Saturday, December 13, 2014

Movie Review: "Santa's Slay" (2005)

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Movie"Santa's Slay"
Director: David Steiman
Year: 2005
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hours, 18 minutes

It's Christmas and Santa (Bill Goldberg) is ready to make his annual trip, except this year, he isn't bringing presents, he is bringing death and chaos. It turns out that Santa is actually the son of Satan and only brought presents to children because he lost a bet to an angel and was forced to do so for 1,000 years. Santa has fulfilled the terms of the bet and is now free to wreak havoc once again. He chooses to unleash his wrath on the appropriately named Hell Township and it's up to a local boy named Nicolas Yuleson (Douglas Smith) and his thought to be crazy grandpa (Robert Culp) to stop him. 

There are a lot of legends and folklore surrounding Santa, many of which involve cruelty towards bad children. In that regard, it's not too far of a stretch to make Santa inherently evil. There are not many scary Christmas movies, and sometimes, it's nice to get a break from all the happiness to see what the horror genre can bring to this most festive holiday. "Santa's Slay" creates it's own folklore about Santa being the son of Satan and how he lost a bet on a game of curling. It tells this little legend in the style of the old school stop-motion animation Christmas specials like "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," which is quite cute and a much needed break from the madness throughout the rest of the film. The acting here is really nothing special, in fact, most of the time, it's completely overdone and cheesy. It's the offbeat, quippy dialogue and zany yet holiday appropriate murders that make it fun to watch. We don't typically think of Bill Goldberg as an actor, but he plays the role of evil Santa ridiculously convincingly, leading us to believe he is probably Satan himself. The rest of the movie is full of the aforementioned slapstick driven dark comedy/horror where Santa kills people with a variety of often holiday themed weapons as he makes one-liner quips, which are also holiday themed. It's not a good movie in any sense of the word, but it's so off the wall that it's good for a kitschy laugh every decade or so.

My Rating: 6.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 6/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: ---%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
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One year ago, we were watching: "Arthur Christmas"

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