Bad Santas: Eight Killer Kris Kringles & Their Christmas Crimes

With Christmas right around the corner the big screen should be filled with Christmas jingles and phony Santa Clause’s with white beards.

Children should be stealing candy canes off a fake tree in the living room and shopping lines somewhere out the store and around the corner. Our Buddies over at Moviefone.com have come up with a list of the best naughty fat men to grace our holiday screens.

‘Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale’ isn’t your typical happy X-Mas story. While Santa is usually a holy man, happy to spread cheer to hopeful children, Rare Exports takes a different turn–changing Santa into “a hulking beast of a monster, here to kidnap children.” I guess I never thought of Kris Kringle that way. Read on for their eight picks…

The Homicidal Maniac in ‘Tales from the Crypt: The Movie’ (1972)

You Better Watch Out: In the segment ‘… And All Through the House,’ everyone thinks the bad guy is Joanne (Joan Collins), the greedy, money-grubbing wife of poor, unsuspecting Richard. She murders him on Christmas Eve and plans to cash in on his insurance plan, but her plan to dispose the body is interrupted by an escaped mental patient from the “Hospital for the Criminally Insane,” dressed up like Santa Claus and roaming around outside. Since she can’t call the cops without revealing her crime, she needs to fend off this homicidal home invader, all by her lonesome.

The Naughty List: Resisting Arrest. Breaking and Entering. Physical assault. Manslaughter. Child Abduction. Has the audacity to put his hands on Joan Collins at her absolute hottest. Oh, and he stole a Santa Claus costume from a shop in Burnley.

The Schoolgirl Stalker in ‘To All a Good Night’ (1980)

You Better Watch Out: The students of the Calvin Finishing School for Girls take advantage of the Christmas break and the superintendant leaving for vacation to sneak in a bunch of eager teenage boys. Amidst a weekend filled with illicit sex and multiple cans of beer, someone dressed as Santa Claus sneaks in and begins killing the barely-dressed couples. Does it have a connection to a tragic accident in the

school’s history? (Answer: Yes. Of course it does.)

The Naughty List: Assault with a deadly weapon. Attacking an officer of the law. Failure to report underage drinking. Operating a plane without a license. Multiple homicides. Star of one of the poorest-lit movies we have ever seen. Oddly released at the end of January.

Harry Stadling in ‘Christmas Evil’ (1980/1983)

You Better Watch Out:Traumatized as a youth by an inappropriate Santa, poor Harry grows up to be a sad schlub who is obsessed with Christmas. When he’s not treated poorly by his co-workers at the toy factory, he’s slowly losing his mind, deluding himself into thinking he’s the real Santa. He sets out on his after-hours plan to reward all the good children with his home-made toys, and teach the bad children a lesson, by leaving them bags of dirt. Oh, also, he murders anyone who ever wronged him.

The Naughty List: Well, the homicides, naturally. Spying on children. Manufacturing of combat toys without a safety inspection. Tresspassing on company property. Vandalism. Beating out ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ for title of “greatest Christmas movie ever” (according to John Waters). Being known as ‘You Better Watch Out’ on its initial 1980 release, giving film snobs another thing to brag about to all those people seeing it for the first time in 1983, under its new title.