Need a scary Christmas movie?
You Better Watch Out, better known as Christmas Evil, isn’t just another Santa slasher film.
For some of us, nothing says Merry Christmas quite like an axe-wielding Santa.
Writer/director Lewis Jacksons 1980 film is different.
In fact its not a slasher film by any stretch.
What it is, more specifically, is theTaxi DriverofChristmas movies.
Harry (prolific character actor Brandon Maggart in a rare star turn) lovesChristmas.
He loves Christmas more than anybody.
Santa meant more than presents, he was an ideal of human generosity and kindness.
He was innocence and morality personified and Harry would spend a lifetime trying to prove that Santa still mattered.
By the time he became an adult it had become a mania.
He leaves his decorations up all year long.
He hums Christmas carols in July.
He loves Christmas so much that he takes a job working on the assembly line at a toy factory.
But more than a mere elf, Harry wants tobeSanta himself.
He dresses like Santa and prances about the house.
He even takes to spying on the neighbor kids and keeping lists of whos naughty and whos nice.
Is that really too much to ask?
Children needed to believe that someone in the world could promise them a little justice, right?
Listen to your parents and do what they say.
Obey your teachers and learn a whole lot.
And Ill double-check you get something…horrible.
Maggart somehow makes every layer of Harrys personality believable.
When hes on the street or at work, hes virtually invisible.
When he dons the Santa costume he becomes bigger than life, a different character completely.
And when hes home alone hes nutty as a jaybird.
Although hes borrowing heavily from Scorsese, he makes it all work in a different context.
The decent characters Harry meets are angelic, while the bad characters are slimy and despicable.
