’Twas the Night Before Therapy
Christmas Evil is the rare holiday movie that answers the question, “What if Miracle on 34th Street and Taxi Driver had a baby, and then that baby grew up in a dumpster behind a dollar store?” Written and directed by Lewis Jackson, it stars Brandon Maggart as Harry Stadling—a man who doesn’t just believe in Santa Claus, he becomes him, but not in the charming, mall-friendly way. No, Harry’s Santa is the kind who spies on children with binoculars and keeps naughty-and-nice lists that could get him arrested in most states.
ape-Revenge, Minus the Revenge Until Act Three
There’s a fine line between gritty exploitation and a $1.50 bin curiosity, and Demented pole-vaults over that line into “Why does this even exist?” territory. Directed by Arthur Jeffreys, this sleazy 1980 revenge flick thinks it’s saying something about trauma but mostly just stares at it in a slack-jawed, creepy way. Imagine I Spit on Your Grave without the grit, pacing, or catharsis—then add Harry Reems pretending to be a doctor.
Meet Linda: The Only Person Having a Worse Time Than the Audience
Linda Rodgers, played by Sallee Elyse, starts the movie in a brutal gang rape scene, then gets shipped off to an institution for a bit before being handed back to her husband, Matt. This is supposed to be “recovery.” In reality, Matt is cheating on her with a woman named Carol, because if Demented has one consistent theme, it’s “every man in this film is human garbage.”
Gaslighting: The Movie
The script’s main idea of suspense is: “What if we made the victim think she’s going crazy for an hour before letting her do anything about it?” Cue Linda being stalked by pranksters in dollar-store Halloween masks while her husband insists she’s imagining it. Even her psychiatrist gets involved, though mostly just to wander around the house and make wild assumptions. By this point, you’re not sure if the plot is building toward a payoff or if everyone forgot they were making a movie.
Cleaver Time
Finally—mercifully—Linda snaps. And here’s where Demented remembers it’s supposed to be a revenge flick. She puts on lingerie (because exploitation logic), drugs one prankster, and methodically works her way through the others with piano wire, a meat cleaver, and the kind of awkward seduction scenes that make you want to unplug your TV out of second-hand embarrassment. By the time she castrates one attacker, you almost feel relief—not because justice is served, but because something is finally happening.
Meanwhile, Matt’s Still the Worst
When Matt finally comes home to confess his affair, he instead gets an up-close look at one of Linda’s kills—laid out in bed like some macabre Airbnb welcome. Linda greets him with the cleaver in hand, and the movie cuts before we see what happens. The ambiguity is probably meant to be shocking, but by this point it just feels like the editor hit “stop” because they’d run out of fake blood and daylight.
Final Verdict: Needs a Do-Not-Resuscitate Order
Demented tries to cash in on the revenge-horror boom of the late ’70s and early ’80s, but it’s more interested in cheap thrills than catharsis. The pacing is glacial, the acting is wildly uneven, and the “pranksters” subplot feels like something the filmmakers wrote on a napkin during lunch. You’ll spend most of the runtime waiting for Linda to finally get revenge—and when she does, it’s still too little, too late. The scariest thing about Demented isn’t the violence—it’s realizing you just sat through 92 minutes of it.
