For most families, Christmas is all about tradition. Decorating the tree, stringing up Christmas lights, visiting relatives, exchanging gifts, watching gory movies about Santa Claus turning evil and butchering people...these are all time-honored holiday customs. Nothing will get you in the Christmas spirit faster than settling down in front of a roaring TV, eggnog in hand, to watch Santa messily murder scores of innocent people.





Unfortunately, good Santa-going-on-a-rampage flicks aren't as common as you might think. Take this one: Santa's Slay, starring pro wrestler Bill Goldberg as Santa. It starts out all right, with Goldberg-as-Santa cheerfully murdering a family of upper-class twits, but eventually loses focus, and, in the end, can't really be called anything more than mediocre.

The film begins, as stated, with Santa breaking through a chimney and annihilating a family of rich, obnoxious jerks (said jerks are played by Fran Drescher, Chris Kattan, and Rebecca Gayheart, among others -- Drescher has her hair burned off before being drowned in a bowl of eggnog, Katan is kicked into a glass shelf, and Gayheart is bashed in the head with a chair leg or something). Following this mayhem, the opening credits roll, and we're introduced to our hero, the teenaged Nick, who works in a deli with his friend/love interest Mary. (This scene features a caustic old woman heaping abuse upon everyone around her and swearing like a sailor. Yes indeed, this is one of those films that believes vulgar elderly people are innately hilarious). Mary gives Nick a ride home on Christmas Eve, where he meets up with his grandfather, a crazy inventor, who proceeds to fart, show off his new invention (a nutcracker that shoots nuts like a gun shoots bullets), and explain all about how Santa is really the offspring of Satan. Meanwhile, Santa wanders around town killing people -- stabbing a mugger in the head with a sharpened candy cane, running the caustic old woman from the deli off the road with his sleigh (pulled by what appears to be a buffalo), that sort of thing.





Later, Mary shows up at Nick's house to hang out with him and his grandfather for a while, but eventually leaves after a contrived argument with Nick about whose family is weirder (Mary's father and brother are gun-happy rednecks, apparently, while Nick's only family, his grandfather, has a reputation as a kook). Anyway, she leaves, and Nick -- bored, perhaps -- decides to investigate the ancient book his grandfather pulled out that described Santa's true, evil origin in greater detail. According to the book (and the odd little stop-motion interlude the audience is treated to that illustrates it), Santa lost a bet to an angel a thousand years ago, and as a result was forced to spend the next millenium spreading good cheer, which was completely contrary to his true evil nature. Now that the thousand years are up, he's free to go back to spreading fear and destruction.

Elsewhere, Santa's killing spree continues: he visits a strip club, delivers a few inevitable lines ("Ho ho ho's") and kills everyone present, from the bouncers to the patrons to the strippers themselves. (The funniest part of this scene comes when Santa sprays some disinfectant on a stripper pole before prying it off the floor and using it as a weapon).

Finally, Christmas Day arrives. After Santa kills the owner of the deli where Nick works (impaling him on a menorah), Nick grows convinced that Santa indeed exists and is going on a rampage; he tries to convince the donut-munching police, but, of course, they dismiss his concerns and eventually all end up getting killed as well after Santa invades the police station. Following this last bit of murderizin', Santa spends the rest of the movie chasing Nick and Mary exclusively -- throwing exploding presents from his sleigh as our heroes try to escape him on a snowmobile and eventually hunting them through a darkened, empty school building. In the end, Nick's grandfather comes to the rescue, Santa is shot out of the sky with a bazooka (courtesy of Mary's gun-happy kin), and Nick and Mary finally get around to expressing their feelings for one another.





The good? Well, Goldberg is well-cast as the violent, muscular Santa, and the scenes where he goes around killing people are generally entertaining, in an over-the-top sort of way (these scenes are played mostly for comedy). (It helps that Goldberg never really needs to actually act; an ability to kick ass and spout obvious one-liners is really all that the role requires). Unfortunately, the rest of the film is packed full of annoying little touches: unfunny, constantly-swearing elderly people, dumb stereotypical jokes about gun owners and religious folks (the town preacher, played by Dave Thomas, is a hypocrite who steals and cavorts with strippers -- wow, hilarious, I've never seen that before in a movie), and a few scenes that occasionally turn uncomfortably blasphemous (the menorah-impaling comes to mind). Additionally, the third act is kind of a drag -- watching Santa chase people just isn't as much fun as watching him kill people. (There was also a bunch of stuff in the plot that struck me as just a bit too convenient, but really, it's probably not worth the effort to bash the plot of a Santa-turning-evil-and-butchering-people movie; you don't tune in to these sorts of things for the plot).

The rest of the cast does okay: both Douglas Smith (as Nick) and Emilie de Ravin (as Mary) are adequate, although de Ravin's odd tendency to vacillate between average-looking and downright cute can be a bit distracting. Oh, and there's also a cameo by Zeus (Tom Lister) as a store owner. Shrug.

All in all: disappointing, but probably still worth looking into if you're a fan of the genre (and especially if you're a fan of the genre who happens to be particularly busy this holiday season -- at only a little over seventy minutes, the film won't eat up a whole lot of your time).

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