Joel Hodgson would call this Oh Little Town of Deathlehem. One of many Z movies that, after the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween, looked for other holidays to build horror movies around, this Xmas execration purloined the plots of The Bells of St. Mary’s and Miracle on 34th Street and stuffed them into the Fargowood chipper. It’s about an orphan (Robert Brian Wilson) traumatized by his parents’ deaths at the hands of a thief in Santa mufti and further warped by an abusive Mother Superior, who tells him, “Punishment is absolute. Punishment is good.” The lesson takes when Billy discovers that a victim’s blood is easily camouflaged by the killer’s Santa-red suit. We’re not knocking the transformation of a hallowed holiday figure into a homicidal maniac — that’s just smart exploitation filmmaking. No, it’s the pleasure Billy and the movie take in leering at, then dicing up young women that lands Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s sicko Santa on our worst list.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vqAdw2E1Qg]