All Through The House (2015)

Episode 282, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: And Merry Christmas, everybody Merry Christmas. Welcome to the end. Finally, of our Christmas season for Christmas horror movies for you. 2021 as we go into 2022 almost here, because we did such a, oh, such a downer movie last week, I told Craig, we need to, we need to have just a goofball slasher this time around.

And I don’t think I could have picked much better, a much sillier than All Through The House from 2015 by writer, director, Todd Nunes happens to be one of the very few things. Writer, director, Todd Nunes has done as well as much of the cast and crew. This movie, it premiered at a film festival and went straight to streaming and video on demand.

So you can actually see it online. On an IMD BTV Tubi TV, Amazon prime, all with commercials. I thought that was interesting. I could not see it commercial free in any of those places, but yeah. So here we are all through the house. I had never heard of this movie. I just found it when we were searching for Christmas horror movies, it was on our list.

It had a killer Santa theme. And so I suggested it for Craig and me to do this time. Greg, how about you? What’s do you have any history with this movie? Is this one that you’ve had playing in the background while you’re grading papers by, 

Craig: but it could have been, this is the kind of movie that I put on in the background 

Todd: when I’m grading.

So this is a little more familiar territory for you than it is for me to be quite honest. 

Craig: It is like I watch a lot, you know, I, I know that you and I. Both big fans, but the truth of the matter is you’re busier than me. , 

Todd: you’re busy too. You’re just doing a lot of sitting down grading papers. So you have, you know, something on while you’re worrying.

Okay. 

Craig: That’s, that’s true. But to be fair, I think that you are just a person who is happier when you are active and doing things. And I am more of a home body and a. Yes. I, I, I don’t just sit around and watch movies all day. Um, but I do, but I do when I’m grading, which I teach a college writing class. So that’s lots of hours of grading.

And even though I know that putting these movies on in the background slows me down, when I’m grading, it also motivates me to keep doing it. Like it gives me, it motivates me to keep doing it. So ultimately it works out and I intentionally usually pick movies that I think aren’t going to be very good because if I get too invested in them, then I’m not paying attention to my work and I don’t get through my work.

And I would say that this movie falls into that category. I I’m glad that you picked it. Um, because I do think that we needed something light and I know that you really like looked hard for something that we hadn’t seen before and that looked, you know, more light and more light and fun than what we usually do.

And this movie has some, some things going for it. I think that what, uh, all what I’ll say out right, is that while the movie does have some things going for it, it’s not terribly made the thing. Took me out of it a little bit is the acting, the acting is pretty darn bad. 

Todd: Acting is pretty bad. And, um, I would also add to that, although it has its moments and you can tell they’re trying this, the, you know, God bless Todd Nunes.

You know, there’s something about it that feels a bit amateurish. It’s somewhere in that nebulous net nether region of, you know, not, not super professional, but not super amateur. Right. It’s like, In the middle where there’s, you know, inspired shots, things are pretty well set up and stuff, but you know, there’s like a part in here where there’s a tracking shot, where a guy’s in front of the computer.

It’s like a classic camera move. There’s a dude, you know, behind a computer, typing away, looking at it. And to keep that scene interesting. The camera slowly kind of dollies, just, just gradually, you know, left to right. More or less just drifts by, he, it adds a little bit of movement to an otherwise static scene.

Well, I mean, here, the camera’s kind of like, kind of hesitatingly moves across. Like sometimes it’s smooth. Sometimes it stops sometimes when it cuts back, it’s dollying the other way. And the whole time, there’s like a little lava lamp on the table. That’s kind of wobbling, you know, and the lighting. The lighting and some times is really quite good, but most of the other time you can tell this just like shine, a bright light on them, you know?

Craig: Yeah. I would say, I would say that it feels a little cheap and probably is, you know, I imagine this was shot on a very low budget and to its credit, you kind of offhandedly said this, but I did get the feeling that they were really trying. I mean, the movie was shot in seven days. The, the director did much of the set dressing himself and, and.

Barfed all over with Christmas 

Todd: like that. It’s got that going for it, but I love these, these homes are decorated by Christmas, in like the most lazy Christmas decorations you can imagine. It’s just garish, let’s throw lights over everything like lights on the floor, lights piled up on the desks that moving up the wall like wrapped around like random stuff.

There’s even like a point in the bathroom where there are candles on the toilet lid for summaries. Did they use that toilet? Do they lift those lit candles off and put them back when they’re done? You know, it just, it’s pretty silly. 

Craig: Well, it is, but, but it, but it is atmospheric. Um, and, and in a good way, I mean, the, the main set piece is this house of this woman who like.

Crazy above and beyond to decorate both the exterior and the interior of our house. And not only is it Christmas Eve, but it’s like creepy Christmas, like tons of like creepy mannequins, all dressed up and like these, um, Santas, uh, with like grotesque and odd get ups and, and faces. And it’s everywhere.

Like the camera can’t point in a direction where there’s. Something, um, 

Todd: where you not getting tourist trap vibes a little, yes, absolutely. 

Craig: A hundred percent. A hundred percent, but I give it credit for that. I do think that there was care put into it and looking at what this director has done before he’s done primarily shorts and things.

One of them was the inspiration for this feature length film. And it looks to me like he works with the same people regularly, the same actors, 

Todd: his sister, 

Craig: you know, so, okay. I didn’t even notice because I didn’t recognize anybody, so I didn’t look into them. Um, but like the main, the creepy lady whose house, most of it takes place in this role was written specifically for her.

This is one of the only roles that she’s played. And I think that she’s mostly only done stuff with this guy. So like, I imagine that these folks are kind of like. Many people that we have come to admire, um, who started out. Small, but had a passion for it and eventually found their footing. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy goes on to bigger and better things.

Now I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he didn’t either. I do see some potential here. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, it’s been seven years, so, you know, who knows, but I mean, that’s disappointing. The movie got good reviews in the like horror, you know, the horror websites and the horror reviews, you know, in the horse circles, basically.

I’m sure it wasn’t reviewed much outside of that. 

Craig: It won awards on the festival circuit. Oh yeah, for sure. Kind of blows my mind. 

Todd: You got to take all this with a grain of salt right now. You’re more into the horse scene online than I am. And we’ve talked about this before. Right? Horror fans like us. We have a wide tolerance for all kinds of schlock and stuff.

Somehow it’s just part and parcel the territory. We overlook it when other people don’t. But then I read some of these reviews and like there’s, if you go on Wikipedia and you see clips of the reviews, bloodshed states that almost every aspect of the film is superb. Don’t think I would go that far. The shock chamber, praise the film saying if this film was made 30 years ago, it would be mentioned today in the same conversations as black Christmas and silent night, deadly night.

Craig: Mm. Maybe, maybe, but it would be, but it would be different. 

Todd: Yeah. Afraid it would be shot on film. So necessarily wouldn’t look quite as cheap. It would be grittier and probably the acting might be better. I don’t know. Maybe marginally. So actually, I don’t know. 

Craig: There’s just something about that era where it feels almost like its own sub genre.

And like you said, you know, when we look at those movies are expectations shift. We don’t, we don’t expect. Great acting. We don’t expect it to look shiny and, and clean, you know, we expect it to be gritty and we expect it to be kind of bad and kind of schlocky, but through a modern perspective in a modern movie, I just don’t think that it translates quite right.

Todd: You know, in some sense, the slickness, I think that the director is going for in this movie does kind of work against it. Like you can tell the way he’s lighting it and the way he’s setting it up, he’s looking for a very modern, almost 90 scream aesthetic. It’s got these beautiful girls. Every one of them have huge boobs.

They’re back lit gets very, like I said before, it’s darkly lit almost too starkly lit at times, but you know, he does a really nice job with like putting things out of focus, just in the background, kind of making things pop a little bit. It has a lot of the same kind of setups with. I mean, it’s an homage type film, you know, there’s throwbacks.

Uh, you could just say stealing, but I mean, every horror movie kind of steals the same sharps, right? Like with similar shots of where, you know, the killers back there and suddenly he’s not, or suddenly his face appears in the foreground and it’s gone, or he comes in from the shadows behind the character, without us ever seeing it with that, like, you know, uh, a sound cue or anything like that.

It’s, there’s only clot 

Craig: everywhere at once. Oh my God, 

Todd: this guy. Yeah. He can be anywhere and everywhere. He can just show up randomly under a random person’s bed, you know, it’s, it’s really just like that. And so what I’m saying is, in some ways, if the movie were shot a little grittier, if it weren’t as slick and it was a little darker and a little dirty or, and whatnot, Yeah, I, you know, it would probably come off better, honestly, instead of the sort of cheap, ultimately almost, you know, shot on video.

Look that that’s what it has, but, but you know, nowadays shot on video. We don’t really care that much anymore. We’re we’re used to this as well. So it wasn’t terribly distracting to me. I think what, like you said, what was most distracting to me was the acting. And for that reason, I just could never kind of get pulled into the story because it never felt like real to me 

Craig: right now.

I have no idea. How old these main characters are supposed to be. I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out who they were or what their names were for the longest time. It was, it was driving me crazy because I’m looking like I’m, I’m pausing the movie and going to the IMDP DB page and looking at the cast.

And I’m like, is that her? He, like, I couldn’t figure out who was, who, how they were related. I mean, eventually about halfway into the movie, I started to figure it out. But honestly, by that point I had already misnamed them and I had to go back through my notes and like change all the names so that I was talking about the right people.

Todd: Totally misnamed. In fact, I think there might even be a mistake in there somewhere where somebody calls somebody else the wrong name. I really do because. Like at one point, the three girls are standing in the doorway of this neighbor, who they go over to her house and she opens the door and she says, oh, and she kind of rattled them off.

And I swear to you, she said, Sheila, Sarah and 

Craig: Jan. I watched that two second clip, four times trying to listen to what she was saying. And I, I think because the girl’s name ends up being G G, but I heard Sheila too. And apparently there is a Sheila 

Todd: in the movie and she wasn’t who I thought she was actually like, I don’t know.

Craig: Sheila was, I finally figured out who GEA was. Who was JIA? Was she the, I think she was the one without the mole on her lip. I think that I’m not sure. Maybe she was the one that with the mole on her lip. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. 

Todd: But she the one wearing the red dress by the, I 

Craig: think so. And that’s the mole on her lip one, but I, I say that that’s so mean it’s a beauty mark.

She’s very, she’s cute. 

Todd: I, I just, yeah, th that’s that was distracting, not knowing their names for some reason was distracting. And then the other thing about the movie, which I’m sure, you know, we’ll get into the plot, but there’s so much of just random scenes that don’t have anything to do with the main character.

It’s just, we, we, we have another couple who were in a bedroom. One is waiting while the others taking a shower. Like it’s always what is on the bed while the others in the shower. And suddenly they both get murdered. And like 

Craig: every time. I was like, who are you? Because it’s so jarring. Like it we’ll just cut away from our main plot to these other characters that we’ve never met before.

And I’m asking myself like, should I know who this is? No idea. And they were just random kill shots, which is fine, but it was just, it was so abrupt. It was right. It was like other movies that we’ve watched recently where like, They just scripted, kill scenes and shot them. And then, well, we’ll, we’ll put them in somewhere.

Todd: It sort of has this artifact, right. Of Santa’s stocking these people in this house, but every now and then he pops away to take a break and kill somebody up and it doesn’t help it. I feel like it’s the exact same bedroom. Every time that’s just been dressed a little differently, different pillows, a different pair of sheets.

They move the lights around a little bit. And of course there’s a different person in there. I really feel like that’s how it was done. 

Craig: Yeah. And you know, another, another feather in the cap for this movie is that all of these people in these random shots are very sexy people running around in there under things like they’re honestly gorgeous 

Todd: people getting off.

And there’s, uh, there were more moments in this when I thought has a pornographic VR edit of this been made, you know, like every one of those seams see, seems like they’re setting you up for some other kind of movie. It does, but no, there’s just, and that’s another thing too, in this kind of movie, there’s, there’s some very Frank sexual stuff that I wasn’t really expecting.

I was expecting more TNA, to be honest. I mean, there’s, there’s lots of it. There’s lots of it. I guess what I mean is I was expecting to see more of it, bear. I mean, there’s bras and panties and, and there’s just girls low. We’re dealing dresses. There’s I 

Craig: distinctly remember I counted, 

Todd: I counted three bare breasts and one of them, we don’t really one of them we only see with like, you know, a knife through it.

So, 

Craig: and I can’t believe I’m going to say this it’s I was just laughing through. ’cause I thought it was so funny. And then it turns out that it’s an actual plot point. There are lots of prosthetic 

Todd: wieners. There is an actual bag of dicks in this. a bag of dicks. Oh, I just have to think that was the Genesis of this.

Like, somebody would just a bunch of guys sitting around talking and laughing at each other. Somebody says, go eat a bag of dicks. And some guys just sit there in the corner. And he’s at that moment trying to think of the next horror movie is going to do 

Craig: what if Santa sack was just full of dicks

Todd: and here we go, 

Craig: fake dicks and he couldn’t Dickey can find 

Todd: God oddly shaped dicks. Yes. 

Craig: It’s a killer Santa’s movie. It starts out with, uh, kids. Yeah. Three kids, uh, throwing rocks. It’s Christmas decoration. It’s a Christmas decoration of a Santa, but it’s wearing this horrible nightmare math. Like what the hell kind of Christmas decoration is this.

And they throw a rock at it and the mask falls 

Todd: off. I love the dialogue though. They’re like, I don’t even remember throw it, throw it you little shit. The kids, like, what happens if I meet this the window? Just throw it your little.

Craig: Right. And the person speaking these lines is also like eight.

And then we see somebody in bare feet in the snow and what looks like. Like scrubs, um, or something picks up the mask and picks up some gardening shears. And there you have it folks. This is our killer Santa’s where’s this creepy mask. Weapon of choice is the garden sheers though. He uses something else once in a while, but it’s almost always the garden sheers.

And then we’ve got an opening scene where a little kid wakes up in the middle of the night and here’s a knock at the door and he opens the door because Santa is out there. And then the next time we see him he’s asleep on the couch or dead on the couch. The mom thinks he’s asleep. And then she goes to take a shower.

She walks into the bathroom, turns the. Off take a 

Todd: shower. I loved it though. How we had a shower scene within five minutes of the opening of this 

Craig: movie. Oh yeah. Boobs out. Then the dad comes in and scares her and he says, I don’t know, like just horny talk between the two of them and she’s covering her boobs.

And she’s like seeing these until I get to see him. And you know why I like to see him, if he isn’t happy.

Just give him a sec. Why don’t you take him into the bedroom? Come make him happy and I’ll join you in a minute. Okay. I made it when you, I really need to get ready. I really need you for kicks. 

Todd: Ready? Let’s make it very earnestly goes off to get him happy. Very 

Craig: intensely. Pep talk like, come on, buddy. We can do this.

We can do this pay. 

Todd: Right. Come on, come on. Here we go. Here we go. Like God. But then as is pretty typical, the next surprise is actually the killer Santa who Rams one end of the garden, sheers that he picked up straight into this woman’s boob all the way 

Craig: through it. Like from the under boob all the way through 

Todd: to come out the top.

Yeah. And there is blood just gushing out of it, gushing, and then he pulls it out there and then impales her in the eyes with the ends of it. And it is great. 

Craig: It is, it’s really bloody. It’s a bloody movie and all the, the effects are practical and I love practical effects and they did a pretty good job.

It’s not, it’s not like it’s stand out. Like, wow. That’s amazing. But. It’s good. I mean, they, 

Todd: yeah, there was only one point, which I felt like of the prosthetic was obvious. It was kind of shifting around a little bit, but, uh, yeah, other than that, it was perfectly fine, perfectly serviceable. We’ve seen much worse and they, and you know, usually in low budget movies like this, this is where they hold back a little bit.

They just try to squirt some blood around and try to get away with not doing too much makeup, but it’s pretty effective here and very. Face. And I actually found that a little stomach churning at time. So 

Craig: the, and then, um, the Santa’s goes to the dad and the dad turns around thinking it’s the mom and he gets his Wiener cut off.

You see it flop on the floor. I 

Todd: was not expecting that. I was, I was like flop on the floor to see a closeup of it total. 

Craig: Well, I don’t know, maybe not, but like, here’s this guy with his back to the camera, who’s been given his Wiener a pep-talk. So I assume he’s standing there with a boner and then he turns around and St has got Santa shear is like, yeah, he’s going to cut your Dick off.

Todd: I know that was going to happen. I just didn’t expect to see it flopped down on the floor. And, um, you know, this is kind of a pattern for the whole movie is that everybody just seems to be paralyzed with fear. Every time they see the Santa, he’s like six inches away from this guy face to face and just stands there, like.

Oh, oh, he looks down and sees the sheers. Ah, and then the sheer snap and then he’s screaming. I’m like at some point in there, maybe back away, like even just one step back would have helped. 

Craig: Yeah. And then it cuts abruptly to the opening credits where there’s a theme song, um, all through the house. It’s to the tune of up on the house top, I thought it just was up on the house top at first, but the lyrics.

Dirty and yeah, 

Todd: it’s going to my regular rotation from now. Yeah.

Craig: He wants to be

all the kids love his big red sec dance effect.

I thought it set the tone. I’m like, oh, this is going to be, you know, it’s, it’s fun. It’s it’s not taking itself too. Seriously. Our main character, I guess, Rachel, again, I have no idea how old these girls are supposed to be because they look like they’re in their late twenties, but I think maybe they’re supposed to.

Teenagers. Maybe they do not look at all like teenagers, but they act like teenagers. No, they look like porn stars. 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, they do. I really thought they might be to be honest because God, almost all of them have boob job. The acting 

Craig: would be on par. I mean, not that I have no. 

Todd: So you’ve heard

that’s another podcast we have, 

Craig: uh, oh man. So this girl Rachel shows up at her grandma’s house and she shows up with a gift for her dead mom, which her grandmother chastises her about. And her grandmother is in a wheelchair, but she’s like, she’s like a frickin sailor. Like every other word out of her mouth is a profanity.

And she’s also like swigging whiskey. She’s funny, such a caricature. It is, but I wished that we had seen more of her. Like I thought she was so funny. I mean, the acting was still terrible, but at least she was hilarious 

Todd: kind of under utilized. It was really nice to see a character in a wheelchair. You know, why don’t we see more of this in movies?

I don’t know. Although perhaps it was a bit of a throwback to Friday the 13th part. I don’t remember whatever when there is a queer 

Craig: one guy in a wheelchair. Yeah. It’s probably a throwback to 

Todd: that who gets, who gets often the same way though. 

Craig: Kinda that’s true. Fair in that way. And then their neighbor is Mrs.

Garrett. She’s the weird eccentric neighbor next door. And I want, they had to have named her that because of the facts of life, like they just had to write, like, where else would you come up with? Mrs. And she’s decorating her house, like I said, and there’s all kinds of like, scary-looking Santa is both inside and out.

Mrs. Garrett has sent Rachel a card and asked her to come help her decorate her house, which is already fully decorated. So I don’t even know what that’s about. Um, and the grandma’s like, you don’t need to do that shit.

Uh, but she goes, she goes over and talks to her and they talk about Mrs. Garrett. Apparently at one time had a daughter, like when, when Rachel and her friends were kids, Mrs. Garrett had a daughter that was about their age. Um, but she had some kind of disease that she couldn’t come outside, like a skin disease or something.

And, and then she says that she got. Taken away from, well, she says taken from her. So I didn’t know if that meant taken away or if she had lost, like if she had died. I wasn’t sure. Then we have one of those random scenes, which is just a random kill scene where this ridiculous caricature of a woman in.

You know, rollers and a heavy makeup and a goofy robe is chasing her dog sugar balls or 

Todd: balls or balls, sugar balls. Where are you? 

Craig: Sugar balls. And the owner both get a oft. 

Todd: She gets stabbed and then she gets stabbed right in the head. The top of the head that always violent. These sheers go through anything.

I’ll tell you what, 

Craig: and in that way it is very much like silent night, deadly night, it is violent. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s silly violence. Like the movie is not scary in any way, but there is a, there is a good amount of violence, but then we see Mrs. Garrett in her house by herself. Th th Rachel, I have to leave, you know, I’m going shopping with my girlfriends, but I’ll come back later.

And then we see Mrs. Garrett talking to her. Mannequin Santas and she’s clearly. Uh, nutcase, like she’s talking to the Zana. She’s like, I have it. And she’s very emotional. Like she’s very angry, like almost at the point of like tears, like telling me

that you can take your question out on whatever.

I guess it was a dream, but she does talk to these things and like she has, she has a female mannequin then necklace 

Todd: that says daughter in case.

Craig: And she talks to it and like she sets the daughter mannequin and one of the Santa mannequins up at a dinner table and like they have dinner together and she, she talks to the Santa, like they’re at a terrible marriage. Like, what did you say to me? Nothing. It’s a mannequin. We can’t even get through what dinner without you criticizing me.

Like, oh my God, it’s so silly. The girls go out shopping for a minute. And they surprise Rachel with apparently her estranged boyfriend, who she has dumped because she has like abandonment issues because her mom left her something it’s so contrived and stupid. 

Todd: And the, and the acting doesn’t help. Right?

Cause like he’s really bad. He just, oh, he’s gotta be the worst of the mall. I don’t 

Craig: know. Don’t 

Todd: don’t blame Sarah. I have this rose for you. He just hands her a rose. And then like, we cut away to two more random people, like just having sex. Uh, and the guy gets tied up and the woman I love this bit, this guy gets tied up, right?

They’re doing this guy, kinky sex game thing. He gets tied to the bed, you know where that’s going. And she says, just a minute, I’m going to come back with a surprise. She goes to the refrigerator and she sees these garden sheers sitting on the table behind the fridge. I was like, Hmm, that’s weird. And opens it up, pulls out a cue card.

Sex it on the table and a jar of peanut butter sets it on the table. A jar of jelly sets it on the table and a stick of butter. And each time the camera pans over to the table, you see this years and I’m like, aha. All right. About the fourth time that pans over those sheers are going to be gone and sure enough, they are, she gets killed.

And then he goes in and chops the Dick off of the guy on the bed as well.

Craig: And then Rachel takes the girls. Their names are G and Sarah. Not that it matters. 

Todd: The cat went to eat it though. We saw flop ground the cat. That’s right. I forgot about that. 

Craig: Oh gosh. So she, Rachel takes the girls back to Garrett’s house. Like they’re going to do this as a group, but like then Mrs. Garrett is like, oh, well I have a date tonight.

But not a romantic one. I’m celibate and happy about it, like, okay. Um, but she gives them this big, long list of like things to do. Like you’re going to have to get all this stuff out of the attic or whatever. And Rachel and Garrett end up in the daughter’s room and there’s, they’re talking and Rachel’s like, you know, I felt bad because I always wanted to play with Jamie.

She’s like, she picks up this doll and she’s like, didn’t I give this to Jamie for Christmas. And Garrett makes up some lame excuse like, oh, she was sick. So she couldn’t play with you or something. I don’t remember. But then we see a flashback and it’s the little girl we don’t see your face. We only see her back.

She’s looking out the window and the mother Garret. Telling her, the other girls don’t want to play with you. They are selfish and spoiled rotten. They don’t have a good bomber. Like you

come away from the window, baby, stop torturing yourself. Those children, they won’t understand you. They will make fun of you. They will laugh at you because you are different. Which I was like, well, that seems like a pretty obvious clue. Like, Hey, at that point, I’m like, obviously this little girl. Is the killer of Santa’s, right?

I mean, it seemed pretty 

Todd: obvious. Well, it’s kind of taken from, you know, it’s like every killer Sante movie we’ve seen so far where the, you know, the killer Sante turns out to be this disturbed child, right. Who is treated poorly by their 

Craig: parents, some sort of trauma 

Todd: and then she comes back in is like, I always tried to be so positive as a mother.

Craig: Yeah. Positive reinforcement is so important with children, you know? Okay. Lady, whatever. Um, and then there’s more like there’s a Krampus mention, which is just offhanded and stupid. And then I have. Note is horny lady and purple lingerie. There’s this gorgeous porn star looking lady like, like top shelf porn star looking lady, 

Todd: like Vegas 

Craig: strip club, like rolling around on her bed and Perryville Andre.

And she’s, she she’s like calling out to her lover. Like, are you going to be horny when you come out of the shower? I love these covers age. Like, could you give me a heads up? It can be horny because otherwise I’m going to read my book. 

Todd: Something tells me there wasn’t a lot of time spent on the dialogue in these scenes.

Craig: And so she’s laying there in her bed and something. Violently shakes the bed. And the first time that it happens, she’s like, oh, that was

Todd: right. Then the second time, it’s like, Ooh, I better pay attention. And slowly crawling across the bed in then a giant knife shoots up from under the bed. I mean, at this point you would probably want to leap off the bed, which is the last no. 

Craig: Like starts feeling around, like, what are you doing? And the knife keeps coming up and eventually she does get off it Santa from under the bed, how he got there, God knows grabs her and pills her under the bed.

And then it cuts immediately to another booby shower scene. And what is happening? It turns out that these are lesbians, um, surprise, lesbians, and 

Todd: cheated out of a lesbian sex scene here. 

Craig: Well, we definitely were. I mean, cause both of them seemed Randy is right, but anyway, so, um, she comes out, she sees her girlfriend dead and then Sante ends up stabbing her through the door first through her chest.

And then when she slides down the door, then he, uh, Stabs her through the door again, through her head that he opens the door and there’s a vibrator on the sink. And he takes that,

is this Sanuk. I was like, is this Santa like planning a party for later? Like, oh, I’ll just take this, 

Todd: uh, Dick from the lesbian couple as well.

I wasn’t sure what was going on at this point. 

Craig: It cuts, it cuts back to the girls and they just need reasons to split them up. So Sarah runs to the store for booze. Geo wants to try on the Christmas dress that Jamie, the mannequin is wearing. Rachel finds a picture of Mrs. Garrett as a nurse with her mom.

Like, were they both nurses? Did they work together or something 

Todd: thing like that, which shocks her because she says, oh, my mom said that she never knew her or something. 

Craig: Well, and Mrs. Garrett had said, I don’t know. She didn’t remember much about her mom, but she remembered that she was pretty or something 

Todd: like that.

Or like seriously alarms her. And 

Craig: she, and she calls her grandma and the crude grandma continues to be crude, but she won’t talk about it. She says, we’ll talk about it later. And so Rachel snoops around some more, they find a naked Santa mannequin. I say Santa mannequin, just because it’s wearing a Santa hat, otherwise it’s naked, but kisses were there.

Lipstick marks all over its body and prominently on its. 

Todd: Yes. Like the cartoon really like perfect lipstick kisses, like, like a lipstick stamp all over this thing.

Craig: And they notice and are interested in a padlocked little door in her. Oh God, I still 

Todd: don’t understand what that 

Craig: either. Right. I 

Todd: mean, but they decide they need to find the. 

Craig: Yeah. So they’re looking for that. Cut back to the grandma. She pulls down a box of old letters, just so that it will be out. And then there’s a cat scare.

Todd: That’s hilarious. She’s looking out the window and a cat gets thrown through the window. You’ll 

Craig: love that. It always makes me, so it just makes me laugh. When somebody throws a cat at somebody in these 

Todd: movies, I liked her reaction. It was like, holy shit or something like that. Forget in these movies, but it’s a lot more accurate portrayal.

Craig: Yeah. And I’m an. Lover. I like cats. I’ve had cats. I don’t have cats anymore because I have dogs and dogs and litter boxes. Don’t go together. It’s just doesn’t work. Um, but it doesn’t even bother me when people throw cats in these movies. Cause you can throw a cat, like 

Todd: it’s going to be fine. You can throw

Yeah, no worries. Well then Santa, because he can be anywhere is suddenly behind her. And uh, he wraps her up with Christmas lights and pushes her out the window. I thought the window had glass in it, but I guess not. And I guess the windows like floor to ceiling now because she just rolls straight out 

Craig: and down at like, 

Todd: yeah, he kind of like comes up behind her.

It looks left looks right. And like, mm okay. And keeps pushing her and suddenly like this houses in the country or something. It’s no longer a suburban ish neighborhood, but there’s, I guess like a big woods right out in front or the front yard should be, and then he just kind of flings it and we just see, we just see a wheelchair with a dummy flying through the air.

Craig: It was hilarious. And it was so obviously a dummy oh gosh. But it was really funny. And like, it wasn’t even a cliff or anything. It’s like they launched this dummy down here, 

Todd: probably off the back of a pickup truck and then like downhill or something. It made no sense. The geography of how this house, where this house is situated stuff.

It only gets more confusing from here. 

Craig: Yeah, it was fine. And then Santa kills the cat for good measure.

Todd: That he killed the dog. 

Craig: And at this point it’s just having the girls separated. So Rachel goes to her grandmothers, she finds the box of letters and it turns out that the letters are love letters between her mother and Mrs. Garret’s husband. So her mom had been having an affair with Mrs. Garrett’s husband, her missing slash dead mom.

We don’t know where she is. Sarah comes back from the store. She sees Santa light peeking around the house, but she thinks it’s the girls messing with. So, so, so she kind of, you know, pursues him or whatever, and he eventually grabs her. And this is actually something that I appreciated about the movie.

These next Santa goes after the two girlfriends next and then separately. But in both cases, they fight back, um, pretty hard, you know, they, they, they put up a good fight and then they Ines, they initially fight back and then they run, like they do the right thing. They do the thing that we’re always screaming at these bimbos to do in these movies.

Like don’t just stand there and wait to get murdered, like fight back and then get the hell out of there. And they, they. 

Todd: They cry. They, they fight, they fight, they run, but then invariably, when the fight needs to be over, they’re paralyzed again, you know, like, I, I didn’t feel like any of these fight sequences, there were times when I’m like, oh yeah, that looks good.

And there were other times when I was like, oh yeah, this is not convincing. It’s like, like poorly staged, you know? And then it’s like, they didn’t really know how to end it in a creative way. It’s just like, oh, this girl like twists her ankle. And just kind of like suddenly can’t move at all right. Can not defend herself one bit.

She just, all she can do is lie on the ground and stare up, you know, as the Sante looms over here with a knife while she cries. So on the one hand they fight back on the other hand, they don’t really fight back hard enough for long enough, 

Craig: you know? I mean, they’re going to get it, you know, they’re gonna get.

Yeah, but, but I you’re. Right. And that was GS. She’s the one who eventually trips in and sprains her ankle or whatever, and is, you know, just laying on the ground. But before that, 

Todd: she, the one who gets her fingers cut off that, that hurt. 

Craig: Oh no, that was the other girl. Um, Sarah outside who had like ran towards the window, that her friend was right on the other side, she got tackled by Santa, just as the girl turned her head.

And so the girl didn’t see her. Um, but JIA is the one who’s in the house and Santa pursues her through the house. And like you said, she eventually gets killed, but I thought that this was the most. Effectively creepy part of the movie because she’s walking around the house and the camera is tracking her.

So her face is to the camera the whole time. And at some point you just see the creepy, Santa’s kind of in the shadows behind her slowly rise up behind her. And then as the camera is tracking her through the house, you just see the Santa’s probably about a 10 feet behind her just following her through.

Um, and I thought that was actually pretty creepy. 

Todd: It was pretty creepy. Uh, there were moments where I thought, I mean, come on, he’s like practically breathing down your neck. Shouldn’t you be? Be aware he’s. But yeah, it was, it was effectively creepy, but then she gets to the top, she gets into this dark room where she hears a noise and she looks ahead and thinks the Santa’s might be in the darkness ahead of her.

But actually of course, he’s behind her. He comes up behind her with a wire and tries to get her around the neck. And you think she’s gone, but just like you said, she manages to slip out and punch the guy, whack him a few times. He hits him with a vase that she finds and knocks him backwards into this dark closet.

At which point she really ought to run away, but instead she just stands there and stares at the darkness and the. Waiting for him to wake back up and lunge back out at her, which he does 

Craig: 10 kills her. And then that takes us to the final act, um, where Rachel ends up back at Mrs. Garrett’s house. And gosh, I don’t even know.

Todd: Well, I mean the boyfriend Cody called call she’s there’s this whole back and forth between her and Cody. Cody’s doing research on the internet for her. About her father. So he learns from looking on the internet that Mrs. Garretts ex husband is not actually dead or gone. He’s been in the state prison for 15 years.

And this is where that terrible Dolly shot is. And I think at this point, she’s realized that her mother had an affair with the husband and then Rachel is in the house and she can’t find her friends. Cause it’s all very dark. She calls her friend and finds her phone on the floor upstairs and freaks out it’s calls Cody again, it’s like she would never be without her phone.

And I thought, well, none of us would. And then she just, um, kind of creeps around the house until she follows a trail of lights down to creepy doll, a knife basement. The padlocked 

Craig: door is now open. 

Todd: Oh, was that through the padlock door? Because that door looked like it was about two feet. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s the padlocked door.

And she goes in and you’re right. Creepy mannequin. And not like there’s creepy mannequins. There’s like sewing stuff. There’s knives. There’s a dog kennel that has a sign on it that says timeout. Um, and there’s other things written on the walls too. And she ends up bumping into Mrs. Garrett down there 

Todd: at affective jump 

Craig: scare.

It was because I don’t know if they did this intentionally. I imagine they did. But when she, she turns around to find herself face to face with Mrs. Garrett. But Mrs. Garrett is emotionless in her face and standing perfectly still. So for a split second, I thought it was one of the mannequins, but it’s not it’s her.

And at this point she’s completely unhinged and she just lays out. What’s going on. 

Todd: Yeah. Monologuing. No, just basically long story short. She wanted a girl so badly, but Janie was born a boy. So she performed a little operation and I was actually glad to hear all this because I thought, okay, so the Dick chopping off might actually have this right point.

Right. Like, oh, okay. That makes sense. Uh, and then, so she chopped off his Dick and then for some reason, at some point Jamie was taken off to a mental hospital matched. I 

Craig: see this, this didn’t really make a lot of sense to me because it’s, she says, when I brought you home from the hospital, I took you down here into the basement and I performed a little procedure.

It was no big deal. It was just like removing a wart or something. Um, she said, but then when your father found out what you were, he tried to kill you. Um, and so I 

Todd: made it look like he’s the one who did 

Craig: it, it made it look like he’s the one that cut off your Dick, but it doesn’t make any sense because it seems like the, the dad didn’t go to prison until like the kid was already grown a little bit.

So I don’t understand the timing. Plus 

Todd: this girl was like staring out the window at her, you know, pre-adolescent friends skipping around. So when did they take her to the mental hospital? 

Craig: Because Mrs. Garrett makes it sound like the baby was taken away right after that. So it doesn’t make sense, but whatever.

I did think that that part of the story having Mrs. Garrett became, I mean, we could tell that she was a Nutter, you know, way early on. Um, but having her really kind of be. The principal villain really? Um, I mean, she’s not doing the killings herself, but she’s aware. Um, because, uh, she says, so now, um, you know, Jamie’s been in the hospital all this time, but now she’s finally come home, um, for the holidays and she wants me to fix her.

And so Jamie has been out collecting dicks so that apparently Mrs. Garrett can put one on her, 

Todd: which at first didn’t make a lot of sense, Mrs. Garrett. Well, she drinks the egg knock, Rachel drinks, some of her eggnog, and you knew that was going to be spiked. And so, uh, she, Rachel starts kind of like acting a little ill, which apparently the actress herself was pretty ill while they were filming this whole thing.

And she starts calling Mrs. Garrett, mommy, mommy, I missed you so much, but then she’s like, no, no, you’re not my mommy. The Santa comes and you know, which is Jamie. Now we know and, and throws her in the little dog kennel, which she ought to be able to just kick her way out of, but whatever throws her in the dog kennel and then brings his bag of dicks up to show to mommy.

I didn’t understand this bit because if mommy wanted a girl that, and she’s the one who chopped off Jamie’s Dick, why would she be so willing or eager to fix it? Then I thought, well, Is it? Well, I guess she says later, later she sends Santa out of the room and says, oh, go out there. Mommy wants to talk to you for a second.

So she sends him out and then she turns to, um, Rachel and says, look, I know that Jamie’s crazy as a loon and I’m not gonna do this operation for him. It’s not going to work. We both, I, you and I both know this. Do you think was it was the, was the conceit sort of like, yeah, but now she finally has a daughter in Rachel.

Craig: She says, so, you know, there’s only one solution. I have to kill Jamie and I’m going to, and then you and I can live happily ever after. 

Todd: I feel like, which is dumb. It’s really stupid. It doesn’t make sense. Even in a crazy person’s mind. It still doesn’t make sense to an audience. And I feel like in a way, the movie showed its cards little too early in painting her so crazy.

So early. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly added a bit of weirdness to the movie, but the ending just feels like a big muddy monologue. The explanation, I mean, we knew she had to be up to something. We knew she had to be down into anything. So it’s not like any of this really shocked us too much. I would say it was just sorta like, oh, okay.

So that’s that, that, okay. That’s why. 

Craig: Well, and there is, I mean, there’s so much of it that we didn’t even say all of it. Like we also find out that she killed Rachel’s. And we’re in the backyard. Um, fast, it comes very, very fast. Cody shows up at some point and Cody fights Santa. Um, but he ends up getting tied down and at one point it looks like he might get away just 

Todd: chilling in the back while all this shit’s going on.

She’s monologuing, they’re throwing her in the cage. And after I’m like, isn’t Cody just like right behind you guys, why isn’t he like yelling or struggling or anything? Right. 

Craig: And Garrett, like, I Garrett eventually kills him too, but he, Cody has that fight with Santa. And then soon, soon thereafter, Rachel has a fight with Mrs.

Garrett. And when I say fight, I mean like a full blown fight, but this is an element where I felt like it was almost. Over produced. Like the fight was so choreographed. I imagine that it’s just that these people are not, they’re not trained, you know, like, like they, they clearly knew what they were doing, but that was the problem.

Like every move felt anticipated. Um, it just didn’t feel real at all. It just felt like, okay, you know that now I’m going to throw you over here. So you’re basically just going to kind of dive when I touch you. Like it just, it didn’t look right. I mean, I, I appreciate the, uh, it was ambitious. Um, I think, but it didn’t.

No. So then, okay, so what’s her name? Rachel’s in the dog kennel. And then the motives tied at the table. Cody’s tied to the table. The Garret is walking out to go kill Jamie, but kind of remembers last second before she walks out. Oh yeah. And takes this years and kills Cody. So he’s dead. So then she goes out and Jamie is like looking at the Christmas presents under the tree, I think, or something.

And, um, the mom comes up behind her and I’m sorry, baby. You no longer belong in this world.

I can’t protect you. I could say if you make you better. Oh, gee. Why he didn’t keep coming back to me. Like the little gerbil line.

Have you ate nothing, but there ain’t nothing worse than that. 

Todd: That was jarring to say the least, 

Craig: I have to give this credit woman for playing the unhinged really well. Like she can, she plays levels and she can, she can jump levels really quickly. I thought she, I mean, she seemed crazy. She, she did a good job and then she stabs Jamie in the back and it’s like, oh, but mommy still loves you.

Mommy still loves you. But apparently she didn’t stab deep enough because Jamie turns around and starts fighting with her and they fight for a while and Sante is clearly getting the better of her. And then Rachel just comes walking out like. She got out of the dog kennel and she just comes walking out and kind of sits in a chair and watch it.

I liked that bit, which I thought, which I thought I know, I thought it was kind of funny then, uh, Jamie is strangling Garrett, and it’s a perspective shot where we’re seeing from Mrs. Garrett’s perspective. And we see Jamie above her in the scary Santa’s mask, strangling her, and then mannequin Santa’s heads come into frame there over Jamie’s shoulders watching 

Todd: and participating.

That’s just her mental, you know, that’s in her mind I think. Oh 

Craig: yeah. I mean, it’s just her crazy, but it did, it was very reminiscent of tourist trap, like for sure, definitely tourist trap. And so she dies and Rachel walks over and kneels down beside Jamie and. Let’s go bury this bitch up back.

And Jamie takes his ma his, her, I don’t know, mask off and throws it on Garret’s face. So she’s kind of wearing it now. And there is a shot where you almost see Jamie’s face, but it’s out of focus. And I liked that too. I didn’t want to see, I didn’t either that character. I wanted that character to remain a mystery, um, and they start to go outside and Rachel turns all the Christmas lights off and that’s it that’s the end.

It was okay. Like it was kind of a, it was kind of a good, bad movie. Um, 

Todd: you know, just enough to 

Craig: make fun of, but just enough, just enough. There was enough TNA enough sexy people. Garrett was unhinged enough. The 

Todd: gore and blood was really there. The facts were there. 

Craig: The story of the, you know, traumatized child becoming a killer Santa is nothing new, but the details of the backstory were interesting and different and a little bit tragic.

You know, th this Santa really is, is tragic. Guy girl, whatever was mutilated and, and abused as a child. And, you know, that’s so the backstory, interesting enough, it’s not a good movie. If you’re looking for something quality to watch this, isn’t it. But if you’re going to get together with some of your buddies,

Todd: I think I’m going to just start playing a clip every time 

Craig: I haven’t said it a long time. 

Todd: And also, uh, you know, like we say about these Christmas movies is that we like it when they’re chock full of Christmas. And this certainly is so there’s, it’s got that 

Craig: going for it. You can have fun with it. You know, you could make a list of all the corny.

Things that show up in these kinds of movies and make it a drinking game. If boobies take a shot, like 

Todd: honestly, If the acting were a little bit better, they might’ve been able to pull this off. So it didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. I 

Craig: agree. And had the, the, um, actors been more age appropriate. I think that that really took me out of it.

Cause these seemed like grown-ass adults and it just seemed a little silly, but, but it was fine. And I think, you know, it was a nice break from the more serious stuff that we did last week, which was also good, but, uh, you know, in a different way. Yeah. Nice to have something, a little more light to kind of finish off the Christmas season and then.

We’re going to smack you in the face with something goofy for new years, 

Todd: pig, all lined up for you. And we’re so it’s a request. 

Craig: It’s a request that a, one of our loyal listeners has made many times. So at least that one guy will. Grill 

Todd: for everybody else that remains to be seen?

Well, it was lovely spending the holidays with you guys once again, another year here on two guys and a chainsaw. Thank you for all of your requests and, uh, please keep them coming. Just to check us out online to guys and a chainsaw podcast is all you need to Google to find all of our pages and places online, where you can leave us a message.

Let us know what you thought of this episode and request episodes for the new year. Thank you so much for listening. Please share this with a friend until next week and until 2020 to Merry Christmas. I’m Todd and I’m Craig Merry Christmas with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.