This routine stalk-and-slasher movie gained notoriety when American parents protested about the effect that portraying Father Christmas as a mad murderer would have on children. Billy sees his parents slain at Christmas by someone dressed as Santa. He suffers a miserable childhood in an orphanage and, not surprisingly, grows up hating the festive season. Working in a department store, he's forced into a Santa outfit by his boss and goes on a homicidal rampage himself armed with an axe, a bow and arrows and fairy lights. The murders are perfunctorily dismissed by undistinguished direction and, aside from a few on-the-button lines about the greed and phoney sentiment of Christmas, it's a shallow and depressing affair.

After a man dressed as Santa Claus brutally murders Billy Chapman's parents, little Billy then endures the cruelty of a sadistic nun at his orphanage. Years later, when adult Billy has to fill in for an absent in-store Santa, his childhood trauma brings him to the breaking point.