Directed by Tommy Wirkola. Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson, Cam Gigandet, Leah Brady, Beverly D’Angelo.
It’s Christmas Eve and Santa Claus (Harbour) is getting drunk before he starts delivering presents. He’s jaded and cynical and believes children are too materialistic nowadays.
Meanwhile In Connecticut Jason Lightstone (Hassell) meets up with his estranged wife Linda (Louder) and daughter Trudy (Brady) in order to spend Christmas with his incredibly rich family, ruled over by matriarch Gertrude (D’Angelo) where his catty, heavy drinking sister Alva (Patterson) tries to supplant him as mom’s favourite.
Things take a turn for the worst when a group of heavily armed mercenaries led by Mr Scrooge (Leguizamo) take the family hostage, with plans to steal $300,000,000 from the family vault.
Coincidentally Santa has arrived to drop off Trudy’s presents. He soon finds himself embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with the mercenaries, luckily Santa wasn’t always jolly old St Nick, but can one man, however adept with a hammer, save the not only the family, but also the spirit of Christmas?
I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for this. “It’s Die Hard, but with Santa.”
The first thing to say is that, despite the obvious similarities, this isn’t actually Die Hard with Santa, in truth a fairer comparison would be that it’s actually Die Hard 2, with Santa!
It’s an odd film to quantify, and I’m not sure it entirely knows who it’s pitched at. This doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, it’s a whole heap of fun, but at times it plays like a family friendly Home Alone style caper, and at others it’s a violent action film, and whilst it’s fun to see Santa kicking arse, it’s also a little disturbing to see him cracking heads with a sledgehammer.
That it isn’t a patch on the films it homages (Die Hard(s) Home Alone, Bad Santa etc) doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, and the main reason for this is Harbour. Is there anyone in film and TV who can do loveable schlubby everyman better than Stranger Things’ Jim Hopper? Comfortable with action and comedy, and always able to radiate nice guy energy, it’s easy to imagine this would be a much lousier film without him.
(from left) Sugarplum (Stephanie Sy), Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo), Alva (Edi Patterson), Morgan Steel (Cam Gigandet), Frosty (Can Aydin), Bert (Alexander Elliot), Linda (Alexis Louder), Peppermint (Rawleigh Clements-Willis), Scrooge (John Leguizamo) and Gingerbread (André Eriksen) in Violent Night, directed by Tommy Wirkola.
As the bad guy Leguizamo does his best but never seems to be given enough to sink his teeth into, and he’s no Alan Rickman (but then, who is?) He’s decent enough and has a genuine air of menace at times.
D’Angelo is clearly having a ball as the foul mouthed matriarch, and the actors playing her family do a decent job with fairly limited characterisation, although there is a neat little twist part way through. Brady in particular gets to have fun pretending to be Macaulay Culkin and Cam Gigandet is amusing as Alva’s film star boyfriend who thinks he’s an action hero.
With just enough campness, violence and humour this is a film that probably shouldn’t work, yet somehow does, down to its knowing script and its lead’s genuine screen presence. A fun diversion, just don’t think about the plot (or the nature of Santa’s history and abilities) too deeply.
Will we get Violent Night 2? I don’t know, can the same shit happen to the same Santa twice? I wouldn’t bet against it!
Something a little different here. I was always a fan of the 1970s movies and the 70s TV show that featured slubby investigative reporter Carl Kolchak, ably played by Darren McGavin. Earlier this year an anthology was planned celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Kolchak story, the TV movie Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I was thrilled and started work on the story I was going to submit. Sadly time ran away from me and I didn’t get to finish it in time. This left me with a story I loved but one I couldn’t really submit anywhere else, so it seemed to best option was to post it for free here. Consider it fan fiction if you will, and obviously if the rights holders to the Kolchak brand have an issue I’m happy to take it down, but hopefully people can just enjoy it for what it is, my homage to a staple of 70s TV horror, with a slight dash of a homage to something else. I think it’s fairly obvious what else but you never know. Anyway. Enjoy!
Man has always been fascinated with the notion of predicting the future, from the oracle at Delphi to Nostradamus himself.
When 45 year old factory worker Hank Tuttle left the bar on Main Street the only future he was envisioning was a warm bed. If he could have seen what was coming, he’d have stayed in the bar until morning.
He managed to weave barely ten yards down the sidewalk, much to the amusement of the handful of people still loitering on the street that night.
None of them were laughing when a darkly shrouded figure swooped down on Hank and carried him away into a nearby alley.
Though inebriated, several of those witnesses gave chase. A patrol car was parked nearby, ostensibly to watch for drunken trouble and the deputy inside soon added his eyes to the search. Yet no trace of Hank, or his assailant, could be found. Not until morning at least.
Bensonville is the ninth biggest city in Nebraska, and the Clarion was the fifteenth biggest selling newspaper in the state. Had I worked for more prestigious newspapers? Of course, but I’d also written for plenty of rags that made the Clarion look like the New York Times, and the older I got the less choosy I got to be. It was the early autumn of 1991, the last whisps of summer were slowly dying and my 70th birthday lurked too close ahead, poised like a cobra to strike once I got within range.
Hank’s body had been found in the parking lot of a strip mall less than six blocks from where he’d been last seen, a fact (along with others) I gleaned from a contact in the police. As such I was the first reporter on the scene
Back in the day the cops I crossed swords with were all middle-aged, chain-smoking white men who seemed to get their suits from the same store and their hair cut by the same short sighted barber. By contrast captain Maria Rosenthal was 35, her red hair was nearly coiffured, and she looked like she could swap her uniform for a swish evening gown at the drop of a hat.
Of course, as the motto goes, the more things change the more they stay the same.
“Kolchak! How the hell did you get here so fast?” She yelled, hands on her hips, the fingers of her right hand far too close to the butt of her gun for my liking.
“Me? I just happened to be passing and saw all the police cars”
Nearby someone was hoisting a gurney into the back of the coroner’s van. Yellow police tape was everywhere. Eager young officers were combing the ground for clues.
Captain Rosenthal made to speak but before she could I had my tape recorder in her face.
“Is it true his eyes had been removed? Just like the other two victims?”
“No comment” she replied. She tried to turn away, but I still move fast for an old guy, I kept the recorder in front of her
“And what about the other incidents I told you about? In New Mexico and Colorado, as if the killer were moving north?”
She gave me a withering look. “I can’t discuss ongoing communication with other law enforcement agencies.”
“Aha! But you are communicating with them?”
“No comment.” She looked over my shoulder. “Grant, you and Foley please escort Mr Kolchak back to his hotel.”
Beefy arms gripped me.
“You can’t do this,” I said as they began to drag me away. “I have rights!”
Rosenthal was grinning as she started to turn away, but her smile faded and those beefy arms released me. The cops had bigger fish to fry because at that moment, a truck from the local TV affiliate arrived. Seconds later a bunch of other reporters showed up. I guess I wasn’t the only one with contacts in the Bensonville PD.
Rosenthal didn’t have the numbers to evict all of us, so she changed tack and hosted an impromptu press conference right there in the car park.
She didn’t give much away. I tried to ask my questions again, but she ignored me. The other reporters’ questions were so inane Rosenthal looked offended. Say what you like about me, cops are never bored when I’m asking the questions. Annoyed, exasperated, murderous, but never bored.
I tried to get a handle on whether any of my fellow members of the fourth estate had any leads, but nobody was talking to me, in fact no one was even looking at me, and that included the cops. Carl Kolchak was, it seemed, persona non Grata. If such things bothered me, I’d have retired decades ago.
As I meandered back to my car I suddenly realised that not everyone was giving me the cold shoulder. One man was staring at me, a dumb smile on his face.
Glancing back every few seconds I could see that he’d broken away from the pack and was following me.
If it hadn’t been for the smile I’d have imagined he was a reporter who wanted to vent his spleen about how I was ruining things for everyone by upsetting the delicate equilibrium that existed in Bensonville between the police and the local media. Said equilibrium consisting of the police giving a statement and the reporters asking how high they wanted the typeface.
Even without the smile he wouldn’t have looked like a newsman, or a plainclothes cop.
In fact, he looked even less like a Nebraskan than me. He was mid-thirties, with shoulder length blonde hair so light in tint that I suspected it’d go white sooner rather than later. He wore a suit, but no tie, and had the look of a man who’d rather be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I could see him in a surfboard, he had that California surfer dude vibe to him.
Figuring if he was some serial killer it was best to talk while I was still close to the cops I waited for him to catch me up.
“Oh wow,” he said, his tone easy going, there was definitely a Beach Boys thing going on.
There was recognition in his eyes, but likely confusion in mine. “Do I know you, sir?” I asked.
He shook his head and laughed. “No but I know you. Carl Kolchak. The Carl Kolchak. I’m sorry, I’m just a huge fan.”
And then he proceeded to invite me to a nearby diner where he offered to buy me coffee.
I accepted. When most people I meet want to run me out of town, the lure of someone who wanted to talk was quite enticing.
Once we were sat down he introduced himself. I didn’t recognise the name at the time. In hindsight I think most everyone might recognise it now. He further informed me that he was a television producer.
I still wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted to meet me, but he helpfully explained, although he took the long way around. He was taking the low road and if I’d taken the high I’d have been in Scotland afore him. One day I really must visit Scotland, Loch Ness in particular has piqued my interest over the years.
I didn’t take the high road. I drank my coffee and listened instead.
“I was sixteen, my folks moved us to Vegas, just for a few months while my dad did a job, but I was there, right in the middle of those killings, the vampire, right?”
I said nothing.
“The vampire. I read your stuff, what they let you print, even got a hold of your book a few years later”
That got my attention, I’d heard masses of them had been pulped. I hadn’t seen a copy in years. I wondered if he had it with him? Had he come all this way just for an autograph?
It turned out to be a no on both counts, he wanted something else from me but first he had more to tell.
“I had a buddy in Seattle, so I got clippings of your stories there, the lunatic who was strangling people to gain immortality. By the time you headed to Chicago I was ahead of the curve, had contacts in local newspapers, told them to save me a copy of anything from INS coming off the teletype with your by-line. Man, you had some crazy stories there “
I wanted to tell him I was flattered but ask him to come to the point. I had places to be, and unlike a young woman I had encountered in Albuquerque I wasn’t getting any younger.
I’d barely opened my mouth before he continued.
“And beyond Chicago. Memphis, New York, Jacksonville, Dallas.” He shook his head. “I have scrapbooks filled with your stories”
“Well that’s very flattering, but why have you tracked me down now? If you’ve been a fan for so long?”
‘Because now I have the opportunity to immortalise you forever.”
“You want to paint my portrait?”
He laughed. “Television”
“Say what now?”
“Television. I’ve pitched a show and the network has bought it, well the pilot at least.”
“About me?” I was shocked, flattered but mainly shocked, after spending so many years being laughed at, ignored, threatened, so many years being almost killed by vampires, aliens, werewolves, lizardmen… finally someone understood.
A lifelong cynic I should have known better, but we’re all vulnerable to flattery.
“Kind of. Negotiations are still ongoing. I want the lead to be a reporter, but the networks, they figure he should be a cop, or someone in law enforcement. And they want to partner him up with a woman. I mean I’m fighting against it but they’re paying so I might have to make some concessions.”
“A cop? So this wouldn’t be a documentary series then?”
“Oh no, but obviously it’d be heavily based upon you, on your stories. There’d be residuals in it for you, maybe even an executive producer credit if you play your cards right.”
I actually grinned at that. It was an odd feeling to be wanted. I had something in my bag, something I’d been debating sharing with Rosenthal, but while she’d likely take one look and throw me in a padded cell, perhaps my new young friend would find it interesting.
I rummaged in my satchel. “Just a second, I need to show you this.”
I pulled several photostats out, piling them up on the table. They threatened to fly away so I put my coffee cup on top of them.
“Just a second.”
“Mr Kolchak…”
“Carl! Call me, Carl.”
“Carl. I need to…”
“Here you go!” And with that I revealed the book. It was old, and if I’d let him look at the flyleaf, he might have seen the label for the State Library. He might also have seen that it was overdue. But I didn’t show him this. I opened at the requisite page, turned it around and tapped at the picture. “This is what’s killing people here. This.”
He peered at the picture. For a moment it looked like he was trying to read the text, but unless he could understand ancient Greek he wasn’t going to get very far. Luckily I knew someone who could, a sprightly young professor of antiquity at the university of Nebraska.
I like to think the photo told him enough. It was a crude picture of a man, naked as the day he’d been born. He was holding out his hands. There were eyeballs embedded in his palms, attached to the ends of his fingers. They ran up each arm, they were sunk into his chest, his stomach, and he had two more eyes above those he’d been born with, and several more below mixed to his cheeks. His mouth was wide open as if in a scream, his tongue extended.
And of course there was an eyeball there as well.
“What the hell?”
I smiled. “To Prágma Vlépei,” I said smugly. Pride really does come before a fall.
His face scrunched up. “Huh?”
“The Thing Sees,” I replied. “It’s Greek, this is a monster from Greek mythology, only one forgotten by all but a handful of scholars. Forget Medusa, this guy is far scarier. He exists to see. So the story goes he was a shepherd who always wanted to keep an eye on his flock, but it was so large and unruly that he could never see them all at once, and he lost more than one sheep to wolves and other predators. And so he made a deal with the Gods, to be able to see what other men couldn’t.” I laughed. “He quite literally has eyes in the back of his head. Eyes everywhere.”
“And now it’s in Nebraska?”
I closed up the book, returned it to my satchel where it banged against a khaki metal canister. “And now it’s in Nebraska. Not the original one, this is something more recent, I believe it is, or at least was, a man named Ludwig Baumann, a German national who emigrated to New Mexico five years ago, after an extended period in Greece where he worked as an archaeologist, though by all accounts grave robber might be a more apt term. Apparently, he had an almost supernatural ability to locate items thought lost for centuries.” I grinned. “Wonder how he did it.”
My new friend shook his head. “But why’s he killing people now?”
“It’s the curse, the curse that haunted the original creature. The Gods originally only gave him a few extra eyes, but it wasn’t enough. He got greedy. When you can see around corners you want to see over mountains, and he found he could take the eyes of others, absorb them into his body, until he was covered in them, until he could see everything. That’s why our killer is so hard to catch. He can’t see the future, but he can see around corners, through buildings. He can see all his pursuers and all his viable exits all at once.”
He laughed. “I always wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
“Where you got your ideas from, I’m a writer myself but this is incredible. You must have spent so much of your life in libraries researching this stuff.”
“Well I have, months, maybe even years but…” My enthusiasm faded. “This is real, it’s all real, the creatures. The vampire in Vegas, the werewolf on the cruise ship, the succubus in New Orleans.” I was exasperated. “You think they’re all fiction?”
“Well…”
“I’m telling you now, they’re all true. Don’t you believe me?”
He stared at me, a sad look in his eyes. Don’t meet your heroes, that’s what they say isn’t it. Well, he’d met his hero and found he had feet of clay, or at least he thought he did.
“I want to believe,” he said, sounding like a small boy.
I stood. “I don’t have time to wait. Let me know when you make your mind up.”
And so I left him there and returned to my car. The shoal of reporters was still circling Rosenthal like she was bait thrown over from a fishing trawler. I left them to it because I had somewhere else to be.
However much he was turning into a pure monster, the chances were that Ludwig Baumann still retained some sense of self, he could have hidden in the woods, but I figured that wouldn’t suit him at all, the man had been a scholar, used to the finer things in life by all accounts.
He hadn’t used his own name to check into a motel or rent a house, and no one recalled taking money from anyone with a German accent, and I’m pretty sure they’d have recalled a customer with a dozen eyeballs in his face.
My search of the property market did throw up something though. On the outskirts of town was a row of abandoned buildings, and one of them had, until very recently, been a bookstore. The proprietor had died, and the place was still tied up in all manner of legal claims. By all accounts it was still fully stocked.
Where else might a man with a love of learning and a hundred eyeballs be happier?
It was the middle of the day when I got there, parking my battered rental car a short distance away so I could sneak up on the place. It turns out I parked too far away because I was out of breath by the time I got there. Sometimes I forget I’m not in my prime anymore.
My satchel was heavy. I could have left the book behind but the other items in there I might need. I had my camera in hand as I approached the bookstore.
Robbie’s Reads was a lonely place. Unlike the storefronts either side it looked like it was still open for business. There were books in the window. If it had still been open there would likely have been no customers, the street was deserted, in fact I hadn’t seen another living soul since I turned off the highway. This part of town had been fading for many years, the demise of Robbie’s Reads had been its dying breath.
I didn’t approach the front door. Instead I went around back, sneaking through the yard of the store next to it. Judging by the rotting tables and chairs I guessed that shop had sold furniture.
There was a gap in the fence just big enough for me to squeeze through, though I had to remove my satchel. I went first and then reached back quickly for my bag.
I expected to be ambushed at any moment, but the yard was as quiet as the grave. It was also tidy, with just a few boxes piled up beside the back door.
I approached warily. I didn’t expect the door to be open, but the handle turned smoothly. That should have been my cue to leave but I’d never been very smart, and age had made me no wiser.
The door did not creak. Perhaps it had been recently installed, or perhaps its current tenant had oiled the hinges.
Inside it was gloomy. Dust hung in the air, made visible by the shafts of sunlight that peeked in through the open doorway.
There was a door wedge on the floor. I took out my torch before using the wedge to secure the door in the open position. Then I stepped inside.
I was in a backroom; part kitchen, part storeroom. To my left were boxes labelled as having been sent by various publishing houses. To my right was a sink, a small stove, and a refrigerator. The sink looked clean. The smell of food lingered in the air.
A side door promised to lead upstairs but however reckless I was feeling, I had my limits. This left one door, that obviously led into the store.
It too opened smoothly. The smell hit me immediately, the dry scent of old books. The shop itself was well lit, it hadn’t been deserted long enough for the windows to become grimy, so a lot of sunlight streamed in through the windows.
I saw a desk and a cash register, the drawer fully open to show no money was inside.
I saw row upon row of bookshelves and there, hidden from view if you peered through the window, was a camping cot. A lantern beside it, along with a pile of books. A single book was open, face down on the bed.
I’d found his nest!
I reached into my satchel, which was the point a shadow fell over me.
I looked up, saw something dark and monstrous falling from above, a living shadow, a giant winged bat.
I realised moments before he ploughed into me that it was merely a man draped in a cloak.
Or what had once been a man.
He clattered into me and I hit the floor hard. It’s an odd thing to say in hindsight, but in that moment my greatest fear wasn’t death, it was that I’d break a hip.
That soon faded when I looked up into a face of utter chaos.
You could, if you focused, still make out Ludwig Baumann’s mouth, and his nose, but it was hard to focus on anything but the eyes. A dozen or more of them, all shapes and sizes, all colours, arranged with no logic, some horizontal, some vertical, many at an angle, and every single one of them blinking down at me.
“Why are you here? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” His voice was raw, as if he was talking whilst simultaneously trying to chew, and I realised there must be eyes in his mouth as well.
“I’m almost done. Soon I’ll be able to see everything!”
Suddenly I felt fingers groping my face, reaching for my eyes, preparing to pluck them out.
I was about to scream when I saw something moved in the periphery of my vision. A book.
Ludwig obviously saw it coming, he ducked out of the way, rolled off me.
Another book. Again Ludwig was too fast for my saviour.
“That’s right you monster, over here! Leave Carl alone!”
It was him, my fan.
He was by the front door, which it seemed he’d forced open, with an armful of books, looking like a small boy throwing stones at a bear. Ineffectual, but he’d distracted Ludwig and that was enough.
“Get out of here!” I yelled.
“But, Carl?” he said and gestured to the beast that was now lumbering towards him.
“I’ve got this,” I said and reached into my satchel.
Ludwig was caught in two minds, conscious of the man by the door, but also seeing me though many of his myriad eyes, seeing me take the khaki coloured canister from my bag.
As my new friend turned and ran, this made up Ludwig’s mind. The creature of a thousand eyes turned towards me, fingers raised and ready to tear my eyes from their sockets. My whole body ached, I didn’t think I could even get up.
But I didn’t need to. Pulling the pin on the grenade was hardly a chore, neither was rolling it across the floor towards Ludwig.
Dozens of eyes followed the rolling metal canister.
As for my eyes I closed them tight and smothered my face into the crook of my arm as the grenade began to dispense its load.
Teargas.
The screams that followed will haunt me for the remainder of my days. Even protected my own eyes stung. For Ludwig it was so much worse. There was no way to cover all those dozens and dozens of eyes he had, no way to minimise the pain the teargas was causing, and not a one of those eyes was clear enough to see a way out of the trap.
I can only imagine what happened next as Ludwig, tears streaming from a hundred eyes, staggered around the bookshop in pain and anguish. A man who dreamed of seeing everything suddenly utterly blind. I would have almost felt a smidgen of pity, if he hadn’t slaughtered so many in his inhuman quest.
Eventually he blundered into a bookshelf with such force that it teetered, rocked back against the wall and then forward again even as he staggered away from it.
The avalanche of books hit him first. Unpleasant but any damage they could cause would be minimal.
The bookshelf that followed was a different story. It was heavy. It crushed Ludwig to death, or so I heard.
Time passed. The teargas cleared and the next thing I knew my new friend had returned to drag me back into the light. We waited for the police to arrive. My saviour gently doused my eyes with water, and all he kept saying was. “It’s real. It’s all real!”
The police arrived, along with paramedics who insisted on taking me to hospital. By the time I was released it was all over. Ludwig had died from his injuries. The police were happy to accept that he was the killer, but no mention of his supernatural physicality was ever mentioned. There was an autopsy. I even got a hold of a copy. It was all very bland and ordinary. As far as the coroner was concerned Ludwig Bauman had only two eyes.
I tried to publish my story, which went about as well as you can imagine. I left the Clarion soon after, or rather was encouraged to leave, and shortly after that I left Nebraska.
I considered retiring but I knew that would be a death sentence. A friend of a friend got me a job at a small paper in North Carolina.
As for my fan. I never saw him again. I think his brush with the uncanny was enough to put him off the reality of life, to push him back towards fiction.
His show got made. It became very famous. I even watched it for a while. The hero was young and handsome, and he wasn’t a reporter. And he had a female partner, he didn’t work alone. Together they encountered monsters every week of the kind I’ve encountered, though slightly less frequently, and also became embroiled in an ongoing conspiracy which thankfully I never have.
He was nothing like me except in one pertinent respect.
werewolves on the moon 