88 - Christmas Evil (1980)
Christmas Evil is different from most holiday-themed-slasher movies. Unlike its contemporaries, Christmas Evil creates a portrait of a troubled man more akin to Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer than Silent Night, Deadly Night.
It’s always tricky to have a protagonist in your film that does bad things. A good protagonist should be someone the audience can sympathize with and relate to. How would you do this if your main character is also the killer?
Christmas Evil does a great job of creating sympathy for Harry, a manager at the toy factory that just wants to be back on the line and working with what he loves, by making him pathetic to his peers. His employees walk all over him and as the audience we instantly feel for his struggle and can relate to not fitting in.
When the killing starts we don’t hate Harry, we feel bad for him and wish it could have been different. It’s an interesting experiment and while the movie is not entirely successful it’s one you soon wont forget.
