SANTA’S SLAY *** USA 2005 Dir: David Steiman. 78 mins
SANTA’S SLAY aims low in terms of humour – there are characters named Dick, Bush and Caulk (pronounced “Cock”) – but can be forgiven for anything because it opens with one of the great festive horror sequences. The scene occurs pre-titles and involves Jewish wrestler Bill Goldberg as an evil Santa (actually the Son of Satan via Immaculate Conception!) interrupting a miserable Christmas family dinner by announcing “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!” and murdering a succession of guest stars.
Fran Drescher gets her head set on fire, Rebecca Gayheart is bludgeoned with a chair leg and a hilarious James Caan is pinned to the table and choked with turkey legs. The rest of the movie doesn’t live up to this show-stopping opening, but Goldberg has a great time riding around on his “hell deer”, ogling big titties, decapitating statues of Christ and replacing genuine presents with deadly alternatives that detonate kids’ heads on Christmas morning. A highlight of this, or any other Christmas movie, is this Bad Santa running a foul mouthed old biddy (“Thank you and go fuck yourself!”) off the road on Christmas Eve.
Review by Steven West