It’s been a week since Halloween! Everyone have a good one? I hope it was safe and filled with king-sized candy bars! Here’s the real question: As horror fans, have you torn down all the Halloween décor already, or are you normal and have been just delaying the inevitable because November 1st usually heralds an aggressive Christmas push that beats you over the head with jolliness before Halloween is even cold in its grave?
Out here in Detroit, we have a radio station that literally switches to non-stop Christmas music the second the clock strikes midnight and the calendar flips from 10/31 to 11/1. You can almost set your watch to it, the absolute haste in which November begins the screaming careen toward late December for reasons I’ll never understand (just kidding, it’s money). And it was an Election Week? Jesus, talk about kicking Samhain while he’s down!
But horror knows. Its fans know. Christmas is going to get crammed down our throats whole weeks before anyone even buys a turkey for the actual nextholiday, so the genre provides “in kind”, plays the game, and gives us the taboo subgenre of “Christmas Horror”. If the puritans who hated the heathen practices of Halloween thought us horror fans “calmed down” by November 1st, they go into fucking orbit when our genre wipes its feet on the holiest of holidays.
I have no evidence, no data, no proof of this theory, but I feel like there’s more Christmas-related horror films than there are any other holiday (including Halloween), and I think it’s because horror is just so metal and anti-authority that filmmakers and fans alike enjoy pushing those buttons in people that get all pearl-clutch-y. And in a country that constantly likes to victimize itself with the imaginary “War on Christmas” every year, our favorite genre really does find a way to ruffle feathers by demonizing the one iconic symbol unanimously tied to festive cheer: Polar Bears drinking Coca-Cola!
I’m kidding, it’s Santa Claus. It doesn’t matter how many colored lights you hang, how sparkly your tree is, or the number of cookies you set out – if you put a knife, an ax, or a chainsaw into St. Nick’s hands, you will incur the wrath of everyone who holds this season dear. And they are loud!
Don’t worry, though. My scheduled itinerary for the rest of 2026 doesn’t include any more Christmas-related films, so this will be the only one I touch on, though there’s plenty out there. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas from 1974 is easily the best of the bunch, with the original Silent Night, Deadly Night from 1984 nipping at its heels for its sheer notoriety alone. The one I’m going to introduce you to today, though, may well be the most unique of the holiday horrors, and possibly – just possibly – the closest to the holiday spirit that any of the films in the subgenre have ever gotten.
“You Better Watch Out” aka “Christmas Evil” (1980)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Meet Harry Stadling.
Played by Sesame Street mailman Brandon Maggart in a very convincing and unpredictable performance, Harry is a…let’s say “peculiar” guy. On the surface, this soft-spoken, middle-aged man who lives a modest life in a run-down part of town, seems friendly enough. He watches the world through sad, St. Bernard eyes, but takes great pride in his job at the toy factory and immense joy engaging in silly conversations with the neighborhood kids as he walks home from the grocery store.
But under the friendly veneer is a man with some loose wiring, and it seems to go back (as these films so often do) to a traumatic childhood event, in which sneaking downstairs one Christmas, he happened to see his mother and “Santa” (his dad) indulging in some Yuletide kinks in front of the fireplace. With his entire illusion of Saint Nick ruined forever, Harry grew up with a warped and obsessive new view of the world: this world MUST have a real Santa! Not one who fucks your mom under the tree, but a real-life keeper of “Naughty or Nice” books, who puts the holiday spirit above all else in the world, and keeps the illusion of Christmas magic strong in children.
And so, Harry does just that. His entire apartment is floor-to-ceiling Christmas décor year-round. His pajamas are red silk, he hums Christmas songs, and – arguably the most disturbing trait – keeps detailed records of the behavior he surveils in the neighborhood children with binoculars, before updating his books in appropriately jolly cursive.
Were it not for the whole “spying on little kids” aspect of it all (as Chris Hansen would say, “You see how this looks…”), you almost can’t help but pity Harry. He’s in a state of arrested development and his obsession with the holiday season has made him estranged from his brother Phil (a very young Jeffrey DeMunn from The Walking Dead, 1988’s The Blob, and many Stephen King adaptations), who has reached the end of his tether with Harry and just doesn’t want to humor any of this anymore. Instead of seeing a sad, lonely man who needs help, Phil looks at Harry as an embarrassment, and despite his wife’s wishes for him to treat him nice this Thanksgiving dinner, he admits that something about the man just brings out the worst in him.
Things come to a head though when Harry learns at the company Christmas party that the Jolly Dream toy factory he works at won’t be making its annual stop at the children’s hospital this year unless they meet an unattainable production quota. Already frustrated with his slovenly co-workers for not taking pride in their work and being disappointed with his promotion from line worker to manager (“I miss being close to the toys”), Harry keeps a lid on it all, despite the constant ridicule and advantage taken of him. He can handle it. But the idea that sick children wouldn’t get anything from the factory for Christmas is simply too much for the poor man, and whatever thin barrier between him and his grip on reality suddenly breaks.
Cancelling his Thanksgiving plans with Phil and his family, Harry sets to work fashioning a Santa Claus suit, painting his van to look like a sleigh, checking his “Naughty and Nice” books twice, and using Germanic folklore techniques to freak out the brat down the street, Moss “I wish I had a lifetime subscription to Penthouse Magazine” Garcia (whose mother is played by none other than Home Improvement matriarch Patricia Richardson), all in an effort to capture the right notes to “the tune” in his head. So he steals bags and bags of toys from the factory, dons his custom-made Santa suit, loads up his van and sets out into the cold night to deliver them to the good boys and girls – while making little side-quests to bump off the greedy bastards he works with.
Writer/director Lewis Jackson’s You Better Watch Out (also released as Christmas Evil, much to his disapproval) is an odd duck to be sure. Typically written off as just another in the pile of “psycho Santa” slasher films like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Santa’s Slay, Santa Claws, among many (many) others, You Better Watch Out, surreal and darkly humorous at times, is much more of a psychological profile of a very sad, very broken man, whose heart is in the right place, even if his methods take him down a murderous road. Harry has much more in common with Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle than your typical horror movie stereotype for this kind of thing, as someone so beaten down and disillusioned by seasonal greed and commercialism (at the expense of children, don’t forget), that he resorts to extreme measures to “play the right tune” and balance an imaginary scale he’s created himself.
Sure, it’s kind of funny to see him unsuccessfully attempt to squeeze down a chimney, get chased through the city by a mob like Frankenstein’s Monster, haul ass from his rooftop to get downstairs to his books after watching Moss Garcia trim out naked women from porno mags for, I dunno, a nudie scrapbook he’s making or some such shit. There’s also Philip Casnoff hilariously riffing on the sanctimonious Geraldo Rivera as news reporter Ricardo Bauma. And of course, the final shot of the movie is so bat-shit insane that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it here but has led to many theories and interpretations (I, for one, think a key series of sound effects during the sequence puts most of the theories to bed rather fitfully, but that’s just me).
But it’s truly Maggart’s unbelievably strong performance and sad, simple innocence that grounds all of this into something not only believable in its surrealism, but kind of heartbreaking. You genuinely don’t know whether to laugh or cry when he’s Super-Gluing the Santa beard to his face, and tearfully laughing madly at his reflection, having just “discovered” his new identity as the de facto Santa for the kids. You also find yourself smiling when he’s dragged into a Union Hall Christmas party, where he’s met warmly, dances the night away, and is a hit with the kids. It and the delivery of presents to the children’s hospital are Harry’s only moments of true holiday joy – perhaps the happiest he’s been in his entire life. It’s difficult not to feel for the guy during these oddly endearing moments. Jackson’s script doesn’t once pander to anyone, finding a precarious balance between something terribly silly, and undeniably disturbing all at once. Harry’s feelings and disenchantment are valid and understandable, but his obsessive and dangerous behavior keep him from being wholly sympathetic. It’s a highwire act that Maggart is putting on, and he never – not once – plays it for camp, but utter sincerity, creating a character in Harry that’s very real, but very disturbed, despite his good intentions.
Much more than just a slasher film (of which there’s very little actual violence), Jackson’s yuletide horror film is a sometimes startling and unsettling psychological profile of a broken mind. It’s a strange film to recommend, but it’s engaging, well-made and certainly something you’ve got to see to believe.
Look for small roles by various familiar faces as Breaking Bad’s Mark Margolis, one of The Purge: Election Year’s “New Founding Fathers” Raymond J. Barry, Die Hard’s “make fists with your toes” businessman Robert Lesser, and Amityville II: The Possession’s Rutanya Alda as a concerned parent.
HOME VIDEO
Christmas Evil fell into relative obscurity after being released on Saturn Productions Home Video in 1985, with very little cable appearances. You really had to just take a chance on the VHS in your local store to discover this little gem.
But Troma Team Video got the rights to it in 2000, releasing it on DVD, and eventually putting it back into the zeitgeist with a commentary, interviews, and (hilariously) a gallery of the film’s “Comment Cards” from its original test screenings.
All of that and more is ported over to this release by Vinegar Syndrome in late 2014, which gave the film a brand new 4K scan from the original 35mm elements. While just about everything on this release is archived material from other releases like a 2006 Special Edition from Synapse Films, it’s great to have all of it in one place! Here’s what you get:
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HD Widescreen, scanned in 4K from the original 35mm elements.
- Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio Original English Mono 2.0
- Subtitles: None.
- (Archival) Audio Commentary with Director Lewis Jackson
- (Archival) Audio Commentary with Lewis Jackson & Brandon Maggart
- (Archival) Audio Commentary with Director Lewis Jackson and John Waters
- Theatrical Trailer
- (Archival) Original Comment Cards
- (Archival) Storyboards
- (Archival) Interview with Lewis Jackson
- (Archival) Interview with Brandon Maggart
- (Archival) Audition Tapes
- (Archival) Deleted Scenes
It’s more than worth it to cram all this down your chimney, particularly if you’re discovering this film for the first time.
Bits ‘N’ Pieces
Traum-A-Meter
2 out of 4
It’s not an overly violent film, but there is a massacre on church steps of a bunch of snide yuppies with “superlative taste” that includes a rather jarring close-up of an impaled eyeball, and multiple bloody whacks to the head with a decorative hatchet.
Today’s Jam: “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen was crooning the radio the weekend Christmas Evil was released – back when Christmas music held off a bit before dethawing Mariah Carey from her glacial slumber…
TODAY’S MORAL:
If you’re bad boys and girls, your name goes in the “Bad Boys & Girls” book, and I’ll bring you something…horrible.