Santa slays and jingle hells: here’s why Christmas horror films are the perfect antidote to the season | Paul Syvret

A clown walks into a bar. Seriously. Bear with me a minute here.

The clown sees a Santa Claus impersonator propped up on a stool with a beer. The clown gambols across to sit on Santa’s lap, and then pees his pants before shooting everyone else in the bar. He steals Santa’s costume, ties him up, douses him with liquid nitrogen and proceeds to smash him to bloody pieces. Ho ho ho.

Welcome to Christmas at the Syvrets, where it is an inviolable tradition that such scenes of yuletide carnage – in this case from the horror movie Terrifier 3 – play across the living room television screen late in the day every 25 December.

Most families have Christmas traditions. Maybe it’s making a gingerbread nativity scene, midnight mass at the local church, hauling the kids and a bucket of prawns to the beach for the day or a slightly intoxicated game of back yard cricket in the arvo. Whatever floats your esky.

Our family is a bit different. At that stage of the day, when the postprandial torpor sets in, it’s time for the annual Christmas horror movie, of which there are hundreds – of vastly varying quality, entertainment value and offensiveness.

There are of course horror movies themed around every occasion you can imagine: New Year’s Evil, My Bloody Valentine, Easter Bloody Easter, ThanksKilling (about a psychotic killer turkey) … you get the picture.

But Christmas is special and for horror fans there is something delightfully perverse in embracing an antidote to the usual saccharine tropes with scenes of gore-drenched carnage or laugh-out-loud insanity.

This is not a new phenomenon. Half a century ago, Bob Clark gave us Black Christmas (with Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder and John Saxon) – a story of sorority house girls stalked by a killer. It’s a tight and effective chiller that far surpasses 2006’s insipid remake.

Among macabre and bizarre Christmas movies, there is something suitable for almost any age and audience. Sure, elderly aunts or young children are probably best not exposed to the likes of Christmas Bloody Christmas (about a military surplus robot Santa that goes on a killing spree) or Silent Night Deadly Night but there are gentler options.

These would include the likes of Gremlins, a PG-rated parable of the perfect gift gone horribly wrong when the recipient doesn’t follow strict rules, and Tim Burton’s stop-motion masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas.

When the kids are teenagers you can shift up a few notches to some of the really great, and more adult, Christmas horror comedies. The 2022 film Violent Night is about a drunk and disillusioned Santa who arrives at the mansion of an obscenely wealthy and dysfunctional family just as heavily armed mercenaries are holding them hostage. Carnage and hilarity ensue.

Or there’s the always entertaining Santa’s Slay. Here, Santa (Bill Goldberg) is a demon who lost a bet with an angel and has spent the last 1,000 years forced to deliver toys and joy. Now the millennium is up and he’s back to his old ways.

This aligns with some of the darker legends of old European folklore – most of which have now been turned into films – about the likes of Krampus or the evil scarecrow Hans Trapp. Christmas has always had its darker, pagan underbelly.

At the adults-only end of the seasonal spectrum, things start to get interesting. For those whose sense of humour has an ebony hue, titles like Terrifier 3 may appeal, or perhaps Jack Frost (about an evil snowman, not to be confused with the Michael Keaton film of the same title).

For those who like their horror unpunctuated by laughs – intentional or not – there is also plenty of cheer to be had. For mine, the pick of serious Christmas horror would be À l’intérieur (Inside), one of the most brutal and terrifying of the New French Extremity films. Strap yourselves in for this one. Also consider The Children, P2 or the delightfully dark Advent Calendar.

For the Syvret family this year? Probably Silent Night Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, a twisted tale about an evil toy maker and his son who create killer toys, and starring Mickey Rooney (who – trivia time – wrote a letter protesting about the original 1984 film in the series because it debased the sanctity of the season). Is it silly and tasteless? Yes. Which makes it a perfect remedy for all the painted smiles, piped music and manufactured niceness of the season.

Merry bloody Christmas.