Christmas Bloody Christmas Star Riley Dandy Says the Practical Killer Robot Santa Was “Terrifying”

The Christmas movie season may be mostly in the rear view mirror by now, but a horror holiday classic was born this year in the form of Christmas Bloody Christmas, a survival horror movie that pits Tori (a record store owner played by Riley Dandy) against a robotic Santa Claus that has strayed from its toy store programming and gone on a brutal killing spree. Going into the movie, Dandy told us, there was no doubt that she would do the film. Luckily, she also fell in love with Riley, so it was more than just a fun high concept that lured her in.

That said, she doesn’t really connect with the kind of actor who wouldn’t jump at the chance to fight a robot Santa. She told us it was never a question for a moment.

“I feel like there’s two kinds of actors,” Dandy told ComicBook.com. “It’s like, there’s the people who would never do something like this under any circumstances, and people who are just like, Of course, how could I not?”

“Forever, I will be like, ‘Oh, remember the one where I fought the animatronic robotic Santa?’” Dandy added. “Yeah, the best time of my life.”

And the Santa, by the way? It was a practical effect, and every bit as creepy as you might think.

“None of it is digital, it’s all practical,” Dandy explained. “That was a big, big thing for me filming this. It felt like a ton of people making a film who are passionate about filmmaking, you know what I mean? We shot it on 18 millimeter. We were shooting during two months of overnight shoots. It was really special, and the fact that everything was practical effects…no one does that anymore. So this team that has never built a robot before, builds robots. And that helped me so much because it genuinely was terrifying.”

It’s easy to compare a movie like this to projects like the upcoming Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, which twists childhood icons and makes them dangerous and violent. But the idea of homicidal Santas goes back way farther than Christmas Bloody Christmas and Violent Night. Heck, even the idea of a robotic homicidal Santa isn’t new; they had one on Futurama years ago.

“I think the idea that the backdrop of Christmas sets up for such good horror movies; it’s so fun,” Dandy said. “That that trope is becoming more and more popular is really exciting for me.”

Once she was already in, Dandy said she really fell in love with Tori as a character, and it was nice to live in that character for a few weeks. The movie has been wrapped for a while now, and she is still channeling her inner Tori.

“She really spoke to me as a character because she’s very scrappy,” Dandy explained. “I love that she just gets shit done, and even if it’s not pretty, she’ll get it done. It’s funny — after playing her, she’s someone I look up to quite a bit and I try to emulate a little bit more of her in my in my daily life, just because she is like such a straight shooter. She doesn’t beat around the bush at all, which I have been known to do quite a bit. And so, yeah, I think like Tori herself kind of drew me to it. But then the heightened stakes around it all, I was just like, this is epic.”

Christmas Bloody Christmas is available to buy on all digital platforms. You can stream it for free on Shudder and AMC+.