Violent Night

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, a team of elite mercanaries broke in, taking everyone hostage. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there to save them. Bad news for the mercanaries, St. Nicholas is already there, and he’s got some people on the Naughty List who need to be dealt with…

Despite their immense wealth, the Lightyears are just your average American family on Christmas… a bunch of materialistic, petty, obnoxious assholes. It’s a portrayal that a few years ago Centrists would’ve tut-tutted over, irritably saying “it’s a little over the top, don’t you think,” but in the intervening years, it’s something that has been shown beyond a shadow of a doubt to not be a parody at all. Well, for most people, at least. But then, that’s true for the Lightyears too. They’re not all assholes…

Because there’s one little girl there who still believes in Santa.

So, as they’re all settling in for their long winter’s nap, with drunken Mom in her kerchief and Mom’s younger boyfriend in his Gucci cap, what into their shitty selfish little lives should appear, but a group of thieves with code names like Scrooge, Candy Cane, Gingerbread, Frosty… I forget the rest, but you get it, Christmas shit. Anyway, they’re here to steal $300 million that’s sitting in the family vault in the basement, money that the Lightyears have stolen from the CIA during one of America’s recent little brushfire wars. They would’ve gotten it too, if not for a not-so-jolly-as-he-used-to-be old elf, who is upstairs at that very moment, resignedly going about his yearly task.

Worst all for the thieves, this is the “real” Santa.

This is the Santa of the old world. He is a creature of ancient magic. Once, he was a man from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow. Once, he was a man of blood and fire, of sea and steel, a Norseman of the frozen North, a Viking raider known as Nicomund the Red, who carried a hammer, dripping with the blood of his enemies, named Skullcrusher.

It was his favorite hammer.

So be good, for goodness sake…

Violent Night is obviously a weird and… hmmm… perhaps non-traditional Christmas Movie, and not just because it’s basically Die Hard (which is also a Christman Movie) but with Santa, but also because, since it involves a magical Santa in the real world, it’s often more like Die Hard but with Bugs Bunny, which I loved. It’s really fun, despite the seemingly endless stream of bad Christmas puns/jokes. It’s no Bad Santa, of course, which is the best non-traditional Christmas Movie, and yeah, it’s also pretty dumb overall, because it is Die Hard with Magical Santa, but I really enjoyed it. Plus there’s some nice anti-capitalist sentiments throughout, sprinkled in like cinnamon on top your hot chocolate, with the hot chocolate in this metaphor being the plethora of good kills in this movie, which is what we’re here for, right?

Mmm-mmm… warms the tummy.