Don't Open Till Christmas

Well, from the immediate heavy breathing, I figure aware slasher fans will know what they are in for. Some bloke in a Santa costume meets up with his honey and looking on from behind them in POV is a killer. The couple goes to their car to make out in the back seat while that typical grinding Casio score builds the killer’s gradual approach towards their location in some back alley. The windows are fogging as the heavy breathing builds volcanically and I couldn’t help but return to The Breather in Student Bodies. The guy sees the breather, tells him to shove off, while his honey, obviously horny, just reinforces her passion and convinces him not to concern himself with the on-looking creep. Not listening to her, instead getting out and confronting this peeping tom; he’s immediately stabbed as his girl shrieks. Basic set up we have seen so many times. The knife finally pokes a hole in the girl; cue the music.
**

Don’t Open Till Christmas is another of the seasonal horrors to feature Santa, except this time those dressed like Jolly Saint Nick meet the misfortune of the blade. Like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Open is sleazier, trashier, and far more willing to offend than those compared to it. You get a randy side of Britain here, where the opening after the credits shows a party of olders and youngers alike shaking their groove thang. I figure the hip GQ crowd of today (those that wind up in perfume / cologne commercials) would consider this bunch, shucking and jiving, a bit square. During this party, the boss of those in attendance is wearing the Santa costume and as he is about to give some presents receives a spear in the head with the tip of the blade protruding out his mouth. This establishes that something about the Ho-Ho-Ho turns someone homicidal. Is there a motive besides people just wearing the outfit?

Edmond Purdom (director for some of the film) is the head of the New Scotland Yard, enduring the hardships of his lofty position with lead-page news of the Santa killings. The demands of the job to catch this killer obviously weigh on him, and with shit rolling down hill, his investigators feel the pressure as well. This is an exhausting experience for all involved. The killer wears one of those creepy “see through” masks and a raincoat (we see him taking a hobo Santa, near one of those poverty row fires to keep warm while taking hits from a cigarette, and pushing his face into the flames! Yikes!), while in his first kill-scene (using the spear) he was dressed as the Grim Reaper during a costume party. So dress-up is what this guy’s all about.

I’ll say one thing: the score is more than a little intrusive. Sometimes, the score is downright rude. I am actually—and this might be hard to believe—trying to listen to the dialogue so I could in some way follow the characters, and try to give a crap. But the score makes that difficult. Why would there be a serious need of a John Carpenter-type score heavily roaring as backdrop for a telephone conversation between a reporter (Giles) and an inspector (Powell) over the Santa killings? Then another scene has a musician (the boyfriend of the daughter of the killed business executive) arguing with a bewildered photographer friend (he keeps reminding the daughter of her father’s murder inadvertently) over the use of a Santa coat in a proposed nude photo shoot that also featured a score showing up and screaming to us, “Hello!!!” Sometimes less is more. Or maybe just “not as loud” is good enough?

There is one particularly interesting scene. Oh, it’s sleazy. But it actually comments on how the killer targets his Santas. A nude model flees into a London alley after getting locked out of her photographer’s studio as police approached. She is naked wearing only a Santa robe, encountering the serial killer. He is wearing the mask but his eyes bulge, his smile is lascivious, and his strait-razor ogles her naked flesh gradually. But he doesn’t slash her throat. That is a surprise considering I believe most (including me) would expect the killer to bleed her viciously. Maybe even peel her like an onion. But instead he moves back, while still admiring her body, until he leaves. She is spared. It is that moment that is unexpected that makes it intriguing.

There is a protracted stalk-and-kill scene involving a Santa on a bike (!!!) riding away from punk hoodlums who follow him to a bridge. Santa ditches the bike and the hoods take off with it (???), while he ends up in this dungeon museum (really a cool macabre museum historically detailing methods of torture to unfortunate souls, and not exactly the place I would prefer to visit late into the night while a killer is known to be out and about). It ends predictably, with Santa biting the dust, but the location is really atmospheric. This is my pick for best sequence in the film. It has the weird (punks and Santa giving them The Finger while on a bike, peddling away), the dark (all alone, the black of night, getting away from danger…or so he thinks), the foreboding (the wicked dungeon museum is the last place one would wish to wind up while trying to keep alive and safe), and the killer in the midst (with his pick of prop weapons to use to stab his victim).

Understanding this film’s infamous production history (the different directors attached, footage of multiple sourced edited into the final film), it is hard to tell where Purdom’s film ends and others’ begin. It isn’t difficult to realize just why Don’t Open Till Christmas is considered such an abomination (although, I didn’t consider it all that totally awful). It was neat to see so much of London used, including the not-so-flattering areas. Giving us the ugly side, the seedy elements, of London mirrors the darkness of the killer among the streets. We don't get jolly Saint Nicks, but dark souls often inhabiting the role of Santa. Or at least people in unfortunate (or simply wearing the costume at the wrong time) places in their lives during Christmas '82 (I read the film took two years to complete, which is why I didn't use year '84). Whether it is the lifelong Mama's boy who visits a peep show after department store labor in the Santa role, or a drunk stumbling about in a stupor wearing the big red suit and puffy white beard, these guys have giant bullseyes and are too lost to realize it.

Of course, eventually you have a character just too stupid to live. She has witnessed a murder on the other side of the glass from her booth during a peep show she works. She is interviewed by Powell, is told she will be getting a police escort and protection for 24 hours, and yet just can’t wait for him. She needs to go to work. 53 minutes in and finally a killer is revealed. It won’t be of any sort of surprise really. He was suspicious all along. She is behind the glass, in her booth, and the killer chats just a bit before he puts himself right through the glass (implausible, much?) grabbing for her. Hence, the chase. It reminded me of the chase in The Burning, except this time on the streets of London. Of course, the idiot gets a distance from her pursuer, decides to stop and catch her breath, and with that hesitation allows him to get around on the other corner to capture her!

Alan Lake has a significant part in this film as the “reporter” who turns out to be the killer. He has a great look about him. The eyes and this voice that can offer menace quite effectively. I read that he died from a gunshot wound via suicide. This would be his final film. Knowing this kind of poopers the mood a bit because, like George Sanders in Psychomania, just understanding that they would not be living much longer due to an illness certain to kill them, resulting in the decision of suicide after their films, there’s a sense of doom the pervasively looms over them while we watch, I think.

There’s this scene set in Piccadilly Theater where Caroline Munro gets to lip sync someone’s else’s song with fog and tight dress hugging her body’s curves as another drunk Santa is about to get a scythe to the face. She gets to move her body all sultry-like, with the eventual trap door on the stage revealing the dead Santa much to Munro’s horror. This is just a way to get Munro on the film, but I like the inclusion of London locations in the film, providing an authentic backdrop (you get lots of shots of the New Scotland Yard sign turning) for all the violence. Literally, a killer is shown using London as a hunting ground with any number of victims at his disposal.

I’ll be honest: this film just gets dreadful down the stretch. As each minute passes, I gave up on this movie. Giles (Lake) seems to just waltz right into the apartment of Kate Briosky (Belinda Mayne), right behind her as she turns to find him standing there. Kate had suspected that Giles’ brother, Inspector Harris (Purdom) was the Santa killer. Harris is fired (suspended) from his job because the bodies were piling up in the city. Somehow, Giles escaped even though Harris supposedly went to visit him in the hospital. If Giles is on the streets how could Harris visit him? Kate had called his home and he had gone to the hospital to visit Giles. Giles is found in Powell’s (Mark Jones) office just going through his desk, yet nothing is done about it. In fact, Giles tells Powell to suspect Harris, and Powell considers it (even having cops follow Harris!). Even tough Kate’s lover, Cliff (Gerry Sundquist), is cleared as a suspect (he should have never been a suspect considering he was standing next to Kate when he father was speared), there’s the persistence in focusing on his tensions with Harris over the investigation. A forced love triangle subplot is half-assed and rather obtrusive because it sort of comes and goes with little true refinement. Then the peepshow booth girl (Kelly Baker) becomes a final girl because the screenplay decides to seemingly ditch Kate as that character. Kate unwisely talks truth to Giles, pretty much telling “crazy eyes” that she plans to call Harris and inform him of how his brother is in her apartment (she tells Giles she knows he is Harris’ brother). Booth girl is chained and kept alive in Giles’ apartment for no reason other than he all of a sudden grants a reprieve out of benevolence thanks to its being Christmas. She uses a block of wood on him when he unchains her, and when she can’t get out of the locked door, booth girl asks Giles for the key! Haha. Oh, she flees up stairs in a building as he follows calmly. She is huffing and puffing while Giles is perfectly breathing without a hint of exhaustion. We way up the stairs (we’re talking flights), when booth girl sends him taking a long trip down. Yet as she walks down the stairs, having to approach him, not only does he look perfectly fine, he grabs her throat and appears to have not a single scratch on him! This is all just absurd. But to cap it off, we get a flashback where Giles, as a child, remembers back to when he was given presents at Christmas, finding Santa humping a babe in a room in their home. The Santa (his father maybe?) slaps Giles’ mama down a stairwell, with the youngster locked in a menacing stare, a blade in hand. That’s it. This is what started it all. Gag me with a spoon. In this regard, the film does sort of mirror Christmas Evil…almost. The film concludes with a What the Fuck? moment consisting of Harris opening a present from Giles that holds a music box as Santa spins around. It blows up and Purdom’s Harris is sent backwards by the shockwave. End credits.

The film has a shitload of Santa killings. That alone will garner this film some rub. It has a load of dumb character acts and questionable decision-making. Munro shows up merely because she has some fame in Britain. You get shot-on-location London as a backdrop for a slasher film so that is perhaps also in its favor (it made a difference for me). Giles has great devotion to carving Santas, seeming to wait in hidden rooms, dark alleys in the shadows, and just out of sight (a good deal of them happen at night and quickly before the victims have much of a chance to protect themselves) until the right time to strike. Castration, mutilation, impaling, and stabbing; Giles is willing to use whatever weapons/methods necessary to just obliterate and destroy Santas that remind him of a childhood trauma. So it returns to the shock factor and that is enough for some people. Logic flaws and idiotic characters are often part of the entertainment value so because Don’t Open Till Christmas has these, the problems could actually work in the film’s favor. Purdom becomes associated with another bad boy (he was also involved in the beloved slasher turkey, Pieces), even though his relationship with the film is troubled and tumultuous. I think you can tell in the finished product that the film had suffered from production problems.