Christmas is drawing near and things are melting down in the town of Bailey Downs … and at best, I rate A Christmas Horror Story as Yellow Puss.
A Christmas Horror Story clearly resides among its own as a B-film. It attempts to interweave four horror stories, each of which to varying degrees have little if anything to do with Christmas myth.
If you pay closer attention to this pot-boiler than I did, allegedly the framework of these stories are tied together by a character named DJ Dangerous Dan — a lonely late-night radio personality, waxing on about how he loves Xmas while hitting the eggnog while getting understandably abandoned by the radio station staff.
DJ Dan is played by none other than James T. Kirk — clearly a retirement job following his service as Captain aboard the infamous Starship Enterprise … who is probably the only actor you will recognize.
First Story – Three teens break into their school to investigate two murders that occurred the previous year. They mysteriously get locked in the basement and then — SURPRISE — the horror begins! This story has nothing to do with Christmas.
Second Story – A husband, wife, and their son go into the woods to chop down a Christmas tree. The son wanders off and gets switched for a changeling who mimics him and then — SURPRISE — the horror begins! Aside from the Pagany changeling and Christmas tree, this story too has nothing to do with Christmas. In other words, these first two stories are just FILLER to justify bringing William Shatner into the film and to bolster the other two stories into a 107 minute B-movie made in Canada.
Third Story – A yuppie family of four visit their elderly aunt and behave poorly. This attracts the attention of Krampus and while on their way home they are picked off one at a time. This is the first portion of the story where the filmmakers take liberties with Krampus mythos …. but then HolloWood has given us far worse. As a result this story has a little to do with Christmas.
Fourth Story – A fittingly Nordic-looking Santa Claus is at his workshop preparing for a busy Christmas when he discovers that his elves and Mrs. Claus have turned into zombies. He manages to kill them all and then for an unapparent reason Santa is then forced to fight Krampus. This is where the filmmakers quite unfortunately took the most gross liberties with the Krampus character (AKA Black Peter). Krampus gets turned into a villain — white hats, black hats … everyone needs a villain — the problem though is that in Krampus mythos he is only a threat to bad kids/people. In fact, Krampus and St. Nick have always worked together — on Krampusnacht (Krampus night) around December 5th he arrived to punish children who have misbehaved while of course Saint Nicholas would reward well-behaved children with gifts. In other words, when Krampus became suppressed his tasks were given to Santa who would ‘make his list of who’s naughty and nice’.
Links
- IMDb
- Wikipedia
- And the most important link is Rotten Tomatoes