Merry Halloween!

I'm continuing my countdown to Halloween covering scary, creepy and Halloween-appropriate Christmas entertainments.

Have you ever seen the 1972 British horror movie Tales from the Crypt?  This anthology film made by Amicus Productions begins with five people separated from their tourist group in the catacombs under the cemetery.  There, they meet a crypt keeper who shows them each how they will meet their grisly deaths.  Of interest here is the first of the five segments, entitled "And All Through the House."  The Grand Dame of Bitches, Joan Collins, stars as Joanne, a woman who murders her husband on Christmas Eve in order to collect his life insurance money.  As she cleans up the mess and the blood, she hears a warning on the radio about a homicidal maniac dressed in a Santa suit in the local area.  As she hurriedly dumps the body down the basement steps, she has to repeatedly tend to her young daughter Carol who keeps getting out of bed--impatient for it to be Christmas morning. 

He knows when you've been naughty!

Unfortunately, the Santa Claus killer is outside the home, eagerly looking in the windows and watching Joanne clean up the scene of her own crime. As Joanne carefully finishes making her husband’s death look like an accident, she's horrified to realize that her young daughter has excitedly opened the front door to welcome in Santa Claus!

One of the fun things about this segment is that it was re-made for the HBO TV series Tales from the Crypt in 1989.  This past summer, a guest blogger wrote about this episode during our Christmas in July party on the blog.  Click here to see what she wrote about it.  Thanks again to Roza for joining in on the fun last July.