Those of us who break out in hives in the presence of cheeseball cable Christmas rom-coms and kiddie junkola might be attracted Christmas Bloody Christmas (now continue Shudder), a killer mutant robot Santa film from Neo-Grindhouse director Joe Begos (bliss, VFW). My hope that this blood-soaked, heavy metal-themed outing would find a malevolent Kringlebot rampaging through a happy, fake Hallmark holiday scenario was not fulfilled when Begos crafted something more like it Hi-Fi meets RoboCop, but totally drenched in seasonal greens and reds. It occasionally delivers on the promise of that aesthetic, but is it enough to warrant a recommendation?
The essentials: Tori Tooms (Riley Dandy) holds her own in a debate about shitty Blair witch Sequels, but how will she stack up against a pounding, nearly indestructible Santautomaton with a big ol’ fire axe? We’ll find out in a moment. She owns a record store and wears a death t-shirt (the death metal band) (because death rules) and likes to smoke weed and just wants to spend this Christmas Eve with a bottle of whiskey and maybe a piece of ass via Tinder. Her arrogant employee Robbie Reynolds (Sam Delich) convinces her to skip the last part and build up sexual tension with him instead. They end up spending the evening drinking too much, playfully arguing about music and pet cemeterys, run into minor characters who will likely be out of breath by the time the credits roll, and eventually rip each other’s clothes off. You know, the usual Christmas Eve exercise.
You haven’t heeded the news about buggy animatronic Santas defaulting to “Department of Defense Firmware” – a buggy animatronic Santa that just so happens to default to “Department of Defense Firmware” just a few storefronts from the record store. Whirr clunk, Whirr clunk, Santa Claus (Abraham Benrubi) awakens, grabs the aforementioned device, and begins hacking at the toy store owner and her boyfriend shortly after they’ve snorted some drugs but before they’ve completed their intercourse. Don’t you hate it when this series of events occurs in your life? It is so unfavorable.
Aside from being the main characters in this movie, Tori and Robbie aren’t on this jolly old elf’s naughty list for any other reason. And if you think he exists to punish people who just want to get drunk the night before Jesus’ birthday, then he first stops at Tori’s neighbor to dismember a poor, clueless nuclear family. This naked conspiracy eventually involves the police, including the relatively quiet Sheriff Monroe (Jeff Daniel Phillips, who we just saw play the 2022 version of Herman Munster) and the hothead Officer Smith (Jeremy Gardner), and the question here is if Tori will have all the friends and staff left after that, or if she has to have Final Girl, she has to get out of there.
Which movies will it remind you of?: The buzzing and satirical commercials will be shut down RoboCop. The thing that doesn’t exist is Michael Myers crossed with the Terminator (1984 to be exact). The mediocre execution of a promising concept sounds like the movie Nicolas Cage-vs-the-animatronic-furries Willy’s Wonderland. And we’ve previously seen the murderous robot Santa-on-a-rampage on an episode of futurama too violent for a 7 p.m. slot on network television in the much more innocent times of the late 20th century.
Notable performance: I loved Dandy’s panache and fire in the first half of the film. What is less exciting is how she has to scream hysterically for almost the entire second half.
Memorable dialogue: “He’s joining. He’s anatomical.” – The toy store clerk thinks a threesome with robotic Santa Claus is insane
gender and skin: women’s buttocks in thongs; a sweaty oral sex sequence crossed with a gruesome slasher sequence.
Our opinion: First of all: the title Christmas Bloody Christmas absolutly riffs on Black Sabbath’s album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath with similar sacrilegious aplomb and contextualizes themselves in the subcultural zone of record shops run by people who can surgically analyze the differences between black metal and death metal. (These are my people!) And yet the film isn’t quite as fun as it wants to be. But is it fun enough? Man. Just like that. It’s too obnoxious to be funny and too classy to dismiss. Begos piles on the old-school practice effect gore—man, that ax is SHARP—and lights it up with enough harsh, intense holiday colors to turn messages of comfort and joy into ho-ho horror.
The attention Begos devotes to the visual aesthetic doesn’t apply to the script, which, having excised our clients’ garrulous pop-culture back-and-forth – which oscillates between ingratiation and mere annoyance – is utterly flimsy. The plot is simple: Hey Tori, don’t get killed! And this goes on for 40 repetitive minutes. Tonally, Begos moves in a 60/40 ratio to cheesy satire/hardcore slasher and never fully commits to both. And for those who dangle in the thought of stumbling upon the idea of government guns becoming the most powerful symbol of seasonal joy, you’re missing the wood for the trees — this isn’t subtext, it’s pretense. The film is there to splatter the heroine in blood and show us heinous killings, while Carpenter synths and Sunn 0))) drones fill the soundtrack. At the level of mutilation and evisceration and ax to the face, it’s satisfying as a craft. What’s more, it plays the same riff over and over again.
Our appeal: Well, if you pay for Shudder, you’re used to this kind of endearingly cheap, mundane, amusingly trashy fodder. That’s enough to admire in principle and in execution, so STREAM IT. But I don’t see Christmas Bloody Christmas an enduring annual classic.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more about his work below johnserbaatlarge.com.
