Santa's Slay Canada/USA, R, 78 m, 2005
Could
there possibly be a more odious holiday picture than Glen Morgan’s Black
Christmas? Nope, but David Steiman’s Santa’s Slay comes
pretty darn close. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the pitiable Jackie
Kong (The Being, Blood
Diner) had dropped this lump of coal in my stocking. The story here is
every bit as half-baked and dull-witted as what you’d get in a Kong flick, and
the gags are just as agonizingly basic. The only difference I can see is that the
production values are a tad higher, but a shellacked road apple is still a road
apple. Santa’s Slay (what a groaningly obvious pun) is the umpteenth
entry in the worthless sub-genre of Bad Santa Movies (my apologies to Bad
Santa, a searingly funny black comedy), which includes such revolting items
as Christmas Evil, Santa Claws, and Silent Night, Deadly Night.
I don’t think Santa’s Slay is any naughtier than those pictures, but
what makes it more deserving of a switch in its shoe is that it was put together
by a bunch of folks who should have known better. The picture opens in an upper-class neighborhood on
Christmas Eve. Inside one of the homes (a veritable mansion adorned with
holiday lights that are very sparkly, very twinkly), a festive dinner table is
surrounded by a goodly amount of familiar faces: James Caan, Fran Drescher,
Chris Kattan, Rebecca Gayheart, and Alicia Lorén. At first I thought I was
watching the wrong picture; cut-rate slasher flicks usually don’t feature
actors of Caan’s caliber. We gather by the clan’s opulent surroundings and
snooty behavior that they’re as moneyed as the Howells, which to the
filmmakers means the same thing as grasping and spiritually bankrupt. The family
spends a few moments insulting each other before a squalid, muscle-bound Kris
Kringle (WCW
and WWE personality Bill “Da Man” Goldberg) comes barreling down the chimney. He
hasn’t loaded toys and goodies on his sleigh this year (unless you count his
gift-wrapped explosives); he’s out for blood. He whacks the whole family in
ways that are clearly meant to be funny, but—unless
you’re some kind of sicko—are sooo not. The yummy but very annoying Fran Drescher
is treated to a fiery makeover before being drowned in a bowl of eggnog, the family pooch is dropkicked into
the whirling blades of a ceiling fan, and James Caan gets his head impaled on a
turkey leg. Bad Santa Movies usually feature some loon dressing up as Santa;
here the loon is Santa. We learn through a crude puppetoon (a goof on Rankin/Bass)
that dear ol’ Santa is actually the son of Satan. (Get it? “Santa” is an
anagram for “Satan.” Ho-ho-hee-hee-ha-ha!) Long ago, Santa lost a wager to
an angel during a curling match, obligating him to perform benevolent acts for
the next millennium. Well, he’s paid his debt in full, and now he’s back to
his old demonic ways. Riding a sleigh drawn by a single fire-breathing bison,
Santa descends upon the snowy, old-world community of Hell Township (!) to seek
out the angel (who has since assumed the guise of a reclusive inventor that
looks like Robert Culp) and destroy him. But first Santa needs to practice his
Spears and Gorilla Press Drops on some of the townspeople. The first to go is a
foul-mouthed, chain-smoking granny; she meets her maker after Santa
runs her car off the road with his sleigh. Also on Santa’s shit list is Mr. Green (Saul
Rubinek), a kindly deli owner who buys the farm after St. Nick shoves a menorah
through his throat. Can you believe somebody paid Steiman to write this shit?
Gee whiz, the money I brought in from writing this year wasn’t even enough to
buy a sandwich at Mr. Green’s deli, and here’s this talentless butthead
plumping up his mattress with enough green stuff to feed a small country! I’m
beginning to think that the mentors in my life that stressed integrity sold me a
bill of goods. I don’t know what attracted SCTV veteran Dave Thomas to Santa’s
Slay, but he’s utterly wasted as Pastor Timmons, a bombastic man of the
cloth who has a secret attraction to Hell Township’s seamy underbelly. He
shames his congregation into giving till it hurts, and then he’s off to the
titty bar to stuff bills from the collection plate into a dancer’s g-string.
When Santa stops by the club, he offs the valet drivers, the bouncers, and the
customers with all the balletic precision of an intoxicated hippo. (I realize Goldberg is
a big kahuna on the wrestling circuit, but he has
virtually no screen presence, so I doubt he’ll be receiving a star on
Hollywood’s Walk of Fame any time soon.) Santa then sneers at the go-go girls
and sets them on fire. But barbecuing a bevy of bare-breasted hos doesn’t
satisfy Santa’s bloodlust for long; he goes off and slaughters a group of
carolers and a station house full of bear claw-addicted bluecoats. (He only hisses at the
Hasidic Jews that pass him on the street.) There’s plenty here to offend
Christians: Santa (played by what may be the only Jew in the wrestling biz)
crashes through a life-size nativity scene, decapitating a statue of a wise man
in the process. Friends of Jesus are tossed a bone, though, when the film’s
young protagonist, Nicolas Yuleson (Douglas Smith), is given a tongue-lashing by
his girlfriend for taking the Lord’s name in vain. That’s all very nice, but
after having subjected his audience to more gratuitous carnage than a Raw Feed
video, shaming a blasphemer may not be enough to put Steiman back in God’s
good graces. Believe it or not, this first-time director worked as an assistant
on The Family Man, a very charming Yuletide picture suitable for kids
from one to ninety-two. Is Santa’s Slay the result of a bet Steiman
lost to the Devil? I dunno, but a malevolent hand must be behind the painfully dumb
jokes that Santa tells his victims before he puts them in the ground. Steiman
isn’t Scrooge-like with spreading those groaners around either: In one scene,
the local sheriff, Caulk (Michael David Simms), is in hot pursuit of Nicolas and
his girlfriend, (I’ll be damned if I can remember what instigated the chase),
and as he gains on them, Nicolas exclaims, “He sucks,” to which his
girlfriend replies, “Caulk?” That should give you a good idea of what
you’re in store for here. Santa’s Slay is one of the lousiest
directorial debuts I’ve seen in ages. If there’s another movie in
Steiman’s future, he needs to extend his knowledge of film history beyond the
oeuvre of Jackie Kong. May I recommend starting with Ed Wood? December 18, 2008 “Santa’s Slay” Review. © Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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