The Naughty List: A Killer Guide to Murderous Santas in Film, TV, and Comics

Happy Holidays, Horror Hounds!

You know what really grinds my gingerbread? Every December, we’re expected to embrace the image of a jolly fat man breaking into homes to leave presents for good little boys and girls. But horror creators? They’ve been asking the real questions for decades: What if Santa was actually a homicidal maniac? What if those rosy cheeks hide something sinister? What if that “Ho ho ho” is the last thing you hear?

Welcome to the dark side of Christmas, where Santa’s checking his list twice—but only to figure out who dies first.

The Granddaddy of Killer Clauses

Before we wade into the bloodbath, we need to talk about where it all started. No, not Silent Night, Deadly Night—though we’ll get there. The first murderous Santa to grace our screens appeared in the 1972 anthology film Tales from the Crypt, specifically in the segment “…And All Through the House.”

Based on a story from EC Comics’ Vault of Horror #35 (published way back in 1954), this deliciously twisted tale follows a woman who murders her husband on Christmas Eve, only to find herself terrorized by an escaped mental patient dressed as—you guessed it—Santa Claus. The kicker? She can’t call the police because there’s already a corpse in her living room. The ironic ending, where her daughter innocently lets the killer Santa inside, set the template for decades of holiday horror to come.

The segment was so effective that HBO remade it in 1989 as the second episode of their Tales from the Crypt series, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Mary Ellen Trainor. Even nearly 40 years later, it remains a masterclass in dark holiday irony.

The Film That Launched a Thousand Protests

If there’s one killer Santa that rules them all, it’s Billy Chapman from Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). This film didn’t just make waves—it created a tsunami of controversy that nearly sank it before audiences could even see it.

The plot is pure trauma porn: Young Billy witnesses his parents murdered by a thief in a Santa suit. He grows up in a Catholic orphanage where a tyrannical nun dismisses his Christmas-related PTSD and abuses him. Years later, when his employer forces him to dress as Santa, Billy’s fragile psyche finally shatters. He embarks on a Christmas Eve killing spree, “punishing” anyone he deems naughty.

What made Silent Night, Deadly Night so explosive wasn’t just its content—it was the marketing. When ads featuring an axe-wielding Santa aired during family programming in 1984, parent groups lost their collective minds. Protests erupted outside theaters. Film critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert condemned it as “blood money.” The film was pulled from theaters within weeks.

But here’s the thing about controversy: it creates legends. Silent Night, Deadly Night spawned four sequels, a 2012 loose remake, and even a brand-new 2025 remake. The franchise introduced us to Billy’s brother Ricky in the sequel, who inherited the family business of Santa-suited slaughter. There are even comic book adaptations for those who prefer their holiday horror in panel form.

Before Billy: The Original Christmas Evil

Four years before Billy Chapman’s rampage, another disturbed man donned the red suit in Christmas Evil (1980). Harry Stadling’s origin story is almost Freudian: as a child, he witnessed something inappropriate involving his father dressed as Santa. Flash forward to adulthood, and Harry works at a toy factory while maintaining a creepy surveillance operation on neighborhood children, complete with a meticulously kept naughty list.

Unlike many slasher films that rush to the killing, Christmas Evil takes its time building Harry’s psychological breakdown. The murders don’t even start until about two-thirds through the film. This slower burn makes Harry feel more like a real person spiraling into madness rather than just another masked killer, which is precisely what makes it so unsettling.

Christmas Evil didn’t generate the same controversy as its more famous successor, but it has earned a cult following among horror aficionados who appreciate its psychological depth.

When Santa is Literally the Devil’s Son

Let’s pivot from psychological horror to gleeful absurdity with Santa’s Slay (2005). This horror-comedy stars professional wrestler Bill Goldberg as Santa Claus—who, surprise, is actually the son of Satan.

The premise is bonkers: Santa lost a bet with an angel and was forced to play the benevolent gift-giver for a thousand years. When that millennium ends, he gleefully returns to his true demonic nature and goes on a Christmas killing spree.

The opening scene alone has achieved legendary status among horror fans. Santa crashes a wealthy family’s Christmas dinner and proceeds to murder everyone in increasingly ridiculous ways: drowning Fran Drescher in eggnog, using a ninja star from the Christmas tree as a throwing weapon. It’s cartoonishly violent, pitch-black comedy, and utterly unafraid to be exactly what it is.

Santa’s Slay understands that sometimes you don’t need psychological complexity or social commentary. Sometimes you just need Bill Goldberg in a Santa suit throwing people through windows.

The Santa Who Fights Back

Not every Santa on this list is a villain. In 2022, Violent Night flipped the script by making Santa the hero—sort of. David Harbour plays a version of Santa who’s revealed to be a supernatural former Viking warrior. When a family is taken hostage by mercenaries on Christmas Eve, Santa decides to intervene in the most violently festive way possible.

This Santa doesn’t sneak down chimneys to leave presents—he drops grenades down bad guys’ pants and watches the explosion with grim satisfaction. Led by John Leguizamo’s villain, the mercenaries quickly learn that messing with Christmas when an immortal Norse warrior is playing Santa is a spectacularly bad idea.

Violent Night works because it takes the concept seriously enough to deliver genuine thrills while embracing the inherent absurdity of “Die Hard meets Bad Santa meets Viking mythology.”

When Technology Ruins Christmas

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) asked the question nobody knew they needed answered: What if we turned decommissioned military killer robots into department store Santas?

The answer, predictably, is carnage.

When one of these robot Santas malfunctions and reverts to its original programming, it goes on a Terminator-style killing spree through a small town on Christmas Eve. A kid gets an axe to the head. The robot Santa drives a stolen ambulance into police cars. It’s neon-soaked, synth-heavy chaos that feels like someone fed The Terminator and Silent Night, Deadly Night into a blender with a heavy dose of 1980s aesthetic.

The film is unapologetically bonkers, and that’s exactly its appeal. Who needs plausibility when you’ve got a killer robot in a Santa suit mowing down everything in its path?

International Horror: Finland’s Terrifying Take

While American cinema gave us slasher Santas and demon Santas, Finland delivered something genuinely unsettling with Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010).

The film reimagines Santa as an ancient evil creature buried deep in the Korvatunturi mountains. When an excavation accidentally unleashes him, a small Finnish community discovers that the original Santa wasn’t a jolly gift-giver—he was a monster who stole naughty children.

What makes Rare Exports work is its commitment to atmosphere. The frozen, desolate Finnish landscape becomes a character itself, and the “real” Santa—a creepy naked old man found frozen in the mountain—is genuinely unnerving. The film treats its mythology seriously, building a world where ancient European folklore collides with modern greed, and the results are both thrilling and thought-provoking.

Krampus and His Merry Band of Monsters

Speaking of European folklore, we can’t discuss Christmas horror without mentioning Krampus (2015). While not technically a “Santa” movie, director Michael Dougherty’s film taps into the same territory by bringing the anti-Santa demon to life in spectacular fashion.

When young Max loses his Christmas spirit and tears up his letter to Santa, he accidentally summons Krampus—a horned, demonic entity that punishes those who’ve lost faith in Christmas. What follows is a siege on Max’s family home by an army of nightmarish Christmas creatures: demonic toys, evil gingerbread men, murderous elves, and a jack-in-the-box monster called Der Klown that swallows people whole.

The genius of Krampus is how it balances genuine scares with dark comedy, creating something that feels like a twisted Grimm fairy tale. The ending—where the family finds themselves trapped in a snow globe in Krampus’s lair, doomed to repeat their nightmare forever—is deliciously bleak.

Reverse Santa: When the Victims Wear Red

Most killer Santa movies feature psychos in Santa suits targeting innocent victims. Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984) brilliantly reversed the concept: what if someone was killing people dressed as Santa?

This British slasher follows a serial killer who targets department store Santas and anyone else unfortunate enough to don the red suit during the London Christmas season. The kills are creative and brutal: one Santa gets his face shoved onto the grill where he’s roasting chestnuts, another is castrated in a department store bathroom, and one gets a cleaver through the face while being displayed onstage.

The killer’s motivation is revealed to be childhood trauma—he witnessed his father (dressed as Santa) cheating on his mother, leading to his mother’s death. It’s Oedipal horror wrapped in Christmas packaging, and while the film’s production was notoriously troubled, the premise alone makes it a fascinating entry in the killer Santa canon.

Comic Book Clauses: When Sequential Art Gets Sinister

The murderous Santa phenomenon isn’t limited to screens—comic books have been serving up sinister Saint Nicks for decades, often with even less restraint than their cinematic counterparts.

The Deviant: A Modern Masterpiece

James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson’s The Deviant (Image Comics, 2024) might be the most sophisticated take on the killer Santa yet. This nine-issue psychological crime thriller follows a blood-stained Santa who commits “unimaginable atrocities” against young men in 1972 Milwaukee. A man named Randall Olsen is convicted and imprisoned, but fifty years later, as Christmas approaches again, copycat killings begin.

What elevates The Deviant beyond simple slasher fare is its exploration of queer identity and societal concepts of “deviance.” The central characters—the accused killer, the detective, and the surviving victims—are all queer, and the series examines how non-heteronormative people have historically been painted as evil or dangerous. It’s a killer Santa story that actually has something to say, wrapped in gorgeous, horrifying artwork by Hixson.

Lobo’s Christmas Massacre

If The Deviant represents the sophisticated end of comic book killer Santas, then DC’s Lobo: Paramilitary Christmas Special (1991) represents the gleefully trashy opposite extreme.

Written by Alan Grant and Keith Giffen with art by Simon Bisley, this one-shot depicts Santa as “Kris ‘Crusher’ Kringle”—a brutal slave-driving dictator who runs his North Pole factory fortress with an army of malnourished combat elves. Amnesty International has even filed complaints against him.

The Easter Bunny, tired of competing with Christmas’s dominance, hires intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo to assassinate Santa. What follows is exactly as subtle as you’d expect: Lobo massacres dozens of elves, fights Santa in mortal combat with sharpened shivs, and ultimately decapitates jolly old Saint Nick.

But wait—it gets better. Lobo takes over Santa’s workshop, forces the remaining elves to build bombs, steals Santa’s sleigh, and flies around the world dropping explosives on everyone on the naughty list. It’s ultraviolent satire that nobody understood was satire—they just enjoyed the carnage.

Classic Comic Santas

Evil Santas have been popping up in comics since the medium’s golden age:

• Iron Man #254 (1990) features a pistol-packing Santa attacking Tony Stark, courtesy of legendary artist Bob Layton. Given Stark’s history of naughty behavior, maybe Santa had a point.
• The Last Christmas (Image Comics, 2006) by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn (the same duo behind Deadpool) depicts Santa after the apocalypse, drunk and defending the last surviving child against zombies.
• The Witching Hour #28 (DC, 1973) showcases Nick Cardy’s macabre cover art of Santa as a fat skeleton—proof that even death can’t cure the holiday weight gain.
• The December 1977 issue of Heavy Metal featured French artist Jean Solé’s heavily-armed Pere Noël, giving Santa an assault rifle and a serious attitude problem.

Modern Killer Santa Comics

The tradition continues with contemporary titles like Naughty List (AfterShock Comics) from Nick Santora, showrunner of Reacher. This series reimagines Santa as a bitter immortal who has outlived his family for hundreds of years. When his Naughty List is stolen, immortal-but-exhausted Santa must hunt it down before it’s used for nefarious purposes.

Meanwhile, I Saw Santa: A Spawn Universe Christmas Story (2025) pits Father Christmas against a serial killer so twisted it would make the Devil weep. Because apparently, even Santa needs to occasionally throw hands with homicidal maniacs.

Beyond Santa: Other Christmas Creatures of Carnage

While Santa dominates the killer Christmas character landscape, he’s not alone in turning the holidays homicidal.

Jack Frost: The Snowman from Hell

Jack Frost (1997) delivers exactly what its premise promises: a serial killer named Jack Frost becomes a murderous snowman after his prison transport vehicle crashes into a truck carrying experimental genetic material.

The film is pure B-movie gold, complete with terrible effects, worse puns, and an infamous scene where Jack (in snowman form) sexually assaults a woman in a bathtub using a carrot. Yes, really. Shannon Elizabeth’s film debut, everyone! It’s the kind of scene that’s so wrong it loops back around to being memorably insane.

Despite (or because of) its absurdity, Jack Frost earned a cult following and a sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000), which relocates the killer snowman to a tropical island. Because why not?

The Gingerdead Man: Gary Busey as a Cookie

In the “I can’t believe this exists” category, we have The Gingerdead Man (2005), starring Gary Busey as the voice of a homicidal gingerbread cookie.

Serial killer Millard Findlemeyer is executed, and his mother collects his ashes and mixes them into gingerbread spice mix. When this mix ends up at a struggling bakery and gets baked into a gingerbread man, Millard’s soul possesses the cookie, which then goes on a foul-mouthed, pint-sized killing spree.

It’s as ridiculous as it sounds, but that’s the entire point. This is Charles Band and Full Moon Features at their most cheerfully trashy. The film spawned two sequels and even a crossover with the Evil Bong franchise, because when you’ve already made a killer gingerbread man, a demonic bong pipe is just a logical next step.

Other Christmas Nightmares Worth Noting

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) is a Scottish zombie Christmas musical that sounds like a Mad Libs result but somehow works. High school students must sing and dance their way through a zombie outbreak on Christmas, delivering numbers like “Turning My Life Around” while obliviously stepping over corpses. It’s Shaun of the Dead meets High School Musical, and it’s way better than it has any right to be.

Red Christmas (2016) features Dee Wallace fighting off Cletus—a deformed intruder who turns out to be the embodied result of an abortion she had twenty years earlier after a clinic bombing. It’s provocative, disturbing horror that uses Christmas as a backdrop for exploring difficult ethical questions about reproductive rights. Not exactly light holiday viewing.

Dead End (2003) traps a family on an endless forest road on Christmas Eve, complete with a mysterious woman in white and a sinister hearse collecting victims one by one. This French horror film is all atmosphere and dread, building to a twist ending that recontextualizes everything that came before.

Black Christmas (1974) deserves special mention as the granddaddy of the Christmas horror subgenre and arguably the first true slasher film—predating Halloween by four years. Bob Clark’s masterpiece follows sorority sisters terrorized by an unknown killer during the holidays. The identity of the killer is never revealed, the obscene phone calls are genuinely disturbing, and the final shot of the phone ringing again, suggesting another murder, is pure nightmare fuel.

Gremlins (1984) might not seem like horror to modern audiences raised on extreme content, but Joe Dante’s film legitimately terrified kids in the 1980s and was violent enough to help create the PG-13 rating. Beyond the chaos unleashed when the rules about Mogwais are broken, the film contains Kate’s heartbreaking monologue about how her father died: he dressed as Santa to surprise the family, climbed down the chimney, slipped, broke his neck, and wasn’t discovered for days. It’s a genuinely dark moment in what’s otherwise a fun creature feature, and it perfectly captures how Christmas can harbor unexpected tragedies beneath its cheerful surface.

Why Killer Santas?

So why does this subgenre exist? Why do we keep returning to the image of Santa Claus as a murderous maniac?

Part of it is simple subversion. Santa represents everything safe, comforting, and nostalgic about childhood. He’s unconditional love in a red suit. Corrupting that image is inherently transgressive, which makes it irresistible to horror creators. We’re hardwired to find the corruption of innocence unsettling—it’s why evil children, possessed dolls, and killer Santas all work so effectively.

But there’s more to it than simple shock value. The holidays—especially Christmas—come wrapped in enormous cultural pressure to be happy, grateful, and loving. Families are expected to gather peacefully. We’re supposed to radiate joy and goodwill. That pressure creates a perfect breeding ground for horror. When reality inevitably fails to match the idealized version sold to us through commercials and Hallmark movies, the cognitive dissonance is profound.

Killer Santa movies let us acknowledge that darkness. They’re cathartic releases for anyone who’s ever felt stressed, lonely, depressed, or angry during what’s supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year.” They say: It’s okay if the holidays aren’t perfect. It’s okay if you’re struggling. Here, watch Billy Chapman murder someone with an axe while dressed as Santa—at least your Christmas isn’t that bad.

There’s also something deliciously rebellious about these films. In a season dominated by saccharine sentiment and enforced cheerfulness, killer Santa movies are punk rock. They’re the cinematic equivalent of blast Slayer while everyone else is listening to Mariah Carey. They refuse to play along with the manufactured joy, and there’s genuine freedom in that refusal.

More to Come?

The killer Santa subgenre shows no signs of slowing down. The 2025 remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night proves there’s still appetite for these stories. New entries like The Deviant demonstrate that creators are finding fresh angles and deeper themes to explore within the framework.

Wrapping Up (Pardon the Pun)

As long as there’s Christmas, there will be Christmas horror. As long as we’re told to be joyful, some of us will want to watch the opposite. And as long as Santa Claus remains a cultural icon, filmmakers and comic creators will keep finding new ways to make him menacing.

So this holiday season, when you’re settling in with your traditional Christmas viewing, maybe skip It’s a Wonderful Life for once. Queue up Silent Night, Deadly Night. Pick up a copy of The Deviant. Revisit Gremlins. Embrace the darkness at the heart of the season.

After all, Santa Claus is coming to town—and he’s not bringing presents.

He’s bringing an axe.

What’s your favorite killer Santa movie or comic? Did I miss any murderous Christmas characters that deserve recognition? Drop your bloodstained recommendations in the comments below, and remember: you better watch out.