Christmas Evil / You Better Watch Out (1980)

 **** / *****

There is just too much in Christmas Evil (1980; You Better Watch Out) to cover in one specific Christmas post on the blog so I’ll toss out some of its content that really landed with great impact with me.

I find this film endlessly fascinating. Many will immediately go to the ending, which is certainly a lasting wow. You can interpret, too, that ending in a number of ways. Perhaps Maggart’s Harry Stadling finally was granted his true desire, realizing as his “sleigh” (the van with a Santa’s sleigh painted on the side) rides off into the night, towards the moon, that there were those who believed in Santa, in him, and he wasn’t what his volatile brother, Philip (Jeffrey DeMunn, quite young), considered him to be…a failure. Or perhaps what you see is an illusion; that Harry perhaps thought he was on his way to “The North Pole” but was only heading towards a remarkable crash to a fiery death. Philip watches as he flies into the sky, unable to keep Harry home to an existence he was not fond or proud of. Harry was always an “emotional cripple” to Philip, a nuisance, a handicap seemingly a burden he tried to choke out of his life at the very end. DeMunn plays Philip almost the whole way through as a dynamite stick ready to go off once he encountered Harry “once and for all”. This has obviously been brewing since they were children and Harry saw “Santa” providing cunnilingus to his mother, warping and distorting his mind into a mania he could no longer contain. So Harry spends his days since trying to perfect a Santa he could embody and deliver to the good children deserved of gifts provided to those who behaved themselves. Not like one kid he noticed looking at a nude body from a magazine.

I figure one of the most unsettling (and there are a few, for sure!) moments is early on as Harry spies on kids with his binoculars from across the street. While this isn’t sexual as it might seem if you were a bystander or passersby happening to see him, Harry looking at kids everyday to monitor them does leave quite an eerie feeling. A voyeurism that is quite unhealthy. We see that he keeps records of those who are good and naughty. He’s checking his list, checking it twice…so on and so forth. One such kid that really bothers him—the kid with the nude cutout who also speaks profanity—gets Harry so worked up, he looks on at the boy from outside the window, later caking his face with mud, pawing the side of the house with handprints, eventually reaching out to scare him!

I think there are some really powerful moments in this film. Maggart gluing the beard to his face, jerking on it as he gazes at Santa in the mirror, with this barely contained mix of laughter and hysterics providing an insight into his mental state. He so badly wants to be Santa, to leave behind the desk manager at the toy factory where a co-worker leaves him to work a late shift underhandedly. He wants to delight children and get even with those adults who don’t believe in Santa. This is where the mania inside Maggart that had been held under the surface eventually does come to life. Outside a cathedral, he stops by to listen to the choir, with three guys exiting on the steps to ridicule him. A toy soldier bayonet and a toy hatchet are pulled from Santa’s sack to crack them on the face, as Harry relinquishes his pent up rage at those who would defile the persona he holds near and dear to him. DeMunn, at the end, tries to pulverize (I felt) years and years of attempted shame and guilt he perceives his brother always held over him. To Harry, his brother, Phil, never believed in Santa. Harry wanted that more than anything, to prove to him that Santa was very real. To become Santa, what more proof would Phil need…if Harry could just provide evidence that Santa is real, a life’s mission would see success.

Another favorite moment of mine is right before Harry leaves for a company party. He looks into a mirror with a fake smile and drags his hand over his face to reveal the sour feelings of his heart because his life was indeed unfulfilled. Harry, the civilian, under the dregs of an everyday existence, no longer putting toys together in assembly, just wanted to give children a reason to smile. To take from the assembly, toys that were left on the line, and give to underprivileged kids who he felt were undervalued and in need of holiday cheer, Harry could feel some sense of satisfaction his managerial job (dealing with adults who took the season for granted) just didn’t offer. There is a big difference in the slouch-faced Harry miserably contending with the employees at work and the ho-ho-hoing Santa opening his van (of taken toys from the factory when everyone was getting sloshed at the company party) to the staff at a children’s hospital with wrapped toys for all the good boys and girls. And that duality of personalities alters back and forth between Santa treating kids to gifts and good tidings of great joy and mentally unstable Harry lashing out at the bad adults who make mockery of the holiday season.

I do think this film will be for a particular kind of cult audience. I’m afraid “Killer Santa genre” enthusiasts will come to it thinking they’ll get something entirely different than what this film offers. I think this is very much a character study of a man either losing his grip on reality or finally discovering what he’s meant to be. And that ongoing “open to interpretation” story might be of certain value to those who give themselves over to it. But when you choose to read an overview of how many feel about it, you do indeed get a mixed bag of those who love it, hate it, or try to come to terms with it.

I think the character isn’t easy to just pin down. He commits acts of violence that can’t be underplayed. No matter if he encounters jerks who pooh-pooh Santa or have not always been too kind to Harry, those psychotic “slips” wreck lives. Attacking that employee who wronged him, slipping in his basement window after an attempt down the chimney was unsuccessful (he gets trapped and must free himself after climbing a ladder to the roof!), finding the guy in bed asleep after delivering some gifts under the tree, smothering him before a tree star slash to the throat leaves a family without a husband and father is particularly disturbing.

I think anyone should just scan the user comments on the IMDb just to get an idea of how this film leaves so many different impressions. While someone like me is often astonished and startled by it, others consider it boring and a chore. Many look at Harry in a myriad of ways. There is just something quite incredible about how Maggart portrays him…even if this is pretty much the performance he is only remembered for, what a role! I don’t think anyone else could play Harry. This was meant for Maggart and Maggart alone.