It’s terrible on every level…but it did give me a few laughs and would make a welcome addition to a bad movie night with your friends.
Welcome to another installment of my You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! series–films that are so strange that you just need to see them to believe!
by Martin Hafer
Santa Claus Versus the Zombies– Grade: F+
Santa Claus Versus the Zombies is obviously a terrible movie, and the filmmakers don’t even attempt to make a great film. It just looks like some friends got together and decided to make a movie even though they had no business doing so! Further proof that the movie didn’t try to be high art is clearly the title of the film! But, is this film worth seeing? After all, sometimes bad films can be fun to watch–especially with a group of friends. In other words, is it bad but good, or just plain bad?
The film starts on Christmas in a household full of folks who seem very ill-matched. There is the rich and obnoxious part of the family, with the nice part of the family that inexplicably choose to hang out with these jerks. Soon, however, this tender moment is interrupted when zombies arrive and eat Grandpa and Grandma–and now at least two of the jerks are out of the way! Among the non-eaten is an actor paid to play Santa as well as two actor elves. However, through the course of the film, it seems that perhaps Santa and one of the elves might just be real, and they help the survivors to somehow make it out alive–even though they look nothing like Santa or an elf!
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In the meantime, the country is a mess and the President is meeting with his soldiers in a room that looks like someone’s rec room (which it probably is). Can the President and his incredibly nuke-crazy general somehow help this family in crisis? And, why would the President care about the fate of seven folks when a zombie epidemic is taking the nation?! Well, regardless of why, in the end he personally leads a rescue mission!
Everything about this film is bad–particularly the acting. Most of the folk, I am sure, are not actors but people writer-director George Bonilla recruited to appear in this super-low budget flick. The soldiers are often extremely obese, or sport ponytails simply because Bonilla’s friends were probably the only people he could afford.
As far as their acting goes, it was rarely very good. Having crappy dialog didn’t help any. Yet, despite all this, cheap sets and a plot that makes little sense, it’s all strangely entertaining. It’s not good, but did make me laugh occasionally because the film had little pretense–it knew it was bad and didn’t care! Plus, a few times it was actually clever (such as the end where Santa stops the zombie attack by inviting the creatures to sit on his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas). Think of this as a film made by a few friends that inexplicably ended up on DVD and is somehow available through places like Amazon.com! Overall, this is a fun but stupid film–just the sort of thing that would make a nice addition to a rotten Christmas movie marathon–one that should also include films like Santa Claus Versus the Martians, Santa With Muscles, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny as well as the Mexican film, Santa Claus (where the jolly guy battles Satan!). It’s terrible … terribly funny!
