While most people celebrate the season by indulging in holiday viewings of Elf, A Christmas Story or Die Hard (YES IT'S A CHRISTMAS MOVIE!), I like to venture a bit off the beaten path in my holiday viewing looking for more non-conventional holiday fodder. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against any of those holiday classics I just mentioned above, and I even partake in a viewing or two per year myself. But given my love of genre, I can’t help but want to indulge in something that while celebrating the season, tickles my horror itch as well.


With that in mind here’s my playlist of films for 2021, let me know what you think if what you have any suggestions for next year. 


American Exorcist - 2018


Starting the list off, with a Philly made horror film, that I've been meaning to catch up on starring none other than Choptop himself Bill Moseley


A paranormal investigator, trapped in a haunted skyscraper on Christmas Eve. The skeptical young woman, Georgette Dubois, is horrified once confronted with the reality of the supernatural. She risks life and limb to escape her ghoulish prison, stranded on the 11th floor.


Elves - 1989


With this synopsis, how can you even say no? I've somehow have never seen this genre holiday classic. But this will definitely be the year.


A young woman discovers that she is the focus of an evil Nazi experiment involving selective breeding and summoned elves, an attempt to create a race of supermen. She and two of her friends are trapped in a department store with an elf, and only Dan Haggerty, as the renegade loose-cannon Santa Claus, can save them.

 

Home for the Holidays - 1972


I have to say when it comes to Made for TV horror Aaron Spelling is a name I trust and when I was researching this list I came across this TV slasher starring a young Sally Field and had to add it to my list.

1972 slasher television film from the ABC Company, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, and produced by Aaron Spelling.  The setting is a country house owned by the rich Benjamin Morgan who invites his four daughters home for Christmas.  Upon their arrival he asks them to kill their stepmother who (he thinks) is trying to kill him, and the girls discover that their stepmother is a convicted murderess who may or may not have killed her previous husband.  A storm causes the roads to be flooded and the telephone lines to go down.  Classic TV mayhem ensues as it soon becomes clear that someone does indeed want to kill the family - when one of them is found murdered.  One sister tries to run through the woods to reach the Sheriff for help, but she is chased by someone dressed in a large poncho carrying a pitchfork.  She returns to the house, only to discover more murders.  The girls begin to fall prey to a killer dressed in a yellow rain slicker.  The prime suspect becomes the stepmother, but was it someone else?

 

Lucky Stiff - 1988


A holiday cannibal film, directed by Anthony Perkins aka Norman Bates. That says it all.

A plump loser, after being left at the alter by his fiancee, is invited to Christmas dinner by a beautiful woman, but her family are cannibals who intend to have *him* as the main course.


To All a Goodnight - 1980

Finally David Hess AKA Krug's sole feature length directorial credit is you guessed it a Christmas horror film. This one is about  about a Santa slasher, that sounds a bit like a riff off of Silent Night Deadly Night. That being said and given the director I am more than curious to check this one out.

To All a Goodnight is a 1980 American slasher film directed by David Hess and starring Jennifer Runyon and Forrest Swanson. Its plot follows a group of female finishing school students and their boyfriends being murdered during a Christmas party by a psychopath dressed as Santa Claus.