Ho-Ho HORROR

Horror movies with a Christmas theme don’t usually do well at the box-office during the holiday season. Perhaps the most successful such film, Joe Dante’s Gremlins, was actually released in June 1984. Black Christmas (the original 1974 Bob Clark version, kind of a classic now) opened in October in its native Canada, and had a modest success in the U.S. later in December. (Yes, that’s the same Bob Clark who directed Porky’s and A Christmas Story, a man for all seasons and genres.)

By contrast, the utterly stupid 2006 “re-imagination” of Black Christmas, which actually opened on Dec. 25, has earned the dubious distinction of being the least-successful remake of recent slasher films.

Last year, though, a new Christmas horror film (Krampus), originally scheduled for early November, was moved to early December, surprising nearly everyone with its opening weekend box-office by finishing ahead of Disney/Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur and just behind The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2.

While it’s not going to outdo A Christmas Story for family yuletide viewing, Krampus makes for a good supplemental stocking-stuffer. More than anything, it resembles a mixture of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation with the creepy fun of Dante.

Preparing for the holidays, Mom and Dad (Toni Colette, Adam Scott) brace their younger son Max (Emjay Anthony) and teen daughter Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) for the imminent, dreaded arrival of their boorish aunt and uncle (Allison Tolman, David Koechner) and the truly hideous cousins. The unpleasantness is compounded when Great-Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell) arrives, too.

Poor Max who, with the encouragement of Grandma Omi, still believes in Santa and the spirit of Christmas, is finally driven over the edge, renouncing his earlier dreams and unwittingly summoning the curse of Krampus, a sort of anti-Santa Claus, that engulfs the home and surrounding community in an isolated snowy wasteland. Soon, family members are forced to pull together and put aside individual pettiness if they’re to survive the night before Christmas.

There’s a lot of humor, PG-13 crude and otherwise, as well as an equal dose of gore and horror. The most surprising thing about the film is how it manages to avoid most of the usual tropes of the genre. And then there’s the ending, one of the more unusual of its kind, giving fans of Citizen Kane and St. Elsewhere the opportunity to nod knowingly to themselves.

Writer/director Michael Dougherty brings to Krampus the same vitality and originality that made his debut film, Trick ’r Treat (2007), a neat twist on the otherwise familiar Halloween horror flick. Dougherty’s writing credentials (X-Men 2, X-Men: Apocalypse,Superman Returns) are more extensive than his directorial outings so far, but he’s slated to both write and direct Godzilla 2. We’ll see what holiday release he envisions for that one.

Another Christmas-themed monster flick was released last year which, unlike Krampus, was relegated to a limited theatrical bow in October before jumping to home video. While not up to the standards of Dougherty’s chill-and-chuckle fest, A Christmas Horror Story is better, at least at first, than one might expect.

Rather than one story, as the title suggests, the yuletide thriller is an anthology of four separate tales, loosely linked together by the ageless William Shatner as Dangerous Dan, a booze-swilling disc jockey spinning tunes for the hapless citizens of Bailey Downs, for whom Christmas Eve turns out not to be a wonderful night.

The first tale involves a trio of horny teens sneaking into their school, the scene of a gruesome murder the year before, to do a video shoot of the crime. Naturally, they get a lot more than footage for their efforts.

The second outing is about a family of three tromping through forbidden woods looking for the perfect Christmas tree. What they get instead is a changeling with an attitude.

The third unholy homily concerns a family of four on a holiday visit to a detested elderly aunt where they are introduced to the legend and reality of Krampus. He’s there to give the naughty souls their comeuppance, and he takes his job seriously.

The last tale, which actually opens and closes the movie, involves Santa himself dealing with an infestation of flesh-eating elves before squaring off against anti-Santa or (you guessed it!) Krampus.

More clever than not, A Christmas Horror Story still falls flat in its separate endings for each individual segment, a common fault of the horror genre. Krampus, on the other hand, is the exception.