Christmas Evil

Saw Christmas Evil, a fairly bananas Christmas film which follows a man who works in a toy shop.  He wakes every morning to some Christmas music and sleeps in a pajama Santa-suit.  His house is decorated with Christmas stuff and he spies on his neighbor's kids, writing down their crimes ("negative personal hygiene") and their virtues ("is just adorable") he's clearly far off the deep end into some Santa-psychosis.

This is the film that I thought Silent Night Deadly Night was.  Whereas that one was plenty unusual on its own, this one is truly inspired.  It's full of strange, art-house flourishes involving the soundtrack and the plot.  Although the film is set in modern times, for example, the climax comes with an angry, torch-wielding mob.  This film is John Waters' favorite Christmas movie.  It has to be seen to be believed.

The plot basically is that the main character has decided to become Santa this Christmas.  He steals toys and rewards the good and punishes the wicked.  He drives about in his broken-down white van, being swept up in jolly corporate holiday parties but also being taunted by snobby church-goers (to their grave misfortune!)  The film has a nice sense of pace and progression, with the good times fueling his madness and the bad times revealing it.

The film is more strange than anything else.  It's not a great movie, nor bad.  The main character has some great philosophy that he shouts out near the end.  His feeling is that although the idea of Santa is just an idea, it's a good idea: a magical vigilante meting out justice to the masses.  This is high camp and needs to be taken almost seriously, you know?