Review of Santa's Slay (2005) by Ginga N — 19 Dec 2006

Santa's Slay.

Starring: Bill Goldberg, Robert Kulp, Emilie de Ravin, Douglas Smith, and Dave Thomas.

Director: David Steiman.

Once upon a time, a demon lost a bet with an angel and was then forced to nice to children. He became known as Santa Claus. However, this Christmas, the 1,000 years are up, and now Santa (Goldberg) gets to be as nasty as he wants... and he's got one thousand years of yuletide horror to catch up on.

"Santa's Slay" is a fabulous horror comedy, with plenty of reference to Christmas pop-culture mainstays and lots of laughlines as the "jolly old elf" reasserts his true nature and calling and massacres his way across Christmas Eve.

Goldberg does a great job as the musclebound Santa, and, like most other professional wrestlers, he shows a sharp talent for comic acting. He takes what might be an eye-rolling concept--Santa as demon--and actually makes it something you can buy into. Unfortunately, our heroes--the fetching de Ravin and the milque-toasty and fairly talent-free Smith--both give such weak performances that I almost found myself wishing Santa would take them out next.

Still, with plenty of fun dialogue and an even greater amount of yule-themed murders, I think this might be something for the more cynical adults to watch after the little kids are soundly asleep.

Oh, it's also a film those jackasses complaining about "Black Christmas" will get a kick out of. After all, it reveals the Truth about Santa Claus's hellish origins! (They loved "The Passion", so a little gore and masochistic violence doesn't bother them, obviously....).

--.

On a near-completely unrelated note...

Not that I think anyone who would be writing protest letters and giving angry interviews about "Black Christmas" reads my reviews, but just in case, I feel I should mention a little detail: I had no interest in "Black Christmas" until you started your stupid counter media-campaign. Now, you're making me feel obligated to go see it, just like your fellows in spirit did when "The Last Temptation of Christ" was showing in the theaters. I KNEW the film would bore me. I KNEW it would suck... yet your protests made me feel obligated to see it. I was going to let you impact the one thing that Hollywood cares about--profitability--so to cancel out at least one muttonhead who listens to your misguided rants, I plunked down my cash. Now, I may well have to do the same for "Black Christmas"... which I am certain is going to suck harder than "Last Temptation".).