Santa’s slay (2006)
Oh the joy of word play! You see what they did there? Santa’s sleigh becomes … yeah I know, not that funny right? Not to mention that, given the subject matter and storyline, they could also have rearranged the name of jolly old Saint Nick to make it Satan’s slay, but then, how Christmassy is that? Well, about as Christmassy really as the idea of Santa Claus having originally been a demon. Here, I’ll let that guy at IMDB explain it.
Santa Claus is actually a demon who lost a bet with an Angel, so he becomes the giver of toys and happiness. But when the bet is off, he returns to his evil ways.
Okay well, didn’t take that much explaining after all. So at least it’s a change from the heartwarming, family-friendly Xmas movies we get crammed down our throats every year (incidentally, in this that’s exactly apparently what happens to James Caan: Santa rams a chicken bone down his throat. So, there is at least one good thing we can say about the movie!) but this is sort of taking it all the way across the tracks to the wrong side of town, beating it, stabbing it, burning it and then dragging what’s left of the corpse back across the tracks and crapping on it for good measure.
Let’s see then if any starving Hollywood stars or TV personalities down on their luck got duped into appearing in this pile of …. well I never! Saul Rubinek, who I only know as Donnie from the later seasons of Frasier and from one role he played in Star Trek: the Next Generation --- dirty beggar stole Data and displayed him among his collection! That did not turn out well, as you can imagine. But also Rebecca Gayheart, Robert Culp, who will forever be known to me anyway as “that other guy from The Greatest American Hero”, Fran “The Nanny” Drescher and of course James Caan, in a spectacularly bad piece of decision-making for him.
Interesting to note too that there are two actors whose parts are credited as “Spoiled Boy #1” and “spoiled Boy #2” --- I can guess what happens to them when our Christmas-hating, redemonised Santa gets hold of them!
Oh dear, oh dear! Let’s move on, shall we?