• The Sins of Cinema
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    CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980)

    Like “eve,” get it? Returning to America, we get maybe the first of many films where people dressed up as Santa Claus are killers (as opposed to people dressed up as Santa Claus getting killed). “Christmas Evil” starts with the origin of main character Harry’s homicidal insanity: one time when he was a kid, he saw his dad (dressed as Santa) going down on his mom (insert your own “under the mistletoe” jokes here)! Not a fun thing to see on Christmas Eve, I think we’d all agree, but sort of flimsy justification for adult Harry’s murderous Santa obsession, which leads him to steal toys from the naughty, chop up preppies, and confront torch-wielding mobs of suburban New Yorkers before a truly bizarre twist ending that shows us all that Harry was the real Santa after all, meaning that the real Santa is in fact a hatchet-wielding sexually repressed spree killer. Fun fact: John Waters is such a huge fan of this film that he got it reissued in 2006 as a DVD, complete with his own commentary track. Additional fun fact: Harry is played by small-time actor Brandon Maggart, whose only other significant accomplishment was fathering enjoyably weird musician Fiona Apple out of wedlock. What traumatic Christmas secrets could have inspired the album, “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do?”