Do you consider yourself a creepy connoisseur? Think that you know everything there is to know about ghouls, ghosts, and gremlins? Are you the ultimate Halloween trivia fanatic?
Halloween is shrouded in mystery. Even the most devilishly devout fans don’t know every fact and facet of the magic of October 31.
Don’t fret! We’re here to help you out. Here are 20 spooky and surprising tidbits that you didn’t know about this frightfully fun holiday. Don’t worry, these Halloween facts aren’t boo-gus.
Yep, that’s right. Many experts have traced this treat-seeking practice back to the early European practice of “mumming.” This is where costume-clad candy-goers would perform dances, songs, and plays in exchange for goodies.
Legend has it that if you spy a spider on Halloween, a loved one is watching over you from beyond the grave.
Take a seat, Tinder. In certain areas of Ireland, singles celebrated the holiday by playing a romantic fortune-telling game that predicted who they would marry. Some autumn activities, including bobbing for apples, were originally intended to help a woman find a husband.
The 1978 classic horror flick, Halloween, was filmed on such a shoestring budget that the crew used a $2 Captain James Kirk mask. To make it more sinister, they reshaped the eyeholes and painted it white
Does the thought of Halloween make you cringe? You may suffer from this phobia. Samhainphobia is actually a medical term for the fear of Halloween!
Some animal shelters won’t let anybody adopt black cats around the end of October because they’re afraid the felines will be sacrificed.
These winged mammals have a special connection to Halloween. In addition to being a witch’s favorite pet, bats were attracted to the bonfires the ancient Celtics created when celebrating October 31.
A New Hampshire man named Steve Geddes won a $6,000 prize for the giant gourd at the Deerfield Fair.
If somebody ever refers to you as “witchy,” don’t forget to thank them! They’re saying that you’re super smart.
If caught with this prank product, it could cost you up to $1,000 in legal fines.
Also known as Devil’s Night, it’s an informal holiday falling on the night before Halloween where pranksters engage in mischievous acts.
According to a 2019 survey, half of trick-or-treaters prefer a chocolate treat over any other type of Halloween candy. Six percent would accept gum. Obviously, toothbrushes don’t make the list.
During the earliest Halloween celebrations, partygoers donned dead animal heads and skins. These pelts were considered the first type of Halloween costumes. Yuck.
In fact, Halloween is more than 2,000 years old!The holiday can be traced back to the times of the ancient Celts and is rooted in their festival of Samhain.
How fast? A mere 16.47 seconds. The speedy carving was done by Stephen Clark of New York in 2013.
The famous illusionist Harry Houdini died on October 31, 1926. Since then, an annual séance has been held with the hopes of making contact with him on the other side. Houdini had even given a code word to his wife before his death and told her he’d use it if his ghost ever returned.
Halloween is the perfect night to have a bonfire. However, this word has a horrific history. Derived from the phrase “bone fire,” bonfires originated during Samhain when priests would toss cattle bones into burning flames.
Looking for a great Halloween costume for your pooch? Spirit Halloween has a ton of cute pet costumes!
Halloween supposedly played a role in extending Daylight Savings Time so kids could collect even more candy during daylight hours.
How much individuals spend on Halloween has grown by about 80% since 2005.
Now that you know all of these fun facts, go show off your Halloween trivia skills to your friends and family!
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Your comprehensive guide to all eleven Halloween movies.
It’s October, which can only mean one thing: Halloween is coming. Not to mention Halloween movies and our annual 31 Nights of Horror.
Yep, a whopping 40+ years after John Carpenter’s original Halloween movie wrote the slasher rulebook, we’re back for one last round of trick-or-treating.
But with 12 (TWELVE) movies in the Halloween franchise and not all of them actually following on from one another, how the hell do you watch them? (Just to give you a flavor of the problem, the writers of the newest sequel informally called their version “Halloween II 3“.)
You’ll want to start at the beginning, which means starting with Halloween (1978), of course. Or Halloween (2007). Um, or Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). Click on the links to skip to the right place in our Choose Your Own Adventure-style timeline. Here we go…
(Director: John Carpenter. Writers: John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nick Castle and PJ Soles)
Back in 1963, young Michael Myers violently stabs his sister Judith to death. After 15 years in hospital, he escapes, despite the best efforts of his childhood psychiatrist Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).
Myers kills a mechanic, nicks his uniform and a creepy white mask, and, what with it being Halloween, decides to stalk high schooler Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). He gruesomely offs her friends one by one before his final* confrontation with Laurie and Loomis.
(*Not actually final.)
(Director: Rick Rosenthal. Writers: John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Dick Myers)
Despite being stabbed every which way and even being shot off a balcony, Michael Myers survives the events of Halloween and goes after Laurie once more, killing oodles of people in the meantime to keep busy.
Meanwhile, Loomis finds out the secret connection between Michael and Laurie, before seemingly sacrificing himself to put an end to Myers’s reign of terror.
INTERLUDE
(Director: Tommy Lee Wallace. Writer: Tommy Lee Wallace. Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy)
The only movie in the Halloween franchise that has nothing to do with Michael Myers. After the story ended with Halloween II, the idea was to keep the name but introduce annual standalone films.
First up (and last up) was Season of the Witch. Its original script was written by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale and suitably mixes up a quirky dose of 1980s sci-fi with Celtic witchy chills for a throw-everything-at-the-kitchen-sink-including-yes-robots approach.
Halloween III is so out-of-universe it even features a character watching a trailer for Halloween, and the lack of Michael Myers annoyed everyone so much that they canned the whole anthology idea.
END OF INTERLUDE
(Director: Dwight H. Little. Writer: Alan B McElroy. Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, George P Wilbur)
After the flop that was Halloween III, a lesson was learned. No Michael Myers, No Halloween. So Michael Myers is back and they’re even yelling about it in the title.
It turns out that Michael didn’t die at the end of Halloween II, and neither did Loomis. Jamie Lee Curtis was off doing hit comedies though, so the only main character who had supposedly actually survived is unceremoniously killed off in an off-screen car crash.
After ten years in a coma, Michael Myers returns and this time he’s on the hunt for Laurie’s previously-unmentioned daughter (and his niece) Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), who grew up with a foster family.
Michael goes on a killing spree once more, and this time the entire city rises up in an attempt to stop him. Myers is eventually killed* (*he isn’t), but there’s a twist ending that suggests his legacy is far from over.
(Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard. Writers: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard and Shem Bitterman. Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Don Shanks)
Despite the whole being-shot-down a-mineshaft thing, it turns out that Michael Myers is still alive. He slips into another coma before waking up for, you guessed it, another killing spree, while being stalked by Loomis, who just refuses to give this one up.
After the events of the last movie, Jamie (Laurie’s daughter, Michael’s niece) is now mute as a result of all that unpleasantness but has somehow forged a psychic link with Myers. On regaining her wherewithal, she teams up with Loomis to lure Michael and put him away for good*.
(*Not actually for good.)
(Director: Joe Chappelle. Writer: Daniel Farrands. Starring: Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Devin Gardner, J.C. Brandy, George P Wilbur)
For the last* movie in the series (*not the last movie) Danielle Harris left as Jamie, being recast by JC Brandy. Donald Pleasence does return though as Dr Sam Loomis for the last time, in one of his final films.
Meanwhile Paul Rudd (yes, that Paul Rudd), stars as Tommy Doyle, who first appeared in Halloween, then popped up in Halloween II (and a tiny bit of Halloween 4). Tommy was one of the kids Laurie Strode babysat. Now in his mid-20s, he takes Jamie’s baby into his care after her grisly demise and tries to protect the Strode brood from Michael Myers’s evil machinations.
Oh, and Michael’s six-film reign of terror? It turns out it’s all because of the mysterious “Curse of Thorn”, and that Myers is himself a victim of a Druid cult. Okay.
Beset by constant on-set script changes and hefty reshoots after troubled test screenings (including a completely re-shot ending), the film has a reputation for being a bit of a bloody mess in every way. The screenplay pretty much went through a corn thresher, and so did the rushes.
Like the Cult of Thorn itself, the film does still have its devoted acolytes, and their lobbying saw the eventual release of the so-called ‘Producer’s Cut’, which restores that original creepy ending and some other bits and bobs.
END OF THIS TIMELINE (Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers)
(Director: Steve Miner. Writers: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Durand, Michelle Williams, Josh Hartnett)
Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, 20 years later. But didn’t she get killed off before Halloween 4? Okay, it turns out that Halloween 4, 5 and 6 didn’t happen. Surprise! This timeline pretends that they just never existed.
H20 is instead a direct sequel to Halloween II, and although it sort-of acknowledges Laurie’s car crash “death” from Halloween 4, it turns out she faked it and is now living as headteacher Keri Tate.
Meanwhile, the late Sam Loomis’s assistant Marion Chambers is killed by… you guessed it, a returning Michael Myers. He’s on another of those darn killing sprees, before he and Laurie Strode come mask-to-face for the first time in two decades, and Myers is finally killed*.
(*He isn’t.)
(Director: Rick Rosenthal. Writers: Larry Brand and Sean Hood. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kakilich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tyra Banks, Brad Loree)
H20 revived the franchise and gave it the perfect ending, but a victim of its own success, it spawned another direct sequel. Jamie Lee Curtis was cajoled back to play Laurie Strode one last time, with the character being killed off for good* this time early on (*she isn’t).
It turns out that Laurie didn’t actually kill Michael last time around, but instead a hapless medic with whom he’d swapped clothes. Doh! Faking a catatonic state, she eventually has a final confrontation with Michael, with Myers getting the better of her as she hesitates.
A year on, a bunch of college students enter reality TV show Dangertainment… they have to spend a night in Michael Myers’s old home for the sake of web-based telly lolz, and you can guess how well that ends up.
END OF THIS TIMELINE (Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween H20, Halloween: Resurrection)
INTERLUDE
(Director: Rob Zombie. Writer: Rob Zombie. Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Sheri Moon Zombie, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif, Tyler Mane)
Despite plans for a straightforward Halloween 8 (or should that be Halloween 5 II?) following on from Resurrection, things took a leftward turn.
The very first Halloween was instead remade/rebooted by heavy metal thrasher Rob Zombie with Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode and A Clockwork Orange‘s Malcolm McDowell as Dr Sam Loomis.
Rob Zombie’s Halloween more or less follows the template of the original movie, though it fleshes things out a bit (in more ways than one) by having much more focus on Myers’s original murderous antics as a child.
Although the film takes place in a completely different universe to the Carpenter original and all its sequels, Danielle Harris returns, but this time playing Laurie’s pal Annie rather than her daughter Jamie.
(Director: Rob Zombie. Writer: Rob Zombie. Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Sheri Moon Zombie, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif, Tyler Mane)
With Zombie’s Halloween being a massive commercial (if not critical) success, a sequel was inevitable.
Set two years on from its predecessor, we find out that Laurie is battling psychological problems, Dr Loomis is writing books about all this palaver, and Michael is somehow still alive.
As per, Laurie and Michael end up on a collision course, and as usual, despite Laurie’s seeming victory there’s a twist in the tale.
END OF THIS TIMELINE (Halloween (2007), Halloween II (2009)) AND END OF INTERLUDE
(Director: David Gordon Green. Writers: Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, Nick Castle)
Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, 40 years later. But didn’t she die in Halloween: Resurrection?
Okay, it turns out that Halloween: Resurrection didn’t happen. And nor did Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Or Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Or Halloween 4, 5 or 6. Or the Rob Zombie remakes. Or even Halloween II. Surprise!
After plans for a sequel to Halloween II (2009) (called Halloween 3D) and/or Halloween II (1981) (called Halloween Returns) fell through, the new Halloween, aka Halloween (2018), picks up exactly where Halloween (1978) left off, sort of.
“We’re kind of ignoring all the films past the first one,” said writer Danny McBride. “It picks up after the first one, but it’s sort of an alternate reality. It’s as if the first Halloween ended in a slightly different way.”
Intriguing…
Anyway, John Carpenter’s back as a composer, executive producer, and creative consultant in the Blumhouse production, and Nick Castle is back as The Shape/Mike Myers for the first time since the original movie, too.
Halloween: (2021) is released on October 13, 2021
END OF SERIES* (*WE’LL SEE…)
So, what do you think of this list? Did you make it all the way through? Please let us know in the comments and if you will, head over to our Scary Movies at the Fort Facebook page for more information and to see what we are watching during this year’s #31NightsofHorror
Technicolor lights are about to illuminate every other home in the neighborhood; carolers are marching through the streets; even that old tree in Rockefeller is shining brightly.
For some folks, that’s enough to make you want to grab an axe. But don’t do that. Watch demented men dressed as Santa Claus or a demon Krampus indulge your Anti-Christmas sentiments with maximum gore. Indeed, this list isn’t about the most charming, heartwarming, or schmaltzy Christmas viewing traditions. Nah, this is about the 20 grossest, nastiest, and all around most fun Christmas horror movies. The kind where the greatest gift you’re going to get on Christmas morning is escaping with your life and maybe some psychological triggers whenever you see jolly men in red suits.
Yep, these are the very best Christmas horror movies. Ho. Freaking. Ho.
Almost certainly one of the sweetest, most positive, and upbeat Christmas movies on the list is this wonderful feel good musical romance from director John McPhail, which also happens to be a zombie movie. It follows a group of friends in a small Scottish town who are just about to finish school and are making plans for the future when a zombie outbreak lands.
Incredibly catchy tunes which take inspiration from Buffy musical episode Once More With Feeling, mix with inventive festive kills – zombie snowman decapitation is a highlight – in a way that manages not to tonally jar. It’s mostly thanks to the super-likeable performances of the young cast, headed up by Ella Hunt, and the teenage troubles, romances, and heartbreak which form the backdrop of the movie. Paul Kaye also pops up as the school’s tyrannical headmaster – his musical numbers aren’t the best but he brings cartoon villain energy to an unusual but rather adorable Christmas horror that’s way better than you might expect.
Home Alone is surely one of the most popular and iconic Christmas movies of all time, though it is not, of course, a horror. However, if it was, it would look something like Better Watch Out, a slick reinvention of the home invasion sub-genre. Olivia DeJonge plays babysitter Ashley, who attempts to protect her charge, 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller), when they are threatened by intruders in his home. But all is not as it seems.
DeJonge and Miller spar beautifully in a movie which plays with gender and coming of age tropes and includes handfuls of gruesome set pieces, while Ed Oxenbould brings comic relief. This is clever, funny and gruesome stuff from director Chris Peckover which might not become a new Christmas tradition but should definitely be watched at least once.
Getting stabbed by a unicorn head to the tune of carolers singing “Silent Night” is probably not how you want to spend Christmas Eve. This pre-Scream holiday slasher claims its victims in a sorority house haunted by creepy phone calls (sans ghost mask), demonic noises, bodies eerily shrouded in plastic wrap, and one perverse killer whose voice alone is enough to freeze your blood.
When an unidentified caller keeps harassing your entire sorority house with obscene things you can only half-understand (because he sounds like a deranged Donald Duck that laughs like the Joker), you should run even if it is 10 degrees outside. The blizzard of murders keeps raging with one victim dragged screaming by a hook, and another bludgeoned to death. Never mind the one suffocated by plastic wrap and left next to the window like the vacant face of a doll staring out into the night. You’ll hardly sleep in heavenly peace after this one.
In his one and only film as writer/director, Lewis Jackson crafted a smart and clever black comedy that’s more character study than straight horror film. John Waters insists it’s a comedy about a closeted transvestite (of a sort), but it’s much more than that—it’s the Taxi Driver of Yuletide shockers. Brandon Maggart plays a man who takes Christmas way too seriously. His home is filled with bright holiday decorations all year-round while Christmas carols are playing on the stereo. Santa is his role model, a symbol of all that is good and just in the world. He even works at a toy factory.
He so identifies with Santa, he takes to spying on the neighbor kids, keeping his own carefully annotated naughty and nice lists. But when he recognizes the level of cynicism and hypocrisy among his co-workers, bosses, and the people around town as the most joyous time of the year approaches, well, he goes a little funny in the head. He reaches for the suit and beard and axe, determined to reward the good and punish the evil.
Maggart has since tried to desperately distance himself from the film, but he gives a remarkable performance here as a completely isolated figure with a head swimming with both joy and rage. In the end, the film remains king of the sub-subgenre. Screw It’s a Wonderful Life and Rudolph. Apart from Blast of Silence and Invasion U.S.A., Christmas Evil is the only holiday film I watch annually.
Admittedly, a number of horror-based Christmas movie have gone with the anthology angle for their storytelling. Hell, this isn’t even the only anthology film on this list. A Christmas Horror Story may not be on a lot of people’s radar, but it’s a worthy installment that goes to some unusual places purely because both the Christmas and anthology playgrounds have gotten so bloated at this point. This film also benefits from being executed by a cabal of directors who are responsible for directing some of the best horror movies to come out of Canada in passing years, such as Splice, the Black Christmas remake, and the Ginger Snaps trilogy.
A Christmas Horror Story deliciously uses a radio DJ (William Shatner) as the connective tissue that holds together the four stories that comprise the film. Parables on ghost possession, clone doppelgangers, Krampus, and zombie elves all get their due here. The film also has a pretty inspired ending that actually casts the picture in a whole new light. It’s got Santa Claus fighting Krampus. What’s not to like?
– Daniel Kurland
Never play hide and go seek in a house where someone was murdered. While it might be best known for Michael Redgrave’s night-terror-inducing ventriloquist dummy scene that sparked the phobia of possessed puppets, Dead of Night also invites you to a Christmas party with a spectral guest. Spacecase Sally’s genuine terror at realizing what she thinks she saw is what she really saw will forever have you second-guessing shadows creeping in the cold.
What is obvious in this scene—encroaching darkness and shadows looming over what a place you know is haunted without ever having to hear the big reveal—is hardly as chilling as what is not so obvious until the truth silently materializes. The ghost of the little boy plays hide-and-seek with the other children as if warm blood courses through his veins. Unlike many stereotypical see-through phantoms of the era, this one doesn’t have that telltale translucence which would set off a chorus of screams. Being almost disturbingly normal is exactly what makes him so terrifying.
Eyes Wide Shut was the non-denominational star at the top of Stanley Kubrick’s Christmas tree. Originally conceived as a Woody Allen vehicle, it almost starred Steve Martin after Allen insisted on reading the script from right to left. It is as much a cautionary tale as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, bringing the whole family together with a different Christmas tree in almost every frame.
Kubrick pours on the cheer from the opening sequence at the Christmas party where the first gifts are unwrapped, and oh boy are they unwrapped. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, dives right into the muffled spirit of giving after he performs a more than charitable deed for the party’s host, played by Sydney Pollack.
Harford spends most of the film looking for the perfect gift like a slow motion version of Jingle All the Way, rushing around from New York City’s famous toy repository FAO Schwartz to downtown specialty shops, to the suburbs, where he can find collectors’ editions. Cruise pays Harford like a wooden windup toy, and not a particularly cute one, either. In spite of all the colorful lights and trips above and below the rainbow, Harford just can’t get into the Christmas spirit. He’s not even moved by the uplifting seasonal tunings of “I Want a Boy for Christmas” by the Del-Vettes. He recovers his seasonal facilities while humming along to the chant during the climactic illuminati sex party, though! The song is actually “Here Comes Santa Claus” sung backwards in Latin, adding more menace to the proceedings than Silas Barnaby brought to Toyland in The March of the Wooden Soldiers.
Santa doesn’t exist… unless it’s your father in a red suit who met his untimely end trying to slide down the chimney with a sack of presents before getting stuck. Don’t tell that to the innocent bat-like ears of a harmless (for now) Mogwai. It’s exactly the kind of story you expect to hear while hunkering down in the shadows with a flashlight while a bunch of leathery green things with too many teeth ransack the neighborhood.
And as for Santa? That smell coming from the fireplace weeks later was no dead cat. Worst. Christmas story. Ever.
This movie should be on every hardcore horror fan’s holiday playlist just for the musical monstrosity of those reptilian things decked out in Santa hats and earmuffs singing “Deck the Halls” at the neighbors’ door, sheet music and all. This is continuing proof that animals have a sixth sense, because her yowling cat senses something off about the voices warbling “Joy to the World” outside. She’s right to have an aversion to Christmas carolers.
– Elizabeth Rayne
There have been so many holiday-themed horror films at this point—reaching Christmas and going far, far beyond that—so why not make an anthology film that takes that idea to the extreme? Holidays hits the expected staples such as Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day, but part of the fun here is how holidays with lesser expectations like Easter or St. Patrick’s Day deliver some truly horrifying content (seriously, the St. Patrick’s Day segment is disturbing, bonkers chaos).
The Christmas segment comes courtesy of Scott Stewart (Legion) and has Seth Green trying to survive the holiday as he attempts to get his son the perfect gift. Stewart’s installment feels very reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode with virtual reality, consumerism, and the dangers of mob mentality all playing their part here.
A lot of these anthology films also try to bank off of the name recognition and notoriety of the assembled directors, but Holidays proudly features a collection of mostly fresh faces (although Kevin Smith and Starry Eye’s Kevin Kolsch contribute segments). It’s fun to discover a bunch of new blossoming talents here.
This ain’t the cringeworthy father/son bonding vehicle starring Michael Keaton. No, this is the Jack Frost where the killer snowman’s nose functions as both a killing tool and a device to sexually assault his victims. All square? But hey, at the least the film isn’t afraid to ride its ridiculous premise as hard as possible.
First of all, an actual killer named Jack Frost crashes into a truck of “genetics material” that causes him to transform into this cold abomination in the first place. That sets the tone pretty nicely for the abundant murders, sex, and plot holes that plague the town of Snowmonton (yup). It’s hard to believe that this film got made, with all of the visuals being some real spectacles that you don’t typically see in the horror genre
Jack Frost is the perfect Christmas horror film to shut your brain off and watch, or the title that you should be selecting right in the middle of your deep eggnog haze. It’s utter nonsense, but it knows that it is and has tons of fun with itself. We need more talented individuals trying to tap into the killer snowman subgenre. There’s still a true classic waiting to come to life here.
Morbidly funny in its anti-holiday sarcasm and ridiculous demons, Krampus is like a mashup of the Griswolds, the Grinch, and every mythical beast that has ever been rumored to devour children on the naughty list. You’d rather get coal in your stocking than a killer jack-in-the-box jump scare… or find chilling hoof prints in the snow that are definitely not from Rudolph.
This version of Krampus is also hungry for anyone who’s lost their holiday spirit—whether or not you otherwise qualify for the nice list. Watch this with the lights off for the full effect of the power outage that works to the creature’s advantage as he goes hunting for holiday nonbelievers. Kids, don’t scorn Santa or Krampus will come to collect you.
There are some of us who know this movie verbatim and to the point where we will shamelessly break out singing “This is Halloween” and raise Jack’s quasi-Shakespearean monologue from the dead even in the middle of July. Or keep warning people that tragedy’s at hand. Or correct anyone who says there are 365 days until next Halloween by growling “364!” The stop-motion animation saga of the talking skeleton turned “Sandy Claws” bewitched an entire generation of ‘90s kids.
Even people who hate Halloween will stare with delight and awe when Jack’s skull bursts out of a snowdrift, and he first puts colored lights in his eye sockets and explores every “what’s this?” in Christmas Town like a spook in a coffin shop. You just can’t help but love the adventurous skeleton, even if he does end up making haunted houses out of people’s living rooms on Christmas Eve. Whether you’d rather be making Christmas with strangely somber carols, reanimated reindeer or toys that bite back, it’s now an officially unofficial holiday classic.
Camp and gory, this is the directorial debut of Franck Khalfoun who would follow it up with a remake of Maniac. The movie was co-written by Alexandre Aja who made one of the greatest cat-and-mousers ever in Switchblade Romance. The set up is formulaic, perhaps, but the game performances and relentlessness of the action makes this worthwhile. And if that’s not enough check out a deranged Bentley dressed as Santa, for the angel on the top of the Christmas tree.
There couldn’t possibly be a more sinister place to search for Santa’s ancient burial mound than in the frigid depths of Lapland. It’s the same supposedly enchanted place Dick van Dyke hiked to in the search for Santa in an ‘80s musical Christmas special, except this time you won’t find him in a cozy cottage with stockings hung by the chimney with care. You won’t find the guy in red from the mall, but anything that takes a disembodied pig’s head as bait couldn’t possibly be jingle-belling on a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer, especially when he seems to have a ravenous appetite for said reindeer.
This time, “the spirit of the season” is literally the most malicious Christmas spirit that has ever terrorized the Yuletide. Even if you watch the whole thing in Finnish and don’t understand a word except the screaming, the ghost of the child in you that really did believe there was a guy in the North Pole will be forever traumatized. This glaze-eyed zombie incarnation of Mr. Claus doesn’t laugh like a bowl full of jelly. You better watch out, indeed.
– Elizabeth Rayne
You do have to wonder what happened to John Russo along the line. 30 years after co-writing Night of the Living Dead, he came up with this decidedly sleazy but sadly unoriginal wonderment, which was much more focused on boobs than Yuletide butchery. In what by that point had become a battered cliché of the Slasher Santa subgenre, a young boy named Wayne (Grant Kramer) sees his mom having sex with a man wearing a Santa hat (!), and so murders them both. I’m not exactly sure how this transference would work in Freudian terms, but when he gets older, he a) becomes obsessed with a low-budget scream queen named Raven (played by low-budget scream queen Debbie Rochon) and b) decides he’s Santa.
As you might imagine, stalking someone when you’re wearing a Santa suit is no mean feat, but Wayne gives it his best shot. Most of the film, however, focuses on Raven and her extended family as she gets undressed a lot and wonders not only why that creep in the Santa suit keeps showing up everywhere, but why everyone around her keeps dying in a particularly bloody fashion. It can feel like there are two films going on here, a by-the-numbers stalker/slasher movie and a holiday horror film, which leaves me thinking Russo had one of them in mind, but after some eight-year-old smarty-pants came up with that clever “Santa Claws” pun, well, he just had to run with it.
Christmas can sure scare the Dickens out of people. Hence why you can’t not watch a holiday horror flick in which Santa is the Antichrist, sentenced to 1,000 years of delivering gifts after losing a curling match with an angel, and played by former pro wrestler Bill “Who’s Next?” Goldberg.
As the only son of Satan (you know what they say about rearranging the letters in that name) whose grim legend is immortalized in the Book of Claus, he can now at last spread Christmas fear with weapons, karate kicks, hand grenades, exploding presents, and his own perverse idea of what “Ho ho ho” should really mean. Them’s the breaks once the bet’s terms are done.
Santa’s methods of murder are fiendishly festive—to say the least. There is no naughty or nice list when it comes to an insatiable appetite for violence. He even knocks out poseurs in red suits and drives a sleigh with a rocket engine like it’s the Batmobile. Mall Santas everywhere are shaking in their pleather boots.
Naughty children get punished with more than just a stocking full of coal in this Christmas chiller. Just the opening scene with all those empty-eyed animatronic toys haunting a window display after-hours should tell you that this is not a movie that’s going to end in visions of sugarplums. Forget that it’s supposed to be the season of all things magical. Those things can be more terrifying than every single plastic skeleton and gaping zombie mask you’ll ever see in a haunted house around Halloween.
You’d better watch out for that psycho in the red suit who grabs a hatchet off the wall as if it was his bag full of toys and packs an automatic pistol in his fur-lined pocket, murdering misbehaving kids he’s been watching undercover of shadow. This sadistic Santa clearly doesn’t believe in sliding down chimneys—and the only red he’s interested in wearing is the blood of innocents. If that won’t convince you to stay awake because he sees you when you’re sleeping, you must be Freddie Krueger.
Three years after the shit-storm sparked by the original’s ad campaign, some smart cookie decided a sequel was necessary. A tough call there, given most all the principals were killed off pretty thoroughly the first time around, but still, right?
But there was money to be made, so they brought in an untested director (Lee Harry), a mostly untested crew, and a cast of mostly non-professional actors. After a half-dozen writers took a swipe at the script, they came up with a confounding but tepid rehash of the first film. This time around, and mostly in flashback, we learn that after the first killer Santa was sloppily dispatched at the end of Part 1, his brother Ricky becomes determined to uncover what went wrong.
He pays a visit to the sadistic Mother Superior at the Catholic asylum where his brother had been kept, and before you can say “ho ho ho,” Ricky ends up donning the red and white suit himself to do a little rampaging, though without nearly half of his brother’s imagination. They even used the same fucking poster design, just slapped a “2” on it. I guess hoping they might raise the same sort of ruckus the first one had. Sadly, it was too late for that.
The Crypt Keeper first emerged as a ghoulish EC Comics horror host in the pages of Tales From the Crypt who crawled onto the big screen in this horror anthology, welcoming unknowing tourists to his catacombs with bony arms open. What the tourists don’t know is that they’re all recently deceased. The invite is to a subterranean story-time in which he unearths the gruesome details of their deaths with a gap-toothed grin. Creatures are obviously stirring when killer wife Joanne is stalked by a homicidal Santa in this warped homage to ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas titled (appropriately enough) “… And All Through the House.”
So it is that “O Come All Ye Faithful” is interrupted while playing on the radio by a scratchy warning of a homicidal maniac run amok. And wouldn’t you just know it, this occurs right as Joan Collins is offing her husband with a shot to the head—and then realizes she has to dismember the body before cashing in on his life insurance. Her blissfully naïve daughter lets the killer jolly old elf in, shrieking that Santa finally came before he erupts into psychopathic rage. Clement C. Moore must be turning in his grave.
Certainly less purely Christmas-y than other entries on this list, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is nonetheless a wintry delight set during the holiday season. Carols play ominously in the background during key moments, and the immaculately snowy white setting of Snow Hollow, Utah is broken only by splashes of color from lights on homes and Christmas trees. Oh yes, and the blood of the titular werewolf’s victims.
Jim Cummings’ film is heavy on cozy, ski town holiday atmosphere without leaning on its actual Christmastime setting at all. But good werewolf movies are a rare breed indeed these days, and a werewolf movie set at Christmas? Well…now you know what to watch when the moon is full each December
Got any other suggestions for Christmas horror movies that we missed? Let us know in the comments!
