Customer Reviews

Don't Open 'Til Christmas

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off I would like to say that the picture quality of this is not the greatest (fullframe transfer,7 out of 10). The audio is also below par (constant crackling). There are no bonus features aside from an optional scene selector and a pics gallery of frozen frames from the film.
Even with these various handicaps this film was still able to charm it's way into my heart. A masked mad man is killing off anyone dressed as Santa Claus. There is plenty of gore, a high body count, and some beautiful naked women. It's a fantastic 80's slasher film. If you hate Christmas this is a special treat not to be passed up.

It's Christmas-time in London, and someone is killing people dressed as Santa Claus. Yep, there's a psycho loose! DOTC is yet another entry in the christmas horror / thriller sub-genre. However, unlike Silent Night Deadly Night or Christmas Evil, this time the murderer is a plainclothes sicky who hunts down St. Nick impersonators, bumping them off in grizzly ways including impalement and urinal-side castration! So, if you absolutely hate the hustle-bustle of holiday shopping, or just want to see many faux santas slaughtered, this is your cup of nog! P.S.- I particularly enjoyed Kate (Belinda Mayne), the beautiful heroine of the movie. She's sort of a bizarre cross between Jane Fonda and Marilyn Chambers. Ho! Ho! Ho!...

I was reading a Christmas triva book and they had this film in there. It sounded like a good movie, so I checked it out to see if it was on dvd. The price is still up, even for a used copy. However, its well worth the price you pay for the film. The story is simple and I liked the flow of the film, and there is plenty of good kills. I'd check it out but here are a few flaws I noticed with the film

The picture is viewable but could have been cleaned up a bit.

There a few scenes that cut away. Since this is my first time viewing this film, I do not know if this version is edited of content.

Other then that, the film is fine. I like the trailers for older films and wish they could have added that as well.

Yes I must admit that the plot was allover the place, but Don't Open Till Christmas still manages to be a fun Christmas themed UK slasher. Don't Open Till Christmas' hook is the idea of a serial killer who targets people dressed as Santa for the holidays. This is an interesting take since there are already at least a couple of films about serial killers who dress as Santa Claus while performing their nefarious deeds. That being said, the film does meander a bit on it's way to a climax, though slashers were never renowned for their ability to tell a story, the focus is usually on the blood, and in that department, Don't Open Till Christmas does deliver. The men dressed as Santa meet their ends in increasingly nasty ways. I won't detail them all to you, as watching the action unfold on screen is a great part of the fun, but suffice it to say that the gore is very fun to watch and the director gets some points for creativity. There was a decapitation, eye gouging ect. Another particularly enjoyable sequence happens as one St. Nick attempts to escape his fate in the London Dungeon, he stumbles through the many Grand Guignol styled tableaux, each depicting some form of torture or murder all on the way to his own demise. The sequence is a few minutes long, and probably the most memorable scene in the film. Don't Open Till Christmas is a fun little movie, if a little bit confusing. I had to work pretty hard to understand what was going on and it was very cheesy especially with the ending, but once the blood started flowing, I was able to lay back and enjoy. The disc really scores with the extra features. The most impressive value-added feature on this disc is a 52 minute vintage "making of" documentary, The Making of a Horror Film. The doc features producer Dick Randall leading a fellow producer through the ins and outs of making a horror picture. This tongue in cheek video is very entertaining while still managing to enlighten all about the behind the scenes goings on in a low budget horror film. Very much recommended. In addition to that there is a 30 minute documentary on Producer extraordinaire Dick Randall. This is another winner for Mondo Macabro and I highly recommend this to horror fans.

I appreciate Mondo Macabro's new transfer and uncut version of DOTC. The film print isn't perfect, but a movie like this was never a thing of beauty, so it's not Mondo's fault. The promised 14 amazing kills on the box is a bit of a stretch, but there's four kills that manage to impress. The movie isn't perfect, because the plot meanders a lot between many characters, but by the last thirty minute home stretch, this proves to be an okay slasher movie. The last scene is pretty good too. I won't give too much away, but if you're a collector, you can't go wrong buying this. If you're a casual fan, please, rent it first.

'80s slasher fans only familiar with the products of the more common American and Canadian films of the period are in for a real treat and a glimpse of life in jolly old England, circa Christmas time, in "Don't Open till Christmas." Yet St. Nick is not quite as jolly this year, as an unknown psycho apparently experiencing the seasonal doldrums is penchant on decking the halls with blood and dispatching any and all Father Christmas (or Santa Claus for North American readers) impersonators in London. None are safe from the wrath of this killer. It's up to a proper Scotland Yard detective (played by the film's director and veteran British actor, Edmund Purdom) to track him down before all such Clauses are butchered.

"Don't Open till Christmas" was released by Dick Randall and Steve Minasian's Spectacular International Films in December of 1984, and as a historical note, incidentally was playing at the very same time as another noted and highly controversial seasonal slasher from across the pond, "Silent Night, Deadly Night." To my knowledge though, there wasn't the same uproar from outraged mothers over "Don't Open till Christmas," as it is far more quaint and refined, much like the British themselves, than its said American cinematic equivalent.

That's not to say there is no sleaze to behold here -- this is a low budget slasher film, after all. Both Randall and Minasian were already well acquainted with the form. Randall had worked on such transcontinental early '80s bloodletters as "Pieces" and Minasian was actually one of the producers of the original "Friday the 13th" (1980).

Not surprising, as the opening sequence of "Don't Open till Christmas" features an unknown heavy breathing perpetrator stalking and ultimately dispatching a Santa Claus and his lovemaking partner in a dark alley that reminded me of the similar first kill in "Friday the 13th."

And yes, there is nudity as well. There is a (very) extended scene of a model being photographed completely in the nude by a sleazy photographer thrown in for good measure and while it wasn't unwelcome, I was far more smitten with a couple of the other British lasses here that remained fully clothed for the duration of the film, one being then 26-year-old Belinda Mayne, who had appeared in the previous year's "Krull" and would turn up for a time on long running British sci-fi series "Doctor Who" in the late '80s. She is very lovely here and quite good for the role she is playing, as the daughter of one of the slain Clauses. I adore her comely eyes, demure smile and as an American I find her refined British accent alluring.

The other is Kelly Baker, who would join Minasian and Randall's crew for 1985's follow-up classic "Slaughter High" and who also had to be in her early to mid 20s. She is actually featured more prominently here than in "Slaughter High," and I found her quite appealing as Experience Girl (i.e. peep show girl). Despite her occupation in this film, she exudes that same youthful innocence and purity that made her stand out so much as Nancy in "Slaughter High." I don't know what ever became of this actress beyond her mid '80s Spectacular heyday, but she has a real screen presence that makes these films endure with each passing year.

I also found the gore effects, handled by Peter Litton and his Coast to Coast Productions quite good (note that Litton would go on to co-direct the aforementioned "Slaughter High"). There is no shortage of blood here, and I found the spearing of a Claus at a Christmas party and another getting his eyeball skewered particularly effective.

I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, but for all the reasons mentioned here I really enjoyed "Don't Open till Christmas." Having never been to England, getting to see the reputed back alleys of London after midnight (complete with a band of anarcho gutter punks chasing a drunken Santa Claus) was fascinating. I also love the vintage cheesy '80s synthesizer music on the soundtrack. This along with the whole film really brings you back to that time and is an artifact of the very tail end of the original, early to mid-'80s slasher wave. All in all, very fun and schlocky stuff. (Note that I pen this review in the dead of summer in July, totally out of season, but who says you can't have Christmas in July? A movie like this is good all year round.)

There really is no excuse for this terrible transfer. Poor picture transfer is soft and barely above my VHS version. The sound is even worse-an annoying buzz runs thru the last half of the movie?! I tried to find info about the company that released this but couldn't. They must know what a embarrassing job that was done.
Bottom line is this is a rip-off even at half the price. If you have a VHS version keep it and save your $$$.

"Don't Open Till Christmas" is a generic anti-Santa Claus slasher film starring Edmund Purdom and Alan Lake, with a lunatic killing the Christmas spirit all over London in inventive and gruesome ways. The special effects are extremely lame, though, so the opportunities for genuine fear are few and far between, with the stabbing being among the least realistic in recent film history; the Santa urinal horror was novel, but equally bogus.

The film has a couple of interesting twists, even though they weren't particularly original, with the conclusion being easily guessed. The acting is above average for this genre and budget, with Edmund Purdom turning in a decent performance as Inspector Harris, and Alan Lake doing well as the creepy Giles. I was also impressed with the lovely Kelly Baker as the unlikely heroine who sees the film through to the final major plot point. There are some detractors here, too, though. The background action for the film is often banal, most notably the extraordinarily painful musical stage act, although the world's stupidest police chase made me roll my eyes involuntarily.

Completists of the Santa-as-horror-film-icon genre will like this film, but it drags quite a bit and suffers from mundane predictability.

Yes, nothing says Christmas like a series of gruesome Santa murders carried out in dark allies, peep show booths, and other sordid locations. Don't Open Till Christmas definitely isn't for the kiddies - unless, of course, your little angels hate Christmas and long to see a whole series of Santas (most of them drunks or perverts or both) slain in North Pole-cold blood. The film has most of the ingredients of a decent B-movie horror flick: blood, gore, and nudity - but it fails quite miserably. Don't go looking for a compelling plot because this film is a mess. With exploitation and skin flick veterans scattered here and there among the crew, a virtual revolving door into the director's office, and two years of re-shoots and re-edits, one could argue that Don't Open Till Christmas was cursed from the very start. Those who sit through the whole film may also feel as if they've been cursed themselves - by the god of bad movies.

Someone apparently got lumps of coal in their stockings every year of his childhood because no Santa in London is safe. A Santa can't even take in a private nudie show or answer the call of nature without getting slashed, strangled, speared through the head, or even castrated. New Scotland Yard is baffled and held increasingly to the fire with each daily killing. The closest thing they have to a suspect early on is the weird, lazy boyfriend of one rich victim's daughter (Belinda Mayne). This is the kind of guy who tries to trick his girl into doing a little spur-of-the-moment "modeling" with a tramp being photographed by one of his lecherous friends. The killer has more respect for women than this troll. Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) is on the case, but his underling Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones) gets a few ideas of his own during the investigation - thanks largely to an exceedingly strange "journalist" who turns up several times out of the blue. The film does succeed at raising a tad of suspicion among several characters as to who the killer really is, but that's pretty much all it succeeds at doing. I seriously hope no one actually wants to hear Carolina Munro perform a terrible disco number.

Don't Open Till Christmas has only two things going for it. One is the actual acting ability of Edmund Purdom. This guy's sort of the quintessentially unknown yet familiar British actor who brings decades of acting experience and a serious air to everything he does. The other is Kelly Baker, who plays the "Experience Girl" who witnesses one Santa slaying and finds herself in quite a sticky wicket with the killer toward the end. I'm just realizing that her stripper character never actually shed any of her clothes, but I really liked this actress for some reason.

His long career of acting experience notwithstanding, Edmund Purdom was no great shakes as a director. He apparently realized this himself, turning over the director's chair to script writer Derek Ford. Ford, a veteran director of sleazy sexploitation films, apparently raised the seedy factor of the whole movie but quickly bowed out as well, leaving editor (and former sex cinema owner) Ray Selfe to try and pick up the pieces and - with a number of re-shoots - actually cobble something resembling a movie out of the whole mess. That's why you have a seemingly important character like Dr. Bridle being mentioned in the script but never actually appearing in the movie.

Don't Open Till Christmas? My advice is to wait until Christmas, and then keep on waiting - forever. Some things are better left unopened and forgotten.

Taking place in some of grimiest streets to be found in all of London, the movie tells the story of what happens when a razor-wielding psycho decides to kill anyone dressed up as Santa Claus. Luckily for him, it's the Christmas season so the streets are literally crawling with potential victims. Can a dedicated police detective (played by Edmund Purdom, who also directed the majority of the film before the producers took it away from him) solve the murders? Will the sex trade worker who witnessed one of the murders manage to escape the killer? And, most importantly, why don't people just stop dressing up as Santa until this killer is caught?

As you might be able to guess from the synopsis above, Don't Open Till Christmas doesn't always make a lot of sense but that's okay. That's part of the film's odd charm. Don't Open Till Christmas is a fast-paced and rather mean-spirited slasher film and, if you're a fan of the old school exploitation and grindhouse films of the late 70s and early 80s, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. And if you're not -- well, then you probably wouldn't be considering buying this film in the first place.

I should add that both the picture quality and the audio quality on this DVD are not the best. However, it's not bad enough to serve as a major distraction and considering that this film was made to be seen in the old grindhouse theaters of 42nd Street, the film's rough edges actually add to the experience of watching it.

Finally, Caroline Munro shows up about halfway through this film playing...herself! She's only in the film for a little over five minutes but still; she makes any film worth watching. She even sings an amazingly dated disco song. Now, seriously, what fan of exploitation cinema could possibly say no to that?