Excerpt from piece on the 1980 slasher film, Christmas Evil

Sunday 12/7/25

Doing some prose. Very good.

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Murderous Santas have been around longer than you may think. Andrew Caldecott’s short story, “Christmas Re-union” from his 1947 collection Not Exactly Ghosts, is subtly rendered, but it’s a work of St. Nick-based bloodletting regardless. We’re left to fill in various gaps for ourselves amidst the score settling, the same of which can be said about the 1980 film Christmas Evil from director Lewis Jackson.

This isn’t a movie that has fared well in the history books, such as they exist for films of the gore-speckled stripe, though you will see it termed a “psychological slasher,” which is a more favorable label than is typically applied to its carmined subgenre cousins. But Jackson’s film has, dare one say it, a Christmas soul.

Brandon Maggart—and yes, that does sound like “Maggot”—plays Harry Stadling, looking like a washed out, middle-aged Greg Brady, who happened to observe his mother being orally serviced by Santa Claus by the tree as a boy. Call it the trigger point for what becomes a life of determining who’s naughty and nice, for Harry decides that this Santa Claus gig aligns well with his ability to accurately assess if you suck, figuratively or literally.

He keeps a voluminous tome in which he writes notes in elegant, large-form cursive about who deserves presents that year. Nothing excites him more than the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade and the arrival of the Man of the Upcoming Match in his resplendent red suit. Okay, Harry uses field glasses to look into the window of the little girl’s bedroom across the street, but she is very well-behaved and an inspiration to him in his work, unlike the boy with the smut mag who practices “Negative body hygiene,” and we all know what that means to Old Testament-style Santas and Janus-faced priests alike. Unhand yourself, boy!

The film’s psychological aspect stems from Harry’s loneliness. He isn’t evil in that he’s kindhearted. He wants to do well and for people to be well—which is more than most of us, regardless of whatever we tell ourselves and the people we think are paying attention to us on our social media pages. We’re a race of self-obsessed breast-beaters; Harry seeks to be a guardian angel of Christmas, though it’s hard to picture him and Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life at the same lodge function.

Harry is picked on, demeaned, laughed at. Unlike Hermey the elf from 1964’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Harry is a stickler for a well-made toy. Toys that last, unlike happiness, which often seems like it doesn’t. He doesn’t set out to kill, as much as situations arise and killing occurs. But we won’t count it as a Christmas sin should you cry out, “Take that!” with the gusto of Santa urging on his reindeer when Harry shows some obnoxious, fake-as-a-metal-Christmas tree rich people what’s what outside of a church while clad in his Santa attire, with his sleigh—that is, his van, where he sometimes sleeps—in position to spirit him away once again.