Classic sleazy slasher that brings all of the crucial elements with some Christmas tinsel on top. A young kid grows up to be fifteen flavors of crazy after he sees his parents murdered by a crook in a Santa suit and is then put in a Catholic orphanage run by one of the nastiest nuns in film history. Eventually, he gets a job in a toy store and is one straight arrow until he’s recruited to dress up as Santa for a night. That pushes him over the edge, due to his pathological fear of Santa Claus. Swinging axes, spraying blood, and rolling heads follow. You know the drill. Linnea Quigley shows up somewhere in there to get topless and get a great death scene where she’s impaled on some deer antlers.
This was mucho controversial when it came out. Its very poster of an ax-wielding Santa Claus arm poking out of a chimney was the stuff of scandal. Theaters showing it got protested. All of the square critics not only hated it, but denounced it with the kind of venom usually reserved for purveyors of mass genocide. It was considered such a dangerous film that many theaters pulled it off their screens after a week even though it was doing great business.
Today, it’s hard to see what the fuss was over and this entertaining, no-big-deal slasher survives as one of the most famous films of its type.