It’s the holiday season, so what better way to spend it then roasting chestnuts and Santa’s face on an open fire? No? Well that kill is just a stocking stuffer in the pile of gory presents underneath the Christmas tree in 1984’s Don’t Open Till Christmas.
This fun, British slasher film is directed by (sort of) and stars Edmund Purdom, who has a very extensive acting career dating back to the 1950’s. He’s starred in quite a few horror related features, including gialli The Fifth Cord and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Joe D’Amato’s Absurd, and the cult slasher Pieces, to name a few that I’m more familiar with. Caroline Munro (Maniac (1980)) even makes a brief cameo as a singer. Oh wait, she was playing herself? I had no idea until watching this that she had a singing career. To be fair, she never took off and with a mediocre singing voice I can understand why.
Unlike a lot of Christmas themed slashers where a guy in a Santa suit is the killer, Don’t Open turns that premise on its head and instead has the killer going around murdering people dressed as Santa, and a few other poor victims who get in his way. And boy does it deliver on that with kills a plenty; there’s probably more kills in the first thirty minutes than in the entirety of other slasher films.
The story revolves around a woman whose father was killed while playing Santa and the ongoing investigation by the police, led by Chief Inspector Harris played by Edmund Purdom. Her father is just the latest in a string of Santa sleigh- er, I mean, slayings, as someone in a mask that has a similar style to the mask from Alice, Sweet Alice (only male instead of female) has been knocking off old Saint Nick. Initially, the police suspect the woman’s boyfriend, but as the film goes on it seems that Inspector Harris is hiding something, and a strange reporter named Giles keeps delivering cryptic messages to the police, but can this weirdo be trusted?
Is this Alice's long-lost brother?
This one was on my naughty list for a while, and I completely forgot about it until I found it on Tubi while browsing through the recommended movies. (Tubi, you get me.) I’m glad I found this one under the Christmas tree as I had a blast with this one. The kills and effects, while not the best I’ve seen, are very solid, with the Santa castration scene probably the highlight. It’s glorious, and I couldn’t help but bust out into laughter at the spectacle of it. While I wouldn’t call the film “scary” per se, the score is appropriately creepy for the genre, and the synth gives me a Halloween 3 vibe during some of the chase sequences. The acting is acceptable, but the performance of Alan Lake’s Giles steals the show for sure.
I do have a few knocks for this one. While the pacing is solid with plenty of kills spread out to keep you entertained, there is some weird editing choices in the middle that left me confused. It didn’t help that I watched it in two sittings, but even rewinding didn’t help clear up my confusion in the next few scenes. I thought the one inspector was going to have Giles tailed, but then in the next scene he’s tailing Chief Inspector Harris, at the suggestion of Giles. Not to mention the boyfriend just disappear toward the end of the film. I guess that’s good for him because it means he survived. There were a few other strange edits and cuts, that add some confusion, but nothing to ruin the experience. My only other gripe with the film is the reveal, since it seems like it was trying to have a mystery, but by the halfway point they seem to throw that plan out the window as you hear the voice of the killer and it clearly sounds like one character. At least the reveal of Harris’s secret is solid and was a decent surprise.
Overall, this was a very fun film, even though it was nothing special, spectacular, or game changing. I could think of worse gifts to receive for Christmas, like the one sent to Chief Inspector Harris early in the film. A word of advice: if you receive a gift in the mail from someone who once spent time at an insane asylum, err, sorry, I meant “School” (listen to our Blood Rage episode for the reference), don’t wait until Christmas to call the police. It’s one hundred percent a bomb. Or you could regift it to SCARY PERRY!!! It’s okay, he’s on the naughty list and deserves to be… PUNISHED!
PS: Keep an eye out for our next podcast episode reviewing Silent Night, Deadly Night. But whatever you do, don’t shoot your eye out.
Overall Rating: 3 Pancakes
