THE PODCAST ON HAUNTED HILL EPISODE 168 - VIOLENT NIGHT AND THERE'S SOMETHINGS IN THE BARN

The Podcast on Haunted Hill will contain spoilers and swearing.

I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil's work. I saw this when I come. And be one of us.

Hello, and welcome to The Podcast on Haunted Hill, episode 168, my name is Gav.

Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Who's this?

Merry Christmas!

That's so exciting.

Gavin, you've been a very good boy this year. Do you want to sit on my lap?

Oh, no, not really.

Tell me what you want from Christmas.

I think you've pissed yourself, so I'm definitely not sitting on your lap. Christmas? Um, um, I want a big wooden... Ooh, ho, ho, ho, ho!...

box.

Oh, yes.

Mrs. Claus has got a big wooden box. Do you want to fill my sack?

This has just gone really bad. No, I don't want too far for Christmas. You're coming across as a bit... speedo-like.

Let me take the beard off. It's me!

Oh!

It's Dan.

Dan, you had me going.

I'm not the real Father Christmas. The real Father Christmas is currently hard at work. Getting everything ready.

I'm glad you said at work when you said that.

Hard at Mrs. Claus' box. He's currently hard at the elves.

Merry Christmas, everybody. Thank you for coming along this Christmas white journey with us.

Jesus Christ. White Christmas journey.

It's a white Christmas journey with Dan and Gav. Jump on the little train. Here we go. It's a little festive train we're on.

You know, we love our Christmas episodes. So this is another one. This is our eleventh Christmas episode, I believe. This means it's the start of our eleventh year of podcasting, because our first ever episode was a Christmas episode 11 years ago. So not only do we both love Christmas, but we also get to sort of mark another year of podcasting together. So indeed we do. Here we are. I hope you're all well.

So it's making up for my lack of a tree.

Might I add Christmas trees in my house? I haven't just had like a terrible tornado blow trees in through my windows. No, I've got two Christmas trees.

No, I'm not as festive as I used to be a lot more festive. If you go back listers to some older episodes, where me and Dan are drunk around a fire during the podcast, which is the odd episode early on ones. It was a bit more festive then, but it's not so much now. I am wearing a Christmas wutan jumper, if that helps.

And I'm wearing a Christmas tree jumper with a big star on the top.

It's very pretty.

It is, thank you very much. Yes, we hope you're all well. We hope you're getting into the festive spirits and watching lots of Christmas films and Christmas horror films and listening to Christmas songs.

And it comes in so many different ways. Also festive spirits. You could be alcohol, ghosts, or just cheer. You know, festive spirit. Free spirits at Christmas.

Or you could have a white Christmas if you wanted to as well. You know, if that floats your boat, fantastic. You could have a green Christmas if you want to have a bit of a Bob Marley Christmas. You can do it anywhere you want, really. If you just want to eat some mince pies like me.

Well, I was just saying that there's three different versions of spirits at Christmas. Oh, sorry. I was just going for one on drugs. The rainbow of drugs, which you could have at Christmas. Dan's a very sensible parent nowadays.

I imagine Christmas day on mushrooms, that would be interesting.

I guess. I don't know. I've never done mushrooms.

So I don't know. Well, we've already started, everybody. We hope you're well. Well, let's get into what we've been up to, what we're doing, what this episode is about. It's our Christmas episode. So of course, our two main reviews are going to be festive themed. We're going to be covering two relatively new ones, actually. One of which is Violent Night from 2022.

Yep.

Starring David Arbort.

Known mainly on So Stranger Things.

Yeah, he's done a few bits and bobs. He's in Marvel now as well, but Hellboy. But yeah, you're right. And that is kind of a bit of Die Hard meets Home Alone with a little bit of John Wick thrown in. So if you like all that kind of stuff and you've not seen it, you might want to check it out. But we will be getting into detail on it. And we're also going to be covering an even newer one, 2023's There's Something In The Barn, which I discovered last year.

Lampoons. I did watch, I'd missed you about it, Turbulence.

You did, yeah. Well, you talked about it on the last episode.

Did I?

Yeah, yeah.

That's how rubbish I am. But that's set at Christmas Eve. So that's why I thought I'd bring it up again. It just popped into my head then. Yeah, I did watch a Bond movie the other night, at Piers Brosnan. I watched GoldenEye the other night.

I've been lucky enough to not have a lot of work on, and the work I can do, I can have films on in the background. So I counted. I have, this is going to come across as a bit mental. I've watched over 50 Christmas films so far this December, because I've just had them on in the background while I've been doing this, that and the other. But I thought I'd just quickly mention a few, the ones that are more horror related or more in our umbrella.

Actually, I got a feeling Sarah hadn't when I first got with her. Possibly.

Great. Obviously, I watched Dark Angel again with Dolph Lundgren, because after reviewing it with you, I don't really remember it, to be honest. Yeah. Well, I watched that. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up of a movie to avoid. The Mean One, which is basically like these Winnie the Pooh Bambi horror films that are coming out. This one is about the Grinch. And if the Grinch was actually a killer killing people and I gave it two out of ten, it was appalling.

I did watch a movie. No, I didn't. I watched half a movie because I just didn't enjoy it and stop watching. It's called Nutcracker. It's a new Ben Stiller film.

I've heard it's awful.

It's not fun. It's really weird. And I guess it was directed by David Gordon Green. It's his first thing directing coming off of Halloween films and coming off Exorcist. It was the last thing he directed. Because the name came up, I was like, oh no. And I was like, oh no, this is like come back to, you know, meet a bit of popular films, not normal genre comedy. And not fun. Not likable. So I was like, oh no, it's a new Ben Stiller movie, comedy at Christmas.

Yeah.

I don't know what tone it was supposed to be. It's a bit more just kind of like, are you trying to pull my heartstrings? Or is it just like you're making them unlikeable? I don't know.

These days, the only, like lately, the only good Christmas films I've, new films that have come out that are new are Christmas horror films for me. You know, it takes a lot for a new Christmas film to really grab me. I think Daddy's Home 2 is one of the last newer ones that I quite liked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was good. I watched Better Watch Out, which is an annual watch now. We saw that at Fright Fest in the summer. I watched the classics, you know, Silent Night, Deadly Night.

I probably still got a candy cane somewhere they gave us.

I threw that away in the end. I probably have. One film I wanted to mention, Christmas related, then we'll move on to a few other bits and bobs, that I think we should probably cover one year because I forgot how good it was is Christmas Evil, which is also sometimes known as Better Watch Out from 1980. Christmas Evil. We did New Year's Evil, didn't we?

I thought we did Christmas Evil.

We did New Year's Evil.

Oh, that's where I'm getting that from then.

Yeah, but we have the Christmas Evil is the one where it's got a really weird ending, where you don't know if he's turned into Santa Claus, if he's died, if he's hallucinating. It's really cool and really weird.

Is that English?

No, it's American, 1980. Christmas morning, he sees as a kid, he sees his mum banging Santa. And then when he grows up, he just goes on a killing spree.

Because his mum bangs Santa?

Yeah, he glues a beard to his face.

But what if his mum's single and horny? And as far as Christmas comes, I've got a donation, and she's like, oh, I quite like bigger, hairier men. I mean, can I have a donation? And she's like, I'll give you a donation, get in here.

Jesus Christ.

But she's she is a lonely lady, and she needs pleasure as much as anyone else does. Little Tommy has his little trucks to play with. She doesn't.

She wants Santa's truck.

She wants Santa's truck to play with.

Well, I was excited because this month, this December, we also got a Friday the 13th thrown in. Did you manage to watch a Jason?

No, no, no. To be honest, I haven't been able to watch much movies, really. I've been busy doing stuff. Well, it did make me, though, want and yearn for a Friday the 13th set of Christmas.

Yeah. Oh, that would be good.

Just have it set at Christmas and that would be really cool.

Funny you say that.

Yeah.

Because I watched Jason X was my Jason of choice for this.

The lake would be frozen over.

And apparently Jason X was originally going to be set at Christmas slash in the snow. They were really trying to push, push, push for that. And the studio said, no, we need to do something very different from the usual, you know, camp crystal lake, which is why it's all set in space. But yeah, originally that was going to be set in the snow in the ice. But there are those, don't never hike alone, and never hike alone in the snow.

I know of them, I'm not sure if I've seen them.

They're really, really good. But yeah, that was just a day away from Christmas for me for that one to watch Jason next. And then I also watched a brand new film. I think brand new.

So I listened to sort of little metallic sounds that you get every once in a while, like springs and things. It seems to be my setup now. It's not like I'm like RoboCop and I move.

RoboCop, RoboCop, I was going to call you RoboCop. Rob, an Irish cop, RoboCop.

RoboCop.

I'm RoboCop. Gav's got a prosthetic leg. That's what is really happening now. Lots of springs in it. Yeah, I, today, I watched Scream 6. A new Scream movie. Now, you know, you think, well, bloody hell, they've made six of them now. Because the first one obviously is a classic. The second one, in hindsight, probably isn't, but it's got that nostalgia because it only came out a year after the first one.

And that's probably the problem is they saw money, so they rushed a sequel through.

Three and four, I don't really have much.

I like four. Three's got some more right bits here and there. I like the Lance Henriksen, the producer, and the actual making of the stab. I think that's quite a fun idea.

Yeah, is that four, is it?

Yeah, three, that's three.

Three, yeah, three's my favorite out of three and four. Well, when I watched five last year, I was incredibly impressed, and I've actually said, I think at the time, and I'll say it again, it's my second favorite screen movie after the first one. Five was really, like, it didn't have any right to be as good as it was, but it was really good.

I'll just say, I know you're about to get on to saying, I didn't like five, went to cinema, I forgot I'd watched it pretty much. Well, no, yeah, I couldn't remember what it was.

Which, you know, and that's fine. I think you should probably revisit it, because it is really good.

I tried to revisit, Charlie Wilder said, yeah, right, we started watching, got about 20 minutes into it, and Charlie said they were bored. And we turned it off. I just was like, I have no interest. I felt like it might be the wrong demograph, but I can't remember any of it at all now.

Well, you may not like number six then, but it was really good. It's not as good as number five, but it follows on.

Is it back in Woodsboro, or is it still at Woodsboro?

No, it's in New York.

Yeah.

That's the good thing about this. And there's a lot of references in it too, weirdly, because it's the directors of Ready or Not. And they wanted to... They were big horror fans, and they wanted to put a few little references in there. And there's a couple of weird Jason Takes Manhattan references in there, just very small ones, lots of meta references. But this one is all about, you know, each screen movie is about a certain aspect of horror.

Yeah, strange.

Apparently, that might be the last one, because the directors, I think they did the fifth one as well. So they wanted to do Five, Six, and Seven as the final sort of trilogy chapter and everything. And it's great. I think they've done a great job. Courtney Cox was fun in it. And if you haven't already seen Scream Seven and you're in the UK, it hit Netflix this week. Scream Six. Six, sorry, I keep saying seven.

Yeah, I realized I've got paramount. I could have watched Scream Six months ago, but I haven't. Yeah, I think it's a, I don't know, I think I feel I might be the wrong generation it's aimed at really now. I feel a little bit maybe.

But I'm your generation.

I know you are, I know you are. You are more likable towards things than myself, I think.

No, but I also, I think, I think watching it on your own without Charlie or anyone else there, not in a cinema, you might enjoy it. I think sometimes you just need to watch stuff on your own. Because if I had been watching it with Alice in the room, I would have been distracted. She would have been talking to me.

But I watched it in the cinema, I wasn't distracted. I was really looking forward to it. I was really excited because it's a screen movie in the cinema. And then I just didn't feel it for myself.

What I like about 5 and 6 and 1, is that they do try to talk about horror and the tropes and they get it right for the most part, but they're very clever with it. Obviously, that was the whole thing with the first screen movie. You know, it was the meta stuff. But I won't keep harping on about it. I just would highly recommend screen 6. You know, it's not as good as 5, but it was for a sixth entry in a franchise that you thought was dead, pretty decent.

It's zombies, right? I'm not excited for zombies.

I'm excited for the comeback of Danny Boyle. I'm excited for the comeback of Alex Garland.

Yeah, totally. We've made a decision because me and Ben were designing a essentially a zombie movie. But it's actually a movie where in a situation could be any thing could be attacking. I would do a werewolf, but we couldn't afford to make a werewolf costume, really like a good one. But we're going to come up with a new creature because it's like, let's not do zombies. It's just so zombies.

I think zombies have their time.

They've had their time.

Walking Dead, you know, there was a point where everything was zombies.

Walking Dead really pushed it out there to the point, and I was like, Season 5 kind of gave up. I went, no more, no more.

Yeah. Well, the trailer for 28 years later looks good. The film looks good. It's got Ray Fiennes in it and a few other bits and bobs in it. I will be checking it out. I am a bit gutted that there, I know now that it's going to probably end on a cliffhanger, and I'm going to have to wait for the second of the three to come out.

So it's basically like a TV series sort of thing.

Yeah. But whatever, we've been waiting for years for a third one, so we're getting it.

I've not really been bothered.

Okay.

But I know it already made sense 28 days, 28 weeks and 20 years, always made sense to have it. But they should really just do it. What they could do, 28 years, part one, part two, part three.

The second one is called 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple.

Is that your house?

That's what I call my house.

Is that your toilet?

No, that's my bed. Moving on. Other bit of news, Return of the Living Dead are returning. We got a teaser trailer for Return of the Living Dead, which is a direct follow on from the 1985 movie set at Christmas. So this will be out in time for next, this will be at next Christmas, Christmas 2025. And it's now been confirmed, there are two Return of the Living Dead movies coming out next year, which I haven't read anything about the second one.

Two more zombie movies?

Yeah, so another couple of zombie movies. They're coming back.

Like I said though, recently I watched, end of at some point in October or before October, I don't know where it was. I just wanted to watch something and saw it and I was like, fuck yeah, put it on. And I was like, man, this movie fucking rules. It is so good. Everything in that movie is so, so good. There's so many good things in that film. We have to cover it because it's so good.

What was it? What?

Return of the Living Dead.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I cannot believe we never covered it.

No, it's so good. Like the acting, the story line, the effects, the music, the punk crew in it. Like so many good. The comedy is all done so, so well.

And then I was like, there was nothing like it at the time.

No, and as it's really weird when you're younger, when you're sort of getting stuff out from video shopping, shit like that, you kind of just, it just all you're a sponge to it all, but you don't really elevate, elevate or put things you say, Oh, that's like, I really like that. You could tell when you like a movie, you know, that's quite a thing, but you don't really differentiate different films so much. Nowadays we can look at it back and then go look back at films and go, Oh, that is shit.

Well, it was in that sweet spot in the mid-80s where we were getting, people were pushing what they could do with practical effects. And then there was some comedic writing being thrown into some of these movies. And there was that turning point. And you can see the turning point in the Jason movies, with Jason Six was around about that time. And that's where the comedy started coming into that. So there was that point in the mid-80s where...

It's just a really fun movie.

Yeah, you want to have fun.

It's like, I want to go and watch a scary movie, but it's got boobs in it. It's got gore in it. It's got talking skeletons and it's got deep. It's deep as well where the skeleton is on the bed saying, you know, I want to...

I can feel myself rotting.

And so it's just like, what the fuck? It's really, really good. So then I was like, oh, that's a part two. So I watched Trader for part two and I was like, I remember this, this is shit.

Well, there's five of them in total.

Yeah, but I mean the original ones. And then obviously the part three has got the kind of goffy chick.

You're pierced up, girl, you know.

Sexy, yeah.

And there's four and five, which are appalling. Four and five are absolutely appalling.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you what goes on in those. But that first movie is really good. So I think is I have to do it nowadays with everything. It makes me really boring or rubbish in some ways. I have to kind of flat base, a flat line, everything, everything that goes on in my life. So I don't get too excited. So I'm not disappointed. Do you know what I mean? So I will wait, I will wait for the film and I won't get excited. I'll just watch it. So that way, you know, hopefully it's good.

Well, another bit of news before we look at films that are coming out end of this year and going into next year, horror films. Quentin Tarantino recently said in an interview, exclusive to that interview, and they were very excited. I've written a TV show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has, yeah.

Eight parts, and I'll be directing every episode of it, and it will be out streaming. So as soon as he's finished up on that, you can imagine the bidding wars between Prime, Netflix and whoever else, Apple TV. Everybody will want to try and grab that.

Yeah, because everybody was going to watch that, watch it. Is that why he gets around not directing movies anymore, start directing TV?

Well, he's got one more, isn't he, in the can. But whether he does it or not, he keeps talking about doing it. He said, I think he's going to end up doing a sequel to one of his previous films. He really wants to do a Kill Bill follow-up.

He was doing the reviewer, no, the critic, and it was going to be called and he stopped.

We'll see what happens with that.

And did you know Ben, Adam Sandler was supposed to be and was written for many, many years to be the Bejee?

Yes, I did. I did know that.

And he was gutted that he had to do something else and couldn't do it.

So Eli Roth stepped in. Yeah. I did know that. Yeah. I like Adam Sandler when he plays straight. Couple of movies coming up then, we got this month, we got Nosferatu hitting cinemas, Robert Eggers.

Yeah. So I will, yeah, I'll be...

I'll try and get to the cinema for that...

at the beginning of January. . So I will go to the cinema.

It's going to be good, I think. It's going to be good. And then going into next year, then we've got, we've talked about some of the sequels, like 28 years later, we got Megan 2.0. I really loved the first one. I only saw it recently. So I'm excited to see that.

I will watch that. Oh, I did watch a horror movie.

Oh, hello.

I watched one with Megan Fox as an AI.

Yes, subservience.

I quite enjoyed that film. Not because of, not because of Megan Fox's era, before you think that, because she is, she is very plasticky looking. She do not mean she is quite plasticky looking, but it's like Arnie was really good as a Terminator, because like acting is, you know, you're not going to give Arnie an Oscar for acting, really. We're still, West of Stone is quite good, but it's a completely different thing.

She's been in a couple of horror movies that I've enjoyed, actually Megan Fox. So that's just it Netflix. And I'll be checking that out over the next week or so.

I think I'm not spoiling anything. But yeah, I think towards the end, I think I kind of just made so much and chained out a bit. But the idea I like, but you know me, I like AI and I like the development of it in some ways. Hopefully in the good ways.

Well, next year, we are going to get a lot of sequels. We're going to get 28 years. We're going to get Megan 2. We're going to get The Return of the Living Dead 6 or 2, whichever they decide to go with it. We're going to get Soul 11. We're going to get Final Destination, the new Final Destination movie. But we're getting some other stuff that I'm excited about, like The Wolfman. I'm really looking forward to Wolfman. I'm sure you've probably seen the trailer for Wolfman. Have you?

I think so.

Yeah. And we're getting probably the one I'm most excited about next year. Jim Mero Del Toro's Frankenstein Man Alive. I don't know anything about it and I don't really want to. I kind of want to just wait really and see it. But that should be good. I think that should be good.

Well, hopefully.

I mean, one can hope. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It depends how many executives have fingerprints on things. I'd also like to think that it will be a good year for independent horror. And I reckon we'll probably have some bangers come out because they've been getting pretty strong. You know.

Indeed. I mean, while we're on a similar subject, substance was just, yeah. Well, for anyone who doesn't know, we both obviously love the substance. But it's been nominated for five Golden Globes, which is incredibly exciting for a body horror film with a lot of practical effects in it. And if it does well in the Golden Globes, it will then potentially go on to at least be nominated. If not, do well in the Oscars the following month. So I'm really, really hoping that that does well.

Well, yeah, this would be probably, well, if you listen to this one day, it'd be old news, I'm sure, and it'd be explained very easily. Well, I like UAPs, you know, otherwise known as UFOs. So this I know is in this drone, so it's not really my type of field. I am, though, interested in what's going on, the same as everyone else is. I think more so if you're in America, because obviously we can say hot off the press that we can probably pretty much say that you can relax a little bit.

Yes. I mean, so to break it down...

Or it could be another division of military.

To bring it down for anyone who doesn't know, there's been over a thousand reports slash videos, and that's a lot of things in the sky.

Well, no, no, no. More than a thousand, a thousand reports. About a thousand drones which have been seen.

Oh, a thousand videos, though, I meant.

Oh, okay. Because there are many reports. Yeah, I think it's...

So people are saying some of them are as big as small cars, which they look like they are, from what you can see. And then there's other reports, and I've seen the videos of these, where they put like a green laser scanner, and they're scanning people, they're scanning cars, they're scanning buildings. It's almost like they're searching for something, which is one of the theories.

Of course they do. Yeah. The only reason, if the government's not telling, but everybody can see it, is either diversion before something very, very major, or they are... As we're trying to fork on, you carry on.

The other theory is that they are testing the waters to how people would react to such.

Yeah, there's always that. Yeah.

Because, yeah, it is weird, and some of them are very big and it probably is quite scary if you're out walking the dog in the dark at night and you see, especially the ones where there's like 12 of them in a row doing like strange. But we know that the drones are very advanced and can do crazy things. You know, we've seen some of the drone shows in China. And when Deadpool Wolverine came out, they did like a whole display of thousands of drones.

There is a video I did see earlier of like, there's a drone just doing the flashy lights, doing the drone thing. Because that's another thing, they've got flashy lights, which is a bit of a weird, it's not really trying very sneakily, but you know, it's letting everyone know we're here. Anyway, so an orange light just comes up, floats around, then goes towards it, then shoots it out the sky, which is really bizarre. But there is also, you know, the chance that they could fake a UFO thing.

Don't worry about JZMP, did he? Look at these UFOs.

They're...

Have you seen the videos of people who have got like a laser pen?

I've got a laser pen.

And well, if you see one of these drones...

They're legal. I mean, I haven't.

If you point your laser pen at these things, they point back at you. They point a laser back at you. That's another weird thing as well.

Unless it's a bigger... Unless it is UFO, and it's a bigger force field, and it's just reflecting off it back to you.

I think Neil deGrasse Tyson, I trust everything he says, and he's told me not to worry. So I'm not going to worry.

I don't think it needs to be worried. And I think it will be weird, no, at some point. But yeah, it's a weird one. But apparently, you know, they have been seen over military bases for the past few years in the UK.

In the UK as well. Yeah. I mean, the last thing I'll say on it really is when there was something to be worried about, which is when those weather balloons were appearing all over America, there was five or six of them. They got shot down immediately by the US.

That's it. And that's why I don't know why it's really that confusing to know if it is the government or not, because surely the government would just put a stop to it. Because you're not going to let a spy just wander up to you with a photograph, take photographs on the ground or something of a military place. And if it is spying, they're going to take it out. So they know what it must be doing.

But for us, our brains, where we like fantasy and horror and science fiction, it is exciting to look at the news daily and just keep on top of what's going on.

Donald Trump's going crazy with it, wanting the government to say what it is. He's just like, get me in there.

The one thing I'm looking forward to about him getting back in is he's apparently going to release lots of stuff.

That is the thing with Donald Trump. At the end of the day, the dude's a businessman. He's going to go in there with business tactics. That's how he's going to do it for the next full term. And the other thing he's could do is because he also is a sort of dude goes down the pub and has a drink at the bar and talks a lot.

And he leaves stuff in bags and bus stops.

That sort of thing. And he's definitely going to be like, fucking, I've seen this, this is going on. That's going to be like, yeah, cool. Bring it on. We want to know these things. So like in some ways, having a, having like this crazy cowboy Donald Trump running the things is going to bring some things which wouldn't, if it was just normal. Do you know what I mean?

And I don't want to turn this too much into your podcast.

Okay. Sorry. I thought you said political, which we never do anyway.

So the other thing is that the timing for this is weird because for the last couple of months, there's been lots of court cases, televised court cases where they've been doing hearings, where they've been given evidence of UFOs and bodies that have been, you know, found at crash sites and stuff like that.

At the end of the day, though, you've got to just take a stop a minute. If you, if you're really is it, because you could just turn all the news off on and just ignore it all. And you're probably nothing else will happen anyway. And but if you do, and there's something major comes out, you do need to stop and look at and think for yourself before you go, oh my God, and share it on social media. You need to stop and go, well, is that really a UFO? Like, come on, that's, do you know what I mean?

There we go. Well, Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Merry Christmas. Let's hope it's just multiple Father Christmases.

What's the difference between a snowman and a snow woman?

Snowballs.

You got it. Oh, there's one of our first Christmas jokes. Well, there we go. Let's have a trailer for a very violent night, cabin.

Let's do it.

You ain't driving, are you? I steer a little bit.

The reindeer do muscle work.

This is my fourth year at the center.

How about you?

I started the whole damn thing.

We decided that you could have one gift. What is it? That is a direct hotline of Santa Claus himself. I can talk to Santa?

Alright, revelers. Welcome to your worst Christmas ever. Let's go! You have $300 million dollars in your personal vault. That's what I want for Christmas.

I don't want any trouble, okay? Soapy's gonna scooch up that chimney.

Who is she? Because it's not your typical mall, Santa.

Santa, are you there? Daddy said you were very busy tonight. Aaaaaaah! My name is Trudy Lightstone. Are you gonna help us, Santa? Yeah, Trudy.

Santa? No, my nice list.

Time for some season's beatings.

Who the hell are you?

Boss, what if he really is the real...

There's no such thing as Santa. These bad men?

They're all my naughty ones.

Naughty?

That's naughty! And what do you do to the naughty ones? I give them a lump of coal.

Where is it?

I gotta watch.

Violent Night, from 2022, rate 15, an hour and 52 minutes. When an elite team of mercenaries break into a family compound on Christmas Eve, a disgruntled Santa Claus must take them out to save both the hostages and his holiday.

Indeed, there's a lot of things to love about this Christmas wise. Santa, some Die Hard references, some Home Alone references. John Niguizamo as someone called Scrooge, who was in Die Hard 2.

I'm sorry. I've always liked him.

Yeah, me too.

I loved him in most things, you know.

In that, you know, Romero movie, the dead movie he did, Land Of The Dead. We've also got Beverly D'Angelo in this as the grandma.

Which, I watched this film last year. I managed to pick it up on DVD and it shot randomly. And amongst all these other random movies, like in a sort of antiquey type shot, it's really weird. Anyway, I was really stoked to get it. And I waited till Christmas, watched it last year, and I was about half an hour into it. And I was like, is that Beverly Angelo? And I didn't even know. Not to say there's anything wrong with her. She's just had plastic surgery.

I know. She's great at it though.

She plays it very well. She plays it like exactly, she kind of looks like she's cast very well, let's say.

Yeah. Yeah. This, you know, okay, I love this movie. That's out there, boom. What I love about it is, it gives me the same feeling that movies like Home Alone, Jingle All The Way, A Christmas Story do, because they managed to hit like a Christmasy, sentimental nerve in me. But this, somehow, this does it at the end. It's almost a bit too cheesy, but I'm there with it.

It is a bit fucking cheesy.

But I'm there with it, because I've been watching Santa, Sledgehammer, Bad Guys, Heads In. What I noticed on this, my second viewing of this, because I bought this last year as well. I just bought it because I knew I'd love it. And I probably will watch this most Christmases moving forward. But this time around, I noticed there's a lot of Jackie Chan references, or that style of fighting anyway, because Santa would just pick up anything around him and use it like John Wick, I guess.

I think somewhere in my notes, I say that if not this, the next movie, but I don't think so. So I think at some point I'll say Jackie Chan for that reason, there's a lot of weapons picking up, well, things around to be used as weapons.

I skates on the ham, that kind of thing.

I think the film should be as tight 90 minutes personally. I think it should just cut something out of it. I don't think it's too long. It gets to a certain point, it does just kind of drag a bit for myself. That's just me. That's just my own opinion. Apart from that, it's a fun film. The first time I watched it, I was kind of, I went in it blind.

Well, I was going to say, it came out probably not the same year, but around the same time as Fat Man, which again, just takes place in a world where Santa is real.

Yeah, so you have to get your mind into that, which is fine, but I wasn't. So when I went to watch this film, so I had to cut you off just then. When I went to watch this film first time, because I hadn't seen it, it kind of just did kind of first kind of spin me out for a little bit. Do you know what I mean? I had to kind of had to find my feet with the film, so to speak. This time around, though, it's different. And so this time around, I think I enjoyed it more.

Yeah, all the bad guys are memorable in it. All the henchmen.

Everything's good. And I tell you one thing, the best thing in this film, absolute best thing in this movie is the composer. The composer is a fucking genius.

I looked him up.

This composer, basically, they said, well, it's obviously diehard references, and it's basically we've taken actually parts of diehard sequences and we're just going to use them, and we say do.

Snowskies, John Noguizamo, the team turn up at the end.

Breaking down and talking about what's going on. It's the exact same thing, which is fine. At first, I was a little bit... The first time I watched it, I was a little bit like, oof, that's diehard. So I think I went in a bit more grumpier with it. Scrooge more stale, Grinch more stale with it last time. This time I was a bit more happy because I knew what was going on. But the composer is absolute genius because there's parts of Die Hard 1, which is not parts of Die Hard 1.

And also the soundtrack, and I've listened to the soundtrack separately. If you listen to the score, it is well-known Christmas songs and carols, but done in a dramatic sort of movie score style. I'll get the best example of that and spoiler alert, but you already know what you're getting into with us. When Santa kind of dies at the end, that scene, it's very dramatic music, sad music playing.

I don't see those two together.

I know, but it is what it is. He's very funny, charismatic guy, I think.

It's really random.

Another reason I love this film is that the opening scene takes place in...

A house.

Bristol.

Oh.

It says Bristol, the United Kingdom.

Oh, cool. I did catch that for some reason.

The reason for that is for Santa to already be delivering presents and the timeline and the difference in time, because it's the afternoon over in America where the family are preparing, and that's why they kind of set it. And so they set it somewhere in the southwest, and they just picked Bristol as the city. So the opening pub that he's in, even though everybody in there sounds like Cockneys, London Cockneys, but it's in Bristol.

I thought it was an English bar in America. I didn't think at all, because then it goes on a roof, and we don't have flat roofs so much. It says Bristol.

All right.

It seems very American, but okay.

It probably was shot there.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, actually, I got a feeling that the exterior shot was probably in Bristol. Maybe. Couldn't tell you where.

I don't know.

But yeah.

You could just look on IMDb and say, oh, I can look now.

Well, you do that and we'll get started. Well, you already know that Gav and I like this film.

Like I say, I wish it was a nice 80s action type 90 minutes.

Yeah. So it's probably 10 minutes longer than you'd like it to be.

That's an hour and 50s. I'd like it 90 minutes, an hour and a half.

For me, it doesn't outstay its welcome because we've already touched on it, but the cast are all great. Even the bad guys, the little girl that plays Trudy, Leah Brady, normally kids in films can be quite grating, but she's really good in it. Quite sweet.

It was all shot in Canada.

Oh, there we go. And I also really like some of the side characters, like the guy that's the action John Claude Van Dipshit, as they call him at one point. He's great in it. And it's just fun. And it doesn't hold back on the violence, like, you know, shooting people in front of their kids, trying to get somebody's nuts cut off in front of his kids, you know, that kind of thing. It doesn't hold back on the violence at all, really.

No, no, not at all.

And it's just very refreshing, really. And I read a really funny comment on Facebook from one of our supporters and friends, Keith Huckfield. Shout out to Keith. We don't give you many shout outs, Keith, but Keith said he thinks it's really funny that people will turn up their noses at films like Rambo, Leave The Weapon, Die Hard. They're not Christmas films, they're action films.

And it's like I said, if they're set or themed, or both, that's the difference where Die Hard isn't themed to a Christmas movie, but it's set at Christmas.

Yeah.

But you do have in the score Christmas bits and bobs, like the bells, like I said earlier.

And the whole thing takes place at a Christmas party, you know, there's no question about Die Hard.

Yeah, it's set at Christmas.

I think Rambo is, I think First Blood, sorry, is pushing it, because it's nothing to do with Christmas, and really, you only see a Christmas tree, but no one really talks about Christmas in it or anything like that. You know, leave the weapon. Yes, okay, it starts off again, very Christmassy. And that all dies.

It's like Jaws, Jaws, The Revenge. That is set at Christmas, but it's not really Christmas themed.

Why did you sound a bit Michael Caine then?

Hello.

That is set at Christmas.

Hello. Well, my name is Michael Caine.

There's a fucking shark coming here for Christmas.

A shark bit off my knob. I said, oh, you shark, fuck off.

There you go. And I did see Santa Shark for a few years ago, which is awful. Yeah. But anyway, Violent Night, should we get into it? Let's do it. Merry Christmas. We start off with Bristol, England, like I say, and it's Christmas Eve. Santa's in a pub. David Harbour sat in the pub. He's drunk.

You got a couple of, seems to be a couple of, this is what I thought it was, because the other guy is a dress up part of Christmas. You got a couple of them at the bar, a woman, they were kind of pissed.

Yeah. Another Santa comes in, a fake Santa, and he says, Oh, here you go, buy my friend a drink to the barmaid. And she says, she said, God, he's had enough already, but okay. And he says to David Harbour, how long have you been Santa? And he just sort of goes, too long. Obviously, it's been about a thousand years for him. Yeah. And he says, but I don't know, fucking kids. He actually hates kids, really. He says, they're so fucking expectant and ungrateful. And most of them just want cash.

She sees it. She sees him flying away with his reindeer and then he pukes up over the side.

Well, it's such a sweet moment. It really, and they've done it so well, because you're instantly like the magic of like watching Santa Claus, the movie or something, and you're like, oh my God. And she sees him. She's like, he's real. And then as he flies past her, exactly as you've just said, he chucks up all over her face.

She still smiles after the shock of the puke. So it's got chunky puke on her face.

But that one's going to be.

Is it special, though? You know, should I wash this off? Because it's Santa Claus' puke on my face. Should I scrape it off and put it in something?

What would you rather have him do out of the sleigh all over your face? Would you rather have?

Shit, cum, piss, puke, bleed.

I'd rather have the piss, I think. Although the cum, he'd have to really be a good shot. But then he's Santa, so he's probably a really good shot.

Bleeding is a bit weird.

Yeah.

There's a load of blood just falls on you. Like Santa's blood. Is that kind of like a Dracula type scenario going on here? Are we going to get fucking Santa's blood on us, and you turn into some sort of version of Santa?

Yeah, you become a mortal and you can teleport.

A slightly different one, I reckon. Kind of a cross-race racial human Santa Claus mixed hybrid thing going on there, I think. So what's going on?

Maybe that's what the elves are. They've sucked Santa's blood.

Me and you, it's like kind of weird father Christmases. Well, to be honest, you're sitting in a... Your beard's got great hinges and you're in a red jumper. Not saying you're fat, but you look Christmassy. So we could be those hybrid Christmases. Not Father Christmas's son of father, Father-in-law Christmas, or something. Slightly not as good as father.

Cousin Christmas.

Cousin Christmas. Sounds like a porn actress.

Great. Well, this scene really sets up what you're gonna get with this film, because you are gonna get spring cleans of magic, that Christmas magic you feel from some of your favorite Christmas films. They managed to capture it very well, but then instantly ending in violence, or in this case, puke in the face. Yeah. And he flies off when we get the title come up, Violent Night. And we immediately are in Greenwich, Connecticut, where we meet the main family. Very rich family.

As far as I can establish, they've been, because I can't understand, because I've been sort of in the same sort of situation. They've been separate for a year and they were married. We jump into it. It's not really a spoiler, doesn't matter. The mum, because as myself, I was trying to detect what is the issue because they seem to be fine. You know, what's the problem? Apparently, the mother is too sort of like overbearing.

Mother-in-law, yeah.

Yeah, well, it's his mother, her mother-in-law, overbearing a bit of a, you know, keeping them saying basically, I'll pay for everything, don't worry about it. But you do what I sort of say sort of thing under their wing a bit too much and they need to get out of it.

Watch there, she is an incredibly rich businesswoman, Beverly D'Angelo, as Gertrude. And yes, so she has a daughter and a son, the son being the dad of this family we're seeing at the moment.

And the daughter's got a thing going on at the house we get to.

With John Crawford and dipshit. And basically, they kiss her ass, their whole life they've been kissing her ass because they want the inheritance, they want the money, they want to be in the business, they feel like they can't leave.

Well, he's not as bad as her.

Yeah, he's not.

That's the dynamic.

So that's part of the reason for the split up. And they've got a daughter called Trudy, played by Aaliyah Bradley. And like I said, she doesn't great. She's one of those few rare child actresses in a film, especially in a film, Christmasy film, that doesn't great on you. She's really nice and she sort of makes a little comment like, hey, I watched this old movie called Home Alone yesterday. Really old movie. It was great. So she's got that in her head.

It's actually a kind of very nice way for Marge and someone to actually mention the thing directly.

Yeah. Well, they do it with Die Hard as well, don't they? Die Hard on Blu-ray, he says later on.

Yeah, they do. They know everybody's going, that's Die Hard.

I mean, you've got John Nick Wasamo is in it again. You know what you're doing really. But they were so pleased when they got him on board. They must have been so happy. So that's the dynamic, exactly as Gav's described. We've got this couple who are getting back together for Christmas, just to sort of hang out with the in-laws, his mum. There's no sign of the dad, so I'm assuming he's dead. I think he is. I think they mention it later on. And they get to the mansion, Gav.

It's that late mid to late 80s, going into 90s action film, really, isn't it? The set up of the catering company, who are bad, naughty caterers. They're not really a catering company. They don't have their hygiene certificates, guaranteed. They've got gun certificates instead.

But they're so rich. I mean, Beverly D'Angelo Gertrude, she's so rich that just for her two siblings and their children and partners, she's got this mansion, obviously, where she lives, but she's got it set up like fucking Santa's Grotto times a thousand with presents and decorations everywhere. There's booze everywhere, mince pies. It's just like a dreamland. It's like Willy Wonka's Christmas Land. And it's brilliant. And I wish I was there.

I love his Christmas presents, Beverly D'Angelo. It's basically an info pack of my next movie. I want to make it. Do you want to fund it? So my present to you is you giving me money.

He says some present, the best presents are opportunities.

He says it's an opportunity.

That's brilliant. And that's it. That's in his head. In his head, he's like Van Damme and his heyday, you know, or Chuck Norris or Seagal. He's like, I can take on anyone.

Yeah, I think he thinks he's like Brad Pitt or something.

But later on, he's going to be put in a terrorist situation and realize...

Jumps out the window.

Although he does a couple of moves.

Not really.

But he also bursts out the window crying and running off.

Yeah. And then we get to seeing the caterers. We do get a throwaway line, which obviously is going to be a foreshadowing, where she says, you're the worst catering company, just as the camera is kind of passing.

And we should also mention that Jean-Claude Van Dipchit's white girlfriend, Alva, the sister of the family, she's got a son from a previous relationship who is called Bert. Bert Trude is his real name. Apparently they named after his grandma, Bert Trude, because she's such a butt kisser. But then Trudy's real name is Bert Trude as well. So they're all butt kissing their mums so much, they've named their children after her.

Yeah, it'd be alright.

But he plays it so well, the kid who plays it plays it so well.

We both don't like him, so yeah. And we've seen this dynamic in many a film, like sort of your knives out type movies and all these sort of things, like families go along to a ready or not stuff and families all gather together in a big house and shit goes down in the house. National Lampoon. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And this is just films basically National Lampoon as well, really, isn't it? Okay.

That's what pushes so many buttons for me. Well, while all that's happening and they're all getting together, we get a little montage of Santa doing what he's doing. So this is the real, we're pulling back the curtain here and it's not that magical thing we've all been told. He is drunk, he's going in and out of people's houses, eating mince pies, tripping over.

I'm totally lying. The next film is definitely National Lampooner's Vacation.

Wrong movie. That too. But the next one has got some of these elements as well. Yeah, so Santa is getting more and more dejected. Every house he goes into under the tree.

He's getting this present-giving montage.

There's Amazon Prime boxes. He's like, what's the point? One of the gifts is money and he's putting cash in one of the stockings. And he's like, why am I even bothering? And we find out later on that his magic, the stronger the belief in him, the stronger his magic and the stronger his strength. So obviously he's probably going to be losing some of his strength because every year kids just want money and PlayStations.

He just can't be fucked anymore. What's the point? It's good. Yeah, I start to feel like that as I get old, my kids get older.

It's very funny seeing though, very funny montage of him up and down chimneys. So we can see that he can do his chimney thing.

Which is funny because that comes to play later. One thing earlier on when we see the douche martial artist, when all of a sudden the woman says, kiss me in front of my son and just starts snogging and is like, what? Why? Why do you need your son to see that? I don't understand what lesson this is for your son.

It's very strange. Poor little Trudy, she sets out some treats for Santa, cookie and some milk and a few little bits and bobs. And then her dad Jason realizes, oh shit, I haven't really got her anything. How am I going to do the whole Santa thing? So he runs off back to his old games room and he finds a walkie talkie. And this is all very good setup for how other characters can talk to other characters and stuff.

Yeah, I did like earlier when the grandmother, the mother turns up and they're all sort of like, quick, get in line, get in line. And says, what's your angle, man? Because he's chilling at the back, because he doesn't have, but he does though, because he's basically, what is it, a spoiler, he's basically already stolen her money.

300 million, I think, is what 30 million.

Hidden it outside to get it later on. It's such a dumb thing to do. Why don't you take 2 million? Do you know what I mean? It's a really weird thing to take so much. Just because it's there, you don't, you know. Anyway. Greed. So he's just as bad, to be honest with you, as all of them. I don't think there's anyone good in this, really.

Well, we cut quite quickly to Sansa arriving at this mansion. He lands on the roof, steps in reindeer shit. Which one of you fuckers did this? You know, shit in there. If it was you, I'm going to kick your... Rudolph wouldn't have pulled this shit.

Remind me of beans a little bit. I don't know, beans?

Well, they kind of like laugh at him a little bit, don't they, the reindeer? And they really get a little fun moment much later on. So you think the reindeer are little dicks when they run away, but you realize why they run away later, which is brilliant. And so then Santa jumps down, well, he magics himself down the chimney, and he lands and he eats the cookies that Trudy's put out for him. He eats a candy cane.

Can I actually got my notes that not that long ago, I sat in the exact massage chair.

There we go. I know you well.

Because occasionally I work in places, I have rooms for relaxation, these very luxurious places. And they sometimes have like just these fancy chairs. And this one's in there. And do you know what? Hurt my back for three days. You get in there and you go into it. You feel like you're in the flight of a navigator or some shit. You're cocooned in a chair. Then all of a sudden it's like fists are in it going ah ah ah ah pushing on you so hard that yeah.

I've done it at airports, but the ones you see at airports, I put a pound in.

Yeah, yeah.

And exactly that. It felt like somebody was like really pushing it. You had a brick and you were just backing.

Oh my God. Oh, fuck.

I wasn't expecting it. It was like the chair. It was like sitting in the chair from Ghostbusters.

I thought this could be good.

Imagine the chair from Ghostbusters sitting in that and all the hands in that.

Yeah, yeah.

This isn't a massage.

But they're trying to fist you. It's P Diddy in a chair.

Jesus Christ.

Alleged. Do you know Beverly D'Angelo was 75?

Yeah.

Fair enough. Ten years younger than my dad.

She doesn't look a day over. I can't tell because she's had so much plastic surgery. But there we go.

Why would my dad get some plastic surgeries to look like that?

Jesus Christ.

Not that I look like Beverly D'Angelo. I want me to look like this. It's not a hairdresser, sir.

Yeah. Well, some people do it, don't they? I want to look like Barbie. I want to look like Ken. I want to look like Brad Pitt. Yeah.

We did an episode on it on The Hostages.

You did. Now, while Santa's upstairs relaxing in this chair, the bad staff make their move, the catering firm. They all get a little beep, beep, beep, beep on their Apple watches. They sync their watches up and it's time for them to make the move. They pull the Wi-Fi and the phone lines to cut the communications outside of the house. And John Nguezamo shows up, aka Mr. Scrooge. Now, the cool thing is they've all got nicknames. They've got Krampus, you've got Gingerbread, Candy Cane, Mr. Scrooge.

And again, to give a house off to the composer again, when we get cut in between Santa Claus having a drink, or his legs up, just trying to enjoy himself, they always got left for his giving out presents and shit.

And you might not notice this on your first, maybe even your second watch, but David Harbour, he plays Santa very well. And I know he's a different Santa, but the way he sort of balances glasses on the end of his nose or inspects the milk, and then he drinks it and sort of says, well, skimmed. But he does things like you'd expect Santa to do, like an old man that's been doing this for a thousand years. He plays it so well, nothing's new to him. He's seen it all. It's really fun.

I've got to say, if anything, though, it's made Santa Claus' night a bit more exciting, but surely, I guess, over the years of doing this, he's seen shit happen and he's obviously, I'm the fuck out of here, fits his nose and just gets the fuck out of there.

Well, he immediately shits himself like, oh, he kind of brawls his eyes.

Yeah, he's probably like, oh, not another shooting or something.

And the family say, we're heading to the panic room. And they're like, follow Gertrude, follow grandma to the panic room. But before they can get there, Scrooge turns up, aka Mr. Leguizamo. He takes out the bodyguards and he drops the line, bah humbug, motherfucker. Which I'd loved, Samuel Jackson. Imagine him as Scrooge in this, dropping lines like that. That would be great. But he pulls it off and Santa decides, well, what should I do?

By the way, John Luke, what's his name?

John Leguizamo. Just call him Scrooge. He's called Scrooge in this.

Oh, Scrooge. OK, John. Just Johnny Scrooge. Could be his pump name.

Oh, Jally Scrooge.

Oh, his gangster name. Hey, Jally Scrooge has got it. He's the one who ratted us out.

Are you in that film in Home Alone now?

I guess so.

Keep the change, you filthy animal.

He's gone to the gate house, sort of gate house. Hello, Cool J hangs out in Halloween H2O. And is shot. He shoots the security guard and he's basically coming in that way. So the character is already in there. He hasn't done the rules of being a caterer. He's just walking in as the boss.

I felt like there was a bit of a Die Hard reference there because that and he happens to be black. The guy he kills is called Owl.

Well, and again, I've got to say there is a resemblance as well. Yeah. And if you're not picking up on it, like I did subconsciously, because you're hearing the same little sounds, the exact same instrumentation of Die Hard's score at the same points as well, because I did it earlier as well at another point. At the same point in this movie, at the same point in Die Hard, you subconsciously could be thinking, Die Hard.

We get an explanation now as to why Santa can't leave as well. And whether it's because he's drunk or whether because children aren't believing in him as much, he cannot magic himself out the chimney. So he's got he's got Brewers droop. He can't magic himself out of the chimney.

Why can't he do it?

Because, well, I said it's either because he's drunk or because the children don't believe in me. He explains later on, if children don't believe in me as much, then I lose some of my strength and my power.

So why does it come back later?

Because they say they believe in him.

But what if he goes into a house generally and he gets down and it happens, but everyone's asleep? He has to wake him up and say, believe in me.

He hasn't met anybody all night that believes in him. It's just Amazon parcels in houses and money asking for cash.

So this is the first time it's got...

He's going to speak to Trudy soon and he's going to realize there is at least one little girl out there.

I think then they should have played it where he was a bit more shocked when he couldn't get up there.

Well, he was just going, fuck, fuck.

Yeah, but he's playing it like it's happened before. I think he should have played it more short.

Yeah, I get that. One of the machine gunners sees him. Hey, you get down here. So he goes down, he headbutts him and they get into a big scrap.

It's a fairly decent fight because you look at him. Obviously, he's in the Santa Claus. He's got padded and stuff, but he's a big old fella. Yeah. Even if he doesn't know my slots, if he picks you up and throws you, it's probably going to hurt.

Well, that headbutt alone almost knocks the guy out. Yeah. And then he takes the guy out and eventually knocks him out and the machine gun goes off, blasts through the roof, which scares the reindeer.

And they fly away. And he's like, no, no!

Yeah. And it's very Jackie Chan style, this fight scene. He's grabbing everything he can around the room. It's just a great bit of action, as is all the action in this really, and funny as well. He ends up stabbing him and throws him out the window, but he gets pulled out the window as well. The guy dies and he looks up and the bad guy's been impaled on an icicle. So we've got another little diehard reference there.

So straight one percenter. Impaled on a thing. He went out the window. And luckily he didn't fall on it as well and pale himself. But this dude did. And he's dead.

And Scrooge now doesn't hold back in the next scene.

This house must be so big that every time these things happen, nobody else hears it.

No, no one really heard many of the gunshots. A few people heard it, but.

Which is crazy. Or the fight or the massive fight.

Well, John Liguizano, aka Scrooge, introduces himself to the family. You know, he walks into the room, singing, Violent Night, Gory Night. And Gertrude says, you must not know who you're dealing with. And he walks straight up to her and punches her. So straight away, boom.

And while this happened very quickly, outside Santa's going, should I go or should I stay? And he starts to walk away and he goes, uh, and goes and has a look through the window and kind of sees what we described now.

Yeah, he sees Trudy, he sees that there's bad guys in there, and he thinks, I can't leave her. And this is where the action star guy, who's called Morgan Steele, he's supposed to be like this badass action star. He sort of shows off a bit, like, you know, I could take out these terrorists, you know, I've done this in a couple of my movies, maybe I could take them out.

Who does it get slapped in the face?

But Gertrude, the mother of the family says, well, you might have punched me in the face, and you might think you know what you're doing, but I can tell you right now that my kill squad are on their way. And Gertrude says, lady, do you think I haven't done my research? This is the richest family in America. I know about your kill squad and I know how to deal with them. I've done my research. We've been studying your house for months and months. We know all the ins and outs of it.

She stole them. She was supposed to go to needy people and she decided to take it. What a cunt. Yeah. It would be rubbish, though, if you were born into this wealth, like her son, and all you know is you can have anything anytime you want. It's not a problem. Do you know what I mean? And then all of a sudden you're like, I don't want this anymore. I want to go do something myself. It must be such a weird and hard thing.

It does happen though. I was reading about the rapper Lil Wayne. His son said to his dad, I don't want any of your money. I want to make my own way. I want you to help me start a business up, if that. And then I want to do everything on my own and make my own money. So it does happen. I think people do go the other way.

Of course there will be, but I mean, sometimes it must be really hard though if you just, if you have grown into it and you're bored, that's your life, you know that. I guess it's, I guess it's kind of like coming to America.

But you don't know real life, do you? Like Michael Jackson and any children that Bill Gates will have or whatever. You know, it's just, you don't know real life. You do not know anything hard in life.

And that's why you get sometimes certain parties, only that class of person will be at that party. Or if it's major A-list actors, all the other people at the party will be major A-list actors. Because they don't really know how to be with other people and stuff.

It'd be great. I mean, I'd love that for my children, as you would, you know, to know that they're never going to need anything in life or have to worry about anything.

Of course, safety blanket. But at the same time, I want them to know the real world. But also, we wouldn't have some of the people out in the world who were like, fuck, I've got nothing and I need to make something. And the drive made them, pushed them to do stuff that we all enjoy and entertain.

Like Richard Ransom. You know, he went from nothing and he just had an idea. Richard Ransom.

Oh yeah.

You know, there are people. But the writing in this film is great because they've just mentioned the safe, etc. And that leads us nicely into the next scene, which is, let's break into this safe. You know, and it's simple, but it's a nice lead into the safe, you know. And that's again, it's a diehard thing. You know, we're breaking into a safe. It's very high tech. Scrooge has been told about, hang on a minute, there's a dead guy upstairs. One of them hasn't checked in. We found his body.

They've been told. So they all go to have a look outside.

He says, we've got to go for.

Yeah, so they know someone's there. And this is if you probably put the percentage of this film up against Die Hard. This is probably the exact same point in Die Hard where they discover one of, well, it's now have machine gun, ho, ho, ho.

And Sansa thinks, well, I'm going to have to help out now. So he starts looking in his sack for a weapon. That all sounded a bit wrong, didn't it? Because the henchman enters the games room and he's got nothing. It's a bit Shaun Of The Dead now where they're throwing records at the zombie. He's just throwing what he can out of his sack.

It's really good fight, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, it starts off with him throwing a blu-ray of Die Hard and a few other things.

Yeah. And this is what I've actually got to remind me of Jackie Chan fight.

It really does.

This one. I love the use of Jackie Chan. Obviously couldn't do that. But if Jackie Chan had thought about being the father of Christmas or something, he would definitely be not. I can definitely use this bag where if the guy punches into the bag, it doesn't hit me. It goes into the bag. It's such a good shield.

So to paint the picture for anyone that hasn't seen this, the bag is like a portal.

Yeah, basically.

And Santa doesn't even...

He doesn't know what he can pull out.

He says, I don't understand the magic and how it works. All I know is I pull out a present and it's the right present for that household.

So is he pulling out... Because that guy would have like die hard for Blu-ray. Then who's attacking him? Probably more likely.

Or maybe that was the present for the Morgan Steele guy. Maybe that was his present.

I don't know. But I do really like the fact whatever he's pulling out, he's trying to attack him. But then when he puts it up in front of him as a shield, the dude punches it and it goes right through. It's really good.

And then we get a Jackie Chan scene now, because in Rush Hour, Jackie did this in a pool hall. And we're in a games room and there's a pool table. So Sansa starts putting balls in. He rips the pocket off and he's using the balls to whip the guy in the face.

Scum as well.

Scum, Seagal has done it as well. It's really... My god, you know how hard... Everybody knows how hard a snooker ball or a pool ball is. It's going to fucking hurt.

I'm your fucking daddy.

He also grabs some darts off the dartboard and throws them at the guy. The guy pulls out a big knife and goes to stab him and it goes into the Santa sack. And he ends up using a Christmas star off the tree, stabs him in the eye with it. The guy's still all about coming at him. So he plugs it in.

He plugs it in. So that's what you got to do. If he sets his head alight. So, you know.

It literally sets his head on fire and Santa sort of just looks at it like, wow.

He does die hard style, picks up the walkie talkie that the fucking guy's starry eyed guy's got.

And he speaks into it. And it's Trudy. Trudy hears him.

Yeah. She's like Santa and he's like, oh, funny enough, it actually is.

And he says, who's this? She said, I'm Trudy. And he looks at his list and he says, oh, you're on the nice list. And she says, we need help. He's like, okay, I'm going to help you.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I'm doing so much help. I've still got to live all these presents.

But there's a funny joke that recurs a couple of times now where she says to him, I need you to ram coal up these guy's asses. And he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're on the nice list. You know, try not to swear. She goes, buttholes? And he says, no, you can't still can't really say that.

Anuses.

Anus. Because, OK, that we can say anus. Yeah. And later on, he says it back to him. He says, I'm going to kick these guys anuses. It's just a funny little recurring thing between how Santa probably would actually speak to a child.

You know, they found the gatehouse guy dead.

Yes, they see some CCTV footage as well of Santa creeping around and they're like, there is another person here. Another person has been killed. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? There is another guy. There's a loose cannon. Someone dressed as Santa. Security guy's dead.

They do get some communication, walkie talkie. And this is straight out of Die Hard. Basically, who are you? What you doing? What you doing?

Who the fuck am I?

This is exactly Die Hard.

You can call me Mr. Fucking Scrooge. Who's this? Santa. Okay, Santa. And he says, let the family go, and I'll leave you alone.

I like that, though. You could have like a Mortal Kombat. Scrooge versus Santa.

That would be amazing. Krampus versus Santa, we've seen. And he says, one little line before he drops the walkie talkie, he just says, Santa Claus is coming. It's just like, it could be cheesy, but it's done so well that I was like, this is great, I'm here for this.

I like the fact they use a nutcracker on the dude's finger in the house now.

Yeah, they say, It's a torture device. Who's the guy you've hired as Santa? And Gertrude's like, I haven't hired a Santa.

Yeah, because she's like, I haven't got a Santa, but it would be like, you would hire a Santa. That's the sort of thing, they've got the money, easy.

Yeah.

So I understand his questioning.

So they grab Jason and they go, we're going to torture you. Get one of these nutcrackers. Now a nutcracker soldier, some of them actually are for cracking nuts.

Yeah.

They put his finger in it. I wasn't expecting the finger, but he got the nuts with you.

No, I wasn't. I love when he says to the woman, because one of the baddies here is a lady as well. Says like, okay, grab one of his balls. And she's like, I'm not grabbing his ball. Says, but I've seen you like-

Scoop brains out of somebody's head.

Yeah, scoop brains out of someone's head. He says, if you want me to scoop my brains out of his head, I'll scoop the brains out of his head, but I'm not touching this ball. But the other guy, the weird, the really weird elf-

He's called Cram first, that guy.

The Cram, oh right, because he plays a bit of a character in it. He's got some things wrong with him. Something happened to him when he was a young child, which shouldn't have happened. He's like, yeah, I'll get the testicle, happily. And goes over there, but they are stopped.

Yeah, so they're going to put his nuts into the cracker.

The girl stops him, the young girl.

By the way, guys, all of this is happening in front of Jason's daughter. So his own daughter has already seen his finger get broken. So she sees his nuts get cracked.

Yeah, so she stops it, screams, Santa get mad and says, Santa's not real.

Santa isn't real. Oh, my God. What a heartbreak. And again, a heartbreaking scene like you would get in a Christmas film in the middle of all of this nonsense. What a way for her to find out that Santa's real, her dad tells her he's not real. Me and mummy just lie to you to make you feel better about Christmas. It's just a terrible way to find out. Did you hear about that vicar in the UK this week? A priest in the UK was giving a talk in a school to a bunch of 8-year-old kids.

Why did he do that?

Well, they're investigating it now, and he's in big trouble. But the worst bit about it was, he said, one of the little kids put their hand up and said, this is like a 7- or an 8-year-old kid, but he eats the biscuit I put out for him. And the priest said, no, no, your mum and dad eat that. So he even ruined that for them. He ruined the whole thing for them. What a bastard.

They're about to find out soon anyway.

Oh, but come on. Well, Trudy runs off somewhere into the depths of this mansion, and we end that scene there, because she's upset that Santa isn't real, even though she's spoken to him on the phone.

Santa, in fact, is injured, and he has got tribal tattoos and has a kind of a predator moment where he heals himself up.

Rambo, to me.

Rambo, Rambo, Rambo.

He sews himself up with wrapping paper and gift tag string. And yeah, he's got all these viking tattoos all over his back, and now we get our first little flashback to-

Yeah, he passes out, and he's just standing there in the battlefield with a helmet on and then cuts out, and you're like, what the fuck's this? Well, you do find out later.

Yeah, so in this movie, Santa Claus or St. Nick or Sinterklaas was originally a warrior, a fierce viking warrior who has penance for killing so many people, was given the task of being a saint and having to every year give every child in the world a present. It's a really interesting backstory, kind of ties in with some of the legends of Santa, and it just adds an extra layer, because you're like, oh shit, this guy can probably handle himself then.

He talks to the girls in the Loft and Warg talkie and it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they go on and on and on and on. And this is like, stop talking now. Let's get back to some action. That's my opinion.

To summarize this scene, she basically says, I'm in the attic. I've set some traps like in Home Alone. Are you real? My dad said you weren't real. They chat about kids who don't believe and do believe. She says, well, I do believe. And he says, well, I know I can prove you I'm real, Sansa. Because last year you asked for this, the year before you asked for that, the year before. And he knows everything she's ever had for Christmas. So she's like, OK, you are real.

Yeah, it didn't need to be so long.

Cut back to Gav's favorite, Cranpus the Weirdo. And he says, I've got an idea.

There's open presents.

Why don't we all open our fucking presents up and see what we got each other?

This is when the douche bag, John Claude van Douche bag says, I'll give you a present. And we said, well, that was the gift of funding my film.

And the mother-in-law doesn't look impressed with that.

It's a pitch deck.

Alva's picture is a photo of her as a baby, which mother-in-law's like, what the fuck are you giving me this for? Get rid of that. Jason's just given her a card and she reads it. We don't get to find out at the time what it is. We assume it's him saying, I no longer want to be part of the business or the family business or the family full stop. But actually, what he's written in there is, I stole the 300 million. Fuck you.

I was pretty crap one Christmas. I don't know. I'm sure I gave her stuff to my mum, but I think I must have been a bit pissed. It must have been Christmas evening. I was like, oh fuck. And I had a picture of myself. So I stuck it on. I glued it onto a magnet. So it'd be like a fridge magnet. And I said, I've seen it.

I've seen that on your mum's fridge.

And it says, yeah, and it says love from Magna Gav. And I think I was pissed because I asked you to explain it to me.

She was really disappointed because I asked you to explain it to me. And you were like, you just laughed. And I think we were quite busy. It was one of these charity things you had at your mum's house.

Oh, really?

And I asked your mum about it. And she said, oh, Gav gave that to me a few years ago. Oh, and so now you've explained it. Now I understand why your mum was laughing when I asked you.

But she's only laughing then for the politeness. She didn't like it.

Well, Santa also explains to Trudy his backstory. He was a warrior who used a hammer, a giant sledgehammer called the skull crusher. And he says, you know, I've done lots of bad things. Trudy says, well, maybe you can use your old skills, you know, to save everybody and to beat these guys up and ram your hammer up their anus. And then he just says to her, okay, you stay safe in the attic. I'm going to go to town. So Santa is now decided he's going to take apart this.

Is this when the Snowbobills have turned up?

Not quite. Although Scrooge now gets a notification that the extraction team are only 30 minutes away. So Gertrude's like, my team will be here in 30 minutes.

And that's trying to establish to us that these guys on the mopeds are mopeds. Snowbills are her kill squad or whatever. Basically, her security.

But if you've seen Die Hard 2, you know exactly where that's going to go.

But yeah, it goes the same way.

It's brilliant, isn't it? Santa fights the girl called Candy King now. She is fucking violent and brutal, isn't she? Jesus Christ. No wonder she's the only woman on the team, right?

It reminds me of Candy King.

She's Candy King. So while he's fighting her, and he's doing a good job, Santa's fighting her, Scrooge shows up, like Guasamo, and he shoots a fire extinguisher, which blows Santa backwards and knocks him out. They tie him up. Trudy's watching all this from the vent above in the attic. She can see it all going down. And while he's knocked out and he's tied up in the chair, they find his magic bag, and they realize there's something weird about this bag because I can't find the bottom of it.

I could tell you, not from experience, but I could tell you it would be a painful situation. And it's smell of hair.

I have once singed to buy a candle once.

How?

Let's just say a long time ago, somebody and I were having a little wax experiment. And yeah, it was a long time ago.

What are you, some 90s movie?

Or wax on each other. So yeah, he is...

I'm totally lost in my notes, by the way. I completely, absolutely for some reason, I don't know where I am. So you carry on and I'll join in when I can.

Well, at this point, Scrooge, look with ammo, just tells his backstory. This is why I hate Christmas, because as a child, I saw my rich neighbors get everything they wanted and we got nothing. So I went next door to rob the house.

Have they opened the safe yet and it's empty?

Not yet. And when he was robbing the house as a child, he accidentally killed the old man who lived in it by knocking him down the stairs. And he doesn't know if he did it on purpose or not, but either way, that started his journey into darkness. Santa says, come on, Jimmy, he knows his name. Come on, Jimmy. And how does he know your name? And he knows all their real names and all their presents. And Scrooge is trying to explain it. Now he's saying you got a bite for Christmas.

They just shoot him.

Yeah, and they blow him away. And you're like, oh, this is diehard too.

And Santa sees this on the rooftop and he's like, fuck. So they start shooting at him. Yeah, he has to jump off the roof.

And the leader of the kill squad says, you four go off, get that Santa, kill him. Let's open the safe.

Well, they open the safe and it's empty.

There's fuck all in there. And Johnny Leguizamo, Johnny Scrooge is not happy.

Johnny Scrooge.

About this at all. Santa manages to head into a great big shed outside with lots of tools and equipment in it. Fantastic.

I was hoping it was almost a homage to Commando, but you know.

Or Evil Dead. But it could be if we wanted. She gives him one last pep talk over the walkie talkie. Come on, you can do this. Remember, you know. There's going to be a way. Tell me about it. Is that Mrs. Claus? And he talks about her and says, I just hope I see her again one day. And while he's talking, the ring slips off his finger, rolls over and makes him look at a sledgehammer. And he's like, great. And I've just written here, amazing sledgehammer scene, because it is amazing.

I don't like the really cheesy ballad that I play over the top. It's really bizarre.

I can't remember the song.

It's really cheap and cheesy. A bit weird choice.

But then it goes outside slightly. And again, it's a cheesy line, but it works so well. Santa grabs a grenade, shoves it down the guy's trousers and says, And you have to watch.

Oh, I'm going to have to watch.

Well, first of all, he says, there's a little stocking stuffer for you. And then as he walks away, like we always know in action films, you don't look at the explosion. You're really cool. But as he's walking away, he's like, I've got to watch this. And the guy goes everywhere, explodes. And then he just goes, holy shit. So he does the ho, ho, holy shit. And I was just creasing up, laughing at that bit. It's just so good.

We find out that dad basically says, I took the money. Again, why did you take 300 million? Even 100 million if you had to. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. He reveals this because Linda's got a gun pointed at her. And the mum says that that was what the note said. So it all comes out now. They will have a big family argument.

I like to have the carers go looking up the loft for the young girl, and they approach the ladder and they look up and they're like, fuck off with your fucking nails sticking through her fucking, his head height is like fifth step up. There's a nail coming through.

Oh Gav, this bit.

And he's like, yeah, what? He looks back at the woman. Yeah, nice one. And as he steps up, it's such a simple thing. As he steps up, one of the, maybe the second, maybe the second step's been cut, been weakened. So as soon as he steps on it, with all his weight, his chin goes on to the, all the way through with the nail on the step. So good. It's so easy and simple.

He's going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

And he's been so cocky about it as well. Anyway, they try and get, but it's a really fun sequence now, of really extreme violence, home alone on the adult version.

Yeah, because she's firing bowling balls at them, using one of those elastic, bam, thingsy thingsy.

One kills him. Why is he at the bottom? He never even makes it up the stairs. He never even gets up there. He's laughing, thinking whatever.

The thing is, this scene is so cheesy and funny, but it works because every time a bowling ball, she doesn't hit the girl.

It hits him in the face or whatever.

We know it's going down the loft hatch.

Hitting the big guy.

And it's hitting him down there, just like the bricks hit the guys in home alone.

Then he's standing, is it the nail? I don't know. He's staring at it. And then the bowling ball comes down, it hits his hand and it just basically goes through his face or his head or his eye or something.

There's glue all over the floor, industrial glue, that she gets stuck to. The back of her hair, the scalp comes off.

She scalps herself.

Yeah, she's fuming now.

Then she's hammered by Santa.

Yeah, well, she steps on, she's then got bare feet, she steps on loads of ornaments. She gets a dumbbell fired at her, and then Santa shows up, hits her, and then he says to Trudy, she hugs him, and he says to Trudy, I want you to turn around, put your fingers in your ears, and sing a Christmas song. I don't want you to see or hear what I'm going to do. And then he turns around and he says, you've been naughty. And then he just, he's just here. It's fine for me.

There's loads of kills in this.

Yeah, and he kills her, obviously, off screen. By now, Trudy has realized that her kill squad are actually in on this.

Yeah, yeah. Not looking good, love.

So they take the family outside because they say, Jason, you need to show us where you've hidden the money then. And it's all hidden in a giant nativity scene outside. Okay, kill the rest of the hostages. We're going to get the money and we're going to get out of here.

You still haven't seen Beekeeper yet, have you?

No, I haven't. You talk about this on every episode. I need to watch it so that I can watch it.

It's good.

Stafem.

He could even make a good son. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello, I'm Father Christmas.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Krampus is going to kill Linda and the cousin Bert and Gertrude and Alva, but they all get together. And it's quite realistic now, because actually three people could take on a terrorist, one guy on his own. And they do, and they kind of batter him quite a lot with their pokers from the fire, don't they? And they have a good fight with him. And when they finally kill him, Linda says, well, it's nice to do something as a family for a change.

He sledges to them.

Oh, that's right. He sledges to them.

He's taking all these snow sports, these fun snow sports, into extreme.

Ice skating on the hands, slicing dices. Santa chases Scrooge and the other henchmen who've got Gertrude hostage. Linda kills one of the guys with an icicle, so there's a couple of icicle kills in this. Her and Jason make up and they kiss. Trudy is really happy that her Christmas wish came true. They seem to be getting back together. So Santa crashes into a tree stump though and crawls into the remnants of an old building on the outskirts of their land.

Now, I don't think it's a reference that they might have taken the line for, we use that line. I don't think they're going, oh, that's Homage's random fucking Halloween movie sequel.

Well, that's like the most mean.

At the time, possibly.

It's the biggest mean from that film. Everyone was saying it at the time. Well, like I said, there's just the chimney left and there's fire everywhere. And Santa's really hurt because he has a fight with an ice axe. But Scrooge has got the ice spiked boots on, so he can't slip over, but Santa keeps slipping over on the ice. That's how he gets the upper hand on him.

His torso is the only thing that pops out the top, with a massive spray of old Samurai blood sword cutting.

It is, Kill Bill style blood going everywhere, it is brilliant. But then Santa gets shot off the chimney by the Kill Squad leader who's still alive. Luckily, Gertrude shows up and she kills him. So Beverly D'Angelo gets to make the final kill. Trudy and her parents arrive. Santa seems to be dying.

He's nice to die.

Jason says, burn the money, burn the money to keep him warm. So that's, you know.

It might be me because I don't have a Christmas tree up, but I found all this stuff really cheesy, this ending, this Christmas ending.

But that's what Christmas films are.

I know, it's just me.

Stop being a Scrooge.

I don't have any pleasure in it.

And I love this bit because this appeals to the 46-year-old me, the people that grew up with Home Alone and that stuff as kids. There's always that little element of cheese to these Christmas films, whether it's Kevin McAllister being reunited with his mom or whatever it is. And they all sort of say, oh, no, I believe, no, I believe, I believe, I believe. And because they all say they believe, he gets reincarnated, he gets brought back to life.

They need the sacks player from Lord The Ring. Lord The Ring. Jesus Christ. Lost Boys.

Why? Oh, I still believe. And then the reindeers arrive. Santa's like, where the fuck did you go? For God's sake.

But they went and got his spare sack.

And he's like, oh, I can't be mad at you guys.

You know, there's going to be a kid out there somewhere who turns into the weirdest kid. That turns into like a recluse that lives out in the mountains. Basically, they're like, we don't know what happened to young Billy. One day he was out in the woods and found some sort of sack, then just retreated out into the woods. And he's there just being a child on Christmas Day all the time, like insane lunatic, another present, another present, another present.

I wish for Megan Fox. I wish for a gun.

I don't think he's pulling Megan Fox out of a bag.

I think he is.

Might be.

I'd be pulling her off my sack.

Pulling his bag to Megan Fox.

Merry Christmas. Also, there's his hammer, a skull crusher is there with a little note from Mrs. Claw saying, thought you might need this. So it's all worked out well. We didn't need it in the end. He thanks Trudy for helping him realize that he still matters. They fly off and he screams ho ho ho Merry Christmas.

He does indeed.

And then we get that song from Slade playing over the end credits. It is phenomenal film. It's a strong 8 out of 10 for me. I absolutely love this film. It'll be one I come back to almost every Christmas. It's probably my favorite of the sort of newer Christmas action films.

Yeah, it's a well produced film.

Really good.

Yeah, it's well made on a lot of levels. Like I said, I wish it was 90 minutes, personally, but...

Yeah, I think for you, you'd like to have tightened up some of the cheesiness in it. But I love that side. So, you know, it's meat in the middle with it.

I do give it a thumbs up and I would recommend it.

Yeah. And, you know, it didn't do very well critically.

Basically, a John Wick at Christmas type thing, but with real Father Christmas.

It didn't do very well critically, weirdly. But it's grown and grown and probably will continue to grow over the years. It's a bit of a cult classic. Just a lot of fun and highly recommended. And I know a lot of our listeners have already seen it and are fans of it. And it's only been out for two years.

So, yeah, it will become like something which people attach themselves to later on as it goes.

It's up there for Krampus and Better Watch Out for me as Violent Christmas Comedies, which is a weird genre. Violent Christmas Comedies. But certainly Better Watch Out falls into that. And this is there as well. It's a bit cynical, but also brilliant and captures the spirit of Christmas. So there we go, guys.

Right, well, I can see someone who plays Scrooge once a part of time, didn't you?

He also did a Christmas special, didn't you, sir?

I found out that when you step out of the restaurant in Scrooge and you fall over, that was because the floor was wet. And you accidentally did that, but you kept going. It's very well done. So well done, you, Bill Murray.

He wishes us a Murray Christmas.

Ah, Happy Murray Day, I don't know what that is.

Well, Bill, do you want to take us into World of the Strange, please? Gav.

Yes.

It's Christmas.

It's Christmas time.

Santa. Let's talk about Santa.

Coming down your chimney, delivering his sack to you, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Emptying his sack all over your living room.

Oh, we didn't do Welcome Back, Welcome Front.

Welcome Christmas.

Oh, that feels like that should be my new talk show. Welcome Back, Welcome Front. No, Welcome Front, Welcome Back.

Brilliant. Alan Partridge.

Yeah, it's very Alan Partridge. Aha!

I've got some very unusual facts about Santa Claus that you might be interested to hear. Some of the news are quite strange. These are facts that I didn't know a lot of these, all linked into the legend of him and different legends and different backstories. You ready to get strapped in?

I'm strapped.

I've just realized Bill Murray's got a little bit of tinsel just above his zip on his trousers there. No. Oh, it's not tinsel, it's mistletoe. What? Oh, I get it.

I'm not. No. He told me what was going on. That's what I'm saying. No.

OK. OK. He said something about kissing his yaw log. I don't know what that is.

He told me he could kiss yaw log. So.

Ah, very good. OK. So Santa Claus, first fact on the list. Did you know that he could speak at a very young age?

No.

He came out of his mother's womb and immediately shouted out.

Mummy Father Christmas.

God be glorified.

Really?

Can you imagine? This was in 270 AD.

God be glorified was the first thing. What in a little God be glorified voice.

As he just come out of his mother, literally said it there and then.

So it literally is heads just out.

Cut the crow fly. Oh, my God. Terrifying. Probably had a little beard as well.

Little beard in his head coming out of a vagina saying God be glorified. Scary.

That is the fact. That is just the first fact.

That's a scary vagina fact.

Yep. Got another one here, which involves sex workers.

Another scary vagina fact.

Yeah. In this little story, they do refer to them as prostitutes. So I am going to be using the P word, if that's all right with you.

Oh, no, you can say it as it's written.

Yeah. Yes. St. Nicholas, he was extremely giving, as you know, to those less fortunate, especially children.

If we have any sex workers at this, give us a rate or a view on Spotify.

Thanks. He had a habit of secretly leaving gold coins in people's shoes. This is all very old legend stuff. He never wanted to be thanked. But it might surprise you to learn.

I know ways he liked to be thanked. Frank and spanked.

It might surprise you to learn what his three biggest presents were. Oh, yeah. So there was a poor man, this is the legend goes, who had three daughters and he couldn't marry them off. Couldn't get them to marry anybody. They're not that ugly. Go on. So he decided, I'm just going to sell them into prostitution.

I love how he couldn't marry them off. It's like they're not sheep. It's like a thousand years ago.

It's a thousand years ago. He thinks they're different, but then.

I've got an idea, ladies. What? You're going to go and sell your ass on the streets.

So he says, I'm going to sell them into prostitution. But the night before the first girl came of age, St. Nicholas threw a bag of gold coin into the man's window.

So he didn't have to prostitute his daughter out.

So then he could marry her off. She had dowry enough to be married off. Same thing happened with the second daughter. And then same thing happened with the third daughter. So he saved three prostitutes for becoming prostitutes.

This is the most random fact ever.

This is an ancient bit of Santa's law.

Right, so hang on here. So in the town, this is going on, and old Bob's going to sell off his guy. I've decided, he's telling Frank down the pub because he's pissed that everyone can hear him.

Turns 18 tomorrow.

Turns 18 tomorrow for a birthday. I'm going to sell her as a prostitute on the streets, and I can make some money. I'm basically going to pimp her.

Santa's outside this time.

Santa's going, Oh, that's not very Christmassy. Right, I will just before he's going to do it, I won't do it all at once because I could just do it all at once. I'll just do it the night before. So the poor girl is in absolute fear. But just before, happy Christmas. And that way she'll have Christmas joy in her forever.

So they all got married and never be, became sex workers. Thanks to Santa.

Well done, Santa.

He's like a pimp. He's like an anti pimp.

He's a pimp destroyer. Anti pimp. Santa Claus. Anti pimp.

Amazing. The next fact is about the reindeer.

Anti pimp and pump.

The backstory on the reindeer.

The back end reindeer.

They weren't always reindeer in the legends. Originally, they were in a war horse.

Look, a Trojan.

Sent by Odin, Thor's father. And the war horse was called, apologies for my pronunciation, Sleepnir. It was an eight-legged, terrifying war horse.

Is it like a Trojan horse? So it's big enough to go inside it?

No, no, it just was ridden by Santa.

Oh, an actual horse, right.

It was one of Odin's horses, a war horse with eight legs called Sleepnir. But Odin used to feed it candy and treats, because it was the only thing it liked. But he gave it to Santa to help him.

Keeping the war horse hyped up on sugar.

When he heard there was someone called Santa out there doing all these presents, he thought he needs something to get around on. I've got an eight legged horse here. I might as well let him have that. But over the years, the legend of this eight legged war horse turned into eight reindeer. First mentioned in an 1822 poem. So up until 1822, Santa rode around on an eight legged war horse sent from Odin.

Cool, about as fast.

It probably did with eight legs.

Twice as fast, probably.

Yeah. Because where are they all? Where are they coming out of?

I think they're even kicking each other down, unless it's centipede like or uniformed.

Things with more than four legs are always a bit creepy, aren't they? Here's another miracle story involving cannibalism. You'll be liking this one. One of the many miracle stories St. Nicholas had accumulated in his time, during a time where there was a fucked up butcher, the story goes, who hired, who got three little children into his shop.

Made sausages out of them.

He killed them and he tried to sell their meat, saying it was ham. Really good ham, everyone. So everyone in the village in the town wanted to buy this ham, not knowing it was three little children. But Santa just happened to be wandering past the butcher shop.

Just like he was the pub.

He's like Batman, he's everywhere.

He is.

He's walking past this butcher and he's looked at this ham and he thought, that isn't ham, that's children.

He knows it. He's like Sherlock Holmes as well.

He resurrected the three children there and then like that.

Out of ham? And they are all just like ham children?

Ham children.

There you go. Happy now? Kill me now.

In some versions of the story, they were actually pickled as well. They were pickled ham. I've never had pickled ham. But yeah, Santa resurrected three ham children. What do you think about that?

Weird.

Great, isn't it?

Maybe they're married to three women. They're not prostitutes.

When they're older. Now, we're going to go off to Belgium in the Netherlands now. So over there, they've got ancient stories about Santa or Sinterklaas. And to them, Santa comes from Spain every Christmas on a steamboat to give the gifts to their children.

And about Santa?

It's going to take a long time for him to do the whole world on a steamboat, surely. You know what I mean?

And hot. It could be sweaty.

And he's Spanish as well. And he's Spanish Santa as well. So he's Spanish Santa, Sinterklaas on a steamboat, coming over to Belgium and the Netherlands on his steamboat. Ah, there we go. Some presents for you, kiddies. Interesting. Now, this next fact, everybody knows. It's about Coca-Cola. You know this one, I'm sure. But up until 1931, Santa wasn't red. Santa was green or blue, brown quite a lot, gray. There was not many color pictures or portraits of him, really.

It kind of goes to say how fake it is. Do you know what I mean? A fucking shit company like Coca-Cola and their coke is just shit. Do you know what I mean? Essentially, I'll still have a can once and a bottle, but it's shit. Made in a factory. That is designed what we see and what we go. It's got to be red and everything's around that. Because they chose that.

I mean, let's not forget Coca-Cola originally in the recipe. And contain cocaine, which is just imagine going back then.

But still, it isn't really a good thing now if you look at where everything's in it. You go, well, that's not good.

It was sold in drugstores.

Oh, yeah.

A hundred years ago.

There's a documentary on it. I've seen it.

Probably, yeah. But yeah. So I mean, my parents probably still got it somewhere. I have a little ornament of Santa in a green and white outfit. And I have seen him depicted in green and other colors. But yeah, since the 30s, Coca-Cola.

And red is like a color of Christmas. Like your jumper is red for a reason.

Yeah. Holidays are coming. Yeah. There we go. Here we go. In the year 311, there was a famine. There was a ship full of wheat docked at a port in Myra. It was headed for the Emperor of Constantinople. And St. Nicholas, the bishop of Myra, asked if the sailors wouldn't mind giving some wheat for the poor. And the sailors said, no, no, no, no, no. The Emperor has been promised all of this wheat. We can't give any of it away. St. Nicholas told them, whatever they gave him, you'll suffer no losses.

Magic.

It's like Jesus feeding the 500.

Maybe Father Christmas is Jesus.

I mean, have they ever been seen in the same room together?

No. Could be more figures. Could be also Frankenstein's monster. Never been seen in the same room.

OK, interesting. Got another one for you involving a goat. Now, before he was called St. Nicholas or Santa Claus, before Odin got involved with his eight-legged warhorse, the Scandinavian countries many, many, many years ago had a magical being instead of Santa that gave presents, and that magical being was the yuletide goat.

Nice, what does it do?

It spent its time.

Is it an actual goat or is it a chocolate goat?

A magical goat, of course.

What does a magical goat do?

Well, it spent its time wandering around, making sure families had finished all their yuletide celebration preparations.

What, like a fucking Union rep or something? Was going around just going, right, have you done it all?

One of your bulbs is out.

Oh, you're not done, are you? So I'm not ticking this off. Go to the next one.

However.

Oh, God, here he comes, quick.

He would, this goat would want payment. Fucking hell. It was the opposite of Santa. He was making sure everybody was celebrating and having fun.

And then taxing people for it.

But he wanted a present.

Oh, it's like a gangster.

But.

The Christmas gangster goat.

After many years of doing this, the goat realized its ways weren't right, and it started then bringing presents back to people.

Right. So the gangster goat seen its way.

But the last stories of it were in 1899, and from 1900, Santa took over. So they were like, get rid of this goat. We need somebody new.

What is it? Take care of him. Like, take care. Santa like an assassin.

Well, we know he is. We've just watched Violent Night. Shit. Now we know he loves milk and cookies. Been left out for him. But in other countries, other things get left out for him, like in Britain. Doesn't really happen anymore, but my parents always used to leave a glass of sherry out for him. And a mince pie, but a glass of sherry. It's sweet.

It's always cookie and milk. But I reckon it was whiskey when because my dad would be like, nice, I'm coming down for a fucking glass of whiskey at three in the morning.

No mince pie. But it's great, isn't it? Because this year the kids are like, daddy, can we leave out a glass of chocolate milk and a cookie? And I'm like, yeah. Because the second you're asleep, I'm coming back down to eat and drink it all.

I love the fact you have to make it like a crime scene, but you're trying to get away with it. So you eat a bit of the cookie, then leave a few crumbs going off the side of the plate. You crumble it with your hand, don't you? Then leave a bite mark in it. So you have to leave a bit of cookie.

I'm going to leave a bit. The biggest bite I can out of the carrot, because they want to leave a carrot for the reindeer. So I'm going to leave a bit. I'm going to take a biggest bite I can, like a reindeer is bitten into it, in the middle of it. If you can imagine what that would look like. And then I'm going to leave that on the plate. Oh, the reindeers didn't eat all the carrot, just a bit of it. It's going to be great. I'm even thinking of getting talcum powder on the bottom of my boots.

Do a whole fucking thing. Do like some presents in the tree out in the back garden. They must have just fallen out of his sleigh as he went up. Look at those singed trees. That's where there's the fire from it going up in the magic, kids.

Press my face up against the window so there's like a smear mark on the face.

Do a whole massive scenario. They'll be like, whoa.

Do a shit in the corner.

Oh, that's the reindeer.

The reindeer pooped.

Alice is just looking at you like, did you shit as well?

Can you imagine what they leave for him in Ireland? Guess what drink?

That's almost like a sketch show, isn't it? Just going along and all of a sudden, look over there, kids, there's a shit. And the wife's just looking at the husband.

I don't know where that came from. Yeah, in Ireland, they like to leave at a pint of Guinness for him. Of course, they fucking do. And in Norway, in Sweden, they leave him rice pudding or porridge.

Or rice pudding. Cold rice pudding. There you go, dad, enjoy that in the middle of the night.

The final fact is that his bones leak miracle juice.

Of course, they do.

What's that at the end of your bone?

I leak miracle juice.

Out of your bone. So the story goes that Nicholas died in 343 AD, and he was buried in Mira where he'd been a bishop. But this didn't stop him from helping people though, because the legend has it that a clear watery liquid would seep out of his bones, and it had miraculous powers, this bone juice. In the 11th century… Bone juice?

Does it actually say bone juice?

It does say bone juice. In the 11th century, some sailors took all of his bones…

It makes me think of his talent salon I've seen up Sarah's Way, and it's called Juicy Tubes.

Wow.

I took a vote of it once. I was like, why have they called it Juicy Tubes?

That sounds like something I've clicked on in the past. Yes, so these sailors took the bones because they had a vision that they needed to take the bones somewhere. They left half of his skeleton, mostly fragments, and they basically poured some liquid out of these bones. And it's believed that it's this, I can't believe I'm about to say this, holy bone juice. It can help people walk or see or heal people.

Amazing.

So, yeah, he's not just a big fat man with a beard.

He's not? Yeah, no.

He's, you know, he's taken over from a goat. He used to ride an eight legged horse. His bones leak magical juice. He hates cannibals. He doesn't want young girls to go into prostitution. And he hates it when people grind up little boys into ham. He is Santa Claus and he is fucking coming to town, Gav.

He is, isn't he?

So there's your facts on Santa. Any thoughts on that? Does it make you believe even more than you already do?

Absolutely.

And what will you be leaving out from this year?

I'm going to leave him out some crap cocaine. A bottle of crap cocaine and some absinthe. I'm going to let him party. Like it's 1999.

Any houses he visits after yours are going to get some weird presents.

Cracked out presents. Cracked out Santa Claus.

Well, Bill Murray is now wearing nothing but two Santa Claus hats. A big one on his head and a little one on his... thing.

Disgusting. Put it away.

I don't want to... He's shaking his jingle bells.

Just because it's Christmas, you still get arrested for it, Bill. You can't do that.

He's shaking his jingle bells. Look.

Stop shaking them.

Okay, and that is not a candy cane. No, I don't want it. Thank you very much. Gav, can you tell him to take us out of here?

Don't put it near his face. Right, let's go.

That's all the time we've got for this week on World Of The Strange.

Next week, though. Hairless pets. Weird.

Look at this.

Welcome to Norway.

You're Americans?

Yeah.

Hi!

Hello.

I can't believe we inherited this place.

There's something in the barn. What do you mean, something?

What do you think happened? Probably some kids.

That's a barn elf.

Are they real? Oh my God!

Yes. First off, the barn elf doesn't like changes to the farm.

That looks good.

Secondly, he hates bright, artificial light.

What do you think?

This is really bad. You're in Norway now, okay? Nothing bad ever happens here. What's going on here?

We are under attack.

Where's your gun? I don't have a gun. What?

This isn't Detroit, Bill.

What are you going to do about it? I'm going to swipe this area for fingerprints, and then I'll call the forensics, and......hush.

There's Something in the Barn, 2023, rated R. R for pirates.

R for arch.

One hour and 40 minutes. An American family fulfills their dream of moving back to their roots after inheriting a remote cabin in the mountains of Norway. But there's a surprise waiting for them. There we go. This came out last year, 2023. I watched it on a whim. I'd heard some rumors that it was good. I really enjoyed it. So, mentioned it to you. You said, it sounds good.

Oh, yeah.

Remember, I sent that to the group. And it held up really well for me this time. It's my second watch of it. What are your initial thoughts, Gav? This was your first viewing of it.

From the onset, from the concept idea, I thought I'd kind of quite dig it. I kind of didn't really like it too much. Sorry.

OK. It's very National Lampoons, like you said earlier in the episode. Very, very much, yeah.

Same thing. It's like the other film we did. They basically just doing stuff right, taking right out of the film. Literally scenes, the same scenes.

Yeah. And it's like the Griswolds doing something, you know, whereas in this case, they're called the Nordemes. They moved to Norway, which is where the family are originally from, generations ago. And the kids are all being, you know, I don't want to be here, I don't want to be here. The dad's all very positive and it's like Griswold.

It's quite a concept that we've seen, like lovely listeners. You've seen it a million times. This sort of film, kind of like The Family. Yeah, that's all. It is basically, maybe that's why I feel like you've seen it a thousand times, because I've seen National Amputee probably a thousand times. But yeah, that kind of family going to another country and a house and a creature attack type thing.

What I like about this, though, is it is a little bit like Krampus in that you've got that legendary sort of beings and some people in the village.

And kind of gremlins as well.

Gremlins as well. And also rare exports as well.

Yeah.

So it's got a lot of elements I like in it. And I bought this. I own this now.

I got it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I will watch it again. It's probably not going to be every year, but I will come back to this one every couple of years.

I don't think I'm going to watch it again.

I really enjoy it. It's fun. But let's get into it and break it down.

Yeah.

Let's break it down. Who was the first person to say that? Which rapper? Break it down. It was probably MC Hammer, wasn't it?

No.

Break it down. No. Yeah, but he's famous for saying that, and you can't touch this. Break it down.

Yeah, but a lot of other people were saying break it down before. James Brown was probably saying break it down.

He probably was. Break it down.

Watch me.

Back up and get back.

Touch myself.

Sit back. Oh, you want? OK, I'll get you a drink. Let me go and get that for you. How many sugars you want? OK, two sugars. No one can understand him.

Especially when he got into his sort of mid to late 80s phase, when he was drunk and he was really into cocaine. Cocaine, coke stage. What crack? Coke stage.

He had the coke sweats and the guns. I saw him live in Manchester.

Amazing.

Supporting the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don't know why James Brown was supporting them. Imagine backstage. It was weird. There was a lot of cocaine, I should imagine.

Yeah, possibly.

But yeah, he got up on stage and he did it. He performed two songs with his back to the crowd because that's what he did. He was like, he was checking out his band. I'm like, what's he doing? I can't see him. He was like, that's it. And I'm like, turn around. We're right behind you.

But he had his eyes on. Probably thought he was looking at the stage.

There's 20,000 people there looking at him thinking, turn around.

You're the bass player going, it's the second song. Come on, turn around. Give him a little nod.

Just beep over your shoulder at least, Jeeves.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. Go on, you cunt. Move, turn around. Sorry, Jace Brown's not a cunt. And died on Christmas Day. And when it happened, I was gutted because it was, I think it was 16 years ago on Christmas Day, he died, it would be maybe or 17 years this Christmas Day. And I got it because it really just wasn't in anything, like no sort of press or Facebook or whatever, because it was quite a long time ago.

A lot of people were more surprised he was still alive.

That was probably wasn't even Facebook actually. It wasn't really, I was a bit gutted. I remember my parent-in-law's came around and I said, I'm gutted, James Brown has died. And they're just like, look at me. I say, it's fucking James Brown people. Why does no one care?

Yeah, I remember when David Bowie died, it didn't seem like many people were really like, oh my God, it was like, come on, it's David Bowie. He's gone now.

I know, so I suppose when James Brown died, social media isn't what it is now. Otherwise, it'd be pictures everywhere, wouldn't it?

Yeah. Well, there we go, dead celebrities, but now we're gonna go back to there's something in the barn.

How did it go there? Anyway, this movie is a very 80s concept straight out of the gate.

Yeah, like the gate. And it is, and it's comical. Most of the jokes land well for me. But let's get into this story. So we're in Norway and we get a little bit of a backstory, just briefly, of a man at night time. He's a bit distressed. He's in this barn in Norway and he's trying to tear the barn down by tying it to his tractor with a chain. But he can't, because some thing has cut the engines out, like a gremlin or something. So he pours diesel all over and he tries to set the barn on fire.

As a visual concept, I really, and actually, I feel like you could look at that and go, that's like some sort of psychological thing, how a woman is trapping a man, having a child with him. So he's trapped and you could go into some real thing. And then the metaphor and then the visualization of the perfect shaping of this massive bear trap inside the pram fits perfectly. I was all over this shit, just in a weird way. In a weird autistic way, I was all over this shit.

It would make a good poster for a horror film, wouldn't it?

Oh, it would be lovely. Like a Rosemary Baby remake or something like that, you know what I mean? You could just look at that as a picture of ages ago. I could interpret to this in different ways, like I did then. Trapped with a child with me.

I'll tell you what it would be called. Parent Trap. I know there's already one called the Parent Trap.

The Baby Trap.

That sounds a bit wrong. That sounds like you're going to make them into ham.

You don't want ham babies. You had ham children earlier. How many ham children references we've got today? I hope we've got ham old people later. It is.

As many as we want, it's Christmas.

Ham.

My ham babies. And then it's a bit of a weird edit because all of a sudden a flaming tire hits him in the back and he falls out of the barn.

And we don't really see what happens to him. I'm not going to be negative as we go through, but I will point out bits where I'm a sort of, you know. And at this point here, when you say that, I'm going to say, I do feel this film is a bit forced. That, for example, there is a forced way to get across to the next point, do you not mean?

Yeah. Well, he falls out of the barn on fire. And then we just cut to the title. There's something in the barn, which is a great B movie sort of title, you know, it came from the desert and all that kind of thing.

Yeah, it attracted me to the film, that title, absolutely.

And we get, similar to Krampus or Rare Exports now, over the credits, we get some sketches and drawings from books of little gnomes and elves and some of the backstory and other languages writing about them. So, you know, you're learning, okay, this is like we're going down that folklore path. And it does, this is a good sort of, you could pair this nicely up with probably Rare Exports or something, although Rare Exports is in a phenomenal movie.

That is straight out in a cast, straight out of National Amphibians Christmas Vacation.

Yeah, they're singing along.

The boy, the son and the daughter wrongly cast. I don't give a shit about the son. He's so uncharismatic. It's literally like, do you want to be in a film? Come on. It's literally that. It's so badly cast.

I think the girl's good.

She's OK. She suffices. But he is just so bland. He's just like fucking wet cheese.

I think the mum and dad are the best, too, in this thing.

What's wet cheese?

And also there's a guy that we'll meet later called Tor, who owns the museum. He's funny as well.

Tor's fine. Tor plays that kind of perfectly, actually. I'd say he even looks like that person, if you were to think of who that person is. But I just really just like to say, and it's annoying because I kind of need to fill for the family. And already I'm like, yeah.

What I like about this film is it takes the piss out of that American lifestyle as well. You know, taking selfies and the American dream and, you know, just because and this is no slight to our Americanist at all, but it's a common trait. You know, where we're going to go and do this just because we're American. We can do this. We can do that. And it can be anybody who speaks, you know, English.

I think it's tradition though, isn't it? It's just a very traditional thing.

But they take the piss out of it throughout this film. You know, and there's even a scene where she uses the American flag to kill one of the elves.

The dad in it, I've been watching recently from Tulsa King with Sylvester Stallone. I've seen both seasons and I quite enjoyed the show.

He's got a face that I recognize, but I don't know what I've seen of him.

You've seen him in the sort of Seth Rogen stuff when he's younger.

Oh, yeah, maybe that, yeah.

And the thing is, he kind of look at him and go, oh, he's going to be really funny. And then he kind of just is just plain. It just isn't. It's pretty flat. He's not funny. You think he's going to say something funny, but he's not funny.

For me, though, what's good about him, the dad Bill, is that he is quite a rundown under the thumb of his of his new wife.

Yeah, yeah.

He's still grieving for his ex-wife.

It does pull it off and he's okay for it. It is fine for the film.

But this scene now with them driving along, this gives us all the backstory really, which is basically that he's inherited a family farm in Norway. His family originally are Norwegian, although they're all American born. They're going to go and they're going to turn this farm into an Airbnb or a guest house and make loads of money out of it, and that's going to be the dream. You know, they've left the normal lives of America behind. There might not be any internet.

It's a, we find it's a kind of chilled policing system. She seems to be the only police officer. And doesn't they carry a weapon?

She's got a gun in her, on her snow sled.

Yeah, okay, fine.

I like, again, every time someone says, haven't you got a gun? One of the Americans, they say, this isn't America. We don't go around shooting each other in the face. This is Norway. We sit down and we have conversations. And we, we, we flesh things out. So every time someone says, where's the gun? They're like, we don't have a gun. This is Norway. We don't shoot each other in the face like they do in America. Just little funny little drives like that. I like about this.

Arunki. I think that's wanker in Norwegian.

Oh, brilliant. There you go, guys. If you're wanting to offend anybody, or if we've got any Norwegian listeners, please tell us if Gav's pronounced that correctly. Say it once more.

Arunki.

Can I try?

Yeah.

Arunki.

Yeah. And there's Pula Vita.

What does that mean?

I'm not going to say.

Oh, God. What?

It doesn't matter.

Okay. Okey-dokey. Well, our Norwegian listeners know what you just said.

It's true. And it could be a terrible pronunciation.

So beautiful house, middle of nowhere, just nothing but mountains and ice and snow around. As I've said, they're going to turn this into a huge bed and breakfast. There's a huge barn, which is the barn that we saw in the opening scene, which was a flashback. Lucas goes into the barn, the boy, to have a look around, and he sees something fall over in there, and he hears a couple of noises. Could be mice. Most likely going to be a barn elf. And he's already tuned in to it.

I know. He loves that, doesn't he? He does. I wish they kind of do a little bit later, but it's a bit too late, I feel. I wish at this point here or even earlier on, establish why they're there, what they've gone from, why they've had to go there, because it doesn't explain it that well. Or the daughter could have done it over the phone when she's chatting to a friend back in America before she loses signal. It doesn't really explain it at this point, really. And I don't know.

I don't know. I just, I don't think you need, for me, I didn't need to get bogged down in that.

It might just be me.

It's just basically they want to...

I kind of just want to know, though, because she's really annoyed the daughter is. But he doesn't explain very well why.

But he's doing that Clark thing of, I'm just going to leave my family on this crazy adventure because I believe in my heart it's going to be the best thing. You know, like we're going to go to Moose Land or whatever it's called. What's it called? In the summer vacation, where they go to... Why can't I remember the name of the place they go? And it's closed when they get there.

Wally World.

Wally World. That's it. Moose Land. Fucking hell, Dan. I've done a gav there, haven't I?

Yeah.

Moose Land. It's because he punches the moose in the nose. Anyway, night time. First night time.

You can see the Northern Lights, don't they?

Come on, we're going to do what everyone in Norway does. What's that, Dad? We're going to look up at the beautiful Northern Lights. And they look up. And it's not what they expected. It's just cloudy. I can't see anything.

Aurora Borealis.

Aurora? I beg your pardon. We're going to go to bed. Good night. Yeah, okay. And Lucas sees...

They've all got Norway hats, because obviously they were expected to be cold, so you'll have to buy them from the same shop. That's what that says.

Yep. And Lucas spots something looking at them at the barn with two little red beady eyes glowing in the dark. Oh, the morning comes, and let's go into town and meet the locals. And they're basically walking over again. Hello, we're the Americans, we've arrived.

Hello, hello.

Why would you do that? They think they're celebrities, I guess, don't they? I don't know.

Again, slightly forced.

But again, it's Clark, where's Wold? It's that kind of... Hello, nice to meet you. If you're friendly to people, they think people are going to be friendly. But they just get rude stares. Everyone's staring at them. They go into a cafe, and everyone's like, You must be the Americans. You must be the people that have bought the Nordain farm. Yes, okay, we know who you are. And they're like, yes, we're going to turn it into an Airbnb or a guest house. It's going to be fantastic.

I don't like it. It's like a four foot Santa Claus. And I was just like, is that it? Honestly, I thought it was going to be a lot smaller. And I don't know, it's something different. I was a bit like, yeah.

He reminds me of what you'd see again in rare exports, that creepy sort of, you know, the little things.

I think I thought smaller, maybe a foot and a half or something. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. You were you were open for more like a game.

It was kind of like a bit weird. And it just comes out. And it was no suspense. But I suppose they're going to get to it, because they've got to establish him being nice before he goes bad. It doesn't take him much to go bad, though. But I don't know. I'd rather it had just been a bit more. Jaws don't show it yet. Just keep it hidden away. But there you go.

Here it is. He's in the shadows a little bit, but then he pops out.

Straight away. It's been the beginning of the movie.

It gives him a cookie. And he says, we promised to keep you safe, because he's a kid, you know, and he still has that open heart.

And he accepts it and eats it. And there seems to be like a truce in bond has been founded.

But he kicks something over, the loud noise scares the elf away. So he's had his first meeting with them. And that's that. And in the next day, Nora, the daughter, is Skyping her friend and the internet is... She just says to her friend, This sucks. There's no one around. There's nothing to do. I don't know why I'm here. And then the internet cuts out as well. So it's just rubbish. And then step-mum, Carol.

Jingle Bells plays.

That's right. And they decorate the house. They're trying to get the house nice and Christmassy. But Carol, the step-mum, also is a life coach. And she tries to do the life coaching thing to her step-daughter. And her phrase is, what was her phrase? Embrace the happy or something like that. She says it all the time.

There's a really well shot here. The director of photography's got a really lovely soft light coming through the windows when in the kitchen. It's gorgeous looking.

The whole, I mean, the whole color palette lighting and everything in this is so Christmassy and cozy feeling, especially in the house and all the knitwear and the hats that everyone's wearing. It gives me that nice, snug, snugly feeling, you know?

I think when I think about it more as we speak about, I think my own opinion, it just needs to be directed a bit better. I think more of like the direction they know they want to go specifically and tighten it up and just really, do you know what I mean? I think it's all there as a film. I know we're only getting into it, but it's really there as a film, but it just, I don't know, it's just, I don't know.

They've also picked some great Christmas tunes to play in all the scenes as well. You've got all your classics in there. So it does a good job of keeping that Christmas feeling.

Yeah, it's very much a Christmas film, absolutely.

Dad is learning Norwegian, which is, you know, he's trying his best again, it's very Clark. Yeah, I don't know what that means. And Carol says, Hey, I've got an idea. There's one way that we can get these Norwegians to like us. Let's throw a big party, get everybody from the town in, let them know that we're nice people, we're generous people. You know, we want to start up our business. We want them on our side. We want to be friends with them all. And he's like, great idea.

It's all been done.

Someone's already shoveled a lovely path.

And they think it's the council.

He says, oh, that's the Norwegians for you. It's probably a service that they do. It's brilliant in this place. But we know it's the elf. And so does Lucas because he gave him a cookie. Yeah. Elf comes into straight away here.

I've got issues. Right. Boom. He's established. There's little kids are stabbed. There's a lot of things going on here. Is this the first elf ever in Norway? Which seems to be the case because the guy in the barn later on, who knows the stuff of the law, we thought it could be some sort of Van Helsing is actually like, they're not actually real dickheads. And this kid's just made established this connection saying, there's a truce, here's a cookie. All right. That's it. Stay in the barn.

Why are you here already?

Why are you here? What if I was in there beating off?

What do you want to know the cooking?

That's too much. That's too cheeky. Stay in your barn.

I could be wanking.

Exactly. I could be knocking one out right now.

I'll bring the cookies into the barn.

How awkward that could be when we make eye contact. Do I carry on?

Let's start with some rules here. I'll bring the cookies to you in the barn. You let me wank in private.

Oh, I think you must go.

Or help.

Turn around.

At least cradle the sack.

Turn around.

You're at the right height to cradle the balls.

It's just, what genre and porn hub is this? Or category?

I don't know, but it's bad for your elf.

Your bad elf.

Um, elf care. So, elf harm. I forget that. A weird route now. Stop now.

So, Mum walks in. I normally have Christmas jokes lined up, and I didn't this year.

Mum walks in on his way in.

Is this a Christmas joke? Oh.

Mum walks in, and the elf obviously vanishes. Lucas is like, oh, oh. He wants, he really wants to tell them, but no one's going to believe him if he does. He does try to tell them later on. We get a montage now.

Straight out of Lampoon's going to get a Christmas tree, straight out of Lampoon's.

Cutting the Christmas tree down, also done in A Christmas Horror Story as well.

I love the fact, again, we've done this thing where we've paired up two films for the show and they both have same themes, same things which they've done in both of them.

And I think, you know, there are only a handful of actually amazing Christmas classics. So you are going to borrow from those films, aren't you?

Fair enough. It is, it just, it's hard. It's one of those, it's like skating on thin ice because if you do it and you're making a really bad movie, you're just making the audience member go, yeah, but I want to watch the original Jaws now. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So you have to be careful.

Well, the montage is them promoting the party. They're setting up the barn, getting everything ready. More cookies being given to the elf, which means dad in the morning goes out to chop up the wood. But someone has miraculously chopped up enough wood to keep them going for a month. So the elf is, you know, every time he gets cookies, doing something for them. We get a real Griswold scene now with the lights, don't we? Gonna turn the lights on, family.

He's older than 10. 11. No, he must be about 13, 14, I'd say.

Probably too old.

For that exact thing, that's what I was about to say. I'd be like, you're not fucking 8. What are you on about?

Do you need a therapist, son?

That's a bit much.

In the morning, though, as predicted by Lucas, all the decorations have been destroyed, including the Santa, which is deflated.

And it's a fuck ton of decorations, wasn't it?

And that Santa does like a horrible, like, oh, oh, oh, oh.

So the thing is, though, obviously, like, I thought they were going to play this more because this is the norm. It's where then as the son gets blamed and that carries on, that's the norm in the 80s film when this happens, do you know what I mean? For a little while, that goes on.

And then at the end, they're like, oh, it really was the barn elves. I told you, man, it wasn't.

But it doesn't play into that too much. They don't actually blame the kid, I don't think.

Yeah, which is quite good.

Which is funny, because I thought they're definitely going to, but they don't.

They call the sheriff again and she turns up. She doesn't give a shit. She laughs. She's, oh, well, you know, what can I say?

You know, yeah, but what's she going to do?

And then aren't you going to investigate? She goes, yes, of course, I'll dust for fingerprints immediately.

But yeah, what can she do?

And then she makes a joke. Maybe it was the moose's revenge.

All you could do is get CCTV on your house.

And they're just like, OK, Carol was annoyed, but Bill's like, well, it's just the Norwegian way. Don't worry about it. Carol and Bill are in the barn and they're talking. And the elf, who's angry, he rolls a barrel onto them and it crashes onto them and hurts Bill a little bit. And Lucas goes in after they've left and says, I thought we were friends. And he does like the heart, hand on heart, sign language that the elf and the elf is too late. The elf's not like, too late.

Straight away, you've got no chance. The whole time, you'd have such anxiety, liver of that fucking elf, making sure he's happy.

Give him a cookie every fucking day.

Every, the smallest thing. And that's it, he's going to fucking try and kill us all now.

Let's watch a film tonight. Yeah, put the sound bar on. Don't put the sound bar on.

Everything the whole time. No, no, quiet. We must be quiet.

Why?

Because we're going to get killed in our seats by a four-foot fucking Santa Claus.

Don't turn the bathroom light on at night.

Why? I fucking hate move. This is awful.

But at the same time, if you follow the rules and give him cookies, he's going to do all the shit for you.

Yeah, but the anxiety would be terrible. Honestly.

I blocked the toilet. I don't really feel like giving him some cookies.

So much. You'd have to just have a stockpile of cookies in there to get him really fat. Slowly find a way to get rid of him. Throw him down a well.

Nora, the daughter, sees the elf's reflection in the kitchen window briefly. She also in the same scene sees Lucas' note on the fridge with the rules. So she's starting to think there's more to this than him, than my little brother just being mental. Hmm. Well, cut to the party scene inside the barn. The whole town have turned up. Yep. They're all really quiet and bored. What are we going to do? I don't know. Let's get the booze out.

While this was happening, yeah, he's pissed off. While this was happening, the museum guy was asked to be Santa on Christmas Eve.

Yeah, it's not the museum guy, it's a guy called Raymond.

Oh, the significant guy, isn't it? That's right.

Yeah. And he's like, I'd love to do this. I've got no friends. I don't see anybody on Christmas Eve. So I'll turn up. He's a happy, really drunk.

He's the happiest lonely person ever, isn't he?

Yeah. Yeah.

I've got no friends.

I'll come round and, you know.

Maybe he doesn't want friends, you know.

Doesn't matter, does it? Have you ever been thrown up on, say, a random person?

No, I was peed on once.

Oh.

I've told this story before. No, unfortunately, I was at first school, so I was, I reckon it's five. I would say five. And there's a girl, there's a girl, Jane Moore. I used to fancy her. Apparently, I went out of her all of the four years of first school. We went out together. So from like, what, four, five, six, seven, something like that, maybe.

Serious.

Super serious, man. Yeah, absolutely. And one day she came and sat in my lap and I thought, that's nice.

Oh, God.

And she pissed on me. So then she got off and then she pointed to me and shouted to the teacher, he's just weed himself.

Oh, my God.

I was like, oh, my God, if I ever have a mistrust of women, if I have a mistrust of women, it's from here. Luckily, I've not. It's just bitch. So I got told off and I had to go with a girl's piss all over me. I got told off and had to go. I don't know what happened. I would have probably had to go and go home, probably. I don't know.

I'm so glad I asked you that question because we got this beautiful story out of it.

It's the same first school where I got my head stuck in the railings and I became a caution story for other pupils years to come, which I found out from another guy went to that school and he went, was that you? We were told not to do that because once by the time someone got their head stuck in the railings, I was like, no, it's me.

I got my head stuck in the railings at school. But it was summer holidays. My best friend lived next door to the school. And we were just skateboarding and BMXing around the block, like where the school is. It's a very big block, as you can imagine. And he vanished.

I don't know why.

And I just thought, I wonder if I could fit my head. I was about eight. I wonder if I can fit my head in between those railings.

That's what I did in lunchtime at the school.

I did it. And then I realized I couldn't get it back out.

I thought, fuck.

And my friend Martin had gone by this point.

This was bad because I think it happened. I think I would have said to a friend or someone, can you get me some help? Shout out there. And everyone that went in, cause the bell went, everyone that went in and there's me. So everybody saw this, that dickhead.

So you're like the kid in the Christmas story with his tongue stuck on the pole.

Yeah, that's absolutely me.

Well, mine could have gone really badly in my story because how it ended was an old man came up behind me, and thank God he wasn't a pedo or something, because he found this eight-year-old boy with his head stuck in the rain.

That's definitely a category in your porn hub, but it's washing machines.

My bottom's stuck up in the air and I'm crying. And I just heard, are you all right, young man? And I said, I'm stuck. And he actually, what he did was he bent...

It's so good it wasn't Jimmy Savile.

He bent my ears back, like forward, and then I could get my head out then.

Oh, that's so good.

It's just my ears. And he's like, and I said, thank you. And I ran off and ran back to my friend's house, and he hugged me back then, like when you're eight, you hug your mates. And he gave me a big kiss. He said, why are you crying? I said, my head was stuck in the railings and you left me. He said, I didn't mean to leave you. I didn't know it. Sorry. And we refined them.

And another quick story. When I was a kid, I think I said this one as well, not related, but around a friend's house. And this is what made me think of it. It just popped in my head. We went up in my friend's house, ice cream vans up there. So we went up as kids. He goes, borrow my friend's bike, my brother's bike, whatever. And it's uphill. So we cycled uphill, got the ice creams. And he went ahead and said, I'm going to eat my ice cream and I'll come back down afterwards.

What do you do?

I haven't really fought it back through properly until now. There was this guy who must have been cleaning his car or doing something in his garden, saw this happen. I just saw a car parked up and I just fucking went for it. So I hit the car at the side of the wing really fucking hard and slid over the front of the bonnet really hard, then fell over the other side, scraped myself bleeding, came around hobbling, picked up the bike and walked off.

Jesus.

And there's a man there watching this happen. And he didn't say anything, but he went back. Yeah, some kidder fucking just rode straight into your car. Yeah. And that's what I get. And actually was not a bad thing to do because it's actually quite clever because I hit the bonnet, so the bike hit the bonnet, then I slid. So that took most of the impact. Then I slid over the top of the bonnet. Otherwise, I would have fucking hit the wind actual car and put my head through the window.

Just luckily, you've watched a couple of Steven Seagal movies, so you knew about it.

I had to make a split decision, but I remember that very clearly.

My last story, and then we'll get back to...

It's Christmas. You're talking about stories and tales.

Talking of bikes, that same friend who I thought abandoned me with my head in the railings, me and him used to ride our bikes around a lot. And there's some really big steps in the park near his house. And one day we were like, should we ride our BMXs down those steps? Yeah, let's do it. I said, go on then. So we got a lot of sort of space to sort of get a good run up. And then I chickened out at the last second, I put my brakes on, I kind of knew I wasn't going to do it.

Oh, no.

But he went all the way down and I just watched him.

Yeah.

I ran down to the bottom, picked him up.

I thought he's all right.

And then I realized his arm was backwards.

Oh.

And we were about eight years old. So we picked our bikes up, wheeled them back, knocked on the door, said to his mum, his mum's name is Alice, funny enough, said, Alice, I think Martin's hurt his arm. She was like, oh boy, straight in the car, straight to hospital, broken on. That's what you do when you're a kid.

Not nowadays, they fucking get hurt fingers and playing roadblocks.

Let's sue the council there. Sue the council for the park.

No, they may be out.

That's true. Well, anyway, Nora has thrown up all over herself and he is fuming, absolutely fuming. And is that where we're at now? Is that the end of the park?

Yeah, and her daughter is grounded.

Yeah. She says, what are you going to do? How can you ground me? I'm already fucking grounded. We're all grounded. We've got nothing to do here. You can't make my life any worse.

That's why, see, that's still playing out, but I need to know why the fuck they're there. I wish they had just had it a little bit earlier, just a little bit of an inkling. Why keep having this? It's not a great mystery.

Witness protection?

No, they do. I think I've got it somewhere else. They do explain later on. But it's just exactly. You don't know either because it's not even a much a thing. So why have this whole thing going? It's really frustrating.

Well, there's a big argument now. And that Tor guy is there, the guy who owns the museum, and he says to Lucas, bowl of porridge. Elves aren't real. But the legend says, if you give them a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve, I'll go have some porridge later. Give them a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve with cinnamon and butter on it, I think. Then that's a peacekeeping ritual on that one. There's a funny bit here. He says, he says, porridge. And the kid goes, porridge?

Yeah, his casting is quite good, that museum guy.

I like when we bump into him later when he's just having a pipe and a whiskey on his own in his little house.

He looks so happy there, doesn't he?

He's got his slippers on.

Yeah, maybe I'll see myself in him.

Anyway, the elf, after everyone's left the party, the elf walks around the barn and he looks at the mess, the sick, the drinks, the smashed glasses, and he's not happy. And the family get woken up by some smashing sounds. So dad goes downstairs in the house. We see, as the audience, see the elf in the shadows and he gets shoved down the cellar steps. He almost gets the mum as well, but the lights come on. They've obviously then called the police because then that sheriff arrives again.

No, he's not. He's just slightly whimsical in a sense. He's very much like, I know that that's not correct answer, but I'm not going to push it because I don't come. I don't really want to ruffle feathers in the comic boffet because he does it later on as well.

Carol is very cross that no one takes them seriously.

But the wife is not happy, yes.

Yeah. So in bed that night, Carol and Bill get into an argument because they start discussing whether the barn is haunted. And he's like, do you really think it's my uncle? And then he says, well, look, here's what actually happened. My uncle was burned to death in that barn. They found him outside. He looked like he tried to set the barn on fire. No one really knows why. So they now know that there's something to do with the barn.

The dad's standing in the dark eating cold porridge.

Why is he? Because he's not even warming it up.

I know, but cold porridge is fucking horrible.

I don't like porridge anyway.

I had some porridge recently for McDonald's. Someone's worker was like, oh, give us some money. I'll go get some McDonald's. I was like, all right. And I got like a McMuffin, whatever thing. And I was like, no, I'll get some porridge as well. Don't we want too much fucking McDonald's? And the porridge fucking got it back. And I left it at a moment, because I thought it was boiling hot. Got back and it was cold and lumpy. And it was real horrible. Really congealed cold lumps.

You learn a lot from us.

Yeah, I know. It's not worth it. It looks cheap. It looks like it's a better option at a McDonald's.

I hate porridge. I hate porridge. The only time I eat porridge is porridge oats with yogurt.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? That's very nice to me. But anyway, Lucas is cross. He's like, Dad, that's the only way that I was able to make peace with the elf. At this point, it sounds like I think you might be taking this elf thing a bit too seriously, son. So what's Lucas got to offer the elf?

Rotted fish.

Leftovers, stinky bits. He takes it in the barn.

Obviously doesn't go down well.

He pops it down. He says, there you go. The elf tries it. Fair enough. And he roars.

He thinks it's hammer time.

He doesn't. Yeah. He grabs a hammer and he's pissed off.

The local who's vast addresses a Santa sees the elf.

He's coming on pissed. Pissed as a fart. And he's singing to himself in Norwegian. He's got all the presence. He's, you know, he's been asked by his only friend in the world, this new American guy. Can you come and pretend to be Santa? And he's like, I can't wait. I'm going to get smashed when I do this. So he turns up and he says, Lucas, is that you? He thinks it's the boy dressed up. And yeah, he gets killed off camera weirdly.

Yeah, this film is very much lacking gore. It's not a gore film at all. It's like, I don't know. It's probably budget reasons, but I feel like if it was an 80s film, I feel like it'd been a bit more gorey or something. Maybe. I don't know. It's just a bit.

Well, inside the house, Bill is worried. He's looking at the window. What you keep looking for, he's just wondering where Santa is.

And there's no suspense in this film either, which again comes down to the directing.

Fair enough. It's a bit of a wham-bam, but I like wham-bam. Thank you, man.

No, I can see the merits for it. And at no point did I go, Oh, my God, I can't stand this film. It's fine because it had a nice, fun concept. A fish out of water family being terrorized by an elf at Christmas time. That's a fun concept.

I'll watch this film over Elf or I'll watch this film over A Nightmare Before Christmas.

Oh, rather Elf. Elf is great.

I can't stand it.

Oh, such a great movie.

I, it was good the first time, maybe good the second time, but I just feel like it's kind of overdone.

Did you watch it? Did you watch it on a bad breakup or something?

No, no, I just I feel like it's overrated to me.

That's really fun.

Yeah. Oh, it totally is. But for me, it's the same with the Nightmare Before Christmas. I can't stand it anymore.

Yeah, I've not really seen it. So I don't really like Tim Burton stuff very much.

Well, Bill goes outside to look for Raymond and he finds him dead, hanging from some Christmas lights with a spike through his head. And he says, we've got to go now, everybody in the car. But the car won't start because someone's tampered with it.

Yeah.

And it's the elf and he's on top of the car.

It's the same old tropes we've seen before.

He smashes the windscreen, they all run back in the house. The adults approach the elf flying on the ground and they're like, Oh my God, this is just right.

Yeah, it's the first sighting for the rest of the family. And this should have been more of a shock thing. And it's just not really.

And then the elf does an elf scream, which cools all the other elves from all underneath the barn.

So you've gone from the fa... this is why it's not... It's frustrating now.

Come on, Scrooge, come on.

You're going from the fact that the straight away, the elf's seen really early on in the film, no suspense whatsoever. Then for the whole family, and there should have been a massive thing for them to go, oh my God, you were not a crazy kid. I'm so sorry. There could have been a whole real dramatic dynamic going on there. And it, as not, as is, it ends up them just seeing straight away the, oh my God, you're right, there was an elf. And then he calls loads of elves. No, have that later on.

Well, they start swarming out of the barn because later on we find out there's a tunnel under the barn that connects to the wooded area where all the elves live in the woods. But they all start swarming out of the barn and they speak in their own little language. They say, humans, kill them, kill them all.

Let the ravaging begin. And I looked at Sarah and gave her a little wink.

Oh, God. The family get barricaded themselves in the house and the elves start breaking in through the windows. And we get a really good fight scene here, in my opinion, quite vicious.

It's really weird. It's a huge punch up. It's like a pub punch up.

Yeah.

It's really odd.

Mom's using a tray to defend herself.

It feels like it's not a horror movie though. Do you know what I mean? It feels like more action science fiction. No, not at all. Action. I don't know what fantasy. It could be an alien.

This could be an alien invasion set at Christmas, really, couldn't it? With alien snow coming in the windows.

A sort of thing, I guess, but having to punch up.

Dad uses a snow shovel. Lucas uses a light bulb. A mum throws the star off the Christmas tree like it was a ninja saw. We've seen this before. We saw that in the last movie. Nora goes to town with a baseball bat. Just out of nowhere, she starts taking out all the elves. Lucas tries to reason with the main elf and says, but we're friends. And he puts his hand on his chest. We're friends.

I think it's a bit late, kid. Give it up.

But while he's doing that, Nora sets his beard on fire, the elf's beard, and they all get chased. Mum gets a corkscrew in the leg. So we get a bit of blood and gore now. But then the cop car turns up. Well, this cop snow sled turns up. And the lights scare away some of the elves. And they say to her, and I was gutted at this point because I really like this sheriff lady. And they're like, oh, it's the elves. They're attacking. And she's like, is this a prank?

See, in Gremlins, it's done so much better with the cops the whole time getting the phone calls saying, yeah, yeah, last week you said it was da-da-da-da. And then they finally go out there in the car and they see them, and they're causing havoc around the place. And they're like, oh, my God, fucking hell, oh, shit. And it's like a whole, I don't know, it's just done so much better.

There's a rumor that Gremlins and Goonies take place in the same universe. Because in Goonies, when Chunk calls the police.

You've got one of the characters in both films.

That's true.

Is that the connection? Different ages.

But when Chunk calls the police, the police officer says to him, yeah, yeah, I know who you are, Lawrence. He says, last week you told me there was a bunch of little creatures in your house that multiplied when you got them wet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just, well, yeah, that's that's not the only connection. That's just that. That's that. Yeah.

Yeah, but I like to believe they did.

But I do like that line, though. It's great, though, because you go, oh, gremlins.

That was like one of the first Easter eggs I realized as a kid.

I was like, nice, nice man. I don't know when I realized that. But yeah, this is done. It's kind of the same deal. The elves steal the snowmobile and go for a little ride on it, which the cops are, oh my God.

But then they run over the cop and they kill her. She gets absolutely shredded.

And there is blood here, kind of.

There's blood all over the whole family.

You have to, though, if you've got that going on, you've got to have white snow. You've got to have red blood, definitely.

One of the elves. So this is a bit of Planet The Apes now. One of the elves picks up the gun. Doesn't know what it is initially.

This is kind of Gremlins as well, isn't it?

Yeah, it is Gremlins, yeah, definitely. But this bit is like Planet The Apes because they pick up the gun like the monkeys do on Planet The Apes.

And he shoots himself.

He shoots. Well, first, I felt like this was, I feel like there's a lot of anti-American gun law in this because they've talked about it a few times. And then this bit here where he shoots his friend and shoots himself. We've read stories about children doing this.

Yeah, I'm glad I didn't think that before saying that because I thought it this time. Oh, God. Yeah.

But anyway, the family regroup, they all administer first aid to themselves. Bill, there's a funny scene where Bill's like, I've been bitten, son, because one of the elves bit him. He's like, listen, you've got to be a man. When I start to turn into one of them, you're going to have to kill me.

Imagine if he turned into a giant elf.

But he's like, Dad, they're not fucking zombies. They're elves. They're barn elves. And he's like, oh, OK. He's sort of a bit relieved. I'm not going to turn into a barn elf. OK, good. But the elves decide to destroy the house.

This is where we have Dad explaining, I thought moving here would help the death of your mum.

Ah, yes.

But it's such a throwaway bit here. It's too late to give any meaning to it or emotional pull. It's done wrong.

And while he's explaining that reason, downstairs, the elves are getting absolutely smashed on all the boos watching TV. They've never really seen a TV before. Do you want to tell the listeners what's on every single channel on this Norwegian TV? Every single channel, there's a different snow sport, isn't there?

What's it? I can't remember.

Just ice skating, sledge in, skiing. So yeah, they're getting hammered downstairs and having a great party and a great time.

Like a Gremlins montage.

Like a Gremlins montage and upstairs, like you said, dad's explaining why they're there and apologizing. Dad and Lucas decide they're going to escape on a sledge. And the women are like, well, what are we going to do? We've got the moonshine and we've got some big baubles. We're going to fill these baubles with moonshine. Set them on fire and throw them like Molotov cocktails at these elves, which is a great scene where one of the elves picks it up and says, what's this thing?

Sarah made a good point of this. She said if this film feels like it's trying to be Krampus.

Yeah, I think it's got some Krampus elements in it.

And makes you go, yeah, Krampus does it right. No offence to this film. To make a film is such a hard thing to do anyway. You know, it's any movie that comes out as a good fit.

I think this is a fun combination of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Gremlin's Krampus and the Norwegian folklore of rare exports. That's how I would describe this. And I'm really happy with that.

I can see how you would like it and find it fun and stuff and other people will. I could see that. So, yeah, fair enough.

The dad and the son are being chased by some elves who are throwing soul blade, buzz soul blades at them.

Yeah, that's commando, isn't it?

That is commando.

That's the cut bits of commando, which I saw years later on YouTube.

There's a funny bit where they see a moose, the elves, and they avoid the moose and then get smashed by a massive lorry and die.

I got this, where we see the eyes in the trees like Sanctuary Moon, their bold films, YouTube.

Yes, because we, we had just, I think I must have watched this not long after we wrapped on that. And that's when I sent the video to you guys of this.

It's funny, isn't it? It's just one of those things.

It's just, yeah, it's one of those things. But yeah, Nora is dragged into the woods by these many, many elves. The boys, though, they've found a house and it's Tor, the guy that owns the museum. This is where they burst in on him. And he just sat there with a pipe and a drink, having a lovely time. And he's got really fancy clothes on as well, considering he sat on his own. And they're like, we need your help, we need your help. And he goes, OK, have you got a gun? No, I don't have a gun.

Yeah, because at this point, at this point, when they, you know, I don't know, if I was sitting there in chilled mode, I'm smoking a cigar over the fuck, I'm drinking some whiskey. I don't do these things anymore. Sitting by a fireplace, in my fucking smooth dressing gown, just fucking lounging, Mac-tenning. Someone comes in and says, you got to help me because these elves are real. Because I turn around, back out that door, my friend. That's all I could say.

Well, they head into the barn and they see the elves going down a trap door. So they follow them down and there's loads of tunnels. And the tunnels come out in the middle of the woods where they're surrounded by elves.

When they get into the tunnels and they're going through the noise, at this point, with these characters here, I think the sun's out as well, by the way, it's real fun. I found, straight away, for whatever reason, I was elevated to like, oh, this film's quite fun here. I don't know why. There seems to be a real mission going on. It's quite tight. It's quite action packed. They're going through these tunnels. They've got to escape or whatever.

Yeah. Tor tries to reason with the elves because they've got a gun and they now know how to use it. But they shoot him.

This is where it comes out in the woods. There's quite a lot of suspense going on here. And all of a sudden, I don't know what's going on. It seems to be my dad had extra time to film or something. It was a bit more like put into it here, it seems.

Well, Mum and Nora tied to a stake. And they basically say, we're going to kill you all. But Lucas manages to get the main elf to realize, we don't want to die. Help us. And so he unties them. They run off back through the tunnels, back into the barn, but they're surrounded again. And the main elf is then called a traitor by the other elves. But there's no bullets left in the gun. So the good elf starts fighting the remaining elves. They're in the barn at this point.

And the song ends and it's very national and parents because the location ended.

And then Lucas does the heart gesture to the elf and he does it back. Yeah. I do really enjoy this film. Twice I've seen it now. And like I said, I'll definitely go back to it. There's a lot to love. Yes, it's a bit cheap and cheerful at times. And it could have done with a little bit more, maybe two directors, you know, because quite often these days you get two directors doing films, don't you? It's directed by somebody called Magnus Martens. I'm just going to see what else he's directed.

I don't know about two directors. Maybe just change director.

I'm just going to see what else he's directed. He's directed quite a lot. A lot of Norwegian TV mainly. Directed some agents of Agents of Shield, Shara The Walking Dead.

There's another thing, though. They might have only had a very limited... You have to watch movies on face value regardless of any movie, but they might have all of a sudden had loads of days cut down. I would actually say possibly the ending was shot first and they had more time to craft it, then days were cut and they ended up having to speed up some of the things and not have enough time just to do more takes or whatever, do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I think I'd like to have seen more sinister looking elves.

Yeah, same, absolutely.

More gore.

It feels like a Sunday afternoon... No, not Sunday afternoon. Late Saturday, 8 o'clock on ITV. Not that I watch TV anymore. It doesn't seem too harsh, but you know.

Yeah.

Or not ITV, Channel 4. Channel 5.

You're probably glad you watched it, because it is fun for the most part. If you weren't watching it with your reviewer's eye.

Yeah, I might. If I was just sitting there, legs up, just like, starting to watch and it was Christmasy thing. Yeah, I would watch it. But like I said, I'm not going to go back to it. So I'm going to give it a thumbs down and not recommend it.

Oh, wow. Okay, Krampus, well, I'm going to give it a thumbs up.

Are you calling me a Krampus or like a Scrooge?

You, I'm calling you a Krampus Scrooge. Yeah. Johnny Scrooge.

That's absolutely fine. You know what I'm like. And I hate to be the negative. Well, it's not negative. It's just the way I am.

I think there's a lot to offer this film. And I think if you like your Christmas horror films, or your Christmas Scrooge features.

If you like Christmas horror, then I don't know.

You're never going to have to repeat the magic of Gremlins or National Lampoonies, but if you like that kind of thing, this has got that in it.

I'd probably say re-watch Gremlins.

Yeah, of course. Absolutely. But if you want something different.

And if you still want it afterwards, there you go. If you watch Gremlins and you still fancy something like that, then watch this. There you go. That's the recommend I can give it.

I do feel like it's jumping on the bandwagon of Rare Exports there with that whole kind of troll hunter type.

Well, to be fair, it's going to be hard nowadays coming up with new concepts of fucking Christmas horror movies. There's only so much you can do.

Indeed. But it's a thumbs up from me. It's a thumbs down from Gav. But it's something in the barn. And that's it.

I hate this. Give me a sequel. There's something in my pants.

Oh, God, I thought you'd been serious for a second. I already know there's something in your pants. I've seen it when you wear your dressing game without any pants. A couple of times. No, I cannot believe a little girl pissed on you and blamed you. That is mental.

If you've only just tuned in, I was also little at the time.

Yep. Imagine, though.

That's my girlfriend of four years. Jane Moore. Jane Moore. Yeah, I don't know what happened to her. I saw her. I did see her later on. She went to secondary school with me and kind of sat over in class, actually, a bit, but she started. She got real. She went real metal smoking, smoking, B&H and more. Won't be surprised. Tattoos. She was. She went quite metal. Listened to Iron Maiden, lots of shit like that. She was real metal before metal was metal for me. I didn't know what that was going on.