When it came to selecting which Christmas themed horror movies I was going to review, Santa’s Slay wasn’t even close to being a contender. It looked dumb, didn’t have good reviews, and although I did enjoy the punny title, it just looked like it was going to be awful. The reason I ended up watching it was because it was available On Demand and it was only 75 minutes. That’s a fantastic length for a movie like this! Normally, it takes about 45 minutes to realize how awful a movie is, and once you’re that far into it, it’s got a sitcom’s length left to go! You’d be an idiot for bailing on it at the end, and this Wolfman ain’t no idiot. Well, he’s an idiot for not realizing that “ain’t” isn’t a word, but other than that, he’s not too dumb. Oh, he’s also an idiot for referring to himself in the third person. Whoops!
“For British eyes onlyyyyyyyyy”
A long time ago, there Satan gave birth to a demon. I don’t understand how that’s possible, because I thought Satan was a man, but I guess that’s not the point. Santa was the name given to this demon, and he was a real dickhead. In 1005AD, an angel challenged Santa to a curling match, and if Santa lost, he would have to deliver presents on Christmas for the next thousand years. The angel did win, but since this movie was filmed in 2005, those thousand years are up, so Santa is free to be a dickhead once again. Santa (played by Bill Goldberg) is running around a small town killing everyone in Christmas themed ways. It turns out that the angel who defeated Santa in the curling match is living in this small town, so they face off in another curling match, and…ugh, whatever. Christmas Day ends and Santa loses his powers so people with guns shoot Santa down, only to realize they shot down someone who he had taken captive and Santa is still on the loose, ready to kill people again next year…probably?
We’ve all wanted to kick Chris Kattan in the chest at some point, right?
Obviously the plot of this movie is incredibly weak and even at only 75 minutes, they clearly ran out of story to tell. Despite the lack of plot, I can get behind any sort of transformation of a well-known legend into something more sinister and just running with it. Rather than doing something really interesting and creative, like was done with Rare Exports, this film just cashed in on the cheap jokes to be made. Even though there were quite a few deaths in the movie, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about calling it a “horror” film, because the emphasis was definitely on comedy. Remember how I said that Jack Frost was bad, but it had enough puns to keep you entertained? I’d say the same thing about Santa’s Slay, because there were enough puns and visual gags to distract you from realizing how shitty this movie was. The story was kind of dumb, it wasn’t scary, and it had some groan-inducing puns, but believe it or not, the movie had a good enough cast to pull things off. Bill Goldberg gained fame being a wrestler, so he was relatively charismatic as a super buff Santa Clause. It was funny to see Emilie De Ravin as one of the leads, because this was only her second movie (after Brick) so obviously she was willing to do anything. The opening sequence, which featured Santa ruining Christmas dinner, was a veritable who’s who of recognizable faces from the late 90’s, with “stars” such as Chris Kattan, Fran Drescher, Rebecca Gayheart, and even James Caan. This movie just goes to show that even with a dumb plot and poor effects, having a decent enough cast can make a dumb joke carry for 75 minutes. Oh yeah, and instead of having reindeer, Santa just had a giant “hell-deer”, which was some gnarly buffalo or something. Now THAT was kind of cool. Everything else? Not really cool at all.
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