A full Free Movie of the Day is posted on the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel every day of the week – but on Fridays things get a little freakier and a little more fun. Get your weekend started the right way by indulging in Friday Fright Nights! Every Friday, we’ll be taking a look at another genre movie you can watch in its entirety, free of charge, either on the YouTube channel linked above or in the video embed here.
Appropriate for the holiday season, the Fright Fright Nights feature we have for you this week is the horror anthology The Christmas Tapes – which was just given a digital release by Terror Films today, December 16th! We’re right there at the start for this one. The wraparound story in this anthology is set on the night of Christmas Eve and begins with a family opening their presents… but then a stranger shows up at their door. And since this stranger is played by Greg Sestero of The Room, you know things are about to go downhill in this household. The stranger proceeds to tell the family four different tales of terror. Like most anthologies, this one has its ups and downs, you’ll probably like one segment more than the next, etc. This also happens to have what may be the shortest segment I have ever seen in an anthology. Which is then followed by the longest segment, which I found to be the most fun of the bunch.
Here’s a warning to some and a selling point for others: The Christmas Tapes is presented in the found footage style. That’s definitely not one of my favorite approaches to filmmaking, but there are some good found footage movies out there. And if you give The Christmas Tapes a chance, you might find that it’s a film you can count among the good ones. Or you may just be annoyed that its existence might have killed any chance of there ever being A Very V/H/S/ Christmas.
The five stories that make up The Christmas Tapes all come to us from the writing and directing duo of Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr., who have previously directed multiple short films, the comedy The Other Girl, and the found footage horror movie Infrared, which also starred Greg Sestero. Livings also directed the drama Two People and the thriller Weekend Healer on his own. The Christmas Tapes has the following synopsis:
A family’s movie night on Christmas Eve is interrupted by a stranger, insistent on making the next Christmas ‘classic’ film himself.
The film stars Janice Angela Burt, Larry Glenn, Louise Harding, Ian Hopps, Jason Kuykendall, Dominic Laurente, Todd Lubitsch, Caleb Lush, Romulo Reyes, Lori Richardson, Joshua Rose, Ruby Setnik, Devin Valdez, and the legendary Vernon Wells. Robert Livings makes an acting appearance in the film, and as mentioned before, Greg Sestero is in there as well. Dave Sheridan of Scary Movie, The Devil’s Rejects, and Victor Crowley is prominently featured in the last and longest segment – and his character Paranormal Perry was easily my favorite thing about the movie.
So take a look at The Christmas Tapes – it’s free! – and let us know what you thought of it by leaving a comment below or on the YouTube page. Retro Puppet Master remains and will probably always be my favorite Greg Sestero movie, but this one is a fun way to kill some time in the holiday season.
