Slaughter Claus (2011) — Triskaidekafiles

SLAUGHTER CLAUS

WRITER: Charles E. Cullen

DIRECTOR: Charles E. Cullen

STARRING: David Hawkins as Slaughter Claus

Nelson Olvier as Bi-Polar Elf #19

Ian Little as Roller Boy

Les Anas as Irritating Dad

Kristen Jones as Irritating Mom

QUICK CUT: Slaughter Claus is coming to town, and he doesn’t care who’s been naughty or who’s been nice.

THE MORGUE

Slaughter Claus - A vile, violent, Santa Claus. Who is he? Where does he come from? What does he want? All this and more won’t be answered!

Bi-Polar Elf #19 - Slaughter Claus’s ever present companion. He loves creeping around and laughing and not much else. He’s easily entertained.

You can’t spell Slaughter without Laughter.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Merry Triskmas! Or Happy Trisking Day, if you're Canadian. This year...hoo. This year, I found, or rather had brought to my attention thanks to Psycho Ape!'s Addison Binek, a movie called Slaughter Claus. But is it actually a movie? Let's find out.

The movie opens up on a kid sleeping, and waking up on Christmas day. She gets ready to go downstairs to see her presents.

Meanwhile, some weird creepy half nekkid elf is lurking around in the background. This is making me all kinds of uncomfortable already.

While the kid wanders around, she eventually hands her Christmas list to a Santa wannabe in a creepy weird half mask, who just crumples it into an origami boulder and flings it away.

And what does this Not!Santa give the child?

Why, he got her a fireplace poker for Christmas! And he delivers it TO THE FACE!

She stumbles around for a painfully long time, before falling over to get out of the way for the credits.

And the credits are something else. They're actually nicely animated, that you wonder; did they blow their entire budget on these??

I have to imagine so, because about 3/4ths of the way through, the music just STOPS, and the rest play in silence.

That is a dreidel! That isn’t even Christmas!!

Being a bit overlong and low budget, that's still a pretty solid opening scene. It establishes "Slaughter Claus" as a badass, who is not afraid to punch a child, and it gives us a taste of what we're in for.

With a cold open tease out of the way, it is time for the real plot to begin!

Orrrr, we'll get a scene of a guy trying to hang up his lights, until Slaughter Claus shows up to end him. And lemme tell ya, this guy is such a fuckup, I'm pretty sure he would have hung HIMSELF on his lights if SC just waited a few more minutes.

When Naughty Slaughty kills this dude, he tries to make a bad joke with, "Winter's almost over, have a nice fall!" AND THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

But, okay, all right. Two scene to establish your murderous Santa. I can handle that. Surely now the actual plot will begin.

Orrrr, we'll just get Slaughter Claus throwing a kid down every flight of stairs in his house until he's dead. Sigh.

...Although, the fake kid obvious dummy IS pretty hilarious, I'll give the movie a point for that.

Some say jingle bells are the best, but I much prefer sleigh bells, mmmhmm.

All right, okay, okay, all right, NOW the plot is going to begin, I am sure of it. Now.

Orrrrr, we'll just watch some cowboy dude go into a bar in the middle of the day, and be told it's last call. We get a lot of staring, until he's finally kicked out for selling drugs.

At least after that Slaughter Claus stands up from the other end of the bar and murders everyone in sight. Sure, we kick out the guy dealing pills, but let the murderous Santa stay.

I will give the movie two plusses here. The use of themed weapons is actually kinda on point, and right up there with Santa's Slay...until the movie gets lazy and he just pulls out a machine gun. And two, the deaths are actually well executed.

Seriously, every time they have someone stare at someone else, you could just tell this movie wishes it could afford to use some Ennio Morricone score, but they couldn't even afford a knock off. So all we get is cars driving by.

Just...seriously. What even is the point of this? There's not a plot to this as a whole, not even a plot to any of the vignettes, it's just boring until Slaughter Claus shows up to murder. And it's not even like he's punishing the naughty, or an inverse of killing the nice people. He is a total cipher of a made up character who punctuates meaningless scenes with random acts of violence.

And all the while he is accompanied by the creepy laughing elf, who is just as much a cipher, credited only as *checks my notes* Bi-Polar Elf #19. What does that even mean?

Okay, surely after all this, surely NOW we will at last get into the real plot of the movie. It's been 30 minutes!

NOPE WE JUST CONTINUE ON AS WE HAVE BEEN. This time, it's a guy TERRIBLY blue screened into a roller rink, cheering on the girls in their roller derby.

Eventually he leaves with his walker, until Slaughter Claus shows up, straps him into some skates himself, and drags him around town into his corpse is nothing but a stump.

I;’m receiving a telepathic message, of girls at the roller rink!

Okay okay, ah ha, ha ha ha ha, the plot is gonna start now? Right? RIGHT? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS JOLLY.

Hahahah, NO BECAUSE THAT WOULD BRING ME JOY.

What even is this movie? Just an endless string of cold opens? Is that it? Is this Cold Opens: The Movie?? This movie is for the people who just want to watch the “cool scenes” on YouTube.

This next section of the movie is about an annoying couple who stare at each other for uncomfortably long times like they're trying to remember their lines, but I'm sure this is on purpose in an attempt to be funny. Shots are reused, lines are repeated, and this is one of the longer segments because of it. It just goes on.

Eventually, some relatives show up with lawn darts, and Naughty Slaughty uses them to kill the children, and then the rest of the family dies as well.

Is...is this hell? Is this what hell is like? This must be my hell. The way that last scene goes in circles and repeats lines, it feels like I'm having a stroke.

The fact this movie actually finds ways to be even worse the longer Slaughter Claus is off screen is amazing.

Even after the family is dead, we just linger on the hanging bodies and a dart flying against green screens forever. All I want for Christmas is freedom from this movie.

Wow, it actually IS all fun and games, until someone loses an eye.

There's only ten minutes left, and despair has dragged me down to a point where I am not even expecting a plot at this point, and I am not disappointed, as the movie ends with Slaughter Claus and Loserlas beating a guy in a wheelchair that looks like he escaped from a mental hospital.

Our final scene is nothing more than that. Just Santa and his elf beating on a wheelchair bound guy with hammers for almost six minutes. And then it just ends. That is it. That’s just it.

This movie has no point. It has nothing to say. This movie is 100% devoid of story. It is just "Here's someone doing something until Slaughter Claus shows up".

Me and my friends would've killed E.T. with hammers, I can tell you that much.

And just one final moment of indignity is in the credits, when you see that outside of "Slaughter Claus" not a single character has an actual name. We're so devoid of story, it can't even do that much.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: One thing I can say for is that it looks fine. There’s few oddities, but it’s well above average.

Audio: Whereas the sound is a bit below average. Most of the dialogue is clear enough, thankfully.

Sound Bite: "This'll go a lot easier if you're unconscious." Don't I fuckin' know it.

Body Count: As expected, a movie that is nothing but murder, there’s a good amount here. So there’s that?

1 - Vaden gets stabbed in the face by Slaughter Claus a few minutes in.

2 - Guy gets hung by Christmas lights

3 - Kid thrown down every stair in the house.

4 - Slaughter Claus stabs the bartender with a knife candy cane.

5 - Bar wench gets shot with a machine gun by Slaughter

6 - The Salvation Army knockoff dude gets beheaded

7 - Roller skate dude gets dragged around until he's a smear.

8 - Mom is suddenly hanged.

9 - One of the kids gets lawn darted in the face

10 - And the other gets one in the eye

11 - Dad is suddenly hanged as well

12 - Mental patient in a wheelchair gets beaten with hammers

Best Corpse: The bartender is the one we spend the most time with. And there’s a lot of blood. And it’s a decent effect.

Blood Type - C: Not a whole lot of blood, but they do a good job with what does show up.

Drink Up! Whenever the elf giggles.

Movie Review: How do you review something that isn’t even really a movie? There’s nothing here. It’s just people wandering around until Slaughter Claus does something. And then it’s the next scene. And the next. There’s no flow. There’s no connection. It’s just a pile of vignettes until we’re done. I feel bad even dignifying them with such a fancy word as “vignettes”. For a movie in the category of “bunch of friends get together and make a movie,” it’s acted well enough. The cringey stuff is cringe on purpose, I hope. And you can tell the people are having fun. But still, it’s barely a movie, not even a story, and just tedious. Someone out there will surely get enjoyment from this, but it is just not for me. One out of five fireplace pokers.

Entertainment Value: But I’ll give it this. The deaths are mostly well executed and fun. If you just want to watch an evil Santa wannabe murdering people for 75 minutes, here you go! The deaths actually have a level of fun, creativity, and meanness. But with nothing to build them around, they’re like a fart in a wind tunnel. It’s such a trainwreck, it almost has to be seen to be believed, but I don’t recommend it. Two out of five roller skates.