From first frame, depicting a serene-scened snow globe shattering under the weight of a passing garbage truck, René Manzor’s Dial Code Santa Claus lets you know it’s not your ordinary Christmas movie. And not just because it’s French.
Thomas is not your ordinary 9-year-old, either. As played by Manzor’s son, Alain Lalanne, he’s a whiz at all things technological and mechanical, a wannabe Rambo and the owner of a most unfortunate kid mullet. Living in a mansion with his toy-exec mother (Brigitte Fossey, Forbidden Games) and his diabetic, half-blind grandfather (The Double Life of Veronique’s Louis Ducreux), Thomas lives the life of Riley, worrying about little beyond whether Santa is a mere myth.
He learns the truth in the worst way possible — on Christmas Eve, no less. After Thomas’ mom fires a temp Santa for slapping a child, that creepy Kris Kringle (Patrick Floersheim, Roman Polanski’s Frantic) wastes no time in descending on the home for revenge. Truly psychotic and possibly pedophiliac, Fake Santa stalks the kid from room to room; in response, the resourceful Thomas uses the home advantage to his, well, advantage, by navigating its labyrinthian passages to lure his pursuer into booby traps.
Comparisons to Home Alone are preordained, although the clever and cunning Dial (also known under the tags of Game Over, Deadly Games and 36.15 Code Père Noël) predates that John Hughes megahit and is not a comedy, although Manzor skillfully dupes viewers into thinking it will be. Then it adopts the malevolence of the Joan Collins segment of Amicus’ Tales from the Crypt feature, with the camera often aligned at Thomas’ level to help sell the boy’s sense of terror; it works. Inevitably, Manzor cannot sustain the breakneck pacing all the way to the finish line — and that’s just fine, because in slowing down, he allows Lalanne to do something Macaulay Culkin never could: act. —Rod Lott