The Story: Christmas in the Inferno means I have to watch at least one Christmas themed movie. Last year it was "A Christmas Carol" which is my all time favorite yuletide flick. This year its...uh...this movie.

Made in the early seventies this is perhaps one of the first slasher movies, maybe even the first slasher movie with a holiday theme to it. Well, it doesn't really have a holiday theme, its just that the movie is taking place on Christmas Eve in a small New England town called East Willard. There's no madman dressed up like Saint Nick or a demented reindeer.

The movie starts off with Diana Adams, the daughter of the mayor giving a voiceover about the old Butler house. Then we go back a year in time to see the events unfold. A lawyer named Carter is conducting business in town on the behalf of Jeffrey Butler, grandson of Wilfred Butler, the original owner of Butler House. Carter offers the mayor a chance to buy the house, a chance that he and the other town leaders (Tess, the telephone operator, Bill, the police chief, Towman, the silent newspaper editor) have been waiting for. It seems Wilfred Butler turned the house into an asylum way back in the 30's run by a Dr. Robinson. Wilfred Butler himself was allegedly burned to death on the premises in the 50's. Since then the house has stood empty and its been a constant irritant to the town. The catch is that Carter wants $50,000 by the next day. After delivering Jeffrey's offer, Carter takes his young mistress to Butler House where they will stay until the Mayor shows up with the money tomorrow. Oh, and Carter says it must be in cash!

You know, if I were the Mayor or anyone else in that room I'd have tossed Carter out on his ass. 50 grand in cash? How do they know he's not trying to simply scam them? The town leaders are hesitant but accept the offer though. (at one point they talk about how that's a lot of money and the town isn't rich because most of them moved there in the depression....which is a silly thing to say in my opinion. Who cares when you moved there? I can't go to a car dealer and tell him "man, that's a lot you want for that car, and my family moved here during the last recession". Who gives a [unwrite]?)

Well, Carter isn't trying to rob them. He's honestly doing business for Jeffrey...but Carter is a sleaze ball. He's married and uses this opportunity to get some lovin' from his pretty young thang mistress....I say tries because as they begin to the mattress mambo a mysterious axe wielding psycho comes into the bedroom and starts chopping them up. The killer then begins calling the police chief and Tess and asking them to come to the house. Which they do.....and get killed.

Enter Jeffrey. He arrives in town and meets the Mayor's daughter, Diana. He wants to go the house but he has no key. (dumbass...he got Carter a key and yet has no key to a house that HE OWNS) While trying to locate someone who can get into the house Diana and Jeffrey begin to realize that some of the other characters are missing and that all of them for one reason or another went to the house. Diana also makes a discovery while reading old newspaper articles. Wilfred Butler was a sick old bastard and raped his daughter getting her pregnant. Jeffrey is in fact, Wilfred's inbred son. Ick.

Jeffrey whether he realized this before or not, figures it out when he and Diana finally get to the house. He finds Wilfred's diary. The rape pushed his daughter over the edge and that's when he turned the place into an asylum. But Wilfred was eaten by guilt and really pissed off that Dr. Robinson and his staff were living it up instead of really helping any of the inmates. During a party, Robinson and his friends got really drunk and Wilfred snuck out to get his daughter and flee with her. (Um...its his house...why not just kick Robinson and company out?) Wilfred also freed the other asylum inmates and they went straight to the house and murdered Robinson and the others. Unfortunately the crazies also murdered his daughter which pushed Wilfred over the edge....and he was teetering on that edge for a long time anyway. Wilfred indicates in his diary that since then he's been hiding out in asylums and institutions waiting for a chance to get revenge. But revenge on whom?

The town's leaders! The mayor and his crew WERE the inmates that Wilfred freed and the ones that killed his daughter in their murderous spree! They've all covered up their past! (They couldn't have been all that crazy then, but I digress....) Its even suggested that Wilfred staged his burning death by immolating a squatter on the premises. When Jeffrey reads this he decides to put on a Dracula cape and when the mayor arrives at the house they both shoot each other in front of Diana. then the killer appears...is it Wilfred? I don't know...we don't get to see his face, but one would assume that it is. (He's gotta be pushing 80 or 90 years old though....I guess asylums are good for maintaining youthful vigor)  Diana, terrified, is still no crybaby-run-from-the-insane-maniac girl. She picks up Jeffrey's gun and unloads it into the killer.

Then we're back to where we started. Diana walks away from the house as bulldozers arrive to demolish it.

No Santa maniac....no Christmas killer one liners...(You know...like stabbing a chick an saying "Ho. Ho, Ho, you 'ho!") But there is a slightly different score of "Silent Night" in the movie. Considering the movie's date, its forgivable that its not as bloody as a more modern slasher would be. Its also not as silly as some of the 80's slashers were. My only complaint is that its really dark. Some scenes are so dark I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. But that's a minor thing really. What do you expect for a thirty year old slasher movie on DVD for five bucks?

David Carradine was Towman. Patrick O'Neal was Carter and I kept thinking he was Richard Dawson fresh from the set of Hogan's Heroes.

Best Lines:  “Do you want to see my maniac card?” -Jeffrey cracks wise to Diana.

Are you kidding me?

1.) Its fairly easy to tell that Carter isn't the flicks hero since he's all to happy to take some young thang on his little trip and still call his wife and family and pretend he's all innocent. But what in the name of Linnea Quigley does this lady see in Carter? He looks like Richard Dawson from the Family feud days only without the charm.

2.) Whoa. I was going to make a smart ass comment about how seeing a lovely young woman getting it on with an older pasty guy is kind of icky, but then the killer busts in and starts carving 'em up. What a dick! He could have at least waited until the afterglow was over!

3.) I love the part where Tess calls her coworker, Maggie and asks if she can come to work a little early. Maggie says she can't because she's watching TV. You know, if my boss called me and asked me to come in early I could think of a reason on the second to not do so that would be better than "I'm watching TV." Like, "I'm taking a dump", or "I've got the neighbors kids right now so I can't" or even "My wife has my car and won't be back for an hour." But then again, why should Maggie come to work early just because Tess wants her too? Tess then says "Maggie Daley you come in here right now!". Yeah, right. Tess, unless you're Maggie's mom (and maybe she is) or you're signing her paychecks, she really has no reason to take you seriously. Unless of course you add to the sentence..."or I'll kick yer mutha farkin' ass!".

4.) So much for small town hospitality. The mayor's daughter tells Jeffrey to come in to her house after unlocking the door and then holds a gun on him until he shows some ID. Some Season's Greetings.

Nudity and Sex: Carter and his floozy almost get busy. If there was any real skin seen, I must have blinked.

Huh?:

Jeffrey obviously must have sent a key to the house to Carter....so why didn't he copy the key so he could have one if he wanted to get into it so badly?

Well, they did reelect Marion Barry so I guess its possible....but it does boggle the mind a bit doesn't it? That the leaders of this small town...the mayor, the police chief, the "communications" officer, etc...were once mental patients in an asylum and escaped. Not only did they murder the doctors and escape, they became....well, a mayor and a police chief etc.

Mr. Towman reminds me of Captain Christopher Pike from the Star Trek 2 parter The Menagerie. Instead of answering (I guess he can't speak) he just clangs on a bell. I guess one clang means yes.

Speaking of Towman, the killer doesn't kill him right away...he escapes but his hands have been cut off. Jeffrey accidentally hits him with his car when Towman leaps from the woods onto the road in terror. Then Diana keeps telling Jeffrey "You killed Mr. Towman!" after Jeffrey tells her he's dead and his hands have been cut off. If I was Jeffrey I'd have smacked her and said "Did you hear me!? HIS HANDS HAVE BEEN CUT OFF! HE WAS GONNA BLEED TO DEATH ANYWAY! What do you think my car knocked his hands off?".

The Final Judgment: This flick is definitely not for people with short attention spans. Its a little slow at the start, the sound isn't all that great and the killings really aren't gory or anything. Still, its an enjoyable little look into what people probably thought was real scary thirty years ago. The Inferno grants it three devil heads because it did manage to entertain.