THE CHRISTMAS HORROR ADVENT CALENDAR Door 19: The Naughty List

Now then, so far in this advent calendar we have looked at a wide range of different movies from many different decades and from all around the world. And all of them have been at least watchable. Yes, there have been a few with rough edges, such as The Dorm That Dripped Blood or To All A Goodnight, but they all have had at least some merit, or at the least, in the context of Christmas horror have some historical value. However, having reached the 1990s, we are well and truly into the age of straight-to-video movies, and an awful lot of rubbish has been inflicted on unsuspecting video rental customers over the years. And of course, there’s vast swathes of drivel sliding out of the various streaming services now too. 

Of course, among all this visual dreck, there are a whole slew of absolutely awful Christmas horror movies, and behind this door we will sample some of the denizens of the Naughty List of Christmas horror! 

One of the earliest and best known Christmas horror turkeys is a little movie called Elves. Now alleged this movie, written and directed by Jeffrey Mandel, had a small theatrical release back in 1989. However I have been able to find no evidence of that actually happening. But what we do know is that it was released on VHS on December 19th 1994 with very little fanfare. Now given its late ‘80s vintage and title, you could be forgiven for assuming that that Elves was some festively themed Gremlins rip-off. However the truth is far weirder! 

To briefly attempt to extract some sort of sense from the plot, basically a homeless man Mike, played by Dan Haggerty - yes, TV’s Grizzly Adams - has landed a gig as a department store Santa. This job has the added bonus giving him the chance to pilfer the store’s snacks after hours. Also working at the store is Kirsten, played by Julie Austin, who turns out to be the last of a specially bred line of Aryans created by a Nazi cult.  However if that wasn’t mad enough, in the film’s opening, while in the woods, she cuts herself which awakens an ancient demon elf. Anyhow before you know it the Nazi cult turns up and plans to breed the elf with Kirsten to create a new master race. And its down to Hobo Santa Mike to stop them. 

So then, let’s cut to the chase here - Elves is a bloody terrible movie. Badly shot, it looks awful, and there’s only one elf in the damn thing. And even then, the effects budget only stretched to a head and some claws. On the upside, the plot is truly demented, and has led to claims that this movie is “so bad, it’s good”, however like many of these lumps of cinematic coal, most viewers will find it’s just so bad, it’s bad. 

However, somewhat bizarrely, it gives us a second unexpected connection between Christmas horror and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams - for the first Silent Night, Deadly Night film was directed by Charles E. Sellier Jnr. the man who created the fondly remembered TV series. 

But if you think Elves is deranged, it has nothing on a little seen Christmas horror called Bloodbeat. Written and directed by Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos, although I’m not so sure about that “written” bit to be honest, Bloodbeat is odd to the point of incoherence. Filmed on a shoestring in Wisconsin, the plot, very roughly, goes like this…  A family is gathering for Christmas, and in a spare room, one of the visiting relatives discovers a suit of samurai armour and an ancient sword. Which comes to life and starts killing people. Two of the family turn out to be psychic, leading to outbreaks of poltergeist activity and a big fight with magic swords at the end. 

At least I think that’s what happened. I might have hallucinated the whole thing. Certainly many viewers have wondered if there was any sort of script when they started filming, and the director has later tried to claim he was making an arthouse film. I think the truth is, Bloodbeat is just incredibly inept. And while there is a certain charm to some bad movies, others are just interminable to sit through. So, do be warned - many of these terrible Christmas horror movies are not as entertaining as they sound. 

Of course there are movies that are setting out to be bad in the first place, which brings us to our next lump of coal - Feeders 2: Slay Bells. Now this movie was a sequel to a 1996 independent science fiction horror flick called - surprise, surprise - Feeders. This shot on a camcorder movie was made for just $500, and the sequel was made for even less! 

Both movies are the world of the Polonia brothers, who made a string of shot on video movies all for next to nothing. The Polonia charter was basically shoot quickly, shoot cheap, and make up for the complete lack of funds and resources by having ridiculous over-the-top plots. Hence while in the first Feeders we had aliens popping down to earth to snack on humans, in Feeders 2: Slay Bells when the little critters return, it’s down to a laser gun wielding Santa to repel them. The box blurb claims “it's a sci-fi adventure you won’t want to miss”  but most would violently disagree. No budget movies like this are definitely an acquired taste, but even so Feeders 2 is so lacking in anything resembling proper film making, it's a challenge for even bad movie devotees.

Also an absolute chore to watch and barely even qualifying as a movie is Santa Claws, released on October 22nd 1996. Starring cult actress Debbie Rochon in a very early role, Santa Claws is basically 83 minutes of your life you will never get back. Looking like it was shot on a camcorder bought in a fire sale, and shot in storerooms, Santa Claws is absolutely dire. There is a plot which has Debbie Rochon as a horror movie actress being stalked by a murderous fan who kills with a not very lethal looking gardening claw, but much of this alleged movie is padding featuring various other girls getting nude. For apparently this was made simultaneously with another straight-to-video tape Scream Queen Naked Christmas which is just girls getting them out. Sadly both of these dubious outings were helmed by John A. Russo, who co wrote Night of the Living Dead with George Romero, and although he later wrote the novel Return of the living Dead which became a classic zombie movie in its own right, here he appears to hit rock bottom. 

Also in the one to miss pile is Christmas Cruelty, a 2013 underground horror from Norway. Originally entitled O'Hellige Jul, which translates to O Holy Christmas, this movie details the rampages of a violent serial killer in very graphic detail. The movie opens with brutal scenes of our antihero butchering a family, but then we have an hour seeing both him, and a group of friends who will be his next victims, going about their business preparing for Christmas. And then in the last twenty or so minutes of the movie we get to watch him rape, torture and dismember them. Christmas Cruelty is a very obscure film, and probably rightly so, boasts a mere seven reviews on IMDB and the majority of those aren’t very positive about it either - it seems the movie is fairly interminable, but not because of the graphic and unpleasant content, but because of the dull day to day scenes, bad editing and highly annoying music which makes up the bulk of the film! 

Moving on to more salubrious but still obscure realms we have Two Front Teeth, a 2006 horror comedy, that like Christmas Cruelty would have languished in limbo if it had not been picked up by Unearthed Films who specialise in releasing highly obscure cult movies. The blurb promises “Rankin-Bass meet EC Comics”, and the plot outline certainly sounds in the right ballpark.  The brilliantly named Francis Johnny Wolf stars as Gabe Snow, a reporter who is obsessed with a mystery plane crash - Flight 1225 was brought down one foggy Christmas Eve, allegedly by a flying creature with a glowing nose. Unfortunately, he has stumbled on the truth and the culprit, a vampiric Santa dubbed Clausferatu, sends out monster elves to silence him. And if that wasn’t enough there’s also a lycanthropic Easter Bunny and a trio of ninja nuns, the Silent Knights. 

Well, you can’t fault the movie for a lack of imagination. Script writer and co-director Jaime Nash would go on to bigger and better things working on the V/H/S film series and scripting more serious horror fare such as Lovely Molly and Exists, directed by Eduardo Sánchez, plus wrote cult favourite the WNUF Halloween Special (2013). And you can see the promise here, however unfortunately though, Two Front Teeth is horribly filmed on video, which will put off most viewers and why this pretty home-made horror comedy doesn’t have a cult following. 

So then, moving on, next up we have a movie that does have something of a cult following, but perhaps doesn’t really deserve one. But at least, it’s a movie you might have heard - Jack Frost, released on 18th November 1997. Now this isn’t the family-friendly movie Jack Frost from 1998, with Michael Keaton coming back from the dead as a snowman. This is the distinctly not family-friendly movie from a year earlier which features a serial killer coming back from the dead as a killer snowman. I imagine there have been many traumatising mix-ups in video rental stores over the years. 

Written and directed by Michael Cooney, Jack Frost stars Scott MacDonald and Christopher Allport, and features the first screen appearance of Shannon Elizabeth. Originally it was intended to be a bigger, more serious movie, with a killer who could morph into snow and ice just like the T1000 in Terminator 2. However instead we got a comedy snowman outfit and a cheap movie knocked out in just eighteen days. Filmed in January 1994, the production very quickly ran into trouble when the director saw the snowman outfits and ended up hastily rewriting the script as a comedy. Then when out shooting on location, all the winter snows unexpectedly melted early, leaving the production with a freak heatwave. And if that wasn’t enough, the production company Prism went under, and seeing the finished cut, banker Lou Horowitz who was in charge of the financial wreckage, deemed it unreleasable and shelved it. And so the film was unreleased for several years until it was picked up by A-Pix Entertainment  who released it  on home video in 1997.     

And unfortunately all of these problems are readily apparent in Jack Frost. And while some of the humour does save certain scenes, and there are some fun festive kills which are suitably silly, mostly the movie is, well, just a bit of a mess. However it gained enough of a reputation as a good bad movie to spawn a sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman in 2000. But unfortunately this flick chose to relocate the action to a tropical island which rather lost all the seasonal silliness of the first movie. 

However, after this naughty list of low and no budget Christmas horrors that are shockers for all the wrong reasons, I will round off with a surprise gift, and proof that inexpensive indie fright flicks don’t have to be awful! So then folks, let’s sample A Cadaver Christmas! 

Released 2nd April 2011, A Cadaver Christmas is a horror comedy directed by Joseph Zerull, which first appeared at film festivals, and was released on DVD later that year. Since then it has had television screenings and more recently had a Blu-ray release and appeared on various streaming platforms. The plot is as follows… 

A janitor is working late at a university on Christmas Eve, and discovers the cadavers in the path lab have come to life. He escapes to a nearby bar and assembles a motley band of very unlikely heroes to attempt to contain the risen dead.

Written by Joe Zerull with Daniel Rairdin-Hale and Hanlon Smith-Dorsey, who also star as our janitor hero and barfly Tom, A Cadaver Christmas is a fun little zom com done on a tiny budget. However, quite cannily, they chose to shoot it so it looks and sounds like an older movie, the kind of cheap flick that played in grindhouse cinemas or turned up in video rental stores back in the day. Hence there’s scratches and dirt on the film, the colours are weirdly saturated, but also the script and performances very much lean deliberately into that bad exploitation film aesthetic. 

Now how well A Cadaver Christmas plays for you will depend on whether the style of comedy is to your taste or not. If it doesn’t, you will think it’s just another lump of cinematic coal, but if you are on the same humorous wavelength, this is a fun little movie. Now I must admit, when I sat down to watch this little flick, I was expecting another terrible no budget, no talent production, but I instantly recognised the style of exploitation movie they were spoofing and a couple of early lines got surprisingly big laughs on our sofa. And after that, we were onboard for the ride. Yes, it is very cheap and somewhat quirky, but it is fairly well made. In fact, it's a great example of tailoring your script to the resources you have. And what’s more, it was clearly made with a lot of love and passion. And if the style of humour works for you, A Cadaver Christmas will deliver plenty of laughs, some suitably silly gore, and has a nice festive theme running through it. And certainly, as the rest of this naughty list has proved, you could do a whole lot worse! 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Door 19: The Naughty List

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FOLKLORE FLASHBACK #7

This week on Folklore Flashback we round up some of the denizens of the supernatural world, in particular various local entities of a distinctly dangerous aspect...

First up we meet a Highland terror, the aquatic predator known as the Kelpie

http://hypnogoria.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/folklore-on-friday-legend-of-kelpie.html

Next we travel a little further south to discover a particular unpleasant species of dwarf, known as a Redcap, and one of this breed that served a dark master in the wilds of Northern borders -

http://hypnogoria.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/folklore-on-friday-rampages-of-robin.html

And finally we head down south to the fen-lands of England, to learn of a powerful local sprite -

http://hypnogoria.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/folklore-on-friday-curse-of-tiddy-mun.html

FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - Changelings

The Changeling by Henry Fuseli

Across the world, one of the most common beliefs is that we share this world with other races. Many cultures tells of these others, and the tales about them are strikingly similar. They are closely tied to the natural world and are mostly invisible to us. They are somewhat capricious, sometimes kinds other times malevolent, and they appear to hail from some kind of parallel plane, another world that is connected to ours through certain portals; often certain hills, caves, and forests, and sometimes even individual trees and stones. We are of course talking about the faery folk, and many different types of these supernatural beings are said to predatory; alleged to kill and even devour us mortal folk. However a more general trait that seems to be a popular pastime for many species of faery across the world, even the ones usually less inclined to grind our bones to make their bread,  is their love of spiriting people away to their own world. 

However while there are many tales of trips to fairyland, elfhame and other places the strangers inhabit, more troubling are the legends of the changelings. From the icy Scandinavia to sun-baked Africa, there are sinister stories of children not just being abducted, but switched with strange impostors. Parents would find their baby child had been replaced by odd beings who were almost but not quite human. Often changelings are described as being ugly and wizened, while others appeared normal but demonstrated weird abilities such as being able to stretch their limbs at will. However strange appearances aside it was their behaviour that marked them out - changelings were said to be either extremely badly behaved - constantly crying and prone to violence, or at the other end of the spectrum strangely docile, often mute and seemingly unable to comprehend anything about the human world they had been left in. Another common characteristic to changelings was an insatiable hunger - a changeling could eat a family out of house and home, a troubling prospect as some changelings were believed to never grow up, constantly needing care and food, while others were said to be extremely long lived, possibly even immortal, being a burden on whole generations of families.

There were several theories about why changelings were left. In the case of changelings that were said to be wizened and sickly, it was said that these creatures were actually ancient, elderly faeries, left by their compatriots to enjoy the love and comforts of a human family in their dotage. Other changelings were so infirm that they soon sickened or died, leading to folk beliefs that the impostor had been nothing more than a magical fake, such as piece of rotting wood crudely enchanted to mimic a human child. And why did the faeries steal children? Well, some traditions held that the faery folk were an old, dying race who sought new blood to strengthen their numbers. However other traditions had darker ideas - the human children were to be used as servants and slaves in their other world. Worse still, some traditions held that the faeries owed a tithe of souls to Hell, and hence they stole human children to pay the debt to the Pit. On a similar note, some folk beliefs held that changelings were mere sent to vex mankind, and in tales of particularly violent or troublesome changelings, they were said to have been left by witches or the Devil himself to increase the sum of human misery.

The Changeling by Arthur Rackham

Now, like many folk traditions, there is more than a grain of truth in these old tales, and a reason that stories of changelings are so prevalent in so many cultures across the globe. The sad fact is that changelings did indeed exist, however they were not faery cuckoos, but rather children with disabilities and diseases. One does not have to read too deeply between the lines to realise that these elf children were in fact nothing more but human babes suffering with a variety of debilitating conditions. While many illnesses and diseases could be recognized in the pre-modern era, other conditions such as gradual degenerative ailments or being born with mental conditions such as autism or schizophrenia were poorly understood. It is a natural reaction for people to seek explanations and answers, and hence in cases where what had been a seemingly healthy baby was suddenly sickly, behaving strangely, or developing in what seemed a weird fashion, supernatural forces were the only explanation available. It is very telling that beliefs in changelings begin to wane when better medical knowledge becomes available.

From the wide range of preventative rituals and charms in folklore, it was clear that finding oneself the parent of a changeling was a real and widespread fear in ages past. Various methods existed that would protect the child from being snatched by the faeries, and hanging some kind of protective charm over the crib was perhaps the common. In some regions, this would be a plant or herb with magical properties - such mistletoe or a sprig of rowan. The faeries were widely believed to have an aversion to iron, and this was also utilized, by hanging a pair of scissors or a horseshoe over the cradle. However should such measures have failed there were several possible course of action to get your child back.

Now there were many regional cures, often involving some local place, such as bathing the child in the nearby holy wells, visiting a shrine or taking it to standing stones. But there are three main ways of dealing with a changeling that occur time and time again in many different countries and cultures. The first is basically to abuse the child, often beating it with sticks, with the idea being that the changeling's real parent - the faeries or the Devil - would promptly appear and give back your own child to prevent further cruelty to their own. In a similar fashion, placing the changeling either in a fire or a hot oven would cause the malign being to take its leave, often said to fly off up the chimney, and your own offspring would be returned. Sadly however these two methods rarely resulted in happy endings, and indeed in the 18th and 19th centuries we begin to find parents and guardians appearing in court on charges of cruelty, neglect, and murder of their own children who they believed to be changelings.

However thankfully there was a third method of dealing with a changeling which while probably ineffective in the real world, at least did not involve cruelty to the suspect child. And what's more, it is somewhat amusing - indeed it is the basis for many of the more entertain changeling folk tales. This third method was based around the premise of tricking the changeling into revealing its true nature, and once its cover were blown, the faeries had to return the real child. And weirdly enough there was an exact way to do this which is recounted in many different countries. Basically in full view of the changeling child one had to cook using eggs - but these was not merely whipping up a quick omelette, rather you had to brewing beer or make stew using the egg shells as tiny containers. This culinary performance was said to be sufficiently surreal and bizarre to make the changeling reveal its true nature,with old folk tales holding that the creature would suddenly sit up, exclaim that it had never seen anything like it in its long and strange life - often the exclamation followed this pattern as related by the Brothers Grimm -

Now I am as old 

As the Wester Wood, 

But have never seen anyone cooking in shells!

from Children's and Household Tales (1812)

And then, having revealed itself as an impostor the changeling would vanish - or again fly off up the chimney - and the stolen child would be magically returned. Quite why this egg based method is so widespread is something of a mystery. Possibly there is a forgotten symbolic significance to eggs in this context - and certainly they seem appropriate given that one can draw parallels between the concept of changelings and the behaviour of birds like the cuckoo which leaves its eggs in other birds' nest to raise as their own. However I would like to think that if this performance art cookery was actually ever carried out to cure a changeling in the real world, then perhaps the oddness of the act caused the troubled child to smile or laugh, providing a valuable point of connection between parent and child, and making them realise that while their offspring may be different they were in fact human after all.

Titania's Changeling by John Anster Fitzgerald