Mrs Heathen enjoys trolling the category lists on the Tivo this time of year, mostly looking for the specials of our youth in the innocent 70s, but about a week ago — during a visit by Mama Nia and the Ultilopp — we saw something that sounded so awful and ill-conceived that we just had to tell the Tivo to grab it.

Last night, with the same company over, we watched it.

Oh. My. God.

The film in question is the unparalled and completely unequaled Santa’s Slay, from 2005 (straight to video, for reasons that will become obvious). It’s a Christmas-themed comedy horror, although it’s really only unassailably in one of those categories, since it’s neither funny nor scary enough to qualify for the other two. At least it’s clearly Yuletide.

The argument is this: Notwithstanding what you’ve previously been told, Santa is the product of a second immaculate conception, this time between the devil and the Virgin Erica (we’re sure that’s an inside joke we don’t get). This original Santa was as evil as the normal one is beneficent, and the wintertime “Christ mass” we all know and love was originally undertaken by the faithful to seek protection from his annual murderous rampage.

With me so far?

At some point, ol’ Santa loses a curling match with an angel, and as a consequence is forced to be nice for a thousand years, a period that conveniently expires at the start of the film, thereby laying the groundwork for the carnage that ensues.

And so it begins. Santa — played, of course, by an enormous Jewish wrestler — makes his entrance in the movie’s first minutes; during a dysfunctional Christmas Eve dinner at (an uncredited) James Caan‘s opulent family home, Santa descends the chimney, bursts through the brick mantle a la Kool Aid, and brutally dispatches the family (Chris Kattan (kicked into hutch), Fran Drescher (set afire; drowned in egg nog — this may have been the high point of the film), and Rebecca Gayheart in cameos) before moving on to spread his particularly lethal brand of cheer.

There is, of course, a good-hearted teen, the sometime object of his affection (Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin), a crooked pastor Dave Thomas, naturally), and the apparently-crazy-but-really-wise grandfather (Robert Culp) who has mysterious but longstanding anti-Christmas views. The town’s deli — where, of course, both teens work — is run by a not-long-for-this-world Saul Rubinek, who meets his end pinned to the wall with a menorah.

You can imagine the rest of the film, I’m sure. Good-Hearted Teen (“GHT”) discovers, more or less simultaneously, that Santa is an enormous killing machine AND the “real” story behind Santa from his perhaps-not-so-nutty grandpa, who is easy to peg as the aforementioned angel well before the origin sequence.

(Said origin bit is actually another high point: it’s done in a halfassed Rankin-Bass style (think Rudolph), which makes it clear the filmmaker was at least trying for something smarter or at least cleverer than he ended up with here.)

Santa pursues our GHT with the help of his Viking-themed sled, pulled through the holiday skies (of course) by a man-eating white ox, and loaded (of course) with explosive presents he throws like grenades. There is, obviously, massacre in a strip club (quoth Santa: “Naughty!”), a snowmobile chase, a showdown in an ice rink, a curling rematch, and a gun nut with a bazooka who saves the day.

I swear, as God is my witness, I am not making ANY of this up, and it’s easily as bad as I’ve described here.

(However, it’s still better than this.)