Psycho Santa

The kind of people who like psycho Santa movies are not exactly aficionados of great film. They expect slashing bloody scenes, brutalities, bad acting, some ineptness to laugh at. This film actually tries to make an interesting movie with careful set-ups, understated acting that shows some ability of the performers, and the directing knows something about editing together scenes to show suspense. The comments made by people about this movie indicate a decided lack of interest in anything less than puerile. This was a film made by someone with little money, hence videotape, but shows some study of the art of suspense, using techniques employed by Hitchcock. Alas, the director may have chosen a genre in which his audience is not worthy of his efforts. This film can actually be watched by adults with a brain to pass time.

Psycho Santa (2003)

* (out of 4)

Pretty bad anthology film has a guy and girl driving when he announces that he can't stand Christmas. She then asks why and the guy then tells three different stories set around Christmas time. The first has two girls going to the woods to meet a friend where they get slaughtered. The second story deals with a couple thieves while another has a boy and girl in the woods with a psycho Santa. This thing clocks in at 72-minutes, which feels about 67-minutes too long. This film is pretty short but it feels ten times longer and the main reason for this is that everything that happens just goes on and on for no reason. To be fair, the story here doesn't have enough for a five-minute movie let alone one this long so to make up for this we just get a bunch of scenes that just drag on. Just take a look at the first story and you'll notice a sequence where one girl takes a shower while another goes for a walk to pick up stones. We just keep cutting back and forth between this stuff for no reason. The second and third stories also features stuff that just drags along and after a while you just feel cheated. The performances are below average, the special effects aren't memorable and in the end there's very little to check out here.

Traveling together to a holiday party, a couple trying to stay entertained on the way there decides to pass the time by telling the tale of a psychotic serial killer who lived in the area who dressed as Santa and attacked numerous people which causes them to wonder if he's still in the area.

This was a decent enough indie genre effort. Among the films' better features is the use of a holiday atmosphere within a solid shot-on-video indie aesthetic. It's nearly unmistakable to see the indie approach here, with the constant buzz and grain present alongside the guerilla-style shooting that takes place here even before taking into account the one-location setting which is where everything takes place. This is enhanced nicely by some fine enhancements to the holiday spirit where this one plays pretty nicely with the song being played as a controlling mechanism for the killer which is integrated rather well here. This lets the film focus rather nicely on the decent setups involving the killer coming into play at random points. The opening involving him stalking the victim through the junkyard is a fine starting point with some more suspenseful tactics than expected while the later flashbacks here to Santa taking out the girls partying in the remote cabin or the thieves breaking into the house have a lot to like. Playing up the killer's inhuman nature and some rather brutal kills, this here offers up a fine entrance point where the later encounters on the girl in her house or the siblings lost in the woods come across as solid enough scenes to bring about quite a lot to enjoy here. There are some issues here that bring it down. One of the better features with this one comes from a scattershot and discordant plotline that makes for a rather underwhelming and confusing time. Presenting the backstory of the psycho Santa killer as a series of anthology vignettes in this form as it does manage to jump around to these encounters as it doesn't need to be a closeted film in this structure. This cheap feeling is the other big drawback here, with the general lack of presence or general atmosphere with the simplistic storyline, toned-down locations, and one-take feel that really combine together to give this a short-changed feel.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, and Language.

I recently viewed Psycho Santa (2003) on Tubi. The storyline follows a young couple moving into a new house with rumors of a psycho Santa in the nearby woods, a plot they initially dismiss but may come to regret.

Directed by Peter Keir (Wolfika), the film stars Kimberly Lynn Cole (Body Snatchers), Eric Spudic (Creepies), Krystal Havens (Dead Clowns), Jason Barnes (Dead Clowns), and Michelle Samford (Cadaver Bayer).

This picture has a fantastic opening shower scene then takes a sharp downturn from there. While the cast, dialogue, and storyline are painfully lacking, the actresses are at least worth a viewing. Unfortunately, the horror elements, especially the kill scenes, are disastrously bad-some of the worst I've ever seen.

In conclusion, Psycho Santa is only worth considering if you're desperate for a poorly executed Christmas horror film. I would give it a 2/10 and recommend skipping it altogether.

If you are looking for a genuine & bona fide Christmas horror classic, in the vein of "Black Christmas" or "Silent Night Deadly Night", then... this certainly isn't the one! But I guess you already derived that from the title, the horrible cover-art, the score here on IMDb, and the reviews. "Psycho Santa" is amateur fan-boy film making of the worst possible kind. We're talking shaky handheld camerawork, atrocious acting from people who wanted to do the writer/director a favor, a flimsy plot, zero gore or make-up effects, and endless amounts of padding footage.

When a couple drives out to their family on Christmas' eve, the man tells the story of a neighborhood psychopath who escaped from a burning asylum and - dressed as Santa Clause - killed a bunch of people. Those kills are told in flashbacks, and here's what makes "Psycho Santa" the absolute worst movie in history: the flashbacks simply exist of random filler-footage. Two girls in a remote cabin, showering and dancing for almost fifteen minutes. Two burglars breaking into the house of a blind woman and spending an enormous amount of time forcing the lock and wandering in the house. A brother and a sister facing engine trouble in the woods and walking around for another fifteen minutes. Just when the psycho is finally about to appear, the flashbacks end and it's the guy in the car who simply narrates the bloody details. What?!? "Psycho Santa" gives a whole new dimension to the term 'anti-climax'. Anyone who claims this movie is worth seeing is either bribed by the director or related to him. One extra point for the poor girls who agreed to show full-frontal nudity, and probably secretly hoped it would help their careers forward.