IMDb rating: 3.2/10
I don't really want to review the 1995 direct-to-video "movie" The Christmas Light; my mission will be accomplished if I draw a few people's attention to it.
This 22-minute picture straddles the line between low-budget short and amateur hobby project—they managed to recruit Dan Haggerty (of Grizzly Adams fame) to do the narration, which suggests at least some sort of actual commercial production that was intended to be viewed by real audiences, but the movie is so cheap, so lazy, and so bizarre that it may indeed have been someone's high-school project. I really don't know.
Since it's so short, I don't know if I should bother to describe the plot. You can just watch it for yourself:
But no, I can't help myself. I have to tell you what it's about.
In Santa's "compound"—that's the term used in the film, and a fitting one given its maximum-security appearance—his most trusted elf Isaac has devised a method of fabricating and painting ugly wooden trains in record time. Yes, that is strikingly similar to a plot point from Santa Claus: The Movie, and I doubt it's a coincidence, but let's let that go. The Christmas Light may have many flaws, but unoriginality is not one of them.
Isaac's chief competitor (and the only other elf we see in the film) is Burton, who Dan Haggerty assures us is disliked by all of his fellows. Burton has his own train-manufacturing system, but it has the downside that its products explode immediately after assembly. Santa expresses his disappointment about as gently as possible under the circumstances, but Burton doesn't take it well. He begins raving maniacally and in rhyme, and then he accidentally falls to his death off a walkway in his non-OSHA-compliant laboratory.
Seconds later, Burton rematerializes as a statue, disintegrates again, rematerializes again as a snowman, and flies away (he can fly, I guess) pledging horrible revenge.
At that moment, somewhere on planet earth, a snowstorm has kicked up—Dan Haggerty explicitly blames the snow on Burton, but on what evidence I have no idea—and a girl named Jennifer consoles her frightened younger brother with a dreadful song called "The Christmas Light".
Meanwhile, Santa and Isaac are braving the dangerous snowstorm in Isaac's new invention, a "sled" called Sled 2. (The script consistently refers to Santa's trademark conveyance as a "sled" instead of the usual "sleigh". Was it a mistake that no one caught? Probably.) Sled 2 is equipped with a robot called X that can penetrate the fog and perform surveillance, which enables it to find a single house illuminated by a seemingly supernatural light that Santa calls "the Christmas Light". It turns out to be none other than Jennifer's house, which is lucky, because the four characters I've mentioned so far are the film's entire cast.
Santa tells Jennifer about the Christmas Light (even though she just sang a song about it), and she joins their expedition to find Burton and thwart his sinister schemes. When they find Burton, his snowman body transforms into a flying buzz-saw that attempts to destroy Sled 2. Isaac defends the team by sending the robot X to blast Burton with a red laser beam, melting him. At the last minute, Jennifer prevails on Santa to abandon this use of deadly force, and Jennifer instead leaves the sled to confront Burton face-to-face in his icy lair.
Jennifer and Burton sing what seems to have been intended as a duet, but it's really just a reprise of Jennifer's "Christmas Light" song intercut with Burton intoning "Ain't no way" over and over again. It's quite a treat.
The power of the Christmas Light melts Burton into a puddle. Santa instantly writes him off as a casualty, but a miracle occurs (according to the narrator), and Burton once again reconstitutes himself in his old elfin form. He pledges to join Santa, Isaac, and Jennifer to work for good as "the Christmas Brigade". End of movie.
When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote a short story for a school project in which Santa Claus's nephew, Quilcer, has to rescue his uncle from an army of fire-breathing anthropomorphic bats. I wrote a sequel in fifth grade, involving a machine that gave the evil bat leader superhuman intelligence.
I freely admit that these stories were nonsensical. And, for what it's worth, no, it wasn't Christmas time when I wrote them.
The point is that this movie was made in 1995; my first Quilcer adventure was written the same year. If they wanted to make a movie that seemed like something a ten-year-old would have written, all they had to do was ask.
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