‘Tis the season to be scary.

While most people will spend the holiday season watching Christmas classic’s like Miracle on 34th Street and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, some of us prefer our Christmas movies to be off the beaten path.  Films like Die Hard come to mind, but what about some good old fashioned Christmas/Horror crossover movies.  I present the Top 5 Christmas Horror movies for your holiday viewing pleasure. (Sidenote: Please be aware that I do tend to gravitate towards b-horror and the absurd)

# 5. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas 2009

Do I even need to write anything about this flick?  The tittle alone should give you enough reason to see this movie!  I actually don’t even know where to start with Bikini Bloodbath Christmas since nothing about this will make any logical sense.  For starters, it’s hard to believe, but this is in fact the third installment of the Bikini Bloodbath franchise.  That’s right the third!  The plot makes even less sense.  For starters, the horrific villain of the movie is an evil chef.  The girls work at a bong store competing with a Christian deli and all the carnage goes down during their Christmas party.  It pretty much gets even more absurd from that point on.  As an added bonus, Llyod Kaufman of Troma fame makes some appearances.  Not the scariest movie by far, but a great title to tell people you’ve seen it!

#4. Black Christmas 2006

Black Christmas is your typical slasher movie with a holiday twist.  Billy, a man with a very troubled childhood becomes a troubled maniacal psychopath who escapes from the mental asylum to revisit his childhood home.  Only problem is that his old house is now currently used as a sorority house filled with hot coeds (we’ve never seen this concept before in a slasher flick have we).  It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure out that it all goes wrong for the girls after that.  The movie also stars what’s left of Michelle Trachtenberg‘s career post Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

#3.  Silent Night, Deadly Night 1984

After it’s 1984 release, Silent Night, Deadly Night was such a cult classic it spawned four additional sequels.  The plot quite simply goes as follows.  A young boy is warned by how evil Santa Claus is by his grandfather in a mental institution.  He then witness his parents death at the hands of a bandit dressed as Kris Kringle himself.  Then as an adult, all that trauma catches up to him and he begins to go on his own killing spree complete with the Santa outfit.  I’m sure you can figure out the rest from there.  Just make sure you don’t accidentally watch Silent Night, yet another Christmas/Horror movie that’s just not as golden.

#2. Jack Frost 1997

Not to be confused with the feel good family movie starring Michael Keaton that came out the following year with the same name.  Jack Frost is the story of a serial killer whose spirit and mind becomes a snowman.  Yup, you read that right, a killer snowman.  I won’t bore you with the scientific aspects of how that happened, but it did.  The great part about Jack Frost is it’s your typical slasher horror in which everyone is scared to death and acts that way, except the bad guy who is filled with cheesy one liners and puns.  Other craziness includes Shannon Elizabeth being sexually assaulted with a carrot.

#1. Gremlins 1984

Gremlins is by far the greatest Christmas/Horror film ever made.  It really encapsulates the small town Christmas movie that on it’s own would make for a great holiday flick, but then inserting those evil, sociopathic Gremlins for a horror aspect is just the icing on the cake.  Anytime you start thinking that it’s more of a children’s movie, something grossly unexpected happens, like watching a Gremlin get cooked in a microwave until it’s guts explode anywhere.  Heartwarming and filled with evil violence, I can’t think of a better movie to represent both genres.

Hope you enjoy these holiday horror movies.  Merry Christmas and a happy new scare!