Christmas Shorts
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Happy Holidays, everyone! For the big Christmas Day episode, we thought we’d do something a little different. We scoured the web and put together our own anthology of holiday shorts. Best of all, you can watch them all down below and follow along with us. There’s a lot of great stuff out there on the interwebs. If you found anything else you’d like to share, please leave us a comment below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6SUjgBhabw
Christmas Shorts (Various)
Episode 154, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Merry Christmas everybody and welcome to another edition of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. Well I should say happy holidays right?
Craig: Say whatever you want man.
Todd: I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. Alright well we’re going to cover everything anyway. We know that the holiday season isn’t just About Christmas it’s about a lot of different things and the minute that we find a really good Hanukkah or Kwanzaa-themed horror movie, we will definitely be doing it here. Absolutely. There’s gotta be a good Ramadan. I feel like some horror movie themed around the fact that you can’t eat has to
Craig: be. I mean that just sounds like a horror movie, just that premise.
Todd: I hesitate to even say this out loud because I feel like it’s a million dollar idea. Maybe I’ll edit this part out, we’ll see. So we decided to do something a little different. You know, we have been oftentimes scraping the bottom of the barrel for these Christmas movies, although interesting ones do keep popping up. This time, we realized that there are quite a few fun little Christmas shorts out there, especially with the proliferation of the internet. These are things that any of our listeners could go out and watch after we’re done talking about them or even before we start talking about them.
Craig: Yeah we could even like post them on our site and you could watch them and enjoy them with us.
Todd: Let’s not go that far come on. That would be too easy. You’d have to dig like us. Well, no, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. If you go to our site, you’ll be able to see links to all of these movies that are out there. All of them are relatively short. None of them I think is any longer than like 15 or 20 minutes.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And a couple of them are just a couple minutes long, but we’re including them anyway because they’re kind of fun. We scoured several, I mean there’s a bit out there for these Christmas shorts and they all vary in quality, they all vary in creativity. That’s kind of what you get when you go to YouTube, right? So we tried to find the 6 most interesting ones that we ran across that other people seemed to enjoy that had relatively good production value and some creative thought behind them and were varied. We didn’t want 6 Killer Santa shorts Because there’s a ton of that out there. So we limited it to like 2. And the rest of this is gonna be, I think it’s a good mix. I think we came up with a really cool mix this year. How about you, Craig? I did too. So Let’s start off with the first 1. Interestingly enough, my wife and I just got done watching a documentary on Netflix called Tree Man, and this is about people who drive to New York. Apparently, there are very few New Yorkers who actually set up Christmas tree sales places, Christmas tree, what do you call them? Stands. Lots. Lots, whatever. They’re all from out of state. So, in New York City, there’s this guy who drives down like 500 miles from Canada, and he sets up his little Christmas tree stand, and that is like his family business. He’s away from his family for a whole month. So it was interesting that somebody had this idea to include the Christmas tree in a horror movie. What happens to these poor trees when they get shipped in from across the country, and how does it traumatize them? And how could they perhaps get their tree venge and that’s exactly what this thoughtful horror movie does it’s called tree venge and when it started out were you getting shades of recognition just from the score alone.
Craig: Oh gosh, I don’t even remember the score, but what I liked about this 1 is that it totally had like kind of like a 70s, low budget horror movie feel. It’s from 2008 and it was directed by Jason Eisner who did a segment in VHS too, I’m not sure which 1, and he also worked on Hobo with the Shotgun. And this 1, you know, it pops up with the music and like a very 70s looking title and the footage is kind of grainy. It kind of looks like a low budget horror movie from the 70s. And it was very Christmassy in the very beginning and so I was into it from the get-go.
Todd: Well it panned out across Christmas trees out in the fields, right? Out in their natural habitat and this music that was playing was ripped directly from Cannibal Holocaust.
Craig: Oh, that’s right. I forgot about that. Yeah, it’s this idyllic footage of like these snowy trees in the field. And I didn’t recognize the music at first, but when I went and did a little bit of reading about it, I saw that too. And I was like, oh yeah, that was the Cannibal Holocaust music. And it’s fitting, It works.
Todd: It is, you know, thematically it works. I mean, it’s sort of the idea is that here these outsiders come into all these trees that are perfectly happy living out alone in the woods, away from civilization. They chop them down, they bring them, and then they stick them in their house. And it’s funny because you never really get this sense of if trees were living and could talk what horrible things we actually do to them at Christmas time. But this movie, make sure you know. And it’s total tongue in cheek. It is hilarious.
Craig: Yeah, it’s funny, because you see all those trees and then you see a guy with an ax, like in a very ominous way, like in a horror movie kind of way. Then like the baby tree is like quivering.
Todd: And making little chirping sounds. Errrrrrr.
Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently, they’re not actually speaking out loud in a way that human beings can hear them, but they can communicate with 1 another and 1 of them is like, oh, I wish I’d stayed in school.
Todd: That’s right. You get little subtitles at the bottom and all you hear is this.
Craig: Oh, gosh. It’s hilarious.
Todd: Yeah, they come in and it’s so funny because they’re, and it’s like these are the most brutal tree rippers down of all time. It’s like, they’re like a few trees, you know, basically coming in and like taking a chainsaw to them and taking an axe to them and yanking them around. It’s hilarious. These guys get a little too into their work and then they go and they bring them to 1 of these you know places where they sell trees and it just takes you through the whole process so it’s kind of like all these little trees get taken home and then we see what happens once they’ve basically had enough in each of their environments.
Craig: The funniest part about this is the subtitles, because you just do get these little like squeaky noises from the trees, but the subtitles are just hilarious. Like when the people are cutting down the trees, they’re like, they’re killing us all. What did we do to deserve this? What did we do to them? And it’s just funny. You know, like it takes something, you know, that we just don’t consider at all and makes it funny. You know, like They cut down all these trees and then the ones that aren’t desirable enough just get burned like it’s a holocaust of trees. And then they do. People come and buy them and set them up in their house. And just, you know, little things like this family buys a tree and they go to set it up and they put it in the Christmas tree stand and they start screwing in the screws for the Christmas tree stand. Like the trees are like screaming. It’s mean, but it’s funny.
Todd: It’s well shot too, you know. It really takes the cinematography pretty seriously, as though this were a horror movie, zooming in on the screws and twisting and twisting like a like a scene from S.A.R. Or something like that. But then I think is it the family where the first kill happens where the girl stands up there unwrapping presents under the tree and the girl stands up in front of it goes, I got a doll. And the tree just grabs her. It’s like it’s branches wrap around her and pull her in. And just blood starts flying out everywhere. Like it’s eating her.
Craig: Tons of blood. Too much blood,
Todd: but it’s so fun. It’s spraying all over the family.
Craig: And the tree throws its star like a ninja star into the dad’s neck. And then it cuts to another family, and they’re opening their presence, and blood starts dripping down on their presence. And they’re like, what’s going on? And they look up and the cat is dead in the tree. The tree has killed the cat. Right. What’s the funny, you know, what I liked and really appreciated about this 1 was that it wasn’t afraid to like really go out there. Like It’s really gory, but there’s just lots of really crazy stuff going on. When people are still putting their trees together and stuff, this 1 guy has dug a hole out of the trunk and is like lubing it up.
Todd: Yeah, that was so
Craig: gross. And it’s this skeezy guy, like you could, he’s got this, you know, big grin on his face and you can totally tell like what he’s planning. It’s so gross.
Todd: I think my favorite though is the couple. They’re like making out on the sofa and they’ve got the tree behind them or something like that and the girl makes some suggestion, I can’t remember what it was, and he goes, it’s Christmas, I just want to f***. Like, okay. And at that point the trees grab them and the tree grabs them and then you get a direct nod to, again, 1 of these old Italian horror movies from the 70s, Zombie, where we have this slow motion kill where a woman gets slowly pulled against a splinter by a zombie that is going straight for her eye. And in this case, the tree branch piece starts going slowly into her eye and then it comes out of her eye and like out of the other eye and then out of her mouth and then it goes across to his eye and it’s like bringing them closer together by weaving itself between their eyes and their mouths until they come together at Christmas time. It’s actually pretty heartwarming when you think about it.
Craig: Well, in the end, I mean, it’s just total mayhem. Like, people are running in the streets, and lake trees are killing people in totally grotesque ways.
Todd: Kills a baby.
Craig: Yes, yes. I feel like that’s the cap. Like they saved that for the end where the tree stump just crushes a baby’s head. But there’s also like a blink and you miss it moment where a tree is raping a guy behind a snowbank. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. And that’s it. Like it just ends on all that mayhem. But I thought it was a really clever idea and I loved the 70s vibe a bit of it and it was goofy and fun. I really enjoyed it. It’s potty humor. It’s gross. Tasteless. Oh yeah, it’s totally tasteless. There’s a couple of these that we’re going to talk about. There’s 1 in particular that I thought, oh my gosh, this was actually kind of a really good idea. They could have made a feature-length film about this, but this 1, I think, just works really well in short form. You know, just give us, I don’t even remember how long it was, 10 minutes or, you know, it’s really short and it worked really well in that medium and I just thought it was really clever.
Todd: Yeah, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes goes on far too long. You know, there’s only so far you can take this concept of these inanimate objects. Sure, sure. And so, yeah, I agree. This worked really well as a short I do not want to see this expanded into a full length you’d have to do
Craig: no yeah No, but you know it totally seems like something trauma would do you know yeah,
Todd: it’s very trauma
Craig: anyway Super clever I I recommend it take a take a look at tree Venge. It’s my go-to word is cute. It’s cute. It’s cute,
Todd: watch it. We’re gonna be saying that about a lot of these. Tree-rape’s a guy and another guy loops up the tree. Was it the same guy who was looping up the tree?
Craig: I don’t know, maybe, I hope so.
Todd: You need to go back and watch. Yeah, me too. I hope it
Craig: was the same
Todd: guy. Well, speaking of cute, I don’t know if you’d call the next 1 Cute or not, but it’s fun. It’s just a couple minutes long and it’s called The Winter Stalker. And it is simply a short, almost like a kind of visual poem.
Craig: Yeah, I mean. Yeah, it’s just a few minutes.
Todd: The idea is that Santa is alone in a cabin, and you know, Santa watches you, right? So Santa, many people could say, kind of like Elf on the Shelf, right? Santa is a bit of a stalker himself. And so it takes that idea and runs with it a little bit and says, well, what if Santa really were a stalker? How would everything that we know about him, you know, having his list and people writing letters to him and stuff, how would all that really play out then?
Craig: Well, what song is that? Is it Santa Claus is coming to town? That’s the, he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. It totally plays on that. It’s just really dark. And I appreciate when you take something innocent and just put a dark spin on it, that totally makes sense. Santa is writing letters back to these people. He’s like, you know I watch you when you’re sleeping, right?
Todd: In the meantime, we’re hearing like voiceover and we’re seeing quick grubby clips of, you know, again it looks like he’s in a tool shed or something like that by candlelight with his hands dirty and messy and everything gross, you know, scratching all this stuff out.
Craig: It’s just deliciously nasty. Like, there’s an imagery where the milk from the milk and cookies like gets splashed up on people’s faces.
Todd: Oh yeah. It’s totally. It goes to a lot of places like that.
Craig: It’s totally like a cum shot. It’s so nasty. But it’s hilarious. It is. And like, it’s so brief, but it’s really pretty artfully done. Oh yeah. Like, It’s well shot in those, you know, just those 3 minutes or however long it is. Well, it reminded me a lot of a short that was really popular on their internet for a while that
Todd: I think even won an Emmy or something. It’s starring Bill Oberst Jr. And it was called Don’t Take This Lollipop. Have you ever seen that? No. It’s a site that you go to. It’s called, and you should, don’ttakethislollipop.com and you click on the lollipop anyway and it tells you we’re going to give us access to your Facebook profile to watch this short. And then it sticks stuff about you and your friends into the short in the context of this crazy psycho guy who’s coming after you basically.
Craig: Oh, that’s funny.
Todd: It’s really cool. And it is this is almost almost I would say in many ways ripped directly from that, you know, it has a similar type vibe to it and a similar style of shooting. But again, I don’t wanna downplay this 1. It’s quite good. But then the ending, right? The ending of it is still like, well, it’s still Santa delivering presents. They still get their present. They get what they wanted and then that’s it. It’s not like he comes and murders anybody.
Craig: No, no. It’s funny, it’s just a nice funny take. I mean, it’s just looking at the whole mythology of Santa from a different perspective And it makes sense. I mean, that’s what makes it so clever is that if you think about it, you know this creepy guy that watches you all the time and knows what your deepest desires are.
Todd: It’s funny. He’d be going a little crazy, I think. He’d have a big bird and let’s just put it that way, but this 1 is more almost a little slapstick in some ways and that
Craig: is called Humbug. 2016.
Todd: Fairly new, right? 2 years old with a female writing and directing and starring team with this. I actually went to their YouTube channel thinking that maybe they had a lot more of these kinds of shorts that they’ve done and I don’t think they’ve done anything since like a year or 2 ago, and they only have maybe half a dozen things up there. But I was really curious to see what else they did because I thought the concept behind this was cute. Again, cute. Yeah.
Craig: Yeah, clever. So it starts out with this, for lack of a better word, goth girl. And she obviously hates Christmas and she’s like sketching in her sketch pad and like sketching decapitated Santas and stuff and she like colors the picture with her own blood like when you vote When you’ve only got 10 minutes or 8 minutes or whatever, how long it is, you really gotta nail the character right away. So she’s cutting herself and coloring her pictures of Santa with her own blood. And there’s loud Christmas music playing next door, which pisses her off, so she goes next door. Her neighbor is this cute, perky, blonde girl who’s super smiley, like over the top, ridiculously cheerful and happy. And…
Todd: She’s the embodiment of Christmas cheer, yeah.
Craig: Yeah, right. And she tries to bestow that Christmas cheer on to the grouchy neighbor but when the grouchy neighbor is just having none of it she tases her
Todd: all right we’ll do this the hard way
Craig: and then yeah And then ties her up in Christmas lights. And then I remember she tells a story about an old man.
Clip: That was the night old man Yates knocked on our door. We knew him as the jolliest man on the block. He brought us a peppermint icebox pie every year. So that’s what mama was expecting when she opened the door. But that’s not what he brought. Merry Christmas, she said. And I will never forget the way he looked. He looked different, like all the joy had been sucked out of him. And the thing he was holding, it was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. It was a… Never mind, I don’t care!
Todd: The other funny thing about this story Is that as she tells it she takes a sip and sets from a thing of whiskey that she offers the girl that she doesn’t take So she takes a sip from it and as she sets the bottle down you see that it’s old exposition whiskey
Craig: It’s hilarious The cheery 1 tries to give the grumpy 1 some eggnog and she won’t drink it and so she force feeds it with a funnel.
Todd: It’s a three-step process actually. She force feeds her the eggnog with the funnel and then she tries to get her to sing. She breaks 1 of her fingers in a nutcracker which makes her sing and then she goes okay and then she climbs on top of her and just starts French kissing her.
Craig: Yeah, there’s some hot lesbian action. I was like,
Todd: whoa, okay. And then suddenly the kissing turns into sucking. And I thought, is she gonna bite her tongue off? You know, is it gonna get that dark?
Craig: That’s what I thought too, yeah.
Todd: But actually as she pulls away from her it turns out there is a creature the humbug is yeah she’s basically going through this ritual to pull this humbug out of her and it looks like a giant black sperm or something from alien or something
Craig: it’s gross but it’s it’s I don’t know it’s funny Like I wouldn’t go so far to say is it’s scary, but it’s it’s funny. And it looks good. Like the effects are pretty good. Like she pulls, She pulls this gross thing out of her throat and then the mean girl is cured and she loves Christmas too And so they go caroling together and if I remember correctly and I may be wrong But like they go caroling together and I feel like the mean girl still has like the blood crusted around her Whoever they go caroling to is also a humbug and slams the door in their face, but they’re like, that’s okay, and they hold up the taser.
Todd: Here we go. Doing it all over again. Oh my gosh. I thought this was hilarious. And what a clever idea. I mean, it’s truly original. I’ve never seen anything like
Craig: this before. It’s really cute. It is. You and I both, 1 of the, actually I think the next 1 we’re going to talk about is All Through the House, which is the 1 that we’re going to talk about is actually a remake of a short that comes from an anthology. What’s the anthology that it comes from, do you remember? Tales from
Todd: the Crypt, the original movie from the 1970s.
Craig: Oh, that’s right, that’s right. And it stars Joan Collins. And the whole way that this episode was inspired was I really like, I’ve never seen that original Tales from the Crypt movie, which I can’t believe. And we’re going to do eventually, which is why we didn’t do the Joan Collins version this time around. You know, Sometimes short form horror, it just can be really, really fun. And we’ve done 2 or 3 at least Christmas anthologies and we’ve done Halloween anthologies and we always really enjoy them. And it’s Not that I’m sure there are others out there that we haven’t seen, but I guess we were just feeling kind of lazy and we just kind of decided to put our own together this time around. But I’m glad we did because I do. It’s just kind of fun to get a complete story in 10 or 15 or 20 minutes and I feel like in that form good or bad you don’t you know like if it’s good you’re like oh that was so much fun if it was bad you’re like well it was only 10 minutes
Todd: yeah I didn’t waste a lot of time. It didn’t take too much time out of my life, which we can’t say about a lot of full length movies we’ve had to do on this podcast. It’s so true.
Craig: This 1. But Humbug was a good, this was an example I think of a good 1, a really cute, clever idea, playing on the whole bah Humbug and making it an actual entity. You know, who knows, somebody could have maybe made a full-length feature and maybe it would have been good, but I just, you know, in this short span of time, it was cute and it was funny and it was gross and…
Todd: The acting was good.
Craig: Yeah, the acting was good, the production was good.
Todd: Well, and it was just, you know, again, when you have a short, you only have so much time, you really need to make every second count. And what was great about this 1 was how unpredictable it was. I mean, you know, something like tree venge, you get the idea, you know, you’re just going to see a bunch of people getting murdered by trees and that’s going to be it. But in this, like every second, you’re thinking, where is this going? You know, and it surprises you by the end. Surprised me anyway. So I think that takes a lot of talent.
Craig: And I also like seeing these people who don’t have the advantage of a big budget. They’re financing this themselves, which means, or at least I assume so, I don’t know, but they’re financing this thing themselves. They’re probably shooting it on handheld cameras or at best some not studio level cameras, But with lighting and set prep and costuming and good acting, they can really do a lot. And it really showcases talent that we might not get to see otherwise. And I just really enjoy them. I spend a lot of time watching horror shorts on YouTube. There’s there are so many and some of them are really good and some of them go on to inspire feature-length films. Every year in my class, my English class, we do a unit on horror fiction. I show them these shorts. 1 of the ones that I have shown for years is Lights Out. That got picked up and got turned into a big budget Hollywood film that I haven’t seen. But the original short was really fun. And so I just like to see, you know, kind of maybe nothing will ever come of these low budget filmmakers, but sometimes this is where they get their start. And I just like to see these people who are passionate about what they’re doing have a forum. And with the internet now and YouTube, they have a platform and that’s fantastic. I love it.
Todd: Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable actually we couldn’t do something like this, you know 15 years ago, right? Couldn’t have found you know who watches shorts 15 years ago. You’d have to go to like a film festival, right? You just have to be totally into this sort of thing You know and to seek the stuff out and now You can go on and you can watch these and you can find other ones and it’s it’s spend a whole day going down the Dark rabbit hole of YouTube and oh yeah, the good ones are on Vimeo
Craig: The good ones are on Vimeo. That’s true. There’s some really good ones there Okay. All right Moving on to All Through the House. As you mentioned, this is a remake from the original anthology film from Tales from the Crypt. And this, the remake, premiered in the first season of the TV series on HBO, Tales from the Crypt, Which as a kid of the late 80s and 90s Tales from the crypt was like crack to me.
Todd: Oh my gosh.
Craig: I loved it so much It was scary, but it also had this great vein of dark humor running through it always.
Todd: Always these famous directors, high quality production value, famous people.
Craig: Yes, yes, that’s exactly it. And I was watching this last night and I was watching the credits and I was specifically watching the opening credits because I couldn’t remember the name of the main actress. And her name is Mary Ellen Traynor. She is such a recognizable face from the 80s. She was the mom from the Goonies. She was the mom from Monster Squad. This, the screenplay for this was written by Fred Decker who did the Monster Squad. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis. Like, like so many crazy Famous people involved in this it’s so fun. I love this. Like I said, it’s the holiday season. We’re busy I I watch the first half of these shorts last week and then last night I was running behind and so I made my partner watch the rest of them with me And this is 1 of the ones that we watched and he really enjoyed it too And he’s not a big horror fan the premise this it’s just it’s so wacky like and that’s what I love about Tales from the Crypt. It opens up and some great Christmas carol playing over the credits and it’s panning through you know this idyllic snowy scene and then into the house that’s totally decked out for Christmas. It’s so Christmassy. It leads up to the mom, Mary Ellen Traynor, murdering her husband with a fireplace poker.
Todd: Yeah. Just comes up behind him and says, Merry Christmas, darling, and whack over the head.
Craig: The guy that plays her husband, he’s famous too. I mean, every face you see in this, except for the little, there’s a little girl. I don’t know her from anything, but.
Todd: Oh, I’m sure she went on to do great things
Craig: I’m sure she did too I’m sure she did too but this woman apparently is murdering her husband for his money and she has a lover and like it’s so it’s so silly like she calls her lover and leaves a message on his answering machine.
Clip: Darling, it’s Elizabeth. I know you told me not to call, but I just had to tell you. It’s done. I did it. It’s all ours. The money, everything. We’re free. Merry Christmas, darling.
Craig: It’s total cornball. It’s so Tales from the Crypt. Like, you know, like nobody in their right mind would do that. It’s the stupidest thing you could possibly do would be to record your confession on an answering machine tape. But she does. But while she’s trying to drag her dead husband out to throw him down the well, because apparently they have a well.
Todd: Another bad idea, but.
Craig: My partner, god it’s so funny, my partner was like, ew, don’t throw him down there, you have to drink that.
Todd: Oh god,
Craig: But anyway, while she’s dragging him out there, we hear on the radio that this lunatic has escaped from the loony bin and has stolen a Santa suit and has killed several people in that area. And then he immediately shows up and it’s just mayhem. And it’s just so fun. It’s so fun and scary. It is
Todd: scary, Yeah, that’s right. But the 1 thing that keeps it from being 100% Scary is that it’s really played up for cheese and I’m actually pretty surprised because it Tales in the Crypts kind of like Twilight Zone, you know in many ways there’s always a twist at the end and they always go in all these different directions. Sometimes it’s a little closer to sci-fi, sometimes there’s a supernatural element to them, sometimes there’s a comedic 1. And this 1 is definitely more in the comedic vein where this woman, she’s a good actress and she plays really serious, but if you only saw her in this movie, you wouldn’t think her capable of playing serious because she hams it up so much. I mean, it was clearly a choice. And the villain, he just looks terrible, you know? He’s got wily eyes and this chubby face and these bad teeth and he’s your classic textbook, comic book killer escape from the mental asylum with an axe.
Craig: And he is, you know, I wouldn’t say he’s like a huge actor or anything, but he’s well known too. I don’t have his name written down, but you and I are old enough to remember LA Law. That show featured a character who worked like in this law firm. I think he was like a clerk or whatever and he played a character with special needs and that’s this guy And he just like he does he just looks he’s so crazy eyed and goofy looking but he is just a lunatic. It’s not like he’s menacing. It’s not like he’s stalking her around. Like the second he shows up, he attacks her and they fight and there’s all kinds of craziness going on.
Todd: Well, and there are a lot of inside jokes too, which is, you know, something we’ve got Fred Decker behind the helm of the of the writing. And this guy just has a love for the genre and you know goes back and he’s done what he did Night of the Creeps which was kind of a throwback to a 1950s style sci-fi horror film and he throws in a lot of these small Easter eggs. I don’t know if you were ever a fan of reading the comics? I didn’t. The reprints came out like in the, well, a whole bunch of reprints came out in the late 80s, early 90s, and I ate them up when I have almost the whole series at home. Oh, that’s awesome. And I got really into the history of these horror comics, and the guy who did the horror comics, the editor and kind of in charge of the whole deal, kind of like the Stan Lee of the 1950s horror comics was named William Gaines and he started Mad Magazine as part of this, his whole empire and that’s the 1 thing after the horror comics kind of got booted off the shelves because parents couldn’t stand him anymore. That’s the 1 thing that kept him going and then made him even more successful. So anyway, long story, but if you listen to the radio you hear that they’re in the Gaines County area. And when the guy, the policeman calls them up on the phone, he says, Mrs. Kamen, this is Sergeant Feldstein. And these are writers, editors, Feldstein, I think, Harvey Feldstein was either a writer or an artist for them. And Dean Kamen was a writer as well for Tales from the Crypt. He stuck those little things in there too, which is really cute. You know, it’s just a fun little short all around. It really is. And again, it’s like you really don’t, I mean, the situation she’s in, at 1 point she’s locked herself in the closet and you think she’s fine, but the real problem is that there’s a daughter upstairs. Right. And she’s excited for Santa to come. And so this guy dressed as Santa starts climbing up the trellis while this woman’s locked herself in a closet. So now she’s got to get out of the closet, but now she can’t get out of it. Right.
Craig: It’s
Todd: just a comedy of errors of her trying to escape him and then turning around and trying to save her daughter. Which is typical, you know, of these horror comics. There’s always a morality to them. This woman does something bad and so this is her punishment. Which is, again, what kind of separates, this could have been a killer Santa just Terrorizing a family it could have been this simple home invasion thing But it’s this woman getting what she deserved basically Yeah, that’s the idea behind this 1
Craig: And you’ve talked about that a lot when you know on the podcast how these tales from the crypt and you know there’s all kinds of them. Tales from the vault, there’s all different ones, but they are. Their morality plays and it’s usually about bad people who get what’s coming to them. And this is precisely that, and it’s a lot of fun. My favorite part, I think, was when Santa first attacks her, she immediately runs inside and calls 911, And they’re like, okay, well, where are you? And then she looks outside and sees her dead husband that she’s killed and realizes that she can’t have cops coming to her house.
Todd: That was clever.
Craig: Which I thought was so funny. Yeah. And then I don’t remember if then she hears on the radio or if the cops tell her that this psycho has been killing people with an axe and like she gets this idea. She goes, oh, they fight, she and Santa fight and she knocks him out and he’s knocked out in the snow. And so she goes out with the axe and axes her husband. And it’s so, it’s just funny. It takes her several swings, but she eventually gets him. And I just like, you know, these twists, like that could have worked out so well for her if she had won, you know? Yeah. If she had won, it would be so easy to say, oh, the psycho killed him. And nobody would have thought any different. Serendipity for her. Right. She doesn’t win. The Santa gets to the daughter, and the mom, after she breaks out of the closet runs upstairs and Nobody’s in her daughter’s room. So she runs back downstairs and she’s so relieved to see her daughter standing down there but then the daughter’s like look Santa came and she pulls Santa out from the other room holding his hand and the mom is just screaming, no, no, no. And Santa goes, naughty or Nice. And then it just like extreme close up on the mom’s face screaming, no. Like. I love it. I’ve seen that 1 a million times and I love it every time I see it. It’s, it’s, it’s good. It’s a lot of fun. Check it
Todd: out. It is great. Oh, and you know, Mary Ellen Traynor at this time was Robert Zemeckis’ wife.
Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that, no!
Todd: Yeah, apparently. I don’t think she is anymore, but at the time she was. I think he’s had a few.
Craig: Yeah, he has. All right, what’s next?
Todd: All right, the next 1 that we watched was called Do You See What I See? And it opens up on a gal coming over to smoking outside of a house and walking into it’s like a suburban neighborhood and things are decked out for Christmas. And she goes into the back and she meets a guy who’s in the back kind of grilling, who’s half dressed in a Santa outfit. And there’s a Christmas party going on inside and they have some banter back and forth.
Craig: You don’t find this out right away, but eventually you figure out her name is Sloane and she is going to her sister’s house for a Christmas party, her sister Jessica. And Sloane is like the kind of…
Todd: Janine Garofalo?
Craig: Yeah, yeah. Like the smoking cynical 1. And Jessica is like the perfect suburban 1. And when Sloan gets there, her brother-in-law Chris is like outside in the Santa suit like smoking weed and like they smoke weed together or whatever. Then the wife Jessica comes out and she’s like,
Clip: Chris, that’s just a rental. We can’t afford to have it smelling like weed.
Todd: It already smells like ass, Jessica.
Craig: I just thought that was such a funny line because you know, those rinsed Santa suits have to be so disgusting. Oh my gosh,
Todd: can you imagine? No! Even worse than any other costume, because they’ve got to wear them for a while. You’ve got kids climbing all over them.
Craig: Right, they’re covered in pee and they’re probably disgusting.
Todd: Usually fat, sweaty people like me in them anyway, to start out with, so.
Craig: Like you, okay. But Jessica, the good 1, is hosting an ugly sweater party. There were just some good lines in this 1. I actually really liked this 1 This is the 1 that I was talking about before when I said this 1 maybe actually could be developed into a feature film Yeah, and Jessica says something like she looks around it’s not snowy and she looks around and says
Clip: I want a white Christmas this year but I guess that’s not happening you’re having an ugly sweater party Jess it’s about as white as it gets
Craig: oh god it’s so funny It’s
Todd: got this sort of hip dialogue that actually works, you know? It’s a very modern sensibility, young, you know, 20-somethings.
Craig: You see from the very beginning that it appears like Sloan is being followed by somebody. Like you see like kind of a Michael Myers esque menacing presence like behind her kind of out of focus as she’s approaching the party and then they have the party and everybody shows up and they’re you know ugly Christmas sweaters and stuff and it’s very typical and there’s you know family tension between Jessica and Sloan because Jessica is trying to hook Sloan up with some guy and Sloan is just sick of Jessica interfering in her life and blah, blah. But meanwhile, we also see that somebody has picked a lock and gotten into the party and is down in the basement. And some guy gets sick on eggnog and goes down and is throwing up and he gets his throat slit. And it’s good production value. Like it looks good. And some stupid girl up at the party is like, I talked to a psychic and they said that I’m going to meet a tall, dark stranger. Ha ha. And it basically just becomes kind of this slasher for a second, but it goes by so fast. Like Chris goes downstairs And you’re not sure if he gets killed, but then somebody else goes down to look for him and he definitely gets killed. And then the killer comes up and the girl who was going to meet the tall, dark stranger gets killed right away. And then it’s just a massacre. Like, it’s just this guy in like a snow mask, a ski mask, just stabbing people left and right and people are running out of the party.
Todd: And I kid you not, Craig, I kid you not, about after the first murder and the killer’s like, I don’t know, bundling him up in the bathtub or doing whatever he was doing in there and we saw him I was thinking that’s interesting that he has glasses
Craig: Oh, I didn’t think that at all. I mean, I guess maybe I should have
Todd: yeah like what killer in a movie would have glasses You know,
Craig: yeah, he’s wearing a ski mask Yeah, cuz he’s wearing a ski mask and he has the glasses on like over the ski, like the whatever you call them, the side pieces are like stuck in the eye holes, but he’s wearing the glasses. It didn’t occur to me, but very good of you for noticing because it’s important. Because then he comes upstairs and he corners Sloan and Jessica and the guy that Jessica was trying to hook Sloan up with and he kills the guy. And then, you know, it’s very typical of these kind of Christmas horror movies that family who have been fighting and bickering the whole time now have to have 1 another’s back and protect 1 another, which is exactly what happens. And Jessica protects Sloan and I feel like Jessica even takes a knife to the side. She’s okay. Sloan, the bad girl 1, bests this bad guy and kills him. And Jessica’s like, what’s going on? And, and someone’s like, I don’t know. And, and why she would do this, I don’t know, but whatever. She takes off the guy’s glasses and puts them on. And then it’s this twist that There’s no way you could see it coming.
Todd: No.
Craig: And this is why I think that they really maybe could make this into an actual feature. It turns out that this guy, these glasses, when Sloan puts them on, she looks at Jessica and Jessica is a demon. And she looks around at all the people who have been slain at the party and They are all demons. So apparently this guy was like on a demon hunting whatever you would call it. I don’t know. I feel like I maybe missed something because you don’t see Chris, the husband die on screen and I just kind of thought that we had seen him die off screen. But then Sloan, the bad 1, opens up the basement door, and Chris apparently had been on the other side of it and goes flying down the door. Did it turn out that he was not a demon and that’s why he not got killed? Is that what I saw?
Todd: I think what happened, if I interpreted it correctly, and I had to rewind and look at it, but what she was seeing through the heads of display, I think was a video game. Oh. It was like an augmented reality video game, like we’re supposed to be seeing here really soon, where it mixes in other stuff with reality. And he just was taking it so seriously that he was going around and actually killing people. But the game was putting demon faces on them.
Craig: Well, that would make perfect sense and also be even maybe more clever
Todd: Yeah, otherwise it would be a little more like if they live right
Craig: right right
Todd: yeah And and that actually was I thought brought up some really interesting thoughts. I mean, we do have this kind of technology coming. We’ve seen demos of it, Magic Leap, and Microsoft has 1, and there’s all these things coming. You know, something like this could very well happen when a person either forgets they have their glasses on or is just crazy enough that they mix the real world and the fake world and they start seeing these things and they start creating real havoc. It’s kind of nuts when you think about
Craig: it. Well, and I think now, thinking back, that you’re probably right, and I think that that’s even more clever. Like, I just, I really liked this 1. The characters were interesting, the production value was good, it had that cool twist at the end.
Todd: Yeah, in fact like you said, it could easily be developed into a full length, probably, and it would, it could go in different directions with that, and it almost makes the short feel a little rushed. And at some, like you said, it all happens pretty quickly. You don’t want to see half an hour of this, but if it went off in some different directions or had some other characters in here, for sure it would make a great premise for a full length movie,
Craig: I think. And what differentiates it from some of the other shorts that we’ve talked about is that the characters seem Like they’ve got some depth to them. Like we could spend more time with them and learn more about them and their history and their relationships. And I don’t know, I just, I dug it. All right, we got 1 more, 1 more, sleigh bells. I won’t, this 1 was not my favorite, but it was interesting.
Todd: Well, we thought we would end with the oddest 1 of the bunch. This 1 is definitely odd. And although it looks like it was put together with a lot of heart and has some surprisingly good makeup moments or whatnot in it, it is 1 of these that looks like it was shot on somebody’s home video camera. Yeah, yeah it does. In many ways. So as long as that doesn’t distract you, It’s really the story about a woman who is she supposed to be a
Craig: witch? Okay, now I don’t know what was going on with her. There’s this woman, she’s, you know, totally suburbanite, blonde, she’s dressed like Mrs. Claus, She’s slim, she’s beautiful. The thing that I didn’t get, I don’t know, I understand why you’re asking that question because the she glides around everywhere. Like she doesn’t walk, she glides. Like I don’t know if they were pulling her on something or if she was like on a hoverboard or what. And there’s even 1 point where like it almost seems, and it doesn’t seem like a production mistake, It seems like it was part of the plot, but like her gliding apparatus seems to get stuck at some point. Did you notice that?
Todd: Yeah. Yeah, well, the whole short is filled with this sort of non-sequitur, unstated comedy that’s still kind of over the top. It’s a little naked gun-esque in that way, right? You’re not really sure if it’s ineptness or it’s just total wacky out there, like a bunch of guys sat around and thought, oh, this’ll be good to throw in there. Why don’t we throw this in? Or if it’s all kind of cleverly planned to be, to give this vibe, this level of, this layer of comedy to the movie that’s just really out there. Because it gets more absurd. It’s a very absurd kind of movie and story really.
Craig: And there’s nothing wrong, and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, I did think it was clever in many ways. Okay, so there’s this lady and she’s hosting Christmas and at first I thought that it was her friends that were coming over, but you eventually realize that it’s her family. And it’s her mother and father and her younger sister who show up at the door. And I guess she must live with her either older sister or just younger sister? She, the main lady, she’s hosting Christmas herself. It’s just her Christmas and she wants to make that perfectly clear. And everybody keeps asking about the other sister like well isn’t Amanda helping cuz Amanda’s always so good at this kind of thing and she’s like no this is my Christmas eventually there’s kind of a confrontation in the kitchen where and her sister seems very normal very millennial but at the same time like the the main girl whatever her name is has like put in a turkey and stuff and Amanda, the sister, is like, well, I took out your turkey because you weren’t having it making any cupcakes and how are you gonna have Christmas without my special candy cane cupcakes and the sister gets so angry that she kills Amanda and Then she she wraps her up. She wraps her whole body her whole body in Christmas paper and then brings it into the living room and people are like, what’s that? She’s like, nothing. She’s like, it’s pieces of Amanda. I mean, presents for Amanda. It’s so absurd and ridiculous, but funny at the same time. And then she’s cleaning up the blood in the kitchen and the brother comes in and he’s like, what are you cleaning up? She’s like, oh, I dropped some jam. And he’s like, oh, I love jam. And then there’s this disgusting scene where he like sucks like the bloody jelly gross off her fingers and like, ew, that’s your sister, you grosso. But the whole thing is absurd like that. It’s like this. And there are, you know, such silly lines like, where’s Amanda? Well, she’s a bit wrapped up at the moment like Just silly stuff like that. And then so the the brothers like is that the turkey? That’s never gonna cook in time We need something more warm more supple and like it goes on and on and on And so she cooks up Amanda and serves it to them. And they’re like, what is this? And I don’t remember what she says, but it’s something like, oh, it’s an Australian turkey. Meanwhile, there is a human foot sitting on the table.
Todd: It’s
Craig: just so silly. And then
Todd: they ask, well, what’s for dessert? She says, ginger snaps. And she looks over at 1 of the girls and I guess she’s ginger?
Craig: I guess. No, brand, it wasn’t even ginger snaps, brandy snaps which surely are not even a real thing. And then
Todd: you know it’s minutes later where she’s killed the sister, yeah. And she serves 1 disgusting, It’s like a cookie wrapped around raw meat. Yeah, the mother tastes. It’s like mmm. This is really good. It’s just so Yeah again, it’s like an absurdist play this thing
Craig: Yeah, and this the main girl keeps saying to the mother because at this point everybody else is dead. She’s killed the dad for unexplained reasons. She’s or the brother, whoever it was, she’s killed the sister to make the brandy snap. So everybody’s dead except the mom. And she keeps saying to the mom, say it’s the best
Todd: Christmas ever. Say it’s the
Craig: best Christmas ever. Say it’s the best Christmas ever. And the mom starts to say it, but then she chokes. So the main girl throws her into a wheelbarrow, like she’s going to take her to the hospital or whatever. And then this is where, like the whole thing is so bizarre, but I really liked the twist at the end. Apparently something had happened that had driven the entire community crazy. So it wasn’t just that this 1 girl had lost her mind, something had happened that had caused everybody to lose their mind. So she’s running the mom around in this wheelbarrow down the street. Meanwhile, everybody else in the neighborhood is murdering each other and, you know, just being totally loony tunes. Then the mom, a car hits the mom in the wheelbarrow. So the main girl goes back home, but she finds a Christmas card from her mom and she opens it up and it says, this was the best Christmas ever. And she’s so happy. And then that’s the end. Yeah. I don’t know. Like it was, it was clearly very low budget. It seemed like an early effort from an aspiring filmmaker, but it was ambitious and it was clever and you know I liked it I didn’t enjoy it as much I didn’t think it was as well-made as some of the other ones that we watched but I liked it anyway.
Todd: I did too, you know, I started out thinking I was gonna hate it and as it went on, I thought, oh, this is like, you know, some 12 year olds made a movie and thought this was funny. But the fact that it really stuck with it throughout, It really committed to this idea and this character and this just bizarre stuff that it was throwing at you up to the very very end. I thought, okay, yeah, some mind went into this, you know, they’re going for a kind of absurdist thing here and it actually cohesively sort of works. It doesn’t entirely work but it’s it’s fine you know. It’s again it’s 1 of those like comedies where you have to suspend a lot of disbelief where it’s you know people of course don’t notice that people are dropping off and there’s suddenly only fewer people at the table and they don’t even ask where they are. You know that kind of thing. You just forget about it and go with it. And yeah, it’s cute. It’s definitely among, and why it’s on this list is it’s among some of the better ones we found out there.
Craig: Yeah, and We did watch other ones, some good, some not so good, but there really are so many available. If you’re into this kind of thing, I would say check them out. There’s some fun stuff out there. You’ll wade through some crap, but you will find some gems. And honest to God, I do. I go on YouTube and Vimeo. They’re really good ones on Vimeo too. And there’s some really good stuff out there. And I bet money that some of these aspiring filmmakers will make names for themselves and we can go back and say we knew them when.
Todd: That’s right. Maybe they’ll call us in to critique at their…
Craig: Of course they will. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
Todd: Alright, well Merry Christmas everybody and thank you for listening again to another episode. If you enjoyed this 1, please share it with a friend. We have a lot more coming up, obviously. You can check out back episodes. We’ve done all holiday films this month. If you haven’t caught some of our earlier ones like Red Christmas or Jack Frost, go back to our website at 2guys.red40net.com and check out those as well. And like I said earlier, we will be posting links to the shorts that we reviewed here as well so you can share that as well. And if you do happen to find some other great Christmas shorts that we missed, please drop us a line at our Facebook page. Just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw and let us know what you found. And we’ll go out and watch them as long as they’re short enough. We’ve got the new year coming up for you. We’re big dorks and we still like to try to find New Year’s theme movies, so we’re probably gonna find another one for you. Until next time, I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig
Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.