Like you, I’m always up for a good — or even a bad — holiday horror show, no matter the time of year. At 40 minutes total, though, The Twelve Slays of Christmas amounts to an extended commercial for Full Moon merch. And if there’s anything Charles Band loves more than tiny toys, it’s shilling them.
On their way to a winter carnival, three young women (Full Moon vets Cody Renee Cameron, Lauren Nicole Smith and Dare Taylor) experience car trouble in a snowstorm and seek refuge at the nearby Full Moon Manor, home to Ignatius (Tom Fitzpatrick, Insidious: Chapter 3), an old man who looks like Chris Elliott in Scary Movie 2. To pass the time, he reads to them from a Yuletide Tales of Terror book.
Presumably, the tome numbers a dozen chapters, each allowing this repurposed anthology to cut to clips of death from the Full Moon catalog. For example, from Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust, the titular cookie fucks a puppet, then chainsaws a puppeteer. From Subspecies, you get the hot-dog fingers of vampire Radu. From Evil Bong and Baby Oopsie to many Puppet Master sequels, the entries have zip to do with Dec. 25, unless your family traditions entail burning babies, puked leeches and sex with Nazi commanders.
Nothing against clip shows, but Ignatius’ “stories” are more montage than anything. It came upon a midnight clear that Twelve Slays is a lazy, shameless bid to move memorabilia outta Band’s storage unit. —Rod Lott