Don't Open Till Christmas

Dir: Edmund Purdom

1984

****

Don’t Open Till Christmas is one of the last true horror classics that can declare itself as being so bad that it is brilliant. Actually, scrap that, I’d go as far as saying that it is just plain brilliant. Most of the great Christmas horrors feature Santa as the main killer (Christmas Evil, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Santas Slay etc) but Edmund Purdom’s cult classic has Santa as the victim. Written by a soft-porn director (Derek Ford) and subsequently re-written by a low budget Sci-fi director (Alan Birkinshaw), Don’t Open Till Christmas is very much of it’s time and place – a bit cor blimey and rather surreal. The male characters are all either jack the lad of establishment gents while every female, with the exception of our protagonist, is a stripper. The film starts with a man dressed in a Santa suit and a woman meeting in an alleyway to have sex in a car. It has a distinct ‘Confessions of..’ feel about it. They are spied on before both are stabbed to death by a man wearing a transparent mask with a smile painted on it. Meanwhile, during a pub party, another man dressed like Santa Claus has a spear thrown through his head while on stage, and dies in front of his daughter, Kate Brioski (Belinda Mayne). At New Scotland Yard, Chief Inspector Ian Harris (the film’s director Edmund Purdom) and Detective Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones) discuss the murders, and interview Kate, and her boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist) who was also there at the night of the murder. That night, another Santa is killed, having his face shoved onto the grill of an open fire that he was roasting some chestnuts on. It is pretty graphic. The next day, a present (which reads "Don't Open Till Christmas") is delivered to Harris and handed to him by his cleaning lady who is straight out of a ‘Carry On’ film. Powell receives a strange call from a man claiming to be a reporter named Giles (Alan Lake) and the plot thickens somewhat. Later that night, a drunken Santa is shot in the mouth in a back street. After telling her it is time she got over the brutal murder of her father (it’s been a day) Cliff tricks Kate into visiting a porn studio owned by an old friend. He suggests that maybe she’d like to pose for some pictures to ‘forget about her troubles for a while’ but she storms off. Later, after a few drinks, Cliff and the model (who is adorned in a Santa cloak) prepare for some outdoor photographs, but Cliff runs off when a pair of police officers spot them. The model hides down an alley but encounters the killer, who is just about to stab her before noticing she is naked under her Santa costume. He admires her breasts for a few minutes and decides to let her go. Later that night, at a Soho peep show, a masturbating Santa is stabbed, which is witnessed by one of the strippers, Sherry Graham. Harris visits Kate and Cliff, and makes it clear that Cliff is a suspect in the attacks, due to being present for two of them. Powell finds Giles digging through his office, and tells him that the newspaper Giles stated he worked for claimed not to know him. Giles retorts by suggesting that Harris is hiding something, and that Powell should keep an eye on him. Later that evening, a Santa is assaulted by a group of teenagers, and runs into the London Dungeon, where he and an employee are killed. In an effort to catch the murderer, several officers go undercover as Santas, but two of them are butchered at a carnival. The killer then abducts Sherry, intending for her to be "the supreme sacrifice to all the evil that Christmas is". Meanwhile, Harris is taken off the case, and when Kate calls him, she is informed by his housekeeper that he is visiting Parklands, a mental institution. Things get a bit manic and a bit ridiculous then as a Santa is chased into a theatre where Caroline Munro (in one of the strangest cameo performances of all time) is performing. The Santa is killed backstage and his body is brought to the stage by a trapdoor complete with a  machete stuck in his face. Kate tells Powell of her suspicions about Harris (who she discovers has no birth certificate) but he dismisses her theories, so she goes to visit Parklands alone, while the killer castrates a Santa in a department store restroom. Kate is confronted in her home by Giles, who she had learned was just released from Parklands, and is the younger brother of Harris (who changed his surname from Harrison after Giles was committed). Powell telephones Kate, and she tries to answer, but Giles strangles and stabs her. Powell hears Kate's death over the phone, rushes to Kate's apartment, and pursues Giles into a junkyard, where Giles electrocutes him. Giles returns to his hideout, which he chases Sherry through when she escapes her chains. Sherry knocks Giles over a railing, and when she goes to inspect the body, Giles springs back to life in a good old fashion horror movie jump scene, and begins throttling her. A flashback is then shown, and reveals that decades earlier Giles walked in on his father (who was dressed as Santa for a Christmas party) cheating on his mother with another woman. When Giles's mother discovered this, she and her husband got into an argument, which ended with Mrs. Harrison being knocked down a flight of stairs. It’s how most serial killers start I’m sure. We then see Harris as he wakes up from a nightmare. He goes into his living room and unwraps the ‘Don’t open till Christmas’ gift he had gotten earlier, which has a previously unseen card that reads "Christmas present from your loving Brother". The present is a music box, which explodes in spectacular fashion after playing its song, killing Harris instantly. There is so much I love about this film it is hard to know where to begin. Edmund Purdom is a much higher calibre of actor than the rest of the cast but Mark Jones’ performance is so realistic you totally believe he’s a real person. Gerry Sundquist is the Jack-the-lad character that pretty much every man in his twenties was represented as in the 70s and early 80s. There is a crudeness to the film – it is both gory horror and a soft-core at the same time – but there is also a lot to give credit to. I would argue that it is closer to being a Giallo than an Exploitation film and the whodunit element of the film is remarkably genuine – I certainly guessed the wrong person as the killer right up to th end. Pretty much everyone gets it and the horror element will please both gore lovers and creep freaks. The ending is so over the top and surreal, that I think it might be one of my very favorites of all time. The film took almost two years to complete after original director Edmund Purdom quit the job and Derek Ford took over but was fired after two days. The distributors then hired Ray Selfe to complete the direction and Alan Birkinshaw to rewrite parts of the script, including the original ending and the London Dungeon sequence, and much of the footage was completely re-filmed when Edmund Purdom eventually returned to finish the film. It is amazing it was made in the first place but I’m so glad it was. Half the cast would either die of alcoholism or suicide over the next few years and, apart from the porn actresses, most appeared in The Bill before disappearing. They should all be proud though of this amazing film. Story aside, I also loved the many scenes of 80s London. Big mainstream films only feature famous landmarks that generally go unchanged over the years but Don’t Open Till Christmas shows so much of the real side of 80s London that I would suggest lovers of nostalgia (and not necessarily horror) would also enjoy this bizarre but brilliant work of art.