Satan Claus (1999)

July 12, 2000

by Nathan Shumate

Produced and directed by Massimiliano Cerchi
Written by Simonetta Mostarda
Starring
- Robert Cummins
- Jodie Rafty
- Robert Hector

As always, with shot-on-video features it’s hard to really know what to compare them to. There’s something about video that is qualitatively other than film, which makes comparison almost nonsensical; when judging an apple by orange standards, the apple will invariably suffer simply because it isn’t an orange. Add to this the observation that most SOV auteurs are using video because no one’s willing to back their “creative vision” with the funds necessary for film, and you’re already facing a grim critical hurdle.

Fortunately, I do have a standard of comparison on this one: Hellinger, a feature which Rounds Entertainment sent my way last year, also directed and produced by Max Cerchi. Satan Claus is Cerchi’s previous and first video, allowing me to observe Rounds Entertainment’s evolution in reverse and giving me the second feature as a valid comparative base.

Alas, this earlier film suffers by the comparison, most notably in the technical department. Whereas Hellinger was shot with crisp, well-lit digital video, Satan Claus was a product of analog equipment, and shows it — or rather, doesn’t show it; the entire movie takes place at night (couldn’t we have had even one daylight scene?), and the lighting proves inadequate, so that the entire movie is murky and blacked out.

On to the plot, then, or what passes for it: There’s a serial killer going around dressed like Santa, chopping random people with an ax, and we’re introduced to him under the opening credits as he drives around, randomly mis-singing Jingle Bells. Then there’s a brief interlude where someone in a black robe dances around in a circle of candles, chanting in an electronically altered “spooky” voice and dribbling blood on a photograph of a grizzle-bearded man.

On to the bloodshed. The first victim, beheaded outside her front gate, just happens to be the wife of Police Captain Ardison, who apparently has all of two other police officers in his stationhouse: Sgt. Miller, and policewoman Lisa Red of undetermined rank. The lighting is so blue and murky in the police station that it honestly took me most of the movie to realize that Ardison had a grizzled beard. (It probably would have helped my comprehension immeasurably to have clued in sooner.) Ardison is undestandably upset, and the three officers interview the only witness, one of Ardison’s neighbors, who can only confirm that it was a spooky-ass guy in a Santa suit. Not long after, Santa calls from a warehouse loft where he has stuck a plastic head on top of a Christmas tree (oh wait, that’s the captain’s wife’s head — my mistake) and taunts the captain, promising to send him another gift. Bwah-ha-hah.

Meanwhile, we also meet aspiring actor Steve, who lives with what we assume is his mother, a big black woman who used to be a witch in New Orleans. (“Assume?” Well, he calls her “maman,” but then we find out that everyone else does too, and Steve is far from being black himself; at best, he’s possibly vaguely ethnic. I’d probably be able to tell you better if I ever saw him in clear light. Aargh.) Steve’s a good boy, though; he’ll be helping his friend Ken raise money for an orphanage for the next few nights, ringing a bell and dressed in a Santa suit. Hey, if you’re going to have a motif, run with it, right?

So that night (nope, no daylight scenes here), Steve is out doing his charitable duty with Ken, and they meet Sandra, the photographer who did Steve’s pictures (you know, actors, pictures, that kind of thing) and her long-time beau Jeff. As they leave, Steve and Ken kibbitz about how pretty Sandra is, but that she’s very attached to Jeff. That all changes, however, when a scream rings out and they run to Sandra’s aid. She’s justifiably distraught; Santa has just attacked Jeff with an ax and chopped off his foot, disappearing then into the park.

Back then to the police station, with the same three persons on duty. Sandra and Steve give their statements, which don’t really give the captain anything to go on. Oh yeah — Officer Lisa, being vaguely ethnic herself, knows Steve pretty well. Naturally, as soon as Sandra and Steve are gone, Santa calls again. I gotta say, Ardison should not be allowed anywhere near this case; he’s such an emotional wreck, he keeps shouting and swearing and threatening Santa, which is just what a psychopath is calling for.

Back home, Maman declares that she can see black forces massing, some kind of Beast has been called forth, and she gives Steve a special talisman to guard him. (Oddly enough, it’s a pair of interlinked rings, looking an awful lot like the Rounds Entertainment logo.)

And now, in our most pointless scene, a blonde walking down a dark alley almost gets mugged. She runs home and, pausing on her balcony, gets a second fright as a bum grabs her ankle. She goes inside, has a shower (obligatory boob shot), and WHACK gets chopped by Santa as she steps out, who then makes off with her hand. (Strains of the old Tom Lehrer song “I Hold Your Hand in Mine” wafted through my head at this point.) So what’s the point of the mugging and the wino? Apparently, to stretch out the hour-long — that’s right, hour-long — running time.

Steve wakes up from a nightmare of making it with Sandra who turns into a bloody corpse, and goes back to the police station, where — you guessed it — the same three cops have apparently taken up residence. He talks to Lisa, who knows and respects Maman but isn’t going to take vague supernatural mutterings to her commanding officer. She does agree to come home for some good cookin’, though.

Before dinner, though, Steve takes a shift at the charity bell-ringing thing. (The time frame is getting more ridiculous by the minute — it’s pitch black, but Steve makes a point of telling Ken that he’s got to leave by 5:20 at the latest. I’d also like to point out that, though one assumes this city to be something New Yorkish, there’s nary a flake of snow to be seen.) Ken trots off on an errand, and promptly is surrounded in the park by three gun-toting good ol’ boy rednecks, intent on catching the Santa killer (or, as the media have obviously dubbed him, “Satan Claus”). Before Ken can wonder aloud why rednecks are congregating in an urban park, they verbally abuse him and proceed to flail at the camera. Oh, wait, that’s them beating Ken up, as seen from his POV. Sorry about that. Steve bursts onto the scene, grabs one of their rifles, and proceeds to give them a tongue-lashing in a speech about the evils of vigilante justice. Obviously moved more than I was, the three good ol’ boys slink off, ashamed. Steve then reveals to Ken, by way of comic relief, that the speech had been a monologue he’d memorized for an audition he didn’t get. (I believe, by the way, that director Max Cerchi cameoed as one of the rednecks.)

So Lisa comes over for dinner. Unfortunately, this proves to be a rotten time to finally leave the station, because Satan Claus pulls out all the stops and starts piling up bodies. By the time Lisa gets a call back to the station, four corpses have popped up. Steve gives her a ride to the nearest crime scene, where she’s greeted by the captain and absolutely no one else. (Or at least, if there were any other cop actors around, they weren’t wearing anything bright enough to stand out from the uniformly dark background. Grrr.) Just to point this out, the captain tells her he wants the coroner’s report on his desk in an hour. That’s a pretty tight order, since the coroner can’t even move the body until the police photographer gets there and documents the crime scene.

Steve, having lost his date, heads over to Sandra’s place and waltzes right in, to find a suspicious-looking setup: a black room, a ring of candles, and a picture of Ardison with blood all over it. (And no, I still didn’t recognize the figure in the photo as being Ardison.)

Steve takes the picture back to Maman, who can sense the evil power attached to it. (And here, finally, through the dialogue, I manage to make the connection.) She starts getting psychic flashes of Satan Claus, and Steve has her focus on the picture until she gets a vision of Satan Claus and his fully decorated Christmas tree, festooned with the organs he’s been harvesting. She also manages to tell that it’s on Washington Street.

An interlude here shows the black-robed figure chanting in the candles again, this time without the electronic processing that disguised the female voice the first time around; it is, of course, Sandra. She tries the same blood-dribbling routine on Steve’s picture, but then exclaims that she can’t enchant him. (This is to be explained later.)

Steve tries to alert the police, but can’t get through (not surprising — you’ve got a panicky populace and three persons to answer the phones). He goes out alone to Washington Street, where he finds the tree — and kneeling in front of it, laughing madly, is Captain Ardison, dressed in a Santa suit. Then Sandra enters, also dressed as Santa, with a gun in hand, and finally we get the exposition:

See, the captain’s wife had been having an affair with Sandra’s Jeff. She had been so incensed that she dug into the occult arts in which she dabbled and took control of Ardison, using him as a pawn so that he would kill Jeff and she would kill the Missus. The other killings, it seems, were a decoy, the pretense of a random psychopath to keep the police from looking for any connection between Mrs. Ardison and Jeff. Sandra knew that Maman was getting too close to the truth, and had tried to take control of Steve too to bump her off, but the talisman protected him.

Now it’s time to clean up the loose ends, though, and Sandra pops the captain. But before she can do the same to Steve, the police burst in and shoot Sandra; Maman had finally been able to get to the station.

The end.

The more I think about the storyline, the more it irks me how arbitrary it is. The entire Santa thing, for instance, is a sidenote; Sandra didn’t need to dress up like Santa any more than she needed to impersonate the Easter Bunny. (And if that sentence somehow inspires a micro-budgeteer to shoot a film about a killer Easter Bunny, I beg your forgiveness in advance.) The idea of killing other people to make the intentional murders look random is a good one, but then she went and killed her first two intentional targets first. And the rigmarole of making the tree of body parts is wholly unnecessary.

And then there’s the fact that Satan Claus is obviously neither Sandra or Ardison. So unless we somehow decide that Sandra’s mystical powers modified her appearance from that of a young babe to that of a sixty-something man whenever she put on the suit, it’s just plain cinematic cheating to show us something we’re then supposed to disregard.

Coupled with the oft-noted murky picture and the often rough camera work, Satan Claus is either a disappointing attempt or evidence of a quick learning curve on Cerchi’s part. I question, though, the wisdom of releasing it now; Rounds Entertainment is currently trying to get a distribution business off the ground (one of its offerings will be the recently-reviewed Drainiac!), and Max is shooting his next couple of films in 16mm; it would be a shame if this early and clumsier offering spoiled Rounds’ reputation before their more professional offerings have a chance to make an impression.