Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)

Too much of everything

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

There are quite a few Christmas themed slasher flicks, among which such genre classics as Silent Night, Deadly Night and the legendary Black Christmas hold top tier rankings. While not on the same level as those, "Don't Open Till Christmas" still has it's place. Directed by and starring the Dean from the awesome splatterfest "Pieces", this film also has the same producers.Sleaze is the name of the game here, and lots of gratuitous nudity and general exploitation are found throughout the film. The style of the killings and the settings such as the peep show and London Dungeon make me think of "The New York Ripper", which I can't help but wonder if it was an influence. The entire premise is pretty wild, as a murderer is targeting people dressed as Santa, and kills at least ten of them. While not heavy on the gore, the few more explicit scenes are actually pretty well done, especially the sliding eyeball.The movie is however pretty disjointed at times, with one major character basically just disappearing with at least a half hour left with no real explanation. There aren't any characters to be particularly invested in, and all fall pretty flat. I will say that the final girl was not who I expected it to be, and the very ending was a cool little treat."Don't Open Till Christmas" has it's faults, but in the wee hours of this Christmas Eve morning, I definitely more than enjoyed it and would certainly watch it again. 'Tis the season.

A vicious psycho brutally bumps off various unlucky guys dressed up as Santa Claus around Christmastime. It's up to the dour Inspector Ian Harris (a very sour and indifferent Edmund Purdom, who also fumbled the direction) to catch the maniac. While this movie totally fails to provide any true chills or tension, it certainly succeeds in delivering a steady succession of grisly and ghastly murder set pieces that are randomly injected throughout the narrative with an appealingly appalling lack of finesse and cohesion: one poor tubby dude gets castrated while using a public lavatory, another has a spear shot into the back of his head, a third's face is fried on a grill, and so on. Moreover, Purdom does manage to effectively create and sustain a thoroughly nasty and seedy tone, there's a hefty corpse tally of 14, the foul script blithely breaks the usual established slice'n'dice rules (for example, the final girl is a cheery harlot instead of the customary virginal innocent), and the St. Nick victims are mostly despicable jerks (one Kris Kringle is offed while visiting a sex shop on his lunch break!). The cast do their best with the tawdry material: Alan Lake as creepy low-rent tabloid newspaper reporter Giles, the fetching Belinda Mayne as the distraught Kate Briosky, Gerry Sundquist as Kate's insensitive boyfriend Cliff Boyd, Kelly Baker as bubbly peepshow booth worker Sherry Graham, and Mark Jones as Harris' partner Sergeant Powell. Caroline Munro makes a cameo appearance as herself singing a cruddy disco song in a nightclub. As a tasty added plus, buxom blonde Pat Astley bares her fine shapely body several times as brash nude model Sharon. Alan Pudney's cinematography makes neat occasional use of a prowling hand-held camera. Des Dolan's quivery synthesizer score does the generic ooga-booga hum'n'shiver trick. Worth a watch for fans of sleazy holiday horror fare.

The story of "Don't Open Till Christmas" is easy to follow:an unknown maniac is killing Santa Clauses around London in the variety of nasty ways.The film was produced by the producers of "Pieces" and "Slaughter High",so I wanted to check it out for so long."Don't Open Till Christmas" is not as crazy and gory as "Pieces",but it certainly delivers plenty of gore and a bit of nudity.There is even infamous castration of Santa Claus in the toilet.The acting is sub-par and the atmosphere of suspense is almost non-existent.So if you are a fan of killer Santa themed slasher movies or slasher genre in general be sure to check out Mondo Macabro's DVD's of "Don't Open Till Christmas".7 killings out of 10.I pretty much enjoyed singing cameo of horror queen Caroline Munro.

"Don't Open Till Christmas" is a pretty bad and often irritating 80's slasher, but on the other hand I honestly can't bring myself to write too many overly harsh things about it, because there were still several elements that I appreciated and thought showed a lot of potential. For example, this is probably the only holiday-themed slasher that reverses the characters. Usually in this sort of flicks, the maniacal killer dresses up as Santa Claus and goes on a murder spree. In this case the killer wears a 'normal' disguise but exclusively targets people who are dressed up in Santa Claus suits. You know, like drunks at parties or employees at the mall. You would assume that, after the third murder or so, the entire city is sufficiently alerted and the police advises people not to appear in public dressed as Santa, but no. Our deranged killer easily keeps finding victims throughout practically the entire movie. After nearly a dozen of Santa Claus kills in the same London area, people still go out dressed as Santa. "Don't Open Till Christmas" also isn't your average 80's slasher with stereotypical teenage characters and clichéd campus ground settings. The film takes place in the darkest alleys of London (either that or they just didn't have the budget for light bulbs) and introduces plausible lead characters, like a fatigue old Scotland Yard inspector and the shocked daughter of a recently slain victim. The inspector has an unreliable partner and the girl has a suspiciously behaving boyfriend. Together they hunt for the Santa slayer, but there really aren't any clues given, so we're just supposed to patiently sit through another handful of gross killings until the revelation of the utterly grotesque and stupid denouement at the end. Luckily enough the body count of "Don't Open Till Christmas" is quite high, because the film is incredibly boring when there aren't any murders occurring. Some of the kills are quick and delightfully mean- spirited, like the Santa guy who bluntly gets shot in the face, whereas other ones appear to be endlessly stretched. There's one Santa who flees throughout the half of London before finally getting stabbed in the stomach at a museum and another one has to endure an whole ugly disco song, sung by Caroline Munro, before a machete splices his face. The scenes in the peepshow-theater are undeniably the best ones, largely because I can't say for certain whether the humor is intentional or not. That sequence, along with the urinal castration of course, are the highlights of the film. There isn't the slightest bit of suspense or intelligence to be found in the scenario, so naturally you go look for hilarious incompetence example to list as the film's highlights. "Don't Open Till Christmas" stands as the sole directorial effort of Edward Purdom. This fine British gentleman appeared in tons of inferior horror productions, mostly Italian and Spanish ones like "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" and "Pieces", but this homeland film was his one shot at directing. According to the trivia section, he quit the job and it took another two years before the film got released.