XXX-Mas (2023)

 

What can I say.  A buddy of mine is in this and I wanted to review it awhile ago, so why not review a Christmas movie in July.   The synopsis of the film is this: "A blood-thirsty Santa wrecks havoc on the set of an eccentric adult film director's latest production."  I took this directly from their IMDB page & I thought why mess with perfection.

So that sums it up nicely and I'm not going to have any spoilers in this review.  You will either like this film or not.  I'm kind of ambivalent towards it.   First off I'd like to say that the cast is so good looking.  I mean really even the guys, but then again it's a porn satire turned horror film.  Here are some of them:


The dialogue is kind of funny and I like our eccentric director played by Chris Ruppert.  He thinks he's making one of the greatest porno's in history, and it will be a masterpiece because there is a plot and a script.  Hey a guy can dream, and Mr Ruppert is pretty funny.  As for the crazy Santa played by handsome & deranged Drew Marvick he's just having fun here.  I mean it's not always you get to play a deranged Santa, and he plays it with some laughs.


But I digress.  I said this little film is populate with some beautiful & handsome people, and why not in this deranged Christmas story they all look delicious.  There is the beautiful Jessa Flux, the lovely Madilynn Paige, who I may say does not get used enough & is killed off too early.  And then there is Mariana Garcia Montes, Kaity Navi McAllister, Dolly Leigh, and of course Johnathan May as Black Mamba, and Shaun Scott as Jack Rabbit.  Like I said all good looking guys & gals, so the movie is a bit easy on the eyes.




The effects are bloody & gory, yet they are quick and not lingered on.  I would be remiss if I didn't mention my buddy & fellow filmmaker Newt Wallen as George.  He has a particular interesting death scene which happens abruptly, but I love his character as the poor abused & misunderstood cameraman George.


There's even an appearance of the illustrious Felissa Rose as Lana Luscious, which is fun to watch.

Now I laughed and sometimes winced at the movie.  It's an interesting premise, and if there were more ha-ha moments I would probably have liked the film more.  It's trying to be serious when it's not.  I know that producing a film of any type is hard work, but some technical matters I cannot forgive.  Some of the images are not sharp.  I also noticed that some shots go out of focuses.  Rule one in filmmaking is shut off the auto-focus.  Measure and set your focuses, and light for appropriate depth of field.   I know time is money, but a bad image is a bad image.  Sorry guys, but it's one of my own commandments which I follow.  It's been drilled into me since film school & I'm hopelessly a technical lunatic who loves his cinematography.  Now I don't  know if the inferior image is from the streaming platform or that the quality has been compromised by compression.  I assume or I hope the Blue-Ray is better.  I have to ask Newt since he was there, but those are my observations of the film.

If you like such films by all means go watch it and enjoy.  The cast as I said is beautiful, and some of the dialogue had me laughing.  James Dean is the director as well as one of the writers of this film.  He's directed "Fountaine & the Vengeful Nun who wouldn't Die" which is playing on Tubi and he is in pre-production of a film called "Absolution".  I wish him luck and much success on his future films, and I'm heading over to Tubi to check the film out.

I've also left out these actors which are: Newt Wallen, Morrigan Thompson, Joe Hammerstone, as one weird looking deranged Elf.  Then there is Joey Mann, Kyle Shute & Tuffy Brandon.  All do their best and are at times quite funny.  So all take a bow please.  You guys deserve it, and I hope to see more of them in other productions.

The film is streaming for free at Fawesome, so go see it.  It's okay and it has it's moments, and it's free so what have you got to lose.  





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