As great as holiday horror movies like Gremlins and Krampus are, they still have that underlying Christmas sweetness about them. They’re dark, but there’s still the essence of the holiday spirit that makes them fairly family friendly. But sometimes you just want carnage with your holidays. It is a stressful time of year, after all. So I sought out the most ruthless of kills in holiday horror; the bloodiest, the meanest, and the most painful of kills inflicted against the backdrop of what’s meant to be the merriest of seasons. Here are the 10 most brutal holiday horror kills to spray the snow red with blood:
Black Christmas – Death by Unicorn
When it comes to this definitive classic, the most iconic and memorable death is the first of the ill-fated sorority sisters; Clare’s suffocation by plastic wrap. The most brutal, though, is Barb’s death. Played by Margot Kidder, Barb is the most entertaining of the girls and brings levity in a serious slasher. She toys with Sergeant Nash at the police station and humorously gives children some of her booze at a party, which makes her death sting the most. What makes it really brutal, though, is that she’s barely recovering from a severe asthma attack before Billy sneaks into her room and stabs her repeatedly with her own unicorn trinket. Harsh.
The Children – Impaled by Door
A family gathering over Christmas holiday turns deadly when the children suddenly start getting sick, then homicidal. Surprisingly dark and tense, these children get very bloody with their kills. But the most brutal kill of all isn’t an adult, but a child. Rebellious teen Casey is desperate to get to her mother on the other side of a locked door, when her mother is cornered and facing imminent death at the little hands of two deadly children. Casey breaks through just in time, grabbing Nicky and shoving him down, neck first, onto a huge splinter of broken door. Not only did The Children have the balls to kill a child on screen, but they made it bloody and merciless.
Christmas Evil – Toy Solider Attack
Like most holiday-themed horror, this film’s killer stemmed from a traumatic childhood Christmas in which he saw Santa doing naughty things to mommy. Thirty-three years later Harry is super obsessed with Christmas. He wants to become the next Santa and even works in a toy factory. Harry snaps, though, causing a murderous Christmas rampage. The unluckiest to cross paths with this killer Santa happens to be leaving Midnight Mass, where he proceeds to taunt Harry as Santa. Harry then stabs him in the eye with a toy soldier. It’s not fast enough punishment for Harry, though, so he plants an ax square into the guy’s skull.
Don’t Open till Christmas –Face Roasting over an Open Fire
This slasher features a killer that seeks to murder any Santa he comes across, in a subversion of the typical homicidal Santa featured in holiday horror. Which means a lot of poor unsuspecting guys in Santa suits getting dispatched in various ways just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The worst, though, is the poor Santa roasting chestnuts over a grill. The killer stumbles across the Santa and decides a more appropriate holiday treat would be to roast Santa’s face on the open fire instead. Santa’s charred flesh and screaming in pain, before falling in fully and catching fire makes for a vivid holiday memory.
Elves – Piercing Santa’s sack
This goofy ‘80s creature feature follows a Demonic Christmas elf summoned during an Anti-Christmas pagan ritual, unwittingly. Throw in a Nazi plot where they wish to create a mixed race of Aryans and evil Christmas elves, and you have one of the strangest horror movies ever that it’s no wonder this one doesn’t get brought up much. And the evil elf is one mean little demon. The worst of his misdeeds might be the way in which he murders a store Santa. This Santa might have been a sleaze, but getting stabbed over and over in the junk was so ruthlessly done that even I managed to feel phantom sympathy pain.
Silent Night, Deadly Night – Run Through by a Deer
Even if you haven’t seen this Christmas horror classic, chances are you’re at least familiar with this death. Poor Linnea Quigley. Of all the creative kills unleashed by a snapped Billy Chapman, hers was the most brutal. Not the decapitated sledder or cutting open poor Pamela with a box cutter. It was the slow impalement of Quigley’s character on hung antlers that proved most cringe-worthy, and the way the antlers slowly penetrated through her skin. Ouch.
Red Christmas – Blender Brains
Horror vet Dee Wallace plays a family matriarch that allows a stranger into her family’s home over Christmas. The stranger wastes no time offending her, and thus gets tossed out. His resulting anger causes him to tear the family apart, one by one, in increasing demented fashion. The most brutal of which involves a death by blender. It’s not the first time that the kitchen appliance has been used in horror, but this does win for being the goriest. The slow scramble of the eyes before they pop and a geyser of blood pours forth easily wins in creativity and brutality.
Silent Night – The Woodchipper
This very loose retelling of Silent Night, Deadly Night doesn’t offer much in the way of storytelling. What it does offer, though, is a handful of fun performances lead by scene-chewing Malcom McDowell as the small town sheriff, and a bunch of gory deaths at the hand of Santa. This killer Santa seeks out the worst, and delivers fatal punishment for their naughty behavior. Skin-crawling sexually deviant priests, spoiler rotten children, and softcore porn filmmakers draw Santa’s ire. The worst of which is the poor gal who just wanted to make a softcore porn video in a sleazy motel, only to have Santa chop off one of her legs after chasing her down in a Christmas tree farm. The farm has a convenient woodchipper nearby, where Santa watches as he feeds his victim leg first into it, blood spraying everywhere.
Black Christmas (2006) – Human Flesh Cookies
This remake doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor, but it does up the ante on the gore and violence tenfold. The most brutal death of all, though, also happens to be the most deserved. Billy’s mother is such a piece of work that it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did. As much coldblooded death that he delivered throughout the film, none held a candle to what he did to mommy dearest. After offing mom’s lover, he first strangles her with a string of Christmas lights before ferociously bashing in her face with a rolling pin. In keeping with the holiday spirit, he then uses cookie cutters to cut out flesh from her back, throws it on a baking pan, and eats them as the police arrive to lock him up. I don’t think that’s what Santa had in mind for treats come Christmas Eve.
Inside – “I think it’s stuck”
Despite the lack of Christmas iconography, save for a few Christmas lights and decorations in the background, Inside is very much a holiday set horror film. It’s just that depressed mother-to-be Sarah doesn’t feel much like celebrating, having lost her husband in a violent car crash and all. Enter La Femme on Christmas Eve, the day before Sarah is scheduled to have her baby. La Femme is determined to take Sarah’s unborn baby, and Christmas Eve becomes awash in crimson as the violence escalates. Of all the gruesome deaths in the film, the worst is that of Sarah’s. Already battered, punctured and bruised from her encounter with La Femme, she’s brutally beaten in the stomach with the club of a very disoriented cop-turned-victim of La Femme’s. With the baby in peril, La Femme performs a C-section with scissors, tearing open Sarah in one of the most vicious, painful deaths in horror.
