Director: Martin Kitrosser
Year: 1991
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Trying to help her traumatized son at Christmas, a woman finds that the repeated attempts of a local toy shop worker and his friend to win him over are based on more serious accusations and must try to stop their dangerous plan for the neighborhood children before it comes to fruition.
Review:
On the whole, this was a decidedly decent enough effort that really does have some good parts to it. One of its better elements is the extremely enjoyable nature it takes toward the sleazy aspect of its storyline, where the idea of a group of innocent neighborhood children receiving malfunctioning toys that will end up killing them in the future makes for a rather chilling premise that gets exploited quite nicely along the way. From the scenes of the children taking the toys and playing to the later scenes of them running amuck as they start to experience all sorts of extremely grisly ends, which are nicely laid out in the second half, this one really gets some rather fun, and cheesy action to go along with the rather entertaining for their fun and goofy time. Also part of this charm is the finale which manages to include plenty of rather fun, cheesy action here with the rampaging doll carrying the action in the toy shop along with a cheesy gusto that's plenty of fun to see through.
However, this is about all that works here since there are a lot of problematic elements throughout, the most notable being the overuse of the killer doll concept that had long run out of steam. The idea of warping it into a killer Santa story is decent enough but it never goes far enough with this premise since the majority of the time is spent on really unconvincing special effects for the killer dolls and toys that are hardly lifelike and realistic which undercuts their effectiveness considerably. Likewise, the revolving door cast as the villains of the piece doesn't give this one the case of mystery as to who's behind it all and why that was most likely the target it was aiming for as here it simply reeks of inability to really commit to a storyline that jumps from one random image to another without really settling on a given topic which causes this one to slip a lot as these are pretty hard-fought flaws here. Still, it's good enough that this is still somewhat watchable.
Overview: **/5
A decent entry if not overly spectacular, this one becomes quite enjoyable at points but has some issues that are quite damaging and make for a rather troubling entry. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of this particular kind of genre effort, enjoyed the previous entries in the series, or are fans of the creative crew while most others out there should heed caution.
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