Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

While watching Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale I was reminded of a short story that I read in The Twilight Zone magazine, way back in the early 1980s.  It was a first person narrated story told from the perspective of Santa Claus, who is discovered going about his business by an excited and inquisitive young child.  The surprise twist - for there is always a surprise twist in a Twilight Zone story - was that Santa Claus, the real Santa Claus, was actually a burglar that steals Christmas gifts.  The story ended with the evil Santa kidnapping the child to make sure that there were no witnesses to his crime(s).  I guess the kid became an elf, or something.

Rare Exports, a Christmas themed horror-comedy from Finland, opens with a young child discovering a similar twist.  Pietari (Onni Tommila) learns that the real Santa Claus actually abducts naughty children and - depending on the child's degree of naughtiness, I guess - either spanks them bloody or boils them for food.  Needless to say, but Pietari is not looking forward to a visit from Santa Claus this year.  Because he has been naughty.

Very, very naughty. 

Pietari and his friend Juuso (Ilmari Jarvenpaa) have cut through a fence to spy on a dig that is being conducted atop a nearby mountain.  The hole in the fence is believed to have let through wolves that have ripped apart the reindeer that Pietari's father catches and sells for meat.  But Pietari thinks that the dig has unearthed something far more dangerous and deadlier than mere wolves.

The real Santa Claus is coming to town.

I think that is an excellent point to stop the plot summary and just recommend that, if you want to find out what happens next, you seek out this inventive and subversive dark fantasy delight and see it.  It is well worth seeking out.

Rare Exports functions not only as a horror movie, but also as a cutting satire on how older (and sometimes meaner) traditions have been co-opted by others and transformed, gentrified, even, for mass consumption, into something that no longer resembles its true origins, or nature. 

With all this asinine War of Christmas garbage being spewed by nimrods that are incapable of acknowledging or remembering that the term Xmas ia a Christian one (the X means CROSS, folks), that the Christmas tree (a barren tree that is decorated with symbolic fruit) is a pagan ritual and NOT a Christian one, or that the style of Christmas we celebrate has its roots in the Myth of Christmas that was created by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol and not the Myths in the Bible, it warms my heart that someone out there knows enough to poke some good natured fun at how we have all warped the Myth of Christmas to suit our many different fancies.

Four stars out of four.

Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas: The Children (2008)

I am hard pressed to remember a time where I have ever been frightened of children.  There have been times when I was frightened for children, for their safety or well being, but I cannot recall a single time when I was ever afraid of them.  I had high hopes that Tom Shankland's bloody horror movie The Children would change that.  It did not.

All the film did was leave me feeling frustrated and resentful.  Frustrated at the clear hints of an intriguing idea that wafts through the film, but then wafts right out of it, unexplored.  Resentful that it was such a well made movie, for it becomes a tedious chore to sit through.  There is no bad acting or glaring technical snafus to giggle at.  So there is nothing to distract from the painful truth that Shankland is ignoring the interesting and focusing on the boring.

The Children takes place during one of those Holiday family gatherings that everyone except the kids pretend to enjoy.  A strange and fast acting flu-like illness moves from child to child.  When the child recovers, he or she then becomes murderously aggressive towards adults in general and his or her parents in particular.  Patient Zero appears to be Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield) who arrives ill and spreads it to the other children at the gathering.  Writer/director Tom Shankland drops his biggest narrative ball here, for the non-infected children are shown to be uncomfortable around and fearful of the infected child.  They seem to sense that something is wrong, but they do not know what.  Later on, when the last of the children begins to grow sick, Shankland drops yet another interesting ball, as he shows that the child is very much aware of the change that is happening to her, and that she fears it.

Instead the film focuses on the plight of the lone, sullen teenager Casey (Hannah Tointon) as she tries to defend the adults from the children, only to be blamed for the carnage.  The first time that a child launches a sneak attack against an adult and Casey barges in, only to have the panicked adult think that it is Casey doing the attacking, has a certain nuance to it.  Because the sequence is foreshadowed via some earlier conflict between Casey and the adult characters.  The second time it happens, with a different kid and different adults, it is just boring repetition.

It all builds to a far too easy to predict ending, and a final shot that needlessly asks a question the film answered mere minutes before.

Two stars out four.

Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas: Dead End (2003)

"And I thought last year's Christmas was bad."

It's Christmas Eve and the Harringtons are making their annual and bickering filled trip to visit family.  But this year Frank Harrington (Ray Wise) decides to take a different route, an isolated stretch of road that cuts through the woods.  As the night and the lengthy drive drags on Frank grows more and more tired, eventually dozing off behind the wheel and almost causing an accident with an oncoming car.  Not too long after that they find a disoriented woman carrying an infant on the side of the road and offer assistance...

Seasoned horror fans will recognize the road that Dead End  travels with a modest degree of success and guess the characters final destination long before the Harringtons reach it.  It's the same road that The Twilight Zone memorably traveled in classic episodes like The Hitch-Hiker and not quite so classic episodes as The Thirty-Fathom Grave and Death Ship. Adrian Lyne took the same detour with Jacob's Ladder.  M. Night Shyamalan took it with The Sixth Sense.

Now some of you may very well cry foul and say that I have broken my No Spoilers rule.  Believe me, those seasoned horror fans that I referenced in the above paragraph would have figured out the twist by the freaking plot synopsis.  So by revealing Dead End's lengthy story heritage, one that is rooted in a spooky campfire story that was well worn when my father no doubt heard a variation of it when he was a boy, and that Frank Harrington himself tells his daughter at one point during their nightmarish trip in the dead of night, all I have done is to let potential viewers know the kind of Christmas scare they may or may not be getting.  Should they choose to take the trip with the Harringtons, that is.

This was my second time on this particular stretch of bad road with the Harringtons and, while the trip wasn't nearly as suspenseful as the first go around, despite my knowing the eventual outcome even then, I was quite happy to find that most of the set pieces I remember as being particularly effective remained particularly effective the second time around.  The acting is quite good for this kind of film and the small cast looks and sounds like a real family taking one stressful and unpleasant road trip too many.  Lin Shaye (as denial smothered mother Laura) delivers the most effective performance of the bunch.  She alone makes the film worth sitting through.

Your scare miles may vary, of course.  But I found just enough old fashioned thrills (this one is real light on the blood and guts, folks) to make a second Christmas Eve trip with the Harringtons one worth taking.

Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas: Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004)

"They're, like, cooler than ever!"

Andre Toulon's great-grandnephew Robert (Corey Feldman, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) has finally perfected the secret formula that animates the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Toulon puppets.  This discovery doesn't come a moment too soon for the evil, and very spoiled, industrialist Erica Sharpe (Vanessa Angel, Sabretooth, Raging Sharks) who not only needs Toulon blood to help animate her mass produced Demonic Toys come Christmas morning, but also wants the Toulon puppets to do her bidding as well.  As the clock counts down to Christmas morning, Robert Toulon prepares his puppets to battle Sharpe's Demonic Toys and save the lives of countless children.

I swear that I have seen Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys before, only it was called Halloween III: Season Of The Witch back then.  The biggest difference between the two is that Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys is supposed to be funny.

Yes, the final entry, or so it seems to be, in the Puppet Master series (and the first not to be produced by Full Moon honcho Charles Band) doesn't even attempt to take its ludicrous story seriously and instead goes for the guffaws rather than the gooseflesh.  (Although there is a human sacrifice sequence that is rather ghoulish.)   The result is a candy colored menagerie of supernatural shenanigans and slapstick shtick.  Corey Feldman and Vanessa Angel both chew the scenery with gusto, but only Angel doesn't look embarrassed to be doing so.  The actual battle between the puppets and toys is a long time in coming though, you'll have to sit through the whole movie to get to it, in fact.  But, if you are a bad movie fan in a forgiving mood, or you have simply grown board from watching Santa Claus Conquers the Martians one time too many, then you might want to consider giving Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys a chance.  But if you want to see a good Christmas themed horror movie, then you had better watch the original Black Christmas instead.

Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas: The Legend of Hell House (1973)

"It's the Mount Everest of haunted houses."

Wealthy industrialist Rudolph Deutsch (Roland Culver) is dying and he wants the facts about survival after death.  For this investigation Deutsch hires the skeptical physicist Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), mental medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and physical medium Benjamin Fischer (Roddy McDowall).  The trio are to spend one week in the only place where after death survival has yet to be refuted, the Belasco House, also known as "Hell House."

Fischer is well acquainted with Hell House's notorious power.  He is the only intact survivor of a previous attempt to investigate it.  Despite his warnings to the rest of the group, it seems that Hell House's tragic history will be repeated once again.

Wait a minute, you may want to ask me, The Legend of Hell House could be considered a CHRISTMAS MOVIE?  Yes, I will reply, I think it is.

Item - In the seasonal classic song "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" there is a lyric that, in today's day and age, seems out of place.  Between mentioning caroling in the snow and telling of the glories, there is the line "There will be scary ghost stories."  Yes, at one point it was a Christmas tradition to tell a Ghost Story, preferably a gruesome one.  The Legend of Hell House is most assuredly a ghost story, though not an overtly graphic one.  Though it does have a bit more special effects steak in its sizzle than Robert Wise's classic thriller, The Haunting.

Item - The Legend of Hell House's story begins on December 17th and ends on December 24th, which is Christmas Eve.  It would seem that Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future have a little company.  So I consider The Legend of Hell House to be an excellent viewing choice for Christmas Eve.  It's time to bring the scary Ghost Stories back to Christmas.  Why should Halloween get all the spooky fun?

Richard Matheson's economical script is an adaptation of his own harrowing novel, Hell House.  While Matheson's novel was far more graphic, and Barrett had a physical ailment that formed a symbolic link to Belasco's spirit, his screenplay trims away most of it.  In some ways it's almost too economical, but the missing pieces aren't really noticeable unless the viewer has read either Matheson's original novel or IDW's recent, and quite excellent, four part graphic novel adaptation of it.

Director John Hough understands when to leave something to the audience's collective imagination and when to payoff on all the tension that has been building as the psychic phenomenon in Hell House escalates.  He also places the camera at either odd angles or in odd locations, putting the statuary and furniture of the Belasco house to excellent atmospheric use.  There is also the motif of reflective surfaces.  Once the group is inside the house, it seems that there is either a mirror or some other item (in one instance a record) casting a reflection in almost every major scene.

The acting is top notch, with Gayle Hunnicutt (as Barrett's sexually repressed wife) and Pamela Franklin getting most of the choice melodramatic scenes.  Revill's Dr. Barrett is a good, solid and skeptical anchor that keeps the others from becoming too flamboyant.  Speaking of flamboyant, I don't think there is another actor that could have sold the film's grand finale as well as McDowall does.

While it does not quite achieve that classic level of para-psychological frights as Robert Wise's The Haunting, The Legend of Hell House richly deserves its status as a minor cult classic.

More importantly, it's a scary ghost story.  So put the kids to bed, curl up on the couch, and shiver from something other than the cold, for a change.

Merry Christmas.