After the fun of the Office Christmas Party, someone having a far less enjoyable night is Thomas (Alain Lalanne), the ten year-old child prodigy protagonist of 1989 French festive horror-thriller 3615 Code Père Noël (also known as Deadly Games, Dial Code Santa Claus, Game Over, and Hide and Freak, all of which are great names). Rene Manzor famously attempted to sue the makers of Home Alone for ripping off his movie, and it’s easy to see the similarities, but for me this one feels much more like a rip-roaring, terrifying Die Hard with a kid in it than Christopher Columbus’ 1990 family-friendly laugh riot. The tone is far more serious and even the film’s steel drum-flavoured score is quite similar to James Horner’s ‘80s Commando/48 Hours action best.
Resourceful Rambo fan Thomas is left at home on Christmas eve night with his frail grandfather when a deranged killer dressed as Santa invades his family’s huge mansion. With nobody around to help, the kid must do whatever it takes to defend himself and his Grampa and Save Christmas. This is a bit of a mad film that lures you in with its child-friendly first act, before turning unseasonably nightmare-inducing. Thomas lives a happy life with his cuddly dog in his family’s huge home that is implausibly filled with trap doors, secret passageways, booby traps and the like. It seems more like the Crystal Maze than a house that someone would feasibly live in, but it makes for a very distinctive and inventive home invasion setting.
Thomas is gearing up for Christmas and is desperate to catch a glimpse of Santa. Being a rich child genius, he happens to have a homemade device that helps him control the house’s security from his wrist and likes to run around the gaff in Rambo headband and camo-makeup, like he’s on a secret mission. It’s also established that he knows how to drive. Wonder if that’ll come in useful later.
It’s all initially very cutesie and the sort of thing you really could see Macaulay Culkin doing. However, we keep cutting to scenes of this bearded vagrant weirdo (Patrick Floersheim) wandering round town, generally frightening people. First time we see him, he’s enthusiastically trying to join in a kids’ snowball fight and seems genuinely confused that they’re weirded out by him. Right away, we know he’s not quite right.
This features what I’m almost certain is the earliest movie example of online child grooming. Our mysterious villain makes contact with our young hero via, of all things, a Minitel machine (google it) and pretends to be the real Santa to find out where he lives. It’s all very sinister.
So, the whimsical, fantastical set-up gradually gives way to a much creepier vibe, but then ‘Santa’ gets to the house while mum is working late and…stabs the dog in the throat right in front of the boy. It's messed up and a monumental shift in tone that feels like a huge rug-pull. Suddenly, we’re in grim survival horror territory and all bets are off. It’s audacious and awesome.
Thomas has to fight for his life and, what makes it worse is that he still thinks this is the real Santa and that he’s after him for being naughty. He has to call upon all his crafty tricks, traps and knowledge of the mansion’s nooks and crannies to evade capture, before turning the tables on his tormentor in the film’s balls-out final third. It’s freaky, fun and downright exhilarating.
This goes to places most other films daren’t go. How many movies have the balls to have ‘Santa’ stab a 10-year-old boy, or slap a little girl in the face? Even Billy Bob Thornton never went that far. It’s made all the more terrifying as, like in John Carpenter’s Halloween, this villain’s motivations are so puzzling and unknowable.
It's like nothing else I’ve ever seen, featuring dream-like visuals (does Thomas’ house really have an old WWII bomber aeroplane in the basement or a mosaic of floor tiles that look exactly like the killer’s eyes from above?) and a satisfyingly bombastic ‘80s rock score, with some Survivor-style pulsating anthems that perfectly soundtrack montages of the kid getting suited-up, setting traps and stuff. Bonnie Tyler even sings the film’s main theme, an inspired mash-up of power rock ballad and Christmas carol.
I’d never heard of this until recently but now love this film. It’s a bit clunky at times, but if you can allow yourself to accept its bizarre, heightened sense of reality, it’s an awesome, runaway sleigh ride of an experience. I really don’t think Macaulay could have pulled this off the way this mulleted little French boy does and though the film has a relatively happy ending, it doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that all involved will likely be scarred for life. The whole thing is like a nice, trippy dream that turns into a bloody nightmare.
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