There are bad Christmas gifts—ugly sweaters, fruitcakes that could double as blunt weapons, novelty socks with reindeer that leer at you. And then there’s Don’t Open Till Christmas, a cinematic lump of coal so jagged it manages to cut you while you’re unwrapping it. Directed—well, “directed” is a strong word—by Edmund Purdom (before he quit his own movie in disgust) and later cobbled together by editor Ray Selfe, this British slasher is the cinematic equivalent of finding out your “Secret Santa” drew your name at the office party and decided to give you food poisoning.
It’s a film about killing Santas. That’s it. No deeper metaphor. No satirical edge. Just the sheer novelty of watching jolly men in red suits get speared, stabbed, castrated, grilled, and macheted to death while London pretends to be in on the joke. Except the joke never lands, because Don’t Open Till Christmas is too busy tripping over its own plot holes to realize how ridiculous it already is.
A Production Cursed by the Ghost of Bad Choices
Before diving into the carnage, it’s important to appreciate that the making of this film was somehow more gruesome than the murders onscreen. Purdom, a veteran actor slumming it in the director’s chair, bailed halfway through shooting, leaving his editor to Frankenstein the movie into existence. Screenwriter Alan Birkinshaw was brought in to rewrite the script, though “rewrite” is probably more accurately described as “hastily tape together random newspaper clippings with fake blood.”
Two years of production chaos followed, during which Christmas must have rolled around twice. By the time filming wrapped, even the killer looked like he wanted out. The result is a movie that feels less like a story and more like a patchwork quilt sewn together with reindeer entrails.
Death by Santa, Santa by Death
The premise is simple: a deranged killer in London is slaughtering Santa Claus impersonators. And not just mall Santas—any man unfortunate enough to don a red suit becomes a walking bullseye. Street Santas, bar Santas, chestnut-roasting Santas, department store Santas—it’s like a bad drinking game where the rules are “spot the Santa, take a shot, and watch him die.”
The kills are plentiful but rarely inventive. A spear through the face at a Christmas party. A head shoved onto roasting chestnuts (which may have been the film’s attempt at “ironic humor”). One poor bastard gets castrated in a department store bathroom, which is less horrifying than it is a tragic metaphor for this film’s complete lack of balls. Then there’s the scene at the London Dungeon, where a Santa runs away from teenagers only to be butchered alongside an employee—proof that even history exhibits aren’t safe from shoddy screenwriting.
The film wants to shock, but the execution is so sloppy it borders on pantomime. By the third Santa corpse, you’re less disturbed and more concerned about whether there’s a Santa shortage in London. Who’s running the pubs? Who’s handing out the charity tins?
Scotland Yard: The Keystone Cops of Christmas
At the center of this tinsel-stained disaster is Chief Inspector Ian Harris (played by Purdom himself, before he ditched the director’s chair). Harris is an inspector with all the charisma of a wet snow boot and about as much competence. He and his sidekick Powell stumble from crime scene to crime scene, always one step behind the killer and several steps behind common sense.
There’s also Kate, a young woman traumatized after her father (a Santa, of course) is murdered in front of her. She spends most of the movie alternating between tears and poor decisions, like trusting her weasel boyfriend Cliff, who practically has “red herring” tattooed on his forehead. Then there’s Sherry Graham, a stripper who gets abducted by the killer to serve as his “supreme sacrifice to all the evil that Christmas is.” Honestly, if Christmas in this film is evil, then maybe we should all stick to Hanukkah.
The Twist That Untwists Itself
Eventually, the movie decides it needs a backstory for its killer. Enter Giles Harrison, Harris’s mentally unstable brother, who witnessed his father (dressed as Santa) cheating on his mother, which led to Mom tumbling down the stairs. Traumatized, little Giles apparently vowed vengeance on all men in red suits. You know, as one does.
It’s a motivation so ludicrous it makes Freddy Krueger’s child-murdering janitor gig seem grounded. Giles also has the decency to explain his trauma in a convenient flashback, because the film assumes you’re too drunk from eggnog to put the pieces together yourself. By the time he’s electrocuting cops and chasing strippers through hideouts, you’ve long since stopped caring who he is. The reveal lands not with shock, but with the exhausted sigh of a viewer realizing the credits are still twenty minutes away.
Cameos, Carnivals, and Carcasses
The movie throws everything at the wall to distract from its threadbare plot. There’s a bizarre cameo by Caroline Munro, singing in a theater just so another Santa can die mid-performance. There’s a carnival sequence where undercover cops dressed as Santas get killed anyway, proving Scotland Yard should’ve outsourced the case to the Ghostbusters.
And then there’s the final act, where Giles gifts his brother a music box that explodes. Because nothing says “Merry Christmas” like failed pyrotechnics and patricide by stocking stuffer. It’s the kind of ending that feels written in the throes of exhaustion—“fine, just blow something up and roll the credits.”
Deck the Halls with Cheap Gore
What’s most frustrating is that Don’t Open Till Christmas had potential as a gleefully campy holiday slasher. Killer Santa stories (Silent Night, Deadly Night, Christmas Evil) can work if they lean into the absurdity. But this film takes itself too seriously to be fun, and not seriously enough to be scary. It’s a cinematic purgatory, stuck between grindhouse sleaze and afterschool special.
The gore effects are laughably inconsistent—sometimes over-the-top, sometimes nonexistent. One minute you get a gory castration, the next you get a victim killed off-screen because the budget ran out. The editing is jagged, the pacing sluggish, and the dialogue sounds like it was written on cocktail napkins during pub crawls.
Christmas Spirit? Bah, Humbug.
Ultimately, Don’t Open Till Christmas is less a movie and more an endurance test. It’s 86 minutes of missed opportunities, wasted talent, and Santas dropping like mall prices on Boxing Day. The atmosphere is grim, the characters are cardboard, and the production reeks of desperation.
But here’s the thing: it’s also weirdly unforgettable. Not because it’s good, but because it’s the cinematic equivalent of a relative giving you expired candy canes and insisting it’s the thought that counts. You don’t want it, you don’t need it, but it sure leaves a taste in your mouth you won’t forget anytime soon.
Final Verdict
Don’t Open Till Christmas is the kind of movie that makes you want to close your eyes until New Year’s. It’s ugly, incoherent, and joyless, yet somehow perversely watchable in the way only a trainwreck of 1980s horror can be. It’s not a slasher; it’s a cinematic carol sung off-key by a drunk uncle at 3 a.m.
If you must watch it, do so with spiked eggnog and a willingness to laugh at the sheer incompetence of it all. Because the only thing scarier than this killer Santa is the thought that somebody, somewhere, thought this would be a good idea.
