Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
Don't Open Till Christmas is sleazy and nasty and British exploitation of the highest order with blue movie actress Pat Astley featuring in a fairly dodgy razor attack that possibly wouldn't escape the BBFC even now.
In a way this is the British answer to Silent Night Deadly Night from the same year, except i think this is better. For a start there is a kill every few minutes, 14 in all i think so the pace has no time to drop or the viewer become jaded before the next bit of hack n' slash spits blood across the screen. The murders are graphic - a spear through the mouth, a cleaver across the face, disembowelment, castrations - that sort of thing, or If it's not a murder then it's a pretty young woman chained up in a basement, (Watching last night really made me think that Fiona Horsey's Penetration Angst (2003) took some inspiration from this.) as the film with it's simple plot of a psycho randomly killing any one dressed as Santa in the run up to Christmas.
The suspense is well handled by director Edmund Purdom, who also plays a police inspector in the film, especially a stalking sequence in the London Dungeon tourist attraction and the afore mentioned attack on Astley. In fact the whole thing has a delightfully grubby atmosphere and it doesn't help that sleazy Alan Lake stars as a reporter who may be more than he seems, and adds a lot of unease to proceedings. Oddly Caroline Munro pops up as herself, performs a song in a skin tight red dress then is never seen again. It's random nonsense like this that makes the film memorable in a quirky British sense.
A Christmas classic round these parts.
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