Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas (2011) (DVD review).

As everyone knows, Christmas can be a bit of a horror story, especially when shopping malls come into the picture with their endless sequences of Santa Claus, reindeers and the elves intermingled with zombie-like people who have eyes focused somewhere else plus the moronic constant mind-boggling inane music. Need I go on? It doesn’t get any better. Well, yes it does, especially where Caesar & Otto are concerned!

This hapless pair has been on movie screens before with comedy horrors including vampires and summer camps, which all end in bloodshed, and now they take on Christmas in their own imitable way in ‘Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas’. They are like Laurel and Hardy or possibly The Three Stooges where one of the trio has been brutally murdered. Over the top slapstick combined with riotous humour, black humour and that’s what you get here. There is absolutely no point to a serious review of this DVD, no need for a complicated dissertation because it’s plain and simple stuff with the common denominator being somewhat low. Comedy horror B-movie with no punches pulled!

Written and directed by Dave Campfield, Caesar and his half-brother Otto play Santa Claus and Elf in a shopping store. Everything goes well until they offend another Santa by the name of Demian. Santa Claus people working in stores usually have to get some sort of official disclosure to protect the public but I’m afraid this chap is a complete and utter nutter. He begins to brutally murder, in a Christmas-like fashion, all of the friends expected to go to a dinner party. Of course, the duo will be the last on the list for the final slaughtering! There’s not much more to it than that but it is a riot of laughs, all in the worst possible taste and, if you’re fed up with Christmas movies, then this is an absolute necessity.

It’s a DVD with lots of Christmas bonus features, in multitude in fact, making the package great value for money. There are three commentaries, no less than three extra feature films, a behind-the-scenes featurette, clips of trailers and alternative scenes. I don’t think I’ve seen so many extra items on DVD before, so it must be Christmas after all.

This isn’t for intellectuals with heads buried in sand or somewhere else, it’s for people who like a good old jolly time, not taking life seriously, at least for a few days at Christmas. Fed up with the constant nonsense that this holiday generates for the general public, it’s a chance to look at the world with laughter. Horrific and bloody it may be, we know that none of it is real. Or do we? I’m keeping away from department stores with Santas. If one of them comes down my chimney I will be ready with a machete. You could do a lot worse than this at Christmas!

Rod MacDonald

(region 0 DVD: pub: Tidepoint Pictures/MVD Entertainment Group. 1 DVD 95 minute film with extras. Price: $14.95 (US), £ 7.02 (UK). ASIN: B00E6F12CU)
cast: Deron Miller, Brinke Stevens, Robert Z’Dar, Dave Campfield, Paul Chomicki, Joe Estevez, Debbie Rochon and Linnea Quigley

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