Fun and humorous Christmas themed anthology provides five tales of Yuletide terror and an enjoyable wraparound segment. An awkward first date, at a far off Broadway production, for two orphans looking to take their minds off of having no one on Christmas Eve makes up the wraparound. The very cheap production showcases the tales which come to imaginative life for our viewing pleasure. We start with the weakest bit in The Stockings Were Hung. An office Christmas party goes bad when a psychopath traps the revelers inside the break room and forces them to open up gifts which are boobytrapped, contain a weapon or reveal an office secret. The story fails to build any kind of tension outside of a nice shock early on and never really fleshes itself out. Luckily, the weakest of the bunch plays first and everything that follows makes up for it. The best of the batch hits when a last minute shopper locks himself outside of his car in a department store parking lot and attempts to get help from two hot hippie chicks in a creepy van. His Christmas Day birthday marks him for a tragic turn of events and that’s all I’m gonna say about Dash Away All. In All Through the House we get a modern day upgrade to the classic Scrooge character with a miserable smart-ass being visited by three ghosts. A stellar job in what is basically a one man show is downright hilarious throughout most of its brief runtime. Another short and sweet story follows in Arose Such a Clatter. A scuzzy photographer hits a deer on his late night drive home, but this wasn’t any deer and a certain red-nosed friend of the now dead animal comes looking for revenge. Another winner but if you sneeze ya just might miss it. In a Twinkling is another humorous and odd tale about the reasoning behind a man’s refusal of company on Christmas Eve and the friends that barge in with good intentions. It doesn’t go where you think it’s going and has a pleasant coda. Outside of the meh opening tale, everything works pretty damn well and nothing drags.
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