If you know about my lifelong passion for pro wrestling, you’ll know that I can never resist the urge to watch any movie that stars a wrestler, no matter how bad it may be. I’ll admit that I was never the biggest fan of former WCW/WWE superstar Bill Goldberg, but when I read the plot summary of his first starring vehicle, Santa’s Slay, there was no chance in hell I was going to pass it up:
In the Christmas Eve of 2005, Santa Claus (Bill Goldberg) arrives in Hell Township killing the locals. The teenager Nicholas Yuleson (Douglas Smith) finds that his grandfather (Robert Culp) is actually an angel that defeated the devil’s son in a curling match and because they had made a bet over it, the evil creature was forced to spend the last one thousand years playing a good Santa Claus, giving toys to the children. Now that the bet is over, Santa Claus wants revenge.
Now, I’m not going to try and pretend that Santa’s Slay isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s goofy enough that hardcore horror fans with a twisted sense of humour owe it to themselves to watch it at least once. Personally, I think the movie’s biggest problem is that it fails to live up to its ridiculously over-the-top opening sequence, which has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but is definitely the highlight. Somehow, the filmmakers were able to assemble a group of recognizable actors (James Caan, Fran Drescher, Chris Kattan, Rebecca Gayheart) to play a miserable family arguing over Christmas dinner… until evil Santa suddenly shows up and gruesomely kills them all off in the first three minutes!