's even easier to write a negative review trashing a film like, say, any Saw movie. Then there's A Christmas Prince, which makes writing a review feel like squeezing molasses out of a pinhole.  It's so effortfully bland that it's no fun to talk about, and it's even less fun to watch.

Sure, there are some solid bad-good moments, like the poorly thought-out set design (a cover photo in the background of the magazine publishing office has a headline that just reads "Pop Singer") or the fact that this is set in the fictional land of Aldovia, which is presumably in Eastern Europe given its small size and disproportionate orphan population, but every character just has a British accent because we're not really pretending that this isn't Prince Harry fan fiction.

But otherwise, this is listlessly predictable drivel that even Jane Austen would judge as being too chaste for her liking. Does the girl get the Prince? I mean, yeah. Duh. Is the lead character clumsy in a way that's supposed to make her flawed enough to be believable, but also not enough that we will notice when it's totally dropped midway through act 2? Hell yes! Are there stakes present within a hundred mile radius? Unfortunately not. A Christmas Prince has been getting a lot of buzz due to this notorious Tweet from Netflix, but really those viral marketing geniuses should have turned their sights toward that other scrap of streaming holiday fare...

Rating: 3/10

Christmas Inheritance

Year: 2017

Director: Ernie Barbarash

Cast: Eliza Taylor, Jake Lacy, Andie MacDowell 

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The heiress of a Christmas gift company (?) must fulfill her father's annual tradition with his business partner, delivering him a Christmas letter incognito in the small town of Snow Falls, in order to prove her worthiness at taking over the company. While she's trapped by a snowstorm, she learns the true meaning of Christmas giving from the small town hicks she is forced to spend time with.

Do you feel that spray? That's the water A Christmas Prince is being blown out of. Christmas Inheritance is everything I was looking for from a terrible Hallmark Christmas spectacular. For one thing, the cast is infinitely better, featuring a couple people I've actually heard of. Jake Lacy for one, who was engineered in a lab to be the perfect bland white love interest and has actually been in real movies (Obvious Child, How to Be Single, Miss Sloane, Carol). The other being Andie MacDowell, who was last seen being a deliciously campy cougar in Magic Mike XXL, and who delivers what would be called an extended cameo if she wasn't in so damn much of the movie.

Toss them into a Canadian tax shelter helmed by the writer of Cube 2: Hypercube, and you've got yourself a recipe for something pretty special. This is exactly what I was imagining when we sat down to watch A Christmas Prince: a workplace that's weirdly specific and Christmas related, a non-threatening small town love interest with an ice sculpting habit and an ex-wife (proving he's marriage material and giving him a wounded, sensitive heart in one fell swoop), and an infinitely contrived plot (there's no reason for the main character to be incognito except to add a wrinkle right when it seems impossibly obvious that they should end up together, and the importance the entire town places on this Christmas Letter tradition is frankly mystifying).

There is such a plethora of bad-good fun to be had here, the best example being the magically elastic size of this small town (Snow Falls is so small they have no cell service and only one taxi, but it's big enough to need a taxi, but also that taxi is run by the guy who manages the hotel, and there's only one diner that's the central spot in town, except there's also a huge bar and grill where an important leg of the love triangle takes place, and there's only one cop and one homeless person, but there's also a huge Apple store, and I'm just so confused). But I also had a great time with the Mickey Mouse saxophone score that follows every emotion like a curious little brother, the constant bizarre dialogue about the true meaning of Christmas, and just every contrived scrap of this plot, which doesn't feel overlong somehow even though it lasts a good ten minutes longer than any TV movie has any right to be.

There's just one thing that sinks the movie like a stone. The main character has a rude, businessman fiancé who we're not supposed to be too terribly cut up about her leaving. This is all par for the course, but that fiancé is one of only two black men in the movie, and the theme of a city woman finding joy in the fundamentals of life does involve her leaving an interracial relationship to return to a Pillsbury Doughboy of a man in a small town filled with almost exclusively white people. I'm going to optimistically assume that this was a hideously misguided attempt at showcasing diversity in casting instead of a conscious political move, but that's pretty disgusting in today's political climate. So... that happened. For me, it was just another element of its campy, clueless fundamentalism, but I'm not really the right person to dig into exactly how damaging this is. It just needed to be mentioned before we close out.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with Christmas Inheritance. It provided me exactly what I wanted: a glimpse into the fantasies of the type of people who watch and make these movies, and as a psychological portrait of a world I have no part of, it was extremely delightful.

Rating: 6/10

Now, just for fun, a list of things that both films have exactly in common:

• Opening credits featuring a jaunty Christmas tune over stock footage of New York City
• A meet-cute involving a taxi
• A Plucky Woman finding True Love while traveling for work
• The Plucky Woman masquerading as somebody else
• That same Plucky Woman proving how relatable she is by clumsily tripping into half a dozen priceless objects
• The Plucky Woman's mother has passed away, which she reveals to the Man at a key emotional moment
• A walk in the snow leads to the discovery of a secret about the Man's beautiful soul
• A hometown diner run by a family member
• The tabloids' reports on debauchery are just grotesquely exaggerated accounts of things like doing cartwheels or having snowball fights with orphans
• Fatherly advice from a dude who's acting really hard
• Stakes so low they're actually subterranean
• Exactly one kiss

Word Count: 1233

Reviews In This Series

A Christmas Prince (Zamm, 2017)

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (Schultz, 2018)

Popcorn Kernels: Nobody Puts Baby Jesus In A Corner

It turns out, if you’re secular or just religious with a good sense of humor, there’s nothing more hilarious during the holiday season than evangelical Christmas movies. Here’s hoping you have a merry Christmas if you celebrate it. My gift to you is two of such Christian cinematic delights.

[EN: It’s almost impossible to give legible scores to good-bad movies of this magnitude, so bear with me. Things are about to go a little haywire.]

Wish for Christmas

Year: 2016

Director: John K. D. Graham

Cast: Joey Lawrence, Leigh-Allyn Baker, Anna Fricks

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

When a young girl’s selfish wish for her parents not to believe in God comes true, she must learn the true meaning of Christmas to return things to normal.

You gotta love Christian movies where God actively grants wishes, touting evangelical values while pretty much defying established doctrine. But hey, I’m not a theological scholar, so I’m probably not qualified to make these judgment calls. Maybe God is a genie. But it just seems like the wrong foot to start off on when you’re trying to promote traditional beliefs and values. Although, all the feet that follow the start are also wrong, so maybe I shouldn’t get hung up on just the first one.

Frankly, Wish for Christmas is hilarious, presenting a gloriously overwrought false dichotomy. If you’re not a conservative Christian who balks when a girl shows her shoulders, that mean’s you’re a misanthropic money-grubbing snake who convinces your daughter to get a belly ring and joins the infantry of the War on Christmas by ceaselessly chanting “Happy holidays!” (I’ll never understand why acknowledging that the likes of Hanukkah exist is a bad thing – Christmas is still included in there, folks!). Oh, and you’ll become so cruel and business-minded at your law office that you’ll fire your terrible employee who sent legal documents to the opposition and had a nervous breakdown when you asked her to do two things at once! The alternative being… giving her a trophy and a plate of cookies?

The fun thing about these movies is that they usually paint non-Christians with a monstrous brush, but they accidentally depict actual Christians as total chumps. Neither of those things are true, but you gotta love that wholehearted dedication to failing at an argument.

But don’t worry, Wish for Christmas fails just as epically at being a movie. Of course there’s an abortive arc at the center of the film, where the teenager seems to have already learned her lesson the second her wish is granted. And a panoply of Wise Old Gurus who teach her lessons that you halfway expect to vanish into thin air when you turn around.

But we already know the script is riddled with flaws. What I would really like to discuss is the massive incompetence in the rest of its construction, which gives it an air of hilarious bad movie grace I haven’t seen in a good long while. The extras are just bananas at all times (there are conspicuously never enough to fill any given scene, but they always seem mismatched to their actual environment e. g. church is filled with kids but a barn dance is populated by elderly retirees), the girls attend what might be the worst party ever recorded and have a blast, and the acting is pretty universally atrocious.

And the only thing that might be considered by any stretch of the imagination “good” if only because it’s truly inexplicable are the handful of scenes where Joey Lawrence and Leigh-Allyn Baker (as the afflicted parents) have a chance to be alone together, spouting some ludicrous dialogue but selling it so hard by maintaining a breezy, pleasant comic chemistry. The inexplicable script combined with their lived-in relationship is frankly exquisite. It’s a real blast to pick apart. Even though I didn’t love it as wholeheartedly as a Troll 2 or The Room, it’s a lovely experience to sit down with a couple friends and riff all over Wish for Christmas. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5/10

Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas

Year: 2014

Director: Darren Doane

Cast: Kirk Cameron, Darren Doane, Bridgette Cameron

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Kirk Cameron has an earnest conversation with his brother-in-law Christian, who is feeling down about the materialism of Christmas.

There could hardly be a more common plot structure in evangelical fiction. A transparent Straw Man is being a Grinch and must be taught the true meaning of Christmas. But this is Kirk Cameron we’re talking about, and he’s deathly allergic to doing things by the book. So, to put a festive spin on Saving Christmas, apparently he slammed back a pint of ayahuasca, grit his teeth, and set about making this evangelical Christmas film a pro-materialism polemic.

Words cannot describe how ludicrous – perhaps actively blasphemous – Saving Christmas is in its pseudo-religious justification for all the trappings of an upper-middle class Yuletide celebration: the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, and the greedy unwrapping of mile-high stacks of presents. “B-But, Wikipedia told me those are Pagan rituals!” yelps the Straw Man, mouth a-sputter, snot glistening from his heretic nose. He’s right, by the way, and the movie fails to realize how much more evidence and clarity they give to his argument, hoping they can bury it under several kilotons of Robin Williams-style vamping (incidentally, this character is played by the film’s writer-director, and he gives himself license to get preternaturally unhinged).

So, after some excruciating anti-comedy involving Token Black Friend Diondre babbling for approximately 9 hours about office politics at a job we’re unaware of that never get resolved and a certain keenness to stay on Kirk Cameron’s face as he reacts for a full minute to unfunny punchlines, further deflating any microscopic threat of genuine entertainment, Kirk and Christian sit down in a car for their film-long talk. Kirk’s explanations are presented via lifeless static shots that fade out, then back in on themselves. It wouldn’t get a passing grade in an elementary school documentary class.

Frankly, this interminable section would be utterly miserable if it weren’t for two things: 1) These explanations are absurd, desperately grasping at straws (“Um… swaddling cloths are like… parallels to the resurrection? So we need nativity snowglobes, which I feel the need to explain for some reason, even though they’re the only explicitly religious thing in the whole movie. And the Bible had trees, ergo Christmas trees. And Adam was the first Adam so Jesus was the last Adam and.. Wait, what was I talking about?” Your brain just loses its grip halfway through any monologue. It’s like listening to Kellyanne Conway speak), and 2) stuff gets cray, and eventually a dubstep Saint Nick kicks the sh*t out of a dude in a bar.

Then the film ends with an extended hip hop dance number, because why the hell not? Saving Christmas is a holiday treat, with every part acting in conjunction with the others to create a truly execrable entry in the cinematic canon. The acting is atrocious (Kirk Cameron is terrible, flapping his hands around like he’s making up his own interpretive dance about his dialogue, but he’s a damn sight better than the mawkish Darren Doane or his own sister Brdgette Cameron, who makes the same sour, disdainful face for ten straight minutes, slowly rotating it so we can see every possible angle), the script is a nightmare (aside from the D-level arguments, it’s peppered with “dudes” and “bros” in a bizarre attempt to humanize the characters), and the cinematography is either tripod static or caffeinated squirrel shaky, at one point shifting focus in camera between people in the background and foreground having a conversation, one of my favorite hallmarks of trash cinema. 

Frankly, it’s a delight. To paraphrase Saving Christmas itself (in a line describing the original Saint Nicholas), this is a bad, bad movie. Bad in the good way.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1326

Christmas In July: Slay Bells Ring, Are You Listening?

Year: 2012

Director: Steven C. Miller

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Jaime King, Donal Logue

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Yeah, they remade Silent Night, Deadly Night. It’s one that kind of slipped through the cracks, late to the remake party in 2012. Although the retitled Silent Night is a loose remake if there ever was one (and boy have there been a few), it shares enough elements with the original (like a Santa killer punishing the naughty, which some of the sequels couldn’t even manage, as well as an antler-based kill, a child gifted with a bloody weapon, etc.) that it at least proves that the original was on its mind, as opposed to the Sex Kitten romps of Prom Night and Sorority Row. That’s by far the best thing I can say about it, because – keeping in tone with the rest of the franchise – it kinda really sucks.

I’m so glad I’m finished with these garbage fires they called movies.

In Silent Night, Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (Jaime King) is forced to work on Christmas Eve when her coworker fails to show up. A line is dropped about this being her first Christmas without her husband, and by “dropped” I mean “hurled off a cliff” because this is literally never mentioned again. Together, she and Sheriff Cooper (Malcolm McDowell, essentially reprising his role as the scenery-masticating Dr. Loomis in Rob Zombie’s Halloween) discover that a killer dressed as Santa Claus has been rampaging through their little town of Cryer, Wisconsin punishing the naughty. This being a slasher movie (a subgenre we finally return to after two hyperbolically bizarre detours), Cooper elects not to call the FBI and handle the threat on his own.

Their search is hampered by a parade in which nearly every able-bodied adult man in town is asked to don a Santa suit, but they narrow down the suspects to a group of bad Santas that would make Fred Claus proud, including a wandering vagrant and a local coke dealer.

You’d think they’d find the killer with ease, considering he’s wearing giant steampunk goggles, but you would be wrong.

To be fair, Silent Night has a lot in common with SNDN1. It’s just as mean-spirited and poorly acted, but it lacks that veneer of 80’s charm that makes the original an enduring mainstay of the slasher genre. While SNDN featured a few too many rape scenes for my taste, it was a loopy, idiosyncratic film that told a strangely detailed, unwittingly compelling story about the societal ills that molded our apple-cheeked Santa killer. Silent Night just pulls a reverse Rob Zombie, stripping away the villain’s backstory and filling in that extra run time with an extra helping of nasty-minded sleaze.

There’s just something deeply depressing about watching a horde of wooden, amateur hour performers get chopped up in 2012 rather than 1984. It might just be the buffer of time making the legwarmered, permed 80’s seem a couple degrees askew from reality, but I think I can blame two movies in particular: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 for igniting the remake boom, and Scream for rendering it basically impossible to make a straightforward slasher ever again. By virtue of being a remake, a movie openly challenges the original film with the unspoken claim that it will either be better or at least satisfyingly different. When it is neither, it doubles down on disappointment. And Silent Night is neither in a spectacularly unpleasant way.

This movie is just plain vicious. In addition to being callously exploitative (a topless woman runs around for what feels like hours before being fed into a wood chipper; while slasher movies are best known for boobs and blood, titillation and mutilation are actually pretty rarely in the same frame save for the sleazier entries – The Prowler, Bloody Moon, etc.), it’s horribly misguided.

Horror films always need to walk on eggshells when it comes to killing a child, and while certain slashers have succeeded (SNDN among them), the death of a minor here is despicably prolonged, involving electrocuting her with a cattle prod until she stars foaming at the mouth before finishing her off. It is at this point where the over-the-top violence of Silent Night crosses the line. Hell, it throws a tarp over the line hoping you won’t notice, and dashes right on over it. Its obscene, boundary-free eagerness for butchery is vaguely sickening.

And I’m someone who watched Maniac without batting an eye.

I will, however, give Silent Night points for its occasional doses of pure, inexplicable lunacy.  There’s certainly a whiff of bad-good charm around Malcolm McDowell’s flagrant disinterest in the project, but by far my favorite scene belongs to the pre-slaughtered 13-year-old- girl and her mom. The spoiled little brat knocks her mother’s heart medication to the floor (!) and demands “F**k church! I want to go to the mall!” instantly becoming the most compellingly unlikeable child this side of Veruca Salt. She’s awesome. And then of course we have a whole scene lit with red and green emergency lights like it’s a Saw holiday special, and then there’s the fact that every time Jaime King walks through her impossibly idyllic small town, greeting everyone she sees and smiling at the whirl of Christmas activity, you expect her to burst into song à la Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

As you well know, I am a sucker for crazy camp, so this goes a long way toward helping me survive the dismal disarray of the rest of the film. And to be fair, there is some incredible gore that would be a real treat if Silent Night hadn’t poisoned the well by frontloading its most distasteful killings. A gushing leg wound and a head split by an axe are two particularly convincing Grand Guignol effects of the highest order.

The movie would at least be a passable horror roller coaster if it weren’t for the out-of-control tone that nose dives into torture porny grunge every chance it gets. Or the story that aimlessly wanders around, sloughing off subplots like a snake shedding its skin. Or the anonymous killer performer that lumbers around like a plumber who just soiled his pants. Ugh, what a waste. I’m terribly disappointed to end our Christmas in July segment like this, but Silent Night is just another abortive holiday thriller with enough potential energy to keep me on the hook, but not enough ambition and drive to do anything with it.

TL;DR: Silent Night is a thoroughly unpleasant, mean-spirited watch.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1094
Reviews In This Series
Silent Night, Deadly Night (Sellier Jr., 1984)
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (Harry, 1987)
Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (Hellman, 1989)
Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation (Yuzna, 1990)
Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker (Kitrosser, 1991)
Silent Night (Miller, 2012)

Christmas In July: Round Yon Victim Mother And Child

Year: 1991

Director: Martin Kitrosser

Cast: William Thorne, Jane Higginson, Van Quattro

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As we continue our July event of pretending that it’s not so hot outside that your steak cooks itself while you’re walking home from the store, we also reach a very important point in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise: the end. We're not finished -we still have the remake to look forward to with a mixture of vague optimism and extreme suspicion - but the contiguous franchise ends here in 1991 with Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker, only 7 years after the original controversial flick hit theaters. 

To quickly recap, Part IV: Initiation obliterated the series’ already senile continuity by presenting a story with no killer Santa that wasn’t even obviously set on Christmas. But it hardly matters, because the series hasn’t had a rating above the 5/10 line since Part 2, and that one was most just recut footage of the much better original. We’re barely looking at a Sorority House Massacre quality average.

Although The Toy Maker is – pretty predictably – a stinker, it does feel a little more like a traditional Silent Night, Deadly Night film. The plot actually centers on Christmas and holiday-related activities, there’s a clip from the previous movie haphazardly sandwiched in (this time, it’s Silent Night, Deadly Night-ception as the TV plays the clip from Part 4 where Clint Howard is watching a clip from Part 3 – stop the world, I wanna get off), and the talent both behind and in front of the camera is startlingly overqualified.

No, I’m not talking about Clint Howard and Neith Hunter, who cameo as characters with the same names as their Part 4 counterparts, as if anyone was actually enough of a fan of that movie to be excited. I’m talking director Martin Kitrosser, Quentin Tarantino’s go-to script supervisor. I’m talking effects shaman Screaming Mad George, back for a second helping. I’m talking f**king Mickey goddamn Rooney!

What is even happening at this point?

So, the plot, shall we? Young Derek (William Thorne) loses his father when a wrapped present that arrives on the stoop turns out to be an evil killer toy, this franchise’s answer to the popularity of Puptpermaster, but accomplished more cheaply (which is saying something). He is traumatized and goes mute, while his mother Sarah (Jane Higginson) attempts to deal with her grief and coax him into talking with various Christmas-related surprises, unaware of how her husband actually died.

Then there’s the roughly 900 splinter plots birthed from their story. Noah (Tracy Fraim) is a department store Santa who we see tinkering with nefarious Christmas goodies in his motel room, goodies that can be seen terrorizing neighborhood children. He is also snooping on the local toy store, Petto’s. That name is supposed to be a pun on the name “Gepetto,” but I only ever heard it as “Pedo’s,” which was mildly alarming. He owner of the shop is Joe Petto (why, Mickey Rooney, why?), a friend of Sarah’s. He has a teen son named Pino (Brian Bremer of Pumpkinhead), who never does anything explicitly bad, but always seems to lurk creepily around the edges of the frame, talking in a nasal whine like he’s Buster Bluth or something.

But seriously, Mickey Rooney is in this. I’m not playing around here.

The one truly valuable thing about SNDN 5 is that it’s quite firmly established in the 90’s (Derek’s best friend dresses like he got oversized hand-me-downs from his older brother. And his older brother is Shaq.), but it still manages to capture the lunatic 80’s high concept spirit of films like Puppetmaster or Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It’s a rare thing to find a film so genuine and sincere in the era of waning slasher rip-offs, angsty vampires, and winking post-Scream know-it-alls, so let’s take a moment to appreciate that.

OK, moment over. This movie sucks. It’s a cheap direct-to-video crock that overpromises and underdelivers. Its weird affinity to Part 4 (cemented by some shared cast and crew) just means that they’re reheating the leftovers, and everything good about that dish was already pretty bland. Part 5 continues that film’s theme of slathering screeching music over totally banal sequences in the hopes that you might be too distracted by a date (or these days, a phone) to notice that nothing remotely scary is actually happening. This movie is another thin, useless lump carelessly slapped together by everyone but Screaming Mad George.

And he really must have been screaming mad, because he’s given fart-all to do here. Although his effects are still the best part of the movie, they look plasticky and cheap, through no fault of their own. This is what happens when you’re asked to bring kids’ toys to life. It’s a hazard of the job (although there’s no excuse for a shoddy, halfhearted, larger piece that shows up in the third act). 

There’s at least a shred of creativity here (an evil Santa doll with a revolving head that plays Jingle Bells until it switches to a fanged face and blares a funeral march is by far my favorite thing in the movie), but these scenes are far more slashery than the MPAA-deceiving body horror of Part 4, and as such have the bajeezus cut out of them. Every last drop of blood is sponged from this movie, so as an effects showcase there’s no way these crummy dime store monstrosities can hold a Citronella candle to the dripping insect nightmare appendages that torture Neith Hunter in Initiation.

But her performance is back to torture us, so that’s cool, I guess.

The performances are more nondescript than Part 4, which I suppose makes them better, and Mickey Rooney at least instills an endearing warmth into the film in his opening scene (he never manages to shed his palpable discomfort when he’s asked to be sinister in any way, shape, or form). But it’s not like anybody could have performed this dialogue well. Sarah and a nurse share a Room-esque greeting, two teens are forced through a sausage grinder of unpronounceable slang, and the material crumbles form everyone’s mouths like mothballs.

The one thing I can cling to is that, especially in the third act, things get real weird in an invigorating burst of camp. The film inexplicably careens into soap opera melodrama and psychosexual absurdism, dragging its million disparate plot points into a miasma of aborted twists, fascinating sex scenes that defy physics and logic, and a charming lack of self-awareness. This reaches a shrieking crescendo with a reveal that can be predicted from the first frame of the film, yet is carried out in the most batsh*t way imaginable. And then the film abruptly ends at an arbitrary point, just like last time.

[HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILERS: I didn’t want to spoil any of the delicious, gooey weirdness on tap here, but screw it. Who’s ever gonna watch this film anyway? This movie ends with a sitcom-style warm smile when Derek asks who the strange man who saved their lives is. This man is his real father, a reveal treated with the bizarrely sincere under-reaction of “kids say the darndest things, don’t they?”]

Anyway, Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker isn’t the worst of the bunch, but that’s hardly cause for celebration. This movie can’t match the dizzy heights of Part 4, and that one was a steaming turd. It’s no wonder that after this, the franchise didn’t see the light of day until 2012.

TL;DR: Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker is at least a return to Christmas-themed horror, but is a weak swing and a major miss for this ancient franchise.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1296
Reviews In This Series
Silent Night, Deadly Night (Sellier Jr., 1984)
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (Harry, 1986)
Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (Hellman, 1989)
Silent Night, Deadly Night IV: Initiation (Yuzna, 1990)
Silent Night, Deadly Night V: The Toy Maker (Kitrosser, 1991
Silent Night (Miller, 2012)