Santa's Slay (2005)

Directed by:
David Steiman

According to "The Book of Claus" there have only been two immaculate conceptions in the history of man. The first and most famous, of course, was God planting his seed in the Virgin Mary, resulting in the birth of Jesus Christ. But did you know that Satan simultaneously impregnated an unsullied lass named Erica, who then gave birth to her own evil son the same day? And that son was named... Santa! Do you now resent your parents for lying to you all these years? Santa is not, in fact, a jolly, generous, hard-working, magical man who spends all year at the North Pole with his elves making sure all good girls and boys will be getting gifts on Christmas morning. He's actually a demon who gets his jollies by slaughtering everyone he comes into contact with. In the days of old, Santa used to spend Christmas on a joyful murderous rampage. That day became known as "The Day of Slayings." But the demon has long been out of commission thanks to him losing a bet to an elderly angel a millennium ago. In the interim, Christianity spread, the myth of a good Santa was devised and the truth was long buried... but the thousand years are now up and Santa's ready to make up for lost time. And that's the premise for which this mean-spirited holiday horror comedy hopes to warp the true meaning of Christmas for our amusement.

Cast in the lead role as the evil, murderous Santa is big guy Bill Goldberg, who's best known as a professional wrestler. Now I don't watch nor do I enjoy professional wrestling, but it hasn't been lost on me that a good number of wrestlers end up starring in horror films for one reason or another. Perhaps it has to do with their intimidating size, but I think for the most part it's because being a pro wrestler actually requires a lot of acting anyway, so why not? Tor Johnson (best known for his Ed Wood film appearances) and masked grappler Santo (star of dozens of genre films in Mexico starting in the late 50s) are early examples of this phenomenon. After them we got Jesse "The Body" Ventura in Predator (1987), "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's They Live (1988) and the upcoming Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies (2013), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in The Mummy Returns (2003) and Doom (2005), "Diamond" Dallas Page in The Devil's Rejects (2005) and Snoop Dog's Hood of Horror (2006), Glenn "Kane" Jacobs in See No Evil (2006), Chris Jericho in Albino Farm (2009) and the list goes on. Now I personally don't mind these guys being cast when they can act; sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. Often times, the parts don't even require much acting. This particular role - which basically requires girth, almost constant scowling and little dialogue said through clenched teeth - is actually a pretty good fit for Goldberg and he acquits himself fairly well here.

Things begin with an entire family of rich snobs (played mostly by washed-up former stars) being slaughtered in a variety of ways. Chris Kattan is kicked into a curio cabinet, Rebecca Gayheart is smacked upside the head with a table leg, Fran Drescher gets torched and drown in bowl of eggnog and James Caan gets a turkey leg shoved down his throat. Considering Caan's career has always been pretty strong since The Godfather days (he was just in the family hit Elf (2003) two years before this), it's kind of odd seeing him in an independent B horror flick, but here he is, anyway. The guy must have a sense of humor. The events all take place in the small, wintry village of Hell Township, where Santa runs a cranky old lady off the road with his sled (which is pulled by a huge reindeer... or is that a buffalo?) and uses things like sharpened candy canes and wreaths to make shot work of the cast. He also burns down a strip club after killing nearly everyone inside, slaughters all of the local cops, sticks a Menorah through a Jewish man's neck and does lots of other, shall we say, naughty things. Opposing him are our heroes Nicolas Yuleson (Douglas Smith), a 16-year-old who works at a deli, his spunky co-worker / romantic interest Mary Mackenzie (Emilie de Ravin, who appeared in the Hills Have Eyes remake the following year) and Nicolas's eccentric Grandpa (Robert Culp, who's great here); a reclusive inventor not well liked by the townspeople. Gramps turns out to be a good archangel who's still on Earth to make sure Santa in put out of commission for good, unbeknownst to his grandson.

Stripped down, Santa's Slay is basically just a series of violent comic gags. Some of these don't work at all and you'll be rolling your eyes and groaning at a lot of the one-liners, which are intentionally corny but corny nonetheless. The profanity also seems a little excessive. While I don't mind profanity at all, when nearly everyone's running around saying "Fuck this" and "Fuck that" and you realize the writer thinks this is going to elicit laughs in and of itself, it begins to seem forced and grates on the nerves a bit after awhile. That said, enough genuinely funny moments seep through to overcome the bad. There's plenty of action and bloodshed, the young leads are appealing, the premise is imaginative and amusing and clever directorial touches are sprinkled throughout. My favorite bit by far was a stop-motion animated flashback (which seems inspired by the classic Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer holiday special) to where Santa and the angel face off over a game of curling! Wisely, the running time is just 78 minutes (over 8 minutes of which is credits), so this moves along briskly and doesn't wear out its welcome.

Dave Thomas (playing a hypocritical reverend), Saul Rubinek (deli owner) and Tommy "Tiny" Lister all have small roles, Brett Ratner (who'd previously directed big Hollywood hits like the Rush Hour series and X-Men 3) was one of the many producers and most of the soundtrack consists of rock covers of Christmas classics. It was filmed in Canada on a 4.5 million dollar budget.

Merry Christmas friends! I hope everyone has a wonderful day tomorrow.

★★★

Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d'amore (1983)

... aka: Adam and Eve
... aka: Adam and Eve: The First Love Story
... aka: Adam and Eve vs. Cannibals
... aka: Adam and Eve Versus the Cannibals
... aka: Adamo ed Eva
... aka: Adan y Eva, la primera historia de amor
... aka: Blue Paradise

Directed by:
"Vincent Green" (Enzo Doria)
"John Wilder" (Luigi Russo)

Seeing how Christmas is right around the corner, TV's been flooded with two of the most popular types of shows this time of year: heartwarming, family-friendly holiday specials and religious-themed programming. Since I've already sat through "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" (featuring fine voice work from Mr. Boris Karloff, I might add!) and - my personal favorite - "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," I needed a God flick to make it all complete. After all, my procrastinating ass is really dreading the marathon of last-minute shopping I have to do tomorrow. I could really use some sound moral guidance or else I may start screaming unholy profanities at complete strangers while getting pushed, bumped and standing in hour-long check-out lines. So, what will it be this year? The Greatest Story Ever Told? Nah. The Ten Commandments? No thanks. I've already had to sit through it at least a dozen times. The Passion of the Christ? Not even if you paid me. Adam and Eve Versus the Cannibals? Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Blasphemy, you say? Well, what did you expect? This is The Bloody Pit of Horror, not The 700 Club.

After the creation of the universe (insert stock footage of explosions and volcanoes here), a cocoon rises from beneath the Earth and a bloody, naked, long-haired Adam (Mark Gregory) comes crawling out. He watches a beautiful waterfall, takes a stroll around the Garden of Eden to pet tiger cubs, gets scared by his own reflection in a pond and finally ends up on the beach staring at the horizon longingly. Yes, poor Adam is lonely. He sculpts a woman out of sand, lightning strikes, it starts raining and, as the water washes away his sculpture, Eve (Andrea Goldman) is underneath. Unlike the actor who plays Adam, who looks like the unholy offspring of Fabio and an aborigine, Eve is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned hottie. The two frolic around for what feels like an eternity as a God awful romantic ballad plays on the soundtrack. Any song that chooses to rhyme "sweet caress" and "tenderness" has gone one step too far in violating the upchuck factor if you ask me. And then a sinking feeling begins to fall over me... This is starting to remind me of two movies I absolutely detest: The Blue Lagoon (1981) and Paradise (1982). Both of those stomach-churners were nothing more than thinly disguised excuses for adult audiences to be able ogle underage teenage flesh and pretend like they're watching a "real" movie in the process. This one really doesn't want to make us feel guilty about it by having the religious angle, but it starts out being the same old thinly-disguised smut all the same.

So Little Miss Strategically Placed Hair gets bored, watches a couple of lions humping, is talked into eating the forbidden fruit from an apple tree by a talking python and thus the world gets its first taste of "sin." She and Adam have doggy-style sex and God gets pissed off because apparently it's only OK for large African cats to screw. As a result, the puppet master causes a hellacious wind storm and tries to smash Adam and Eve with a huge, stop-motion boulder Indiana Jones-style. He also levels the entire planet, leaving behind only rocks and sand. Thankfully, from here on out, this thing starts going off in all kinds of bizarre directions. They find a nest with large eggs inside... and then are attacked by a pterodactyl (!!) Adam snaps its neck, rips open its chest with his bare hands and then he and his girl begin eating its raw innards. Not wanting to waste it, Eve creates a fashion forward bikini out of the creature's wings. From there, they encounter a tribe of cannibal ape men, who kidnap them, tie them to poles and take them back to their caves, but a tiger scares them off so Adam and Eve can escape.

After getting into an argument about how to get to the ocean, Adam and Eve part ways. She ends up running across a tribe of peaceful vegetable eaters who paint themselves green, taking a particular liking to one of them (Ángel Alcázar) she dubs "Green Man." The two hit it off, have sex and then Adam stumbles upon them lounging together by his favorite waterfall in their post coital glory. The village of green people is invaded by a slew of pug-nosed mutant cannibal men in huge, puffy orange wigs who start killing and eating everyone. They drag Eve and "Green Man" back to their village, where they kill and eat a naked green woman. Adam saves the day and the three manage to escape into the forest. Torn between her two lovers, Eve chooses Adam, but when he finds out she's knocked up he takes her on "The Maury Show" for a paternity test and discovers she got drunk at a party and slept with 20 other guys and has no clue who the father really is. OK, so that last part didn't really happen... but it might as well as far as this being biblically accurate is concerned.

Bogged down somewhat by numerous icky romantic interludes (and damn if they didn't play "the song" two more bloody times!), this is quite an interesting film otherwise and is actually much-better than either Lagoon or Paradise. The acting is surprisingly decent, the score, costumes, makeup and photography are all good and the various outdoor locations and scenery are superb. This also scores major audacity points for going all gonzo on the bible at a time when it certainly wasn't popular to be doing so. And did I forget to mention this also includes a hilarious fight scene between Green Man and one of the worst man-in-a-bear-suit bear's you'll ever see? Check it out.

★★1/2

Last Bride of Salem (1974) (TV)

... aka: ABC Afternoon Playbreak: 'Last Bride of Salem," The

Directed by:
Tom Donovan

The night before her family's big move, little Kelly (Joni Bick) has a really bad nightmare about a black-robed cult chanting over a potential human sacrifice. A bad omen? Offff course. Dad Matt Clifton (Bradford Dillman), a painter, and mom Jennifer (Lois Nettleton) have decided to move from Boston to tiny Salem Village in New England so that Matt can have some peace and quiet to concentrate on his artwork. And with a name like Salem Village, you may already know what to expect (if some Lovecraftian character names don't also clue you in). They've been set up in a home owned by another artist - the famous Sebastian Mayhew (Paul Harding) - and been allowed to rent it dirt cheap. When they show up, they discover just why it's so affordable. The place is dusty, dirty, dark and well over 200 years old and looks like it hasn't been inhabited in about so long. Well, all except for one upstairs room, which has a fresh coat of white paint, a skylight and modern furniture. The strange out-of-place room appears to have been added on just recently. Across the street is a gloomy old mansion, and it's the same one Kelly had seen in her premonition. Their first night in the home, the lights flicker on and off and Jennifer is startled when the home's stern caretaker Seth Whately (Ed McNamara) and his strange mute son Thomas (Robert Hawkins) wander into her kitchen unannounced.

The next day they're off to church, where they meet some of the locals, including Dr. Hiram Fletcher (Murray Westgate) and his wife Grace (Susan Rubes), and the village's only doctor, Dave Glover (James Douglas), and his wife Rebecca (Patricia Hamilton). Everyone seems nice and friendly, so Jennifer invites them all to dinner. Dave takes it upon himself to then tell all about their home and what had supposedly gone down there. According to local legend, back in 1691, accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire around the village, but the real witches and warlocks actually ran the entire town and the innocents they branded witches and later executed were actually being killed as sacrifices to Satan. A man named Prosper Morgan, who lived in the same farmhouse the Clifton family now occupy, supposedly burned down the witch's house, killing all of the evildoers... except for one. The sole survivor then made a pact with Satan to continue on living until he could destroy Morgan and all of the family bloodline. Being wily, the man decided to let one descendant keep living each generation just so he himself can remain alive.

Kelly's doll turns up missing, Seth peaks in windows, draws an upside down cross on their door and cuts off a lock of Matt's hair while he's sleeping and Thomas keeps trying to unsuccessfully warn the family. Not long after, Jennifer notices changes for the worse in both her husband and daughter. Both have become antisocial, short-tempered, secretive and moody. Kelly's premonitions continue and she stops wanting to do things with her (they think) imaginary friend named "Abehu;" who she claims lives in the woods. Matt becomes immersed in his work, barely leaves his studio and keeps painting the house across the street over and over again. As it turns out, the mansion across the street is occupied by a witch named Elsbeth March (Moya Fenwick), a coven of followers and a young man known only as "The Master" (Rex Hagon); all of whom have dark designs on both Matt and Kelly. Jennifer, with help from the local reverend, must try to get to the bottom of things before it's too late.

This ABC Afternoon Playbreak presentation (which runs just 73 minutes minus commercial breaks) is well acted by the leads and is competently made and plotted within its low-budget limitations. The most fascinating thing about it though is that somehow this meager, completely unknown videotaped TV presentation seems to have influenced Stephen King in his writing of "The Shining." The similarities are actually quite striking. Parents with one small child go to a secluded area so that the father can have peace to concentrate on his work. Matt and Jack Torrance are actually quite alike. Both work in an artistic profession; one's an artist, one's a writer. Both become completely and unhealthily immersed in their work. While Matt paints the same thing over and over again, Jack writes the same sentence over and over again. Both snap at their wives for disrupting their creative flow and both seem to be going crazy, possibly because of some supernatural force. Comparisons can also be drawn between the child characters as both have premonitions and both have imaginary friends; as well as the Jennifer character, who's at first almost annoyingly overly cheerful, just like Wendy Torrance, until she's forced to try to get to the bottom of things. There's certainly enough here to raise eyebrows.

Never released on VHS of DVD, Last Bride (which was a 20th Century Fox production) hasn't even been shown on TV for many, many, many years, and is extremely difficult to find these days. Dillman won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Daytime Drama Special for his work here (the film itself and Nettleton were also nominated). A very young John Candy can be spotted several times as a cult member.

★★1/2