DAILY CALL SHEET: DECEMBER 7, 2025

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984) Guys dressed as Santa Claus are being offed in various ways, and Scotland Yard seems helpless to find the masked killer. As the body count escalates, the police decide to send a bunch of undercover Santas onto the streets. The killer isn’t biting, though, and instead kidnaps a stripper to be the supreme sacrifice to all the evil that Christmas is. This distraction works, allowing the maniac to resume his Santa-slaying ways. Can nothing stop him? And what’s it all got to do with the mysterious package the lead investigator received marked “Don’t open till Christmas”? With all the head-spearing, face-grilling, and castration, this British attempt to replicate American slashers is actually more sleazy and brutal than many of its Yank counterparts.

TIL: Some Christians, particularly from evangelical, Reformed, or fundamentalist traditions, oppose the modern figure of the all-knowing, all-seeing Santa Claus (distinct from the historical Saint Nicholas), arguing that it can subtly erode faith rather than build it. Pope Paul VI was a little kinder. In a general audience on December 15, 1976, the pontiff noted, "Truly, there is something else that brings us to the threshold of the world of fantasy and poetry: the Christmas tree, 'Santa Claus,' and finally, for those who want to see into the historical and religious reality of Christmas: the nativity scene." The hope was that the childlike joy inspired by the former traditions would lead people to look into Christmas's true profound meaning represented by the latter.

London After Midnight (1927) Despite the protestations of his family and staff, Roger Balfour's death is ruled a suicide by Burke of Scotland Yard. Five years later, a sharp-toothed, wild-maned man in a top hat and his extremely pale female companion take up residence in Balfour's mansion. Oddly, the deathly-looking duo's lease bears the signature of the deceased Balfour, prompting Burke to reopen his investigation. All signs point to vampirism, but things may not be as they seem. One of the holy grails of missing films, the only way to "watch" London After Midnight now is either through slideshows of film stills and production photos organized based on copies of the script, or, more recently. through attempts to add some motion to the existing images with the aid of A.I. Sure, it would be nice to have the original film, but what we do have is enough to get the intentions of the movie across. The results may not be quite as visually astounding as some of its expressionistic horror peers, but Lon Chaney's acting and makeup are excellent and creepy as always, and it's a good dry run for Tod Browning before taking on Dracula.

TIL: If you think it's useless to invest time in something composed of pieced-together fragments, then you may as well toss out your Bible. As the Church attests, we don't have access to the original documents. What we do have are copies of copies whose contents are verifiable through fragments recovered piecemeal over the centuries. For most modern translations, the Old Testament draws heavily from bits and pieces found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from 3rd century BC to 1st century AD. As for the New Testament, it's confirmed mostly from the tattered remains of 2nd–3rd century papyri. The good news is that there are literally thousands of these fragments and more being discovered from time to time, which has allowed translators to accurately assemble a text that reliably reproduces the original biblical authors while weeding out transcription errors or later additions that may have creeped into individual snippets.