‘Christmas Evil’: the John Waters-approved ‘Video Nasty’ that became a Christmas cult favourite
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(Credit: Pan American Pictures)
The ‘Video Nasty’ panic, in which the government was so concerned that impressionable young minds were too fragile to avoid being warped by the increased gore and gratuitous violence taking over the horror genre that movies were being outlawed on a regular basis, does not carry any obvious festive cheer.
Christmas horror flicks have become an increasingly regular occurrence as filmmakers seek to balance the year-round affection for terror with the bells and whistles of the holiday season, but doing so back in the late 1970s and early 1980s ran the risk of making enemies on the highest rungs of the political ladder.
Writer and director Lewis Jackson’s Evil Christmas wasn’t prosecuted under the law like so many of its ‘Video Nasty’ contemporaries, but copies were seized and confiscated under the Obscene Publications Act, underlining that not even Santa Claus himself was immune from the wrath of Mary Whitehouse.
The story is a fairly simple, if suitably deranged, one. Young Harry Stadling never recovers from the childhood trauma of seeing his father dressed as jolly old Saint Nick getting frisky with his mother. As an adult in his 30s, he decides that the best way to process his lingering grief of having his Christmas spirit shattered forever is to become Santa. Or his own twisted version, at least.
In order to accomplish his goals, he dressed up in full costume and embarks on a murderous rampage. It might sound formulaic, but one of the biggest badges of honour ever bestowed upon Evil Christmas is its enduring status as John Waters’ favourite festive film of all time.
“There’s only one movie to ever watch at Christmas,” he told Criterion. “He breaks into people’s houses on Christmas Eve and wedges his fat ass down the chimney to deliver presents. The parents freak out and try to kill him but the kids save him and at the end, he takes off on his sleight.”
If the ‘Pope of Trash’ and B-movie icon makes a point of revisiting the film every year, then it must have something special about it. To be fair, it does. At first glance, Christmas Evil could be accused of being nothing more than an exploitation flick that transforms Santa into a force of evil, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake instead of presents.
However, it also has some genuinely impressive cinematography and does a remarkable job of balancing its myriad of disparate tones. Sure, it’s a horror, but it’s also a story about unresolved trauma, and one that’s got lashings of dark comedy, a surprising amount of character-building, no shortage of introspection, and even touches on notions of identity and conformity after Harry goes public in his Santa garb after spending his life doing it in private.
A Waters-approved ‘Video Nasty’ it may be, but Evil Christmas doubles as an unexpectedly complex rumination on the darker side of the human condition. It’s still a blood-splattered horror at the end of the day, but it’s one with plenty of things to say beyond the brain matter and entrails.
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