Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Christmas Bloody Christmas’ on Shudder, a Killer-Robot-Santa Slasher for Your Ho-Ho-Horror Needs

Those of us who bust out in hives in the presence of cheeseball cable Christmas rom-coms and kiddie junkola may be drawn to Christmas Bloody Christmas (now on Shudder), a killer-mutant-robot-Santa movie from neo-grindhouse director Joe Begos (Bliss, VFW). My hope that this gore-soaked, heavy metal-referencing outing would find a malevolent Kringlebot rampaging through a cheery, phony-ass Hallmark holiday scenario went unfulfilled, as Begos crafted something that’s more like High Fidelity meets RoboCop, but totally drenched in seasonal greens and reds. It occasionally fulfills the promise of that aesthetic, but is it enough to warrant a recommendation?

CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Tori Tooms (Riley Dandy) can hold her own in a debate about shitty Blair Witch sequels, but how will she hold up against a stomping, nigh-indestructible Santautomaton with a big ol’ fire ax? We’re about to find out. She owns a record shop and wears a Death (the death metal band) tee (because Death rules) and likes to smoke weed and just wants to spend this Christmas Eve with a bottle of whisky and maybe a piece of ass via Tinder. Her stached-and-mulleted employee Robbie Reynolds (Sam Delich) talks her into skipping the latter part and developing some sexual tension with him instead. They end up spending the evening drinking too much, playfully arguing about music and Pet Sematarys, running into supporting characters who probably aren’t going to be breathing by the time the end credits roll, and, eventually, ripping each other’s clothes off. You know, the usual Christmas Eve drill.

They haven’t paid attention to the news reports about malfunctioning animatronic Santas that are defaulting to “defense department firmware” – a malfunctioning animatronic Santa that just so happens to be defaulting to “defense department firmware” just a few storefronts down from the record shop. Whirr clunk, whirr clunk, Santa (Abraham Benrubi) awakens, grabs the aforementioned implement and starts hacking away at the toy-store proprietor and her boyfriend, just after they’ve snorted some drugs but before they’ve completed their sexual intercourse. Don’t you HATE IT when this series of events occurs in your life? It’s so inconvenient.

For no reason beyond the fact that they’re the main characters in this movie, Tori and Robbie are on this jolly old elf’s naughty list. And if you think he/it exists to punish people who just wanna get wasted and shtoink each other on the night before Jesus’ birthday, well, he stops at Tori’s neighbor’s house first to dice up a poor, unsuspecting nuclear family. This bare-ass-bones plot eventually involves the cops, including the relatively calm Sheriff Monroe (Jeff Daniel Phillips, who we just saw play the 2022 version of Herman Munster) and hothead Officer Smith (Jeremy Gardner), and the question here is whether Tori will have any friends and associates left after this, or if she’s gotta Final Girl her way out of it.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The whirr-clunk and satirical commercials are copped from RoboCop. The it-won’t-f—ing-die thing is Michael Myers crossed with the Terminator (1984, to be precise). The so-so execution of a promising concept rings of Nicolas Cage-vs.-the-animatronic-furries movie Willy’s Wonderland. And we previously saw the murderous-robot-Santa-on-a-rampage plot in an episode of Futurama that, in the far more innocent times of the late 20th century, was deemed too violent for a 7 p.m. time slot on network TV.

Performance Worth Watching: I liked Dandy’s spunk and fire in the first half of the movie. Less enthralling is how she’s asked to shriek hysterically for almost the entire second half.

Memorable Dialogue: “He joins. He’s anatomical.” – The toy store lady thinks a threesome with robot Santa would be high-larious

Sex and Skin: Lady butts in thongs; a sweaty oral-sex sequence cross-cut with a grisly slasher sequence.

Our Take: First off: The title Christmas Bloody Christmas absolutely riffs on the Black Sabbath album “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” with similar sacrilegious aplomb, and contextualizes itself within the subcultural zone of brick-and-mortar record stores run by people who can surgically parse the differences between black metal and death metal. (These are my people!) And yet, the film isn’t quite as fun as it wants to be. But is it fun enough? Man. Just barely. It’s too obnoxious to be funny and too stylish to dismiss. Begos piles on the old-school practical-effects gore – man, that ax is SHARP – and lights it with enough harsh, intense holiday color to turn tidings of comfort and joy into ho-ho-horror.

The attention Begos pays to visual aesthetic doesn’t apply to the screenplay, which, after excising the chatterboxy pop-cultural back-and-forth of our principals – which teeters between ingratiating and just grating – is utterly threadbare. The plot is simple: Hey Tori, don’t get killed! And that goes on for 40 repetitive minutes. Tonally, Begos goes about 60/40 kitschy satire/hardcore slasher, and never fully commits to either. And anyone pawing around in the idea that he’s jabbing at the idea of government weaponry being turned into the most powerful symbol of seasonal joy is missing the forest for the trees – that’s not subtext, it’s pretense. The movie exists to splatter the heroine with blood and show us hideous kills as Carpenter synths and Sunn 0))) drones fill the soundtrack. On the level of maimings and disembowelings and axes-in-the-face, it’s satisfying as craft. Beyond that, it’s just playing the same riff over and over and over again.

Our Call: Well, if you’re paying for Shudder, you’re used to this type of endearingly low-budget, pro-profane, amusingly trashy fodder. That’s enough to admire, in principle and execution, so STREAM IT. But I don’t see Christmas Bloody Christmas becoming an enduring annual classic.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.