Brooke and Roger, two graphic designers in a soon-to-be-merged company, help one another by agreeing to a loveless marriage of convenience. In the process, Brooke gets to upstage her sister who just announced her engagement to her ex-boyfriend.

Now, you may say, “Sam why are you watching this?”

David DeCoteau got me again.

Yes, the maker of the “Wrong” series of movies (The Wrong Cheerleader, The Wrong Tutor, The Wrong Mommy, The Wrong Friend, The Wrong Crush, The Wrong Man, The Wrong Child, The Wrong Roommate, The Wrong Boy Next Door and The Wrong Stepmother), the 1313 softcore for guys series, not to mention A Talking Cat!?! and its sequel A Talking Pony!?!, plus movies stretching the whole way back to Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and Dr. Alien, David DeCoteau has started a cottage industry of made for streaming and small network Christmas movies, sort of like Fred Olen Ray.

This movie strangely places Vivica A. Fox (yep, the very same one who was in Kill Bill) and Ricco Ross (yes, Private Frost from Aliens and Lt. Nathanson in Wishmaster) together as the North Star crossed lovers, as well as Eric Roberts (forever in my heart the voice of Duffy) and Jackee from Saturday night NBC sitcom fave 227.

This being a DeCoteau joint — is that a thing? — you also get Dominque Swain showing up as the friend to our protagonist, Hilary Shepherd (Divatox from the Power Rangers Turbo series), Helene Udy (who was on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman as Myra Bing; if you ever want me to judge you, have that series on when I visit your house), Michael Bergin (J.D. Darius from Baywatch), David McKnight (Uncle Ray from Hollywood Shuffle), Johnny Whitaker (yes, sure, he was Tom Sawyer and on Sigmund and the Sea Monster, but he is also a DeCoteau A Talking Cat!?! alumnus), Galyn Gorg (Angie from RoboCop 2 and Margarita from Point Break) and Laurene Landon (Theresa Mallory from Maniac Cop).

But there’s one big reason why I watched this movie.

It unites Robert Brian Wilson (Billy Caldwell from Silent Night, Deadly Night) with Eric Freeman (Ricky Caldwell from Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2) in one movie. Such is the magic of a Christmas DeCoteau film. They play two office workers who are wrapping gifts and this was Freeman’s first movie role in nearly two decades.

Just a dumb question: Is DeCoteau pranking me? Is this an elaborate ruse to get me to see his movies? Is George Eastman going to play the owner of a lovable dog in his next film? Honestly: What the actual fuck is going on?

You can watch this for free on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

Much like The Wizard of Oz, The Magic Christmas Tree thinks that reality is in black and white while dreams are in color. Both films have a witch. Both movies have wishes. But only one of them had a budget. And only one of them is a classic beloved by families for generations.

Sorry Richard C. Parish. Your one and done directorial effort isn’t getting a 4K re-release this year.

In the black and white real world, three boys are walking home from school on Halloween. One of them, Mark, helps a witch get her cat Lucifer out of a tree. The moment someone told me I had to climb a tree to save a demonic cat, I would honestly be out of there, but Mark instead falls out of the tree and gets knocked out.

When he wakes up, the witch gives him a magic ring, as well as some magic seeds that need planted. On Thanksgiving, while everyone else is sleeping off the turkey, Mark is combining the wishbone of a turkey with the magic seeds and the magic words and the magic ring to grow the magic Christmas tree. His turtle Ichabod just watches in terror as Mark engages in a rite of eroto-comatose lucidity.

This tree that grows is unkillable, even when Mark’s dad cuts the grass in the middle of November. I guess we should assume that they live in California. Also — Mark’s dad is played by the director and his dialogue appears to appear as if by magic. In fact, this entire film appers dubbed even when it isn’t.

While Ichabod the turtle eats the grass, dad has a wacky grass cutting session that ends up with the mower in flames and him acting drunk. The way he talks to his wife, you can only assume how he really treats her. This film cuts deeply into the dark underbelly of post-war America. The dream is dead. The power mower is in flames. The Christmas tree is alive.

That’s right. On Christmas Eve, the Magic Tree comes to life and can talk. It grants Mark three wishes. The Magic Christmas Tree also speaks with all the snark and pomp of Charles Nelson Reilly. Seriously, it’s as if the tree has seen it all and is bored with this charade. He’s merely indulging Mark.

Now, Mark’s a smart kid, so he wishes for an hour of absolute power, which he promptly is corrupted by absolutely. That said, he’s not that smart, because why wish for only an hour? Just wish for absolute power. Don’t put any limits on it, Mark. And don’t talk to trees.

What does Mark do with all that power? He makes flowers appear and disappear. Mark has obviously not gone through puberty, because if I had magic power in 1964, I would use the entire hour with Barbara Steele. Or Mamie Van Doren. Or Bardeau. Ah, you get the picture, even if Mark doesn’t.

Instead, he makes people run all over the place and throw pies in one another’s faces, but the camera is so far away you may wonder exactly what’s happening. It’s all kind of like Benny Hill but terrifying instead of madcap. Firemen get pies in their faces while their antique engines careen out of control. Happy holidays, La Verne, California. Hope you survive the experience.

Yes, the same town where the wedding scene in The Graduate was shot (and Wayne’s World 2) is subject to the Magic Christmas Tree gifting Mark with the power to be a complete jerk.

Mark’s second wish is to have Santa Claus all to himself. He couldn’t think of any other wishes. I mean, you have any power in the world and you can’t think of a wish?

Santa really seems like he’s senile. He also seems like he can’t stand up from the chair he’s stuck in.

This wish causes every other child in the world to grow very sad, so Mark uses his third wish to send Santa back to the children. That’s because he gets sent to a pocket dimension where his selfishness leads him to meet the very personification of Greed. The giant man yells, “You are my little boy!” and offers him a mountain of cake and toys to stay.

Greed is played by Pittsburgh native Robert “Big Buck” Maffei, who uses his 7’1″ frame to his advantage, playing monsters and aliens in a ton of television shows and movies, including a creature (actually a Taurus II anthropoid) in “The Galileo Seven” episode of Star Trek and the giant cyclops on Lost In Space. His last movie appearance was in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams.

Mark gives Santa back to the children. But of course, it was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. Maybe Mark learned something. Maybe we all did.

The bastards at Goodtimes released this on VHS in 1992, pairing it with Rene Cardona’s Santa Claus. I can’t imagine a more horrifying double feature ever — the battle of Santa and Patch directed by the man who brought you Night of the Bloody Apes paired with this film that feels like it was shot on one of those Price Is Right Showcase Showdown sets with all of the lights turned out.

You can watch this for free on The Internet Archive and Tubi. I would advise you to avoid it and ensure that your Christmas Day isn’t filled with relentless horror.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Emily Fear is a librarian by day, professional wrestling lover and accordion player in the band Bitter Whiskers by night. You can catch her as the co-host of Grit and Glitter on PWTorch and read her blog all about intergender wrestling, Boy Girl Party. She’s also recently conducted a class on the role of women in horror films.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood

The opening scene of Black Christmas intercuts shots of shadowy, conspiratorial hallways and the whispered oaths of men with the much less formal, more boisterous and loving revelries of a sorority house. In this home of women, there are drinks and “more cheese, bitches!” and music and a tender phone call between roommates implying the gift-giving of a vibrator.

The recipient of this thoughtful present is walking home late from the library, headed to a relative’s for the Christmas break. Walking alone in a dark campus emptied of others, she encounters two simultaneously jarring appearances: Ominous and threatening DMs from an anonymous account and a man, staring down at his phone, walking behind her.

She gets her keys out of her pocket and puts them between her fingers, a kind of makeshift Wolverine claw defense that so many of us know so well. It will not save her.

So begins Sophia Takal’s and April Wolfe’s staunchly feminist reimagining of the 1974 slasher classic Black Christmas, Bob Clark’s ode to the women who suffer because of the cruelty of men, be it in its most brutal, insane manifestation or in its more benign, condescending forms. The original film has been celebrated for its striking visuals, its wrenching tension and never-ending sense of dread and its performances, but in more recent years, the film has also seen a resurgence through feminist film theory, with many of these critics praising the implicit feminist themes in the movie.

Rather than strictly adhere to the original premise, Takal and Wolfe take those implicit themes and make them the core of the film. This Black Christmas is centered around the sorority sisters and fraternity brothers of Hawthorne College, which is just about to shut down for Winter Break. Riley (Imogen Poots) is a senior and MKE sister, still trying to recover years later from a sexual assault by AKO’s former fraternity president, Brian – who is back to observe the fraternity’s annual holiday talent show, which Riley’s sisters Kris, Marty, Jesse & Helena happen to be performing in.

Kris (Aleyse Shannon) is fighting her own battles, including convincing the college to remove the bust of the school’s founder, the infamously bigoted Calvin Hawthorne (“He owned slaves. IN THE NORTH.”) and petitioning to have Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes, perfectly balancing slimy and authoritarian) fired for failing to diversify his literature course beyond the canon of dead white men.

Kris is ardent about her campaigns, perhaps to an overwhelming extent as even her sisters are keen to distance themselves from some of her more passionate screeds. But when Helena has to leave the AKO party early, it is Kris that convinces Riley to reclaim her space and join the girls in the choreographed talent show number – which is actually, despite its sexy Santa trappings, a barbed parody shaming and ridiculing the fraternity’s rape culture, specifically directed toward Riley’s attacker.

Video of the performance goes viral, sisters start disappearing and, as Riley, Kris, Marty and Jesse prepare for a holiday dinner at their otherwise vacated sorority house, the looming threat of violence that these women live under becomes a direct siege, with an invasion of robed, masked men come to exterminate them through whatever means handy, be it a string of Christmas lights, a bow and arrow, or unimaginable physical power. Is that power sourced from something even more dark and sinister than insane rage or thirst for revenge? Well, the movie tells you pretty much from the start that it is.

Takal and Wolfe add a heavy dose of supernatural conspiracy to the original’s slasher concept and its effectiveness may vary for viewers, many of whom may be expecting the satire to still play more straightforward with the violence. However, in a horde of slasher movies each attempting to outdo the other ones in ostentatious displays of over-the-top gore, there’s something revelatory in a horror film that maintains tension without the need for constant blood and guts.

What will likely be harder for some of traditional horror audience to swallow is the intensely explicit feminist themes of the movie. Riley, Kris and their sisters are not hapless victims being picked off one by one, nor are they likable, plucky “Final Girls.” Rather, they are a flawed but bound army of resistance against an evil patriarchal force bent on eliminating whatever women cannot be forced to submit to its power. What the movie sacrifices in subtly, it makes up for in moments of rousing rebellion, or in the smaller moments of joyful, lived-in exchanges between characters, like when a scattered sorority sister begs Riley for a pad because she’s misplaced her Diva Cup. (“How do you lose a Diva Cup?” “With abandon!”)

Poots proves her mettle as a suspense thriller heroine once again, with Shannon an able and engaging support presence. The women’s performances overall fare better than their male co-stars who, Elwes aside, mostly blur together in a homogenous Caucasian blur of privilege and sniveling misogyny. Landon (Caleb Eberhardt) is more wholly defined – and in a movie about raging against injustices of supernatural extent, has maybe my favorite explosive moment when he sees what the way the irresponsible frat bros have destroyed his sound mixer – but still lacks depth in shading, which is particularly interesting when you consider he’s the only non-white male character in the movie. How privilege and power differ for him in contrast to his white cis male counterparts needn’t have been explored to great depth, but touching on it would have been a welcome note of intersection between the struggle against sexism and struggle against racism.

This Black Christmas is sure to be divisive for audiences, but if you’re into the idea of a suspense-filled horror satire birthed from the #MeToo moment, this is a very enjoyable hour and a half at the movies.

The Wolf of Wall Street — in real life — was Jordan Belfort. Other than spending time in jail for fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation and running a boiler room as part of a penny-stock scam, he also executive produced this Hulk Hogan vehicle.

Oh Hulk Hogan — the man who to this today claims that he was asked to take over for Cliff Burton in Metallica, who says that Elvis used to watch him wrestle in Memphis even though Hogan didn’t wrestle there until 1979 and Elvis died in 1977. Then there’s the time the makers of a grill called him first, he didn’t get the phone in time and they called George Foreman next. Then there’s the time he outdrank John Belushi after WrestleMania II, which took place in 1986. Nevermind that Belushi died in 1982.

Actually, there’s no one better to play Santa Claus, who is based on telling lies to children.

Blake Thorn (Hogan) is a millionaire who sells vitamins but doesn’t ask anyone to say their prayers. Really, he’s not a nice guy and the cops bust him one day as he’s playing paintball. This is perfectly normal, as is the amnesia he gets at the mall, which leads him to believe that he’s Santa.

Don Stark, who was Bubba Caldwell in Evilspeak, plays a mall manager who gets Blake into the costume. He’d also go on to play Bob Pinciotti on That 70’s Show alongside Mila Kunis, who is also in this movie. When she was asked about this movie by GQ, she said, ” “I was too young to fully understand the importance of working with Hulk Hogan. I just thought he was this huge man.” She had some rough early films, such as American Psycho 2 with William Shatner and the 1995 Piranha TV movie remake.

There’s also an evil scientist named Ebner Frost (Ed Begley, Jr.) who is taking over an orphanage run by Garrett Morris because he wants some magic crystals. He has an entire army of maniacs to help him — Dr. Blight, Dr. Vial, Mr. Flint and Ms. Watt (Diane Robin, who is one of the prostitutes that Clarence Boddicker snarls “Bitches, leave!” to in RoboCop).

Robin Curtis, who was Lt. Savvik in the Star Trek films, is in this. And speaking of Evilspeak, Clint Howard shows up. So does William Newman (Silver Bullet and The Craft), Brenda Song (from that Netflix stinkfest Secret Obsession) and Brutus “The Barber” (also known as Baron Beefcake, The Booty Man, Big Brother Booty, Brother Bruti, Brute Force, The Butcher, The Clipmaster, Dizzy Hogan, Dizzy Golden, The Disciple, Ed Boulder, Ed Golden, Eddie Hogan, The Mariner, The Man With No Name, The Man With No Name, Furface and The Zodiac).

Director John Murlowski also was behind Amityville: A New Generation (2020 spoiler: we’re doing an entire week of Amityville movies). It was written by three one and done writers, Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata and Dorrie Krum Raymond. However, Mata was a casting director and cast the Andrew “Dice” Clay movie Brain Smasher… A Love Story. Seriously, knowledge like that will get you nowhere in this life.

If you ever wanted to see Hulk Hogan as Santa Claus, well, here’s your chance, brother. You can watch this for free on Vudu or get the blu ray from Mill Creek Entertainment.

Mickey Rooney famously decried the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. He said that the scum who made it should be run out of town for having sullied the sacredness of Christmas. Yet here he is, starring in the fifth installment. Hollywood is funny that way.

This came from https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/12/05/collins-crypt-protesting-silent-night-deadly-night-was…-ok

Neith Hunter, Clint Howard and Conan Yuzna — who played Kim, Ricky and Lonnie in Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation — make cameo appearances, but as far as I know, they aren’t the same characters.

One night in December, Derek Quinn finds a gift on his porch. His father yells at him for being awake so late and opens the gift himself, which has an orb shaped like Santa inside it. Soon, it unleashes some tentacles which strangles dad and makes him fall down on a fireplace poker. His wife Sarah soon finds his body.

Two weeks later, Derek’s mom takes him to the toy store of Joe Petto (Rooney) — get it, JOE PETTO — to pick out a toy. Petto’s son Pino — yes, Pino Petto — is a weird duck who tries to get Derek to pick Larry the Larvae. Derek rejects the toys and Joe begins screaming at Pino, blaming him for the toy store failing. While all that’s going on, Noah Adams has followed the family and taken that worm toy, which he gives to his landlord. Larry the Larvae crawls into that dude’s mouth and out his eyeball, proving that this movie isn’t screwing around when it comes to holiday gore.

The next day, Sarah takes Derek to see Santa, who ends up being Noah. There’s also another gift on the porch and if someone didn’t want a gift any more than this kid, I have no idea who that person is.

So that gift ends up being rocket skates and a kid ends up getting hospitalized by them. And oh yeah — Pino gets beaten into oblivion by his dad. And oh yeah part two — Noah is really Derek’s real dad.

What follows next is a sequence where the babysitter and her boyfriend are accosted by a toy hand and then annihilated by an entire army of toys that basically dissects them. Joe steals Derek and Noah reveals that the old toymaker hurt a whole bunch of kids after his wife died by selling them toys that would hurt them.

As they get to the toy store, Noah is knocked out and Pino reveals that he is a robotic boy created by Joe to replace his dead son, but that he can never live up to being a real boy. Joe beats him to the point that he dies time and time again, but now he wants Sarah to be his mom, so he sexually assaults her. Yep. This movie is taking no prisoners.

The end of this movie is completely out of control. The robotic kid — who has an asexual body like a Ken doll — gets chopped in half and his head stomped on, as he cries for his father. You really have to see it to believe it.

Director Martin Kitrosser has had an interesting career, writing starting as a script supervisor on the first Friday the 13th before eventually writing the third and fifth films in that series. He also wrote Meatballs Part II and has gone on to be a script supervisor for nearly all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, with his credit in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood listing him as Martin “The Cobra” Kitrosser.

Brian Yuzna, who produced Re-Animator, was also on board for this. The effects, by Screaming Mad George, are incredible, with tons of gore and some really inventive deadly toys. Actually, this whole movie is way better than it has any right being, seeing as how it’s the fifth movie in the series. To be honest, it’s several cuts above the other ones all put together.

You can watch this for free — with commercials — on Vudu.

This entry in the Silent Night, Deadly Night series has nothing to do with any of the others, dropping the killer Santa Caldwell brothers for an entirely new plot. It was directed by Brian Yuzna and written by Yuzna, Woody Keith and Arthur Gorson. In the UK, it’s called Bugs, which is a much more descriptive title.

Keith took several of the ideas he had for the movie Society but was unable to get into that movie. Thanks to the miracle of how movies are released, that film came out two years after this one.

Kim Levitt (Neith Hunter, who is also in Less Than Zero and Carnosaur 2) is an aspiring journalist working at the L.A. Eye. Her boss gives breaks to all the guys, including her boyfriend Hank.

However, when she finds a spontaneously combusted body on her sidewalk, she starts her own investigation. That brings her to the bookstore of Fima (Maud Adams, the titular heroine of the James Bond film Octopussy), who gives her a book on feminism and the occult.

On Christmas Eve, Kim spends a rough evening with her boyfriend’s family, dealing with way too many questions and anger about her lack of religious faith. On Christmas Day, she attends a picnic Fima invited her to, where she meets Katherine Harrison (Jeanne Bates, Mrs. X from Eraserhead) and Jane Yanana (Sheeva from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation), who tells her about Adam’s first wife Lilith.

Merry Christmas, huh?

Soon, our heroine’s writing career is going well but she’s eating bugs and drinking weird tea and you know, it’s tannis root all over again. She passes out, only to awaken to Jane, Fima, Katherine, and Li performing a ritual where they cut open a live rat, pulls out some larva and shoves it inside her secret garden. It then comes out of her mouth as a vomited giant roach, which their assistant Ricky (Clint Howard!) slices up and drips all over her face.

The mania continues with her running to her man’s apartment and Ricky following her to stab Hank to death. Her co-worker Janice comes to help  — no she doesn’t she’s in on all this — before taking her back to meet Fima. Janice is played by Allyce Beasley, who you may remember as the secretary from TV’s Moonlighting.

This all leads to the Curse of Lilith, burning bugs, Ricky wiping out a family, an office holiday party and Reggie Bannister from Phantasm playing Eli, the horrible boss. Oh yeah — you also get to watch a gigantic insect eat Clint Howard, which really sounds like the best Christmas gift possible for me. Thank you, everyone involved.

You can watch this for free — with ads — on Vudu.

Monte Hellman started his career by directing Roger Corman’s Beast from Haunted Cave before working with Jack Nicholson on the westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, as well as creating the films Two-Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter. He also shot second unit on RoboCop and executive produced Reservoir Dogs.

The original script was thrown out and rewritten in one week, with that rejected version becoming the fourth film in the series. Shooting was completed by the next month and then editing was complete two months after that. This is a down and direct VHS rental film, but it isn’t without its charms.

After being shot by police at the end of the previous film — cue the stock footage from Silent Night, Deadly Night — Ricky Caldwell has been in a coma for six years. Now, he has a transparent dome covering his damaged skull and the blood sloshes all around inside his brainpan.

Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer, Ben Horne from Twin Peaks) is an eccentric doctor who wants to reach Ricky (now played by Bill Moseley!)  by using a blind clairvoyant named Laura Anderson (Samantha Scully, Best of the Best).

Laura hates the experience and decides to quit. She goes home for the holidays to visit her grandmother (Elizabeth Hoffman, Fear No Evil) with her brother (Eric Da Re, Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks) and his girlfriend Jerri (Laura Harring, who played Rita and Camilla Rhodes in Mulholland Drive, as well as being the first hispanic Miss USA).

Meanwhile, a drunk hospital employee dressed as Santa taunts a comatose Ricky, who wakes up and kills the guy. Soon, he’s on a trail of bloody murder all over again, tracked by Newbury and Lieutenant Connely (Robert Culp).

Ricky can see into the mind of our heroine — and vice versa — which means she can tell that he’s probably already taken out grandmother and that her brother, his girl and she are next.

Honestly, this is my favorite of the series so far — I haven’t gotten to 4 and 5 yet — because it’s sheer madness punctuated by people who have acted in David Lynch movies. I wonder if he used this as an example of who to cast?

You can watch this for free — with ads — on Vudu.

Remember Silent Night, Deadly Night? Well, that movie was a big deal before it was pulled from theaters and then became an even bigger deal on home video. A sequel was demanded and it was delivered, but it was made on a shoestring, with director Lee Harry trying to make something other than a greatest hits reel of the first film. Seriously, though, this movie is nearly the entire first film with a couple of new scenes.

Ricky Caldwell, the 18-year-old brother of Billy from the first movie, is in a mental hospital after a series of murders. He’s being interviewed by psychiatrist Dr. Henry Bloom, which allows us to watch pretty much the entire first film before Ricky goes off on his own rampage.

Ricky did have a chance once, because he fell in love with Jennifer Statson (Elizabeth Kaitan, Savage Dawn, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and several of the Vice Academy films). However, her ex-lover Chip sends Ricky over the edge, which ends with Ricky hooking his head up to some jumper cables and then him killing his girlfriend just because. Then he goes even crazier, causing cars to nearly hit him (an incredible stunt) and then yells, “Garbage Day!” and wipes out everyone.

Ricky is captured by the police, but now we flash forward (or back) to the beginning of this film, where he kills the doctor and goes after Mother Superior, whose face now looks like Catholic school lunch pizza. Billy gets stopped, but he isn’t dead. And why should he be? After all, it’s Christmas.

You have so many options to watch this movie with. You can see it for free on Tubi or Amazon Prime. Or watch it with or without commentary from Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. Finally, you can get the collectors set from Shout Factory, complete with an action figure.