Bad Santas

[A discussion is in progress at The Blackboard about the relative paucity of Christmas-themed noir films.]

See, the horror genre has got this so much better covered. Here is a list of the "top ten" Christmas horror films (well, admittedly standards are kind of low):

http://listverse.com/2007/12/17/top-10-christmas-horror-movies/

To All a Good Night (1980)
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974)
Don't Open 'Till Christmas (1984)
Jack Frost (1996)
Santa Claws (1996)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Santa's Slay (2005)
Gremlins (1984)
Black Christmas (1974)
Christmas Evil (1980)

More homicidal Santas than you could shake a stick at, really. And of course, Terry Zwigoff's and Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa is a variety of Christmas horror movie...maybe a neo-noir comedy, too.

Then, if you want to move forward a week, there's New Year's Evil (1980).

The horror genre is just uncommonly tied to holidays, so much so that one of the triumphs of short film-making of recent years, Eli Roth's faux trailer for Thanksgiving in Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse project, was expressly created to fill a festivity gap. (Not for the squeamish.)