"He didn't know how to cut a woman into pieces."

I have a perfect New Year's movie picked out for you mortals, but we'll get to that in a minute, as I also have some important movie critic business to attend first.

As we reach the end of another trip around the sun, most other reviewers are publishing their top 10 films of 2017. If you've been following this blog for any stretch of time, you know staying up on what's new isn't what interests me, but I'll give it my best shot.

Here we go:

10.) Death Race 2050 -- Yes, Roger Corman's Death Race 2000 has been remade before with a full reboot of the franchise featuring Jason Statham, but that sucked. This remake by G.J. Echternkamp remembers why the original was so funny in the first place, keeps with the essentials of story and tone, but offers up an all-new cast of currently relevant, satirical racers like Tammy the Terrorist, a religious nut who worships Elvis; rapper and black supremacist Minerva Jefferson; and interactive sex toy Dr. Creamer. For my money, this is the best splatter-comedy of 2017. It's still on Netflix.

9.) The Evil Within -- As heir to an oil fortune, writer-director Andrew Getty got to live out his dreams in a way many of you mortals will never realize. Getty was able to self-finance a film about a mentally retarded boy who finds advice about love and life in an antique mirror that doesn't have his best interests at heart, and he got to do it while addicted to methamphetamine. The film took 15 years to complete and Getty died during post-production. Hate on rich kids and meth heads all you want, the film is touching, trippy, scary and something altogether spectacular. Michael Berryman plays a demon. I predict that time will be kind to this sleeper and it will be revered as a one-of-a-kind classic. The Evil Within streams on Amazon Prime.

8.) The Void -- Technically, this Lovecraftian tale of bizarre sex rituals and human sacrifice by the writer/director team of Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski was released in 2016, but it didn't make it to Netflix until 2017, which is when I watched it and reviewed it. That is to say, I reviewed it in 2017, and that's how things get on this list.

7.) The Babadook -- Thanks to some epic shit-posting on Tumblr, the titular monster of this 2014 Jennifer Kent film enjoyed the renowned status of mascot for Gay Pride 2017. Sure, it doesn't make sense, but are you gonna deny the homosexuals their claim on an allegory about grief? What's wrong with you?

6.) Dog Soldiers -- For many, 2017 was a year of tragic loss and even I am included in that bunch. My favorite werewolf took a silver bullet in June and 2002's Dog Soldiers reminds me of him. You can find it on YouTube.

5.) Invaders from Mars -- In 1974, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released on an unsuspecting public. It was original, intense and it changed the course of horror history. It was shot over a nasty, hot Texas summer by a bunch of hippies led by director Tobe Hooper, who shuffled off his mortal coil this past August. Amazon Prime no longer hosts The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, so the number five spot goes instead Hooper's Invaders from Mars. It is a 1986 remake of the 1953 original, and is frog-gulping, slime monster fun. It streams on YouTube.

4.) Night of the Living Dead -- Night of the Living Dead is the only movie I've reviewed twice. I wrote about the 1968 classic in February 2016 as part of my Black History Month celebration, but we have nasty mailer-daemons in Hell and they gobbled up every last byte, so I reviewed it again a year later. Little did I know at the time that auteur George A. Romero would cross over in July. Night of the Living Dead streams on Amazon Prime, Shudder and YouTube.

3.) Bride of Frankenstein -- We've established that I don't stay on top of what's new. That isn't among my purposes. One of my goals is to let you know when classics come available online, like six Universal monster films did on Shudder in October. Bride of Frankenstein from 1935 is my favorite of the batch, and you better get to it quickly if you haven't watched it yet as Shudder's got it listed in the "Last Chance to Watch" collection.

2.) Night of the Demons -- I think at this point we've covered that I suck at writing best-of-the-year lists, but my favorite thing to do when writing this blog is to rediscover forgotten gems, and you'll be hard pressed to find a movie as shiny as 1988's Night of the Demons. It's about a bunch of horny teenagers who break into a reputedly haunted house one Halloween to have a party and a seance. Disgusting things happen. It's still available on YouTube.

And that brings us down to number one. The best movie of 2017 is Abby from 1974.

1.) Abby -- Louisville native William Girdler directed this blaxploitation ripoff of The Exorcist. It stars Carol Speed as Abby, and Blacula himself, William Marshall, as the priest. Abby, a faithful wife and devout church-goer becomes possessed by a sex demon. It's funky, psychedelic and appears to have cost $12 to make. Abby streams on YouTube.

So there's the list, and what better way to wrap up 2017 and set the tone for 2018 than with an old slasher flick that takes place on New Year's Eve?

This week's Thursday Thriller is Terror Train.

This 1980 film by Roger Spottiswoode is about a bunch of college kids who played a prank gone awry. The members of Sigma Phi decided to haze a pledge by telling him to go upstairs and lay Jamie Lee Curtis, but when he got to bed, he found a medical school cadaver where she was supposed to be. Three years later, the fraternity throws its New Year's party on a train, and a masked killer starts picking them off one by one. The killer changes costume throughout the movie, and starts off in what's supposed to be a Groucho Marx getup, but looks a lot more like Gene Shalit.

David Copperfield is in it. Roger Ebert called it "gruesome stupidity," but it's definitely in my top 52 of the year. Its thin plot will make it a great background movie to play at your New Year's Party.

Terror Train streams on Amazon Prime.

"Moss Garcia: throws rocks at dogs; uses profane language; picks his nose; impure thoughts; negative body hygiene."

It's the last Thursday before Christmas, mortals. We've been through a lot. We've seen a lot of murdering Santas over the last month. We saw the first murdering Santa in film; we saw the murdering Santa concept stretched to outlandish, pro-wrestling style extremes; we saw murdering Santas menace a sorority house; and we're still not done with this theme -- not by a long shot.

There are plenty of murdering Santas in films that aren't so easy to find online. Some streaming services act like the genre doesn't even exist. They'd rather wallow in more traditional fare, the kind of stuff that's offensive in its harmlessness. Netflix has the whole Tim Allen/Santa Clause trilogy, but can't cough up Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out starring Bill Moseley?

Then over on Amazon Prime they have tons of latter entries in the field, but a lot of them suck pretty hard. There's one called Christmas Slay in which the police come to arrest the maniac, and he just lazily pushes them down on the ground, one-by-one. For some reason they don't all-at-once kick the shit out of him. It's so surreal, you have to wonder if it's possible someone actually made a movie this bad or if you're just dreaming. I'm sure the cast and crew thought they were being ironic or some shit. I had to turn it off.

But I'm afraid our time to explore this topic is coming to an end, and I've saved the best I could find for last.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Christmas Evil.

This 1980 film by writer/director Lewis Jackson is one of those slow breakdown of a fragile mind stories. Harry (Brandon Maggart) has had problems ever since he was a kid and saw Santa Claus kneeling in front of his mom and fondling her legs by the Christmas tree. He has a fantasy of being Santa. He has a middle-management job at a toy factory. He uses binoculars to watch the neighborhood children and writes down when they're naughty. He gets worked up when he sees the big guy make his appearance at the end of the Macy's parade. He lives alone. At work, superiors and subordinates alike treat him like a chump. His brother thinks he's a failure.

So what does he do? He makes a Santa suit and paints a sleigh on the side of his white, windowless van, and behaves in a generally creepy manner, but he doesn't act out until he learns at the factory's charity drive for the Willowy Springs State Hospital for Retarded Children isn't on the up and up. He suits up, steals a bunch of toys from the factory, and delivers them to the hospital. Harry's an all right guy after all, until he stabs a guy in the eyeball with a toy soldier's sword in front of a church.

What's fun about this movie is how it really puts you in Psycho Psanta's mind. Harry is a lonely outcast because he still wants to believe in Santa. He's a simple man, not stupid, but perhaps naive enough to think the world could be simply divided into naughty and nice. He suffers for his own innocence until he learns to stand up for it. You're never entirely on his side, but you might feel at times like he's got a point, you know?

Christmas Evil streams on YouTube with ads and on Shudder.

"You put your hands on any of these little fillies and I'll personally change your vocal pitch!"

So mortals, are you sick of Christmas yet? Be honest. It's OK to hate it. It's too many sweets and worrying about money. It's feeling so stressed and overstimulated that you're numb to the ever-present singing of children. What's so great about the singing of children anyway? They have no idea what they're doing. And the small talk! It's the worst! The inescapable, mindless seasonal banter usually hangs on two questions:

Have you finished your shopping?

Have you put your tree up yet?

The implication of both questions is clear: If you haven't, you're clearly some kind of delinquent, a derelict, a ne'er-do-well who refuses to participate in the largest economic ritual of the year in a timely manner. That's obviously how the person who asks such questions would think if they were genuinely listening for an answer. Don't sweat it, they're not. They just want an opportunity to tell you they've already put up their tree and got their shopping done. They were finished on Labor Day and they've been telling everybody who will nod politely at them ever since.

It's enough to make you hang yourself with a rope of garland and colored lights. Don't be so drastic. I've got a movie for you that will, if not relieve the merry monotony, then at least contribute to it.

This week's Thursday Thriller is To All A Goodnight.

This 1980 David Hess film opens in a flashback to "two years ago" at Calvin Finishing School for Girls. It seems a bunch of co-eds were chasing another girl through the house that Christmas break. One of them was wearing a Santa wig and brandishing an axe. They chase their prey out onto the balcony and she takes a tumble to her death. Why she doesn't survive the fall is curious, considering she turned into a mannequin right before impact. Returning to present day (1980), we see school emptying out for Christmas break, leaving behind five girls, their house mother Mrs. Jensen (Kiva Lawrence), and their slow-witted religious nut handyman Ralph (Buck West).

Over dinner. with the chaperones out of the room, Leia (Judith Bridges) reveals the plan. Her boyfriend T.J. (William Lauer) is flying in with a bunch of his buddies for an all-night fuck party. The only one who thinks this is a bad idea is Nancy, played by Jennifer Runyon. You remember her. Bill Murray tested her for psychic powers toward the beginning of Ghostbusters.

Nancy's not wrong. You know how these things go - the fuck party gets off track because there's a maniac picking the kids off one by one with knives and axes and crossbows and the like. In this case, the maniac is disguised as Santa Claus.

It's not the best Santa slasher, but it's got weird music by Richard Tufo and some pretty good kills. Harry Reems is in it for some reason. To All A Goodnight streams on YouTube.

Remember, you've only got 11 shopping days left to buy Todd Merriman's Santa Claus meets Frankenstein for Amazon Kindle before Christmas. When those 11 days are gone, it will be after Christmas.

"Why, I'm just trying to spread a little Yuletide fear."

I started my celebration of killer Santas last week to help make this holiday a little more tolerable for all you beautiful grinches, scrooges and all-around misanthropes out there and my research has lead me to something even I find outrageous.

The movie I'm going to tell you about this week has the audacity to allege that I am the father of Santa Claus. That is absolutely ridiculous because I'm a big fan of getting that money shot. Everyone knows I always pull out, except for maybe with Rosemary or with Damien's real mom or with all those other women with whom I tried to sire the Antichrist. OK, you know what? You get me a sample of Santa Claus's DNA and we'll take the case to Maury. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Santa's Slay.

This 2005 comedy by writer/director David Steinman would have you believe that jolly, old Saint Nick is my son. The film's standout exposition sequence, a Rankin-Bass- style claymation flashback, explains that Santa was a demon who loved to torture and kill elves, but an angel disguised as an old man challenged him to an impromptu curling match. The bet was if Santa lost he would have to spend the next thousand years giving presents to children on Christmas.

The bet expires and Santa gets back to his evil roots. He sets Fran Drescher's hair on fire, uses a tree topper as a shuriken and burns down a strip club -- it's total mayhem.

Former NFL defensive tackle and WCW wrestling champion Bill Goldberg plays Santa, Dave Thomas plays a corrupt pastor, and Lost's Emilie de Ravin is the leading lady. Other familiar faces include Robert Culp, Rebecca Gayheart, Chris Kattan and James Caan.

It's a silly movie chock full of corny jokes and wrestling fan service. You'll probably like it if you enjoyed Jack Frost.

Santa's Slay streams on YouTube with Russian subtitles. The sound quality isn't the greatest so unless you read Russian, crank it up.

And if you want to read a Christmas story, I really can't recommend enough Santa Claus Meets Frankenstein by Todd Merriman.