Forget everything you’ve ever been told about Santa Claus, the jolly old gent in red and white, deliv ering goodies to children on Christmas Eve. The...

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Conceived with winking humor and a terrific visual style, pic is a rare treat.

Quite the opposite of treacly holiday fare, this European import features one very bad Santa.

A Finnish film provides a novel take on Santa, writes JIM SCHEMBRI

The film is a fiendishly entertaining Christmas yarn rooted in Northern European legend and lore, complete with a not-so-jolly old St.

Movie review: 'Rare Exports'

"Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" is a rather brilliant lump of coal for your stocking hung by the fireside with care. How else to explain an R-rated Santa Claus origin story crossed with "The Thing" (1982)? Apart from the inescapable that the movie has Santa and reindeer in it, this is a superior horror film, a spot-on parody of movies about dead beings brought back to life. Oh, and all the reindeer are dead.

Locarno Review | Santa Gone Wild: Jalmari Helander's "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale"

(Jalmari Helander, Finland, 2010)

You’d better watch out.You’d better not swear.Have a gun handy, loaded for bear.Santa Claus is coming…to Finland.“Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale,” is a dark Finnish horror farce about “the real Santa Claus.”As the knowing boy Pietari (Onni Tommila) tells his friend, “The Coca Cola Santa was just a hoax.”The real Santa was an ancient beast…