Strangely, Pig Killer follows the superior Squealer as the second film released in as many months to tell the twisted tale of Canada’s felonious farmer, Robert Pickton — not exactly one of your A-list serial killers. Here, he’s played by Jake Busey (The Predator), whose hobby is murdering prostitutes and feeding their parts to his pet pig, Balthazar, most assuredly not named after the cinema of Robert Bresson. 

As the first sex worker dispatched and destroyed, Bai Ling (Southland Tales) does the “me so horny” bit from Full Metal Jacket and wears panties emblazoned with “ALL YOU CAN EAT.” With one hand petting Balthazar, Pickton has sex with her dead body while imagining he’s boning his own mom (Ginger Lynn Allen, Vice Academy). Not for nothing is Pig Killer produced by Girls and Corpses magazine.

The rest of the pic depicts the attempts of troubled young woman Wendy (newcomer Kate Patel) to keep from becoming a victim of Pickton’s, not to mention a gun with dildo silencer, antifreeze-filled syringes and penises I hope — nay, pray — are prosthetic. 

It’s an ugly picture further hampered by writer/director Chad Ferrin’s questionable decision to often present such brutal proceedings with his tongue pressed hard against his cheek, giving the effect of reveling in the sicko circus of Pickton’s creation. Also at odds with the grim subject matter is near-constant, mostly upbeat rock music — some 35 songs in all, most by one G Tom Mac (aka Gerard McMahon of The Lost Boys’ “Cry Little Sister” fame) and sounding like the clatter you’d hear from a stage at a state fair, adjacent to the fried footlong corndog vendor.

Pig Killer marks the third film I’ve seen from director Ferrin, and I think it will be my last. The other two, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! and Exorcism at 60,000 Feet, were odious enough, but at least they could lay claim to being spoofy. Based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer, Pig Killer has no such veil to hide its tastelessness behind. 

In one of the film’s final lines, from the back of a cop car, Pickton’s throat-cancerous comrade asks him about Wendy, “Did you ever get it in her pooper?” Did a 12-year-old boy write that? Or was he 13? Regardless, that’s the flavor of childishness running throughout two bloated hours; earlier, it plays an abusive sex scene for laughs. You can practically hear Ferrin giggling from behind the camera. Life is too short. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at Amazon.