Every year I watch more or less the same Christmas movies (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, and the TPB Christmas Special) but this year I added a new one to the lineup, To All a Goodnight. I didn’t remember caring for this one when I saw it on VHS but after watching the BD last night I kind of wonder why that is. While it’s not the best Christmas slasher I found that it does move at a fairly decent pace and has a decent body count with a couple of pretty cool kills; the story is a little generic but overall not bad either. It’s no Silent Night Deadly Night but, imo, it’s definitely worth a look if you’re into 80s Christmas slashers!
Trivia: This was the first role for Jennifer Runyon, who would later star in Charles in Charge (Gwendolyn), and it is also the only full-length feature directed by David Hess (of Last House on the Left fame).
Also checked out another 80s Christmas slasher (sort of…) that I’d never seen or heard of before: 3615 Code Père Noël (aka “Deadly Games” and “Game Over”) and was pretty entertained by it in spite of it’s somewhat slow start, low body count, and mostly off-screen violence. It’s the story about a kid at home in his family’s mansion/castle on Christmas Eve with his somewhat feeble and half-blind Grandpa. He talks to some crazy guy on some Santa chat room and the guy figures out where he lives and tries to kill him. The boy, using improvised traps, attempts to defend himself and his grandfather from the killer Santa. The story is pretty decent and the atmosphere is really cool, it’s one of those movies where I almost feel like I’m there in the setting and like being there.
If the plot of that one sounds a lot like Home Alone you would not be alone in thinking that because apparently the director threatened to sue the makers of Home Alone, which came out a year later, over the similarities between the two movies. Now I want to watch Home Alone…
