What if David DeCoteau - yes, the director of A Talking Cat!?!, Prey of the Jaguar, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and the utterly baffling Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper directed a family-friendly holiday movie? Alright, I have no idea what that'd be like, but sure. Let's do that.

What if Chris Mitchum played Santa? Yes, Chris Mitchum from Aftershock, The Day That Time Ended, Faceless, Bigfoot and Alejandro Jodorowsky's Tusk. I see you starting to get a bit weirded out, but let's press on.

So who do we get for Mrs. Claus? Well, Cynthia Rothrock, of course. Yes, the hard fighting star of China O'Brien, Honor and Glory, Rage and Honor and plenty more straight to video karate epics.

Honestly, what am I about to watch?

Let's go one better. This movie was made in the exact same house as A Talking Cat!?!

They may have also shared the same budget, which was probably catering. Which was probably Jack in the Box.

Yeah, Mary Crawford may be the name in the credits, but this Santa movie is all the work of David DeCoteau. It feels the most porn holiday film I've ever seen without actual penetration. I mean, that wouldn't do for this, a movie that's trying to be kid-friendly and feels holiday destroying.

And is that Gary Daniels I spy? Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star? In a Christmas movie? Wait! Martial artist Daniel Bernhardt, who was Alex Cardo in the second and third Bloodsport films? Surely we're going to see fisticuffs and people go mano y mano, right?

Nope. They're going to play croquet.

This is a Christmas movie not set at Christmas, replete with public domain holiday songs and Lucas-like wipes that use Google Images clip art. It's as if it were edited in iMovie - I know it surely isn't, it couldn't be - but almost as if a family made this movie and sent it my way to drive me insane before the holidays and seasonal depression have their way with me in a threeway so rough that it had to be shot by Max Hardcore.

Gary (Daniels) is a workaholic married to another workaholic named Sadie, who is stranger still played by another world class asskicker, five-time would kickboxing champion Kathy Long. I mean, she's known as The Punisher and the Queen of Mean. She played Fros-T in the aforementioned Rage and Honor. And why is she and her husband and their kids getting in a van and driving through some magical fog on their way to discover Santa's Summer House?

Then there's a caterer named Constance - what is it with DeCoteau and catering characters!?! - who bullies an orphan named Molly into giving up being a photographer.

Somehow, Robert Mitchum, the man who made The Night of the Hunter, one of my all-time favorite films, gave birth to the man who would play Santa here. Santa, who sits in a hot tub and just drops hints about what he does and none of the martial artists can pick up the sledgehammer obviou clues because they're all too busy playing a game of croquet that may still be going on now, nearly eight years after this movie supposedly stopped filming.

As for Santa, all he wants to do is chill. He has like a month he works a year and it's so much effort that he spends eleven months watching TV and just schvitzing in the hot tub. Chill, out Santa. Run, run Rudolph. And hey - for all the cookies Mrs. Claus cooks, she seems to be keeping in pretty decent shape. Must be all the times she kicks dudes in the head.

Every holiday season, I discover one movie that makes me at once fall in love and desperately hate the holiday. This year, Santa's Summer House is that movie. Watch it at your own peril, because trust me, this one will own you.

DeCoteau also directed Christmas Spirit and The Great Halloween Puppy Adventure, two more holiday films. If you don't think I'm going to hunt those down right now, you may have never been to our site before. I mean, Eric Roberts and a Halloween puppy? Come on. I'm not made of stone.

True story #1: I once had the wild idea of writing a Dukes of Hazzard script where Japanese businessmen try to buy out Hazzard County from Boss Hogg, who of course gets swindled himself. Ninjas would get invovled - of course - and Cynthia Rothrock would play a new Duke cousin who was in the army and had learned how to fight overseas. Obviously, I went to art school. Anyways, imagine my surprise when Ms. Rothrock showed up in 1997's The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! The moral: Sometimes, the universe listens to you.

True story #2: Cynthia used to be married to her kung fu instructor Ernest Rothrock. The guy owns schools all over Pittsburgh, including one I drive past every single day. When I was a kid, I dreamed that Cynthia was really at these schools and would teach me the ass kicking powers I needed to decimate the bullies who made my life hell. The moral: Instead of dreaming, I turned to Satan and got my revenge Trick or Treat style. Thanks, Sammi Curr!

If it is your Christmas wish to see a film where the special effects consists of cheesy Xmas decorations doing screen wipes, two martial artists not doing martial arts and a guy who randomly just bellows, "HO HO HO!" at the top of his lungs, this is the movie for you! I honestly do not think there are too many people who wanted or asked for this movie, but there ya go. A very drab one location film where not a lot happens and where only the minimal Christmas decor is used, this is Santa's Summer House!

The story, a van full of people gets lost and ends up at a mansion by the ocean. I honestly thought they were somewhere a bit exotic, but they are just in Southern California. The van driver got lost due to a mysterious fog and a family comes out of the van confused by the strange mansion. Only, they are actually like three groups of people who apparently talked not at all in the van because they only start introducing themselves after they are welcomed by Cynthia Rothrock to the strange summer house. These guests are lucky, when people are usually invited to stay at a stranger's house in a movie it tends to go very badly. Not that this is a super fun time as we watch them play croquet, be all upset and be generally awful people. I was so Cynthia would kick some butt to liven things up and make these drones act with a bit more emotion!

The casting is just bad as Cynthia is the only one doing a goodish job, but she does nothing cool. What makes this worse is we also have Daniel Bernhardt, the Van Dame lookalike from Future Wars also in the film and he has no acting ability and he too does nothing of the martial arts variety. Why have either of these two in your Xmas movie if you are not going to utilize what they are known for? The parents in the film both act as if they are on some really powerful sedatives, their boy an over anxious dweeb. We have a really mean blond who bosses her sister around and the sister lets her and Santa just lets out Ho Ho Hos at times that are disturbingly awkward. These insufferable people will have to carry a film with little else to it other than interactions between the characters...yikes!

So, it is bad, you get no kickboxing or anything. You get a lot of awkward conversations and you get a lot of looking at the clock wondering when the film will be over or if there will be time for another croquet match. Santa is busy trying to get gifts for these people and at one point we learn he did not give a gift to one of the people that would have made the guy less of a prick because the toy that he wanted as a child did not exist. Um, I thought Santa made toys...so couldn't he make anything? Proves my theory that Santa is all corporate now, doesn't even employ elves, but just takes goods from the lowest bidder!

I've watched some garbage Christmas movies in my life, but this takes the Christmas cake!

Absolutely nothing happens, the acting is absolutely appalling, and there's a toe-curlingly long and pointless croquet match which appears unscripted and as if it was filmed on an iPhone.