It was only a matter of time before Randall would turn his attention to one of the oddest offshoots of the burgeoning slasher genre, the Christmas body count movie. The sinister notion of a holiday revolving around an enigmatic man who breaks into people's homes in the middle of night every year wasn't lost on filmmakers, with Bob Clark offering the first and most respected entry with Black Christmas in 1974. However, the most infamous chapter in yuletide cinematic terror came a decade later with the notorious Silent Night, Deadly Night, whose image of an axe-toting Santa heading down a chimney had indignant parental watchdog groups howling for blood on national television. Randall's own British-based contribution, Don't Open till Christmas, was completed the same year (long after it initially wrapped in 1982 thanks to numerous reshoots), offered at least as many Santa-based outrages in its grisly hour and a half, including one Father Christmas neutering at a public urinal that would have ignited just as much controversy had more people actually seen the film.
That indelible sequence is just one of many highlights in this film's catalog of Santa slaughters, since each of the numerous stalk and slash scenes involves a potential victim dressed in that familiar red-and-white garb (including, of course, a sexy bimbo in one of the kinkiest moments). A store Santa and his girlfriend are attacked in their car during the opening scene, a partying Saint Nick imposter gets speared through the noggin, another gets chased through a museum of horrors complete with torture implements, and the luckiest gets a cleaver through the face and displayed onstage while scream queen Caroline Munro coos a disco song called "I'm Coming to Get You."
In between the mayhem there's also something resembling a plot, as Scotland Yard is called in to investigate while the first victim's daughter, Kate (Belinda Mayne) and her unfaithful and frumpy boyfriend (Gerry Sundquist), sniff around separately for clues. Also one of the cops gets a mysterious package marked "Don't Open till Christmas," which obviously plays into the attempted surprise ending.
Any attempt at piecing all of these elements together on the part of the viewer is doomed to failure, as this film was an intensely troubled piece of work from the beginning. Veteran actor Edmund Purdom, who got his start in films like The Prodigal and the 1953 version of Julius Caesar, was brought on to star in the project as the lead police inspector, a role fitting with his more recent tenure in European commercial films like The Night Child, The Concorde Affair, Ator the Fighting Eagle, and of course, Pieces, a film which figures prominently in the filmographies of many of the film's other participants as well. However, Purdom also stipulated that he actually direct the feature this time, despite the fact that he had no actual experience. The production turned out to be fraught with problems, and Randall and co-producer Stephen Minasian brought several additional hands on deck to churn out new gore sequences to save the film. The most notable of these cinematic surgeons was Alan Birkinshaw, also responsible for the ridiculous 1982 body count film Killer's Moon and three films for the short-lived Cannon offshoot 21st Century Film Corporation. Another man enlisted for additional directorial duties was the film's screenwriter, Derek Ford, who had penned '60s thrillers like The Black Torment and A Study in Terror before becoming a softcore maven with films like Suburban Wives, I Am a Groupie, What's Up Nurse!, and the shocking Diversions, a horror/erotica hybrid whose graphic export version outside the U.K. made it one of the country's first significant features with unsimulated sex, albeit in small doses.
With all of these cooks involved, the ensuing film feels more like a string of sketches than a coherent feature, a trait which has endeared it to horror fans who stumbled across it on home video. The film essentially bypassed any theatrical distribution and appeared uncut on video in American from Vestron Video in 1985. Unfortunately it was less lucky in its native country and several other European territories, where many bloody highlights were scissored out. Numerous unauthorized versions have made the rounds over the years pulled from this same VHS source, but the DVD from Mondo Macabro marks the first fully authorized, newly-transferred edition on home video. The picture quality is a major improvement in every respect, with accurate 1.66:1 framing, far more detail, and eye-popping candy reds whenever an ill-fated Santa stumbles onscreen. Along with the usual excellent liner notes offering context about the film's rock genesis, the disc features the company's excellent and raucous "The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall" documentary (which features many of his actors and crewmates reminiscing about their time together) and most appropriately, a wonderfully ludicrous making-of documentary, "The Making of a Horror Movie." Running 52 minutes, this insane concoction was thrown together on videotape to promote the film in some venue the human mind can't begin to comprehend. Randall and Minasian sit in a screening room leering over footage of the two busty, topless Santa girls from the film and then detour into random chunks of making-of sequences from the set, including several demonstrations of the nasty special effects (most presumably engineered after principal shooting had finished) and Caroline Munro's entire musical number, reprised here with different angles and a snippet of the star (who reunited with Randall for another slasher film, Slaughter High) revealing her own personal preferences in the horror genre. While unprepared viewers might think the film itself is a lump of coal if they're expecting a traditional slasher film, those with a taste for senseless, borderline incompetent, fast-paced '80s holiday horror with no sense of propriety whatsoever should find this a jolly stocking stuffer indeed.
For more information about Don't Open Till Christmas, visit Mondo Macabro.
by Nathaniel Thompson
