Sub Rosa's Psycho Santa / Satan Claus double feature is like a physical manifestation of the joke about the man who hits his hand with a hammer because, he says, "it feels so good when I stop." It consists of one passable feature and one agonizingly painful feature that elevates the first to much greater heights than it ever would have achieved on its own.

Satan Claus is this heinous offender of which I speak, and it is spectacularly, jaw-droppingly bad. Like a train wreck, it is horrific, yet to such an extreme degree that a morbid inner curiosity compels the viewer to look on.

Satan Claus begins in Santa's car, where we watch him drive around New York while singing Jingle Bells off-key and with incorrect lyrics (surely that was a stylistic choice, no?). After this he walks up to a random woman and chops off her head (off-camera, sadly), tosses it into his sac, and then runs off singing Jingle Bells again.

It just so turns out, we find, that Claus'â victim was the wife of the chief of police (who doesn't seem terribly distraught by the fact), who works for days straight in a police station that seems to consist of one office that is manned by three people. The chief vows to find Claus and exact revenge.

Meanwhile, somewhere (this movie isn't a leader in the clarity department), we meet Steve, an aspiring actor, and his voodoo priestess mother. (I don't write it, I just report it...) The actor informs her that, since he's not having too much luck with his acting career (is the movie critiquing itself?), he's taken a job as a Santa to help raise money for the local orphanage.

Soon, he's out on the street selling trinkets for charity along with a friend of his. While out there, our actor happens to encounter an old flame of his, who is walking around with her new boyfriend. After a lackluster exchange of dialogue, the couple sets off again, and the boyfriend is promptly axed by Santa in the park.

His girlfriend and our actor decide to join forces to try to stop the perfidious Pere Noel, while Santa begins calling and taunting the detective, talking about who he's killed and how he's going to kill again. And kill again he does, in a strange little montage that consists of random people walking down empty streets and then being axed as Santa steps into frame.

Of course, the plot thickens, and it eventually becomes apparent to our slow-witted actor that necromancy is behind Satan Clausâ doings, so a mystery element (with a fairly impossible solution) is added in hopes of livening the plot, but chances are you, like me, wouldn't have cared in the first place and certainly won't care when it rears its head in the last ten minutes. In the end, the culprit is found, Santa is stopped, and the whole movie limps to a close at a merciful 61 minutes run time (technically nine minutes shy of feature length, but you won't hear me complaining).

If any of this sounded good, I've just been having too much fun writing. I implore you to believe me when I say it is not a pleasant affair, not just because of the hackneyed story and trite plot but also due to the staggering degree of technical ineptitude on display: lines are flubbed, the gore effects are cheap and tacky, the acting ranges from passably bad to staggeringly awful, and the film isn't even lit properly (as the screenshots must surely have lead you to notice)! The entire movie takes place in perpetual darkness, even when indoors; I'm still trying to figure out why none of New York's three cops thought to turn on a light in their office. This light problem leads to some scenes being so under-exposed that it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on in them. Of course, I suppose even if the action could be seen it still wouldn't be entertaining, but that's still no excuse for a problem of this magnitude. I'll state it simply: do not watch Satan Claus. You have been warned...

After the Satan Claus debacle it took me several days to work up the energy to watch Psycho Santa, the other feature on the DVD. Thankfully, it was nowhere near as bad, and, to be honest, I actually found myself enjoying it at times.

Psycho... concerns a young couple driving to a party on Christmas Eve. The man, obviously not pleased about going, decides to make some conversation with his wife, and the topic quickly turns to discussing the story of the local psychopath who is said to be roaming the area nearby. This allows for a nice vignette structure for the story that I found suited it quite nicely. It's amazing how varying setting and characters can lighten up a movie. If only the perpetrators behind Satan Claus had known this....

The first story, concerning a couple of girls waiting at a cabin for their friend on Christmas Eve, makes up for everything that Satan Claus lacked. It contains a nice, long shower scene (with some creepy-looking girl, with a LOT of piercings) replete with full-frontal nudity that more than makes up for SC's one brief topless shot, an extended dance in lingerie, and an understatedly creepy climax.

Next, we are told the story of a couple of burglars who make the mistake of robbing the wrong house. In this house lives a pretty blind woman (who is, it just so happens, preparing to take a bath) whom they strangle before pillaging the place. With her dead, they prepare to leave, but are stopped by strange sounds coming from a locked door. Of course, we all know they shouldn't open it, but we also all know that they will, right? Right. The expected mayhem ensues as the maniac is unleashed.

The killer, Chris, escapes the house and begins a rampage, first killing a guy in a Santa suit and taking his costume, then going on to stalk a brother and sister (in the third vignette) who get lost in the woods while looking for a Christmas tree. Of course, all of this has the poor wife scared out of her wits, yet this doesnât stop her from telling her husband to stop the car to check and see if they have brought their gifts for their friends at the party with them. The guy goes around back to check, and, of course, the end writes itself.

Psycho Santa is so much better than its companion piece that it's hard not to like it. It's well-lit, well-edited, and comes with enough sex and violence to keep a viewer entertained. Even if some of the effects are a little unrealistic or some of the acting isn't perfect, it's forgivable, as the film is at least watch-able and, in the end, delivers the sex and violence that it promises, which is all that I really ask for in a situation like this.

Audio and video on the two films is a mixed bag. Satan Claus sounds and looks like what it is: a camcorder-produced micro-budget movie. Sound is often garbled and at times unintelligible. Video is generally clear (when you can see what's going on!), aside from a few VHS glitches like brief distortions, etc. Psycho Santa, letterboxed (non-anamorphic) at what looks to be about 1.75:1 (I'm not sure if it was cropped from full-frame or not), fares better, with video that is generally clear exempting a few instances of pixelation and audio that is fairly audible all the time.

The disc itself has a strange static menu that looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old (I'm assuming this was employed for effect), and a few trailers as the only extras: one for Psycho Santa, and a few previews for films like Insaniac, The Christmas Season Massacre, China White Serpentine, and I Spit on Your Corpse, I Piss on Your Grave. Ironically, most of the previews contain more graphic sex and violence than do the disc's features.

I suppose, in the end, I can't really recommend Psycho Santa / Satan Claus. Certainly anyone who was at all attentive to this review will know that I can't recommend Satan Claus, and while Psycho Santa is good for what it is, it's not terribly original, either. If you're a Killer Santa completist (are there any?) you can't do yourself any harm by picking up this disc for Psycho Santa alone, but don't think of what you're getting as a double feature. Satan Claus shouldn't be viewed by anyone, as a matter of public safety.