Tuesday, December 23, 2008

My Worst Christmas Movie Ever

Sunday night, after making many, many Christmas cookies, I psyched myself up to rewatch my Worst Christmas Movie, hit the couch, popped in the DVD and laughed myself silly.
OK, so here it is - drum roll please ....


Santa's Slay
Santa's slay

Yeah, that's Slay as in slaying all the happy Christmas-cheering people in the Hell Township. Hell Township!

While this 2005 release is nowhere near as badly made as Elfman's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, the cheese factor of this black comedy is pure Wisconsin Gold!
Pro-wrestler Bill Goldberg plays the devil's son (Santa ... Satan, get it?) who lost a wager with an angel and was forced to spend 1000 years playing Santa. Now the wager of that time has run out, and good old Santa isn't so joyful anymore.

The film starts out almost respectable - almost. It's Christmas Eve 2005 and the first family of Hell Township is celebrating with a yuletide feast that would make Martha Stewart jealous. I mean, when I saw James Caan sitting at the head of the table, I thought, WTH? James Caan? This movie might not be too bad afterall. Fran Drescher plays his wife, along with Chris Kattan and Rebecca Gayheart in supporting roles.
Not long after they all get into it with each other (as is a family tradition at the holidays), our devilish Santa comes crashing down the chimney, kicks the dog, stabs Caan's hands to the table with serving forks and sets Drescher's hair on fire. In a few minutes, everyone's dead, thereby setting the tone for this shlockfest!

Flash to Hell Township's quaint little village - young Nicolas Yuleson (I kid you not) is closing up the deli along with his coworker Mary "Mac" Mackenzie (Lost's Emilie de Ravin) when a surly old lady comes in for a last minute sandwich. After letting loose a string of obscenities at our youngsters, the curmudgeon drives off, only to be run off the road by Santa and his sleigh-pulling Brahma bull. That's right, no reindeer here, just one huge Brahma!

Nic's grandpa (secretly the angel from 1000 years past) fills him in on the Christmas wager, reading from - are you ready for this - The Book of Claus! This is when we learn that the wager involved a curling match - yeah - a curling match!!
(Curling, for those of you who don't know, is an Olympic sport that involves sliding heavy, polished granite stones down the ice towards a target, in this case a hole in the ice.)

Back to the story: Since this is a bad movie, it has to include gratuitous nudity, so guess where Santa ends up next? Oh yeah, the local strip joint, where he effectively makes mincemeat out of all the (topless) sinners and his Brahma eats the valet.

Oh, I forgot to mention the crappy stop motion photography (reminiscent of those Rankin & Bass specials) that illustrates the legendary curling storyline in a flashback while Grandpa and Nic sit in his - underground bunker!

Next, Santa takes on Hasidic Jews, even they're not safe from our red-suited mad man! The Chief of Police gets a taser to his nether regions (yeah, I just wrote nether regions), and the rest of the staff is unceremoniously murdered.

Back in the bunker, Nic says, "We're trapped in a closet on Christmas with Santa trying to murder us. How f---d up is that?" (It wouldn't be a bad movie without cheesy dialogue afterall.)
And if that's not enough, wait till you see the snowmobile chase with flying Brahma bull and sleigh, complete with bad Christmas music written specially for this lame flick.

Uh-oh, there just happens to be a Norman Rockwell Christmas celebration going on downtown with the townsfolk when the snowmobile chase brings Brahma Bull Santa thru the streets ...
Hey, is that Dave Thomas of Bob and Doug Mackenzie fame? Sure is Hoser! Why he's the town pastor, so nothing bad will happen to him right? Not.

One of my fave moments happens after Santa chases our heroic couple into the town library. While holding a copy of A Christmas Carol, Santa says (no lie), "Christmas can sure scare the Dickens out of people."

And it all ends up at the local hockey rink, complete with Zamboni chase - c'mon, you knew that was coming right? And yet another curling wager ... will there be a happy ending? You'll have to sit thru all 87 minutes to find out.

Santa's Slay is available for rental. I got it thru Netflix. But you can watch the opening scene with James Caan and friends here http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=santa%27s+slay&emb=0&aq=f#

And here's the trailer http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=santa%27s+slay&emb=0&aq=f#q=santa's%20slay%20trailer&emb=0

Merry Christmas!

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