With a remake/reboot/sequel in cinemas now (see review, p.64), AFS takes a break from its commitment to critically acclaimed high art to screen one of the most unique and controversial slashers of the 1980s. Catch a rare 35mm screening of a seasonal treat that most people remember from a battered VHS cover, with an axe-wielding Santa emerging from a chimney. Outrageously violent and perfectly mean-spirited, it’s like director Charles Edward Sellier Jr. challenged himself to tell a story even more baffling than his bizarre TV hit, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. By having a maniac in a Santa suit work through his childhood trauma by butchering everyone in town, he may have managed it. – Richard Whittaker
