As we plunge ever deeper into the sickly sweet realms of the festive season, resplendent in its gaudy, glittering and gluttonous glory, you may feel that baubles, mince pies, carols and fairy lights are being shoved down your snowman scarf-wrapped throat without mercy.

Where then, do you go for respite from the relentless seasonal cheer; to take a break from the never-ending goodwill? Sometimes we just need to see Santa behaving badly - and we're not talking about him giving Mariah Carey some cheeky undies.

Though a permanent solution to the annual saccharine onslaught may be to move to the Middle East, a more likely antidote is the Christmas horror film. This perfect dichotomy of Christmas joy tainted with cathartic bloodletting is rarely family-friendly watching but can be a deviously dark remedy.

So load up your gun of anti-festivity with our carefully-selected rundown of the ten best crimbo scarers and watch as the holy day is ruined in a hundred blood-soaked ways.

10) Santa's Slay

It doesn't matter if you're naughty or nice in horror comedy Santa's Slay: the deranged, son of Satan Santa is going to do away with you anyway. This isn't the rosy-cheeked, white bearded Father Christmas of greetings cards, this is the aggressive, knife-handy, bomb-throwing, sleigh-joyriding hardass of a St. Nick who plants explosives in childrens' presents and terrorises the town with his equally vicious reindeer.

Santa's Slay
We Didn't Put This On Our Christmas List!

The violence begins one Christmas Eve when Santa falls down the chimney into a family's living room and sets to work killing everyone in the bloodiest ways possible despite pleas of "I've been good!" before taking off on his hell-deer to continue the death spree. Professional wrestler Bill Goldberg plays the formidable Father C with a great grey beard, a filthy red suit and the most agressive-sounding "Ho Ho Ho!" we've ever heard.

Watch The 'Santa's Slay' Trailer:

The movie's pretty un-p.c with its desecration of Christmas cheer by the Antichrist, the massacre of many small children, and the scene where a Jewish deli owner is stabbed with his own menorah. As long as you're not easily offended, Santa's Slay could be a rather cathartic romp against all the relentlessly grating jingle and cheer. Somehow, a lump of coal doesn't seem quite so bad now...

9) Jack Frost

"One cold night, science and evil combined," begins the trailer and may be all you need to know about Michael Cooney's 1997 chillingly scary Jack Frost. A week before Christmas, a van carrying serial killer Jack Frost, played by Scott MacDonald, crashes into a truck containing some genetic material. The crash causes Jack's body, the genes, and the snow on the ground to fuse together to create a cold-hearted killer like never seen before.

Jack Frost
'Jack Frost': He's Chillin' And He's Killin'.

The movie has become a cult classic and a key calling point for guaranteed festive gore as MacDonald's fearsome snowman begins his quest of slaughter, using ice picks, sleighs and icicles. Just don't confuse Cooney's Jack Frost with the 1998 heart-warming family drama in which a boy's dead father comes back as a loving snowman. Then again, they'd probably look exactly the same to those hungover on Christmas morning.

Watch The 'Jack Frost' Trailer:

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