Happy Helladays begins way back in 1974 with a baby being thrown against the door of a sorority house and a kindly woman taking the child in. Flash forward 13 years to 1987 and our little baby is now young Alistair being played by a man in his 30s standing on his knees and wearing glasses like Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys.
 
So Alistair lives with his adoptive mother in the sorority house with a multitude of sorority sisters who all treat him like shit. All little Alistair wants is a Michael Jackson doll to play with for Christmas and he’ll pretty much do anything to get it. After some taunting and teasing, Alistair sings a Christmas song for a pageant and the girls once again make fun of him. Poor Alistar snaps and start offing the sorority girls one by one while wearing a Santa outfit his mother gave him for an early xmas present.

Before we get too far into the review, I should point out that this is a short movie, clocking in at just over 45 minutes. It’s also super-low budget around $4000. It was filmed by a group of friends and it’s presented as if it is a lost gem from 1987 despite being made in 2011. Even the DVD case advertises it as “The original 1987 Holiday Horror Classic.”



The kills are about what you’d expect for such low budget schlock. Stranglings, eye gouges and neck snaps are pretty weak and all have hilarious voiced-over sound effects. A few of the effects are decent and have lots of blood like the chest stab or a hysterical testical slicing.

I’d say the best part of the movie is the soundtrack. It is genuinely enjoyable with a nice variety of actual music played at a reasonable volume level. Now that may not sound like much, but if you’re like me and have watched a few low budget horror movies, then you know that whenever a song comes on it’s not uncommon for all the audio in the scene to be blown away by whatever metal band the director’s cousin is in.

I’d be lying if I told you this was a good movie, but Happy Helladays is a blast. If the movie was any longer the flaws would have overpowered it. Being the nice short piece that it is, the charm is allowed to come front and center. That charm is what separates Helladays from a spiteful turd like Santa Claws. It’s a difficult movie to find but I think it’s worth searching out, before you know it we’ll all be around the Yule fire singing “Boners at Christmas”

Happy Helladays is a low budget Christmas romp that wants you to look at horror more on the fun trashy side than the serious one. If you can look past the bad acting, and like to have a laugh along with your testicle cutting scenes then Happy Helladays is for you.