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| Courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome |
Just
one year before John Hughes and Chris Columbus immortalized on film the
smash-hit family Christmas comedy Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin as
a young boy left home alone by his parents to defend his upscale suburban house
against invading burglars, French director René Manzor in only his second
feature devised a film many cite to be one of the primary influences on the 1990
holiday favorite. Known as 3615 code
Père Noël or Game Over or Hide and Freak or the title used by
Vinegar Syndrome for their 4K UHD release Deadly Games: Dial Code Santa
Claus, the director unsuccessfully threatened the producers of Home
Alone with legal action on the grounds of plagiarism. Despite the similarities in terms of a whiz
kid devising a cacophony of booby traps designed to repel invaders, this pitch-black
horror thriller couldn’t be more different from the hit family comedy if it
tried. Whereas Home Alone is
designed to make you laugh, Deadly Games: Dial Code Santa Claus is
perhaps one of the darkest Christmas horror films ever made.
Spoiled little rich kid Thomas (Alain Lalanne) who lives in
an opulent mansion with his single mother Julie (Brigitte Fossey) and diabetic
granddad Papy (Louis Ducreux) is obsessed with action films and videogames to
such a degree he sets up much of his house with booby traps where he and
granddad play battle games together. On
this particular Christmas Eve, however, after mom departs for a business
outing, Thomas and granddad get an unexpected knock on the door from…Santa
Claus himself (in actuality a deranged department store Santa on a murderous
rampage), who proceeds to murder their servants and terrorizes Thomas and
Papy. Despite being twice his size and
strength, the quick-witted Thomas determined to survive goes into battle mode,
taking full advantage of his labyrinthine household full of nooks and crannies amid
skillfully rendered booby traps. But this
psycho Santa isn’t going down without a nasty fight of his own.
A wild, maniacal freakout that starts out ominously before
building up into a fever-pitched intense chase action-thriller nerve-wracking
watch, part of what makes Deadly Games so dark is how it deals with
child trauma. While we know the film’s
nameless antagonist to be a sociopath, Thomas firmly believes the whole time it’s
the real Santa inexplicably coming down the chimney to kill him and that
misunderstanding is maintained as the stakes continue to climb sky high. Unlike Home Alone which is a bright and
chipper family friendly venture, Deadly Games makes its presence known
immediately as a Christmas endeavor not for kids that doesn’t play nice with others. Think of this as a lightly unnerving holiday
creeper that in the blink of an eye shape shifts into a mean and mad scream, a
movie prominently featuring a child protagonist that’s otherwise intended for
adults.
Visually the film is shot with the dark-blue nighttime terror
of a thriller handsomely by Michel Gaffier who turns the interior tunnels of
this expensive funhouse into a bit of a James Cameron action flick. There were times when the psycho Santa
(played with devilish glee by Patrick Floersheim) takes on the ominous dread of
The Terminator, stalking the halls bloodlessly and relentlessly
searching for its prey. This dread is
aided by the film’s downright starkly terrifying electronic score by Jean-Félix
Lalanne whose high-pitched notes of rising dread will remind some viewers of
the awful fears conjured up by Ralph Burns’ mournful score for Star 80. There’s a real sense of gloomy doom in the
tonality of Lalanne’s soundtrack and elements of montage take on tragic
weathers that feel all the more disturbing for being experienced through the
perspective of a minor.
Overqualified actress Brigitte Fossey is nice as the widowed
single mother who begins to sense something is amiss when her phonecalls to her
home go unanswered. Louis Ducreux is
also good as the film’s grandfather who doesn’t have all of his faculties at
his disposal but cares enough for his grandson to intervene when he can. Patrick Floersheim is a great bit of a mime
performer, largely acting in silence with his physical appearance being all
that’s needed to intimidate. The real
revelation here is Alain Lalanne as the film’s resourceful young hero who doles
out the pain but takes some brutal knicks himself including but not limited to
a stab wound and climbing atop the snow frozen rooftop trying to evade the
maniac.
While winning the Best Director and Best Film awards at the
1990 Fantafestival, the film was overshadowed by Home Alone’s success
prompting threats of legal action which didn’t come to pass and the film was
otherwise only available through third party bootlegs before finally being
granted a North American premiere in 2018 followed by a now out-of-print
Vinegar Syndrome 4K UHD. Seen years
later, while the similarities of a boy fending off invaders during Christmas
Eve can’t be ignored Deadly Games is a dark and disturbing horror film
that never really lets you off the hook while Home Alone is a warm,
saccharine slapstick comedy designed to make you smile. One movie is a lot of laughs while the other
starts off innocently enough before it closes itself upon you like a mouse
trap.
For this reason, it is hard to accuse one of being a ripoff
of the other as tonally their aims differ.
One thing is for sure though, as far as killer Santa Claus movies ala Silent
Night, Deadly Night or Christmas Evil, this one goes for the jugular
leaving you exhausted and shaken by the end of it. One of most frightening home invasion psycho
Santa Claus movies ever with real stakes physical and emotional you don’t
expect or know how to deal with once they’re deployed, Deadly Games: Dial
Code Santa Claus is one of the most intense holiday horror films ever made
without compromise or relent, a film that lulls you into a false sense of
security before violently and cruelly taking it away from us. Where Home Alone reworked longstanding
slapstick tropes becoming of Laurel and Hardy or The Three Stooges,
Deadly Games is kind of daring in just how far out on a limb it is willing
to go for a movie prominently starring a child actor. The kind of film that will make you think
twice about that reflection behind you as you gaze into a Christmas ornament.
--Andrew Kotwicki
