#2,276. Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)

Directed By: Edmund Purdom

Starring: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne


Tag line: "The Gift of Terror That Just Won't Wait"

Trivia: The film took almost two years to complete after original director Edmund Purdom quit the job and Derek Ford took over but was fired after two days










Don’t Open Till Christmas is a bad film. It’s sleazy and at times utterly ridiculous.

So why did I have so much fun watching the damn thing?!?

It’s Christmastime in London, and a killer is on the loose, targeting anyone wearing a Santa Claus costume. When her father (Laurence Harrington), decked out as Father Christmas, is murdered during a holiday party (in front of dozens of witnesses, no less), a distraught Kate (Belinda Mayne) teams up with Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Harris (director Edmund Purdum) to track down this psychopath. 

At first, Inspector Harris and his second-in-command Detective Powell (Mark Jones) believe Kate’s live-in boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist) may have something to do with the killing; Kate’s father was rich, and with him out of the way his girlfriend stands to inherit a great deal of money. 

But the bodies continue to pile up, and before long a new suspect emerges: Inspector Harris himself!

Released in 1984, Don’t Open Till Christmas features many of the tropes you'd expect to find in a typical '80s slasher. The kill scenes are exceedingly violent, and the murderer uses a variety of weapons, including a spear, a knife, a gun, a razor and a broken bottle. There’s even an electrocution, and one poor guy dressed like Father Christmas meets a gruesome end while using the bathroom! 

Along with its slasher elements, Don’t Open Till Christmas is a straight-up exploitation flick; at one point, Cliff and Kate pay a visit to Cliff’s photographer pal Gerry (Kevin Lloyd), who is snapping pictures of a naked model. The sequence comes out of nowhere, and doesn’t really forward the plot, but it does give the film its lone nude scene!

In addition to its seedier elements, Don’t Open Till Christmas has some unintentionally funny dialogue (I laughed out loud when, after the fourth killing, Detective Powell asked inspector Harris “Do you think we’re dealing with a psychopath?”), and the murderer’s uncanny ability to find every drunk in a Santa suit gets a bit silly after a while (he is always in the right place at the right time). 

As for the killer’s identity, I had a hunch less than 15 minutes in that Don’t Open Till Christmas was going to be a movie where the “big reveal” wouldn’t make a bit of sense (and I was right). We even get one of the most preposterous flashback sequences I’ve ever experienced (where we learn why the killer hates Christmas and Santa Claus).

Still, it was all so incredibly ludicrous, so hilariously inept that I couldn’t help but enjoy myself; without a doubt, Don’t Open Till Christmas is, in some ways, “so bad it’s good”, yet there were moments when it genuinely surprised me, like when Caroline Munro, playing herself, shows up to sing a Christmas tune. 

That said, Don't Open Till Christmas a hard movie to recommend. Most viewers will find it poorly paced, horribly acted, and containing scenes so outrageous they’ll be scratching their head, wondering what’s going on. 

As mindless entertainment, though, this one delivered the goods. Yes, Don’t Open Till Christmas is trash, but it’s the kind of trash I love.