Released a year before Home Alone, French horror-action-thriller Dial Code Santa Claus blends wonder and terror as a boy genius uses his own high-tech security system and homemade booby traps to outsmart a maniacal home invader dressed as Père Nöel.

Thomas is a child prodigy who lives in a modern day castle. While his mom works late nights managing a high-end department store, he stays at home and pals around with his partially blind grandpa and ropes his trusty pet dog into reenactments of his favorite action movies. The castle has sophisticated security cameras, a remote control operated trapdoor, secret passageways, and a hidden treasure trove of toys passed down for many generations. Thanks to a new online service that lets kids talk to Père Nöel, the family becomes entangled with a madman who climbs down their chimney on Christmas Eve.

Dial Code Santa Claus features a supremely bittersweet Christmas rock ballad by Bonnie Tyler about the sadness of growing up. A year later, Chris Columbus found an unexpected smash hit in Home Alone (1990), which tells a story so similar that the director of Dial Code Santa Claus threatened to sue.

TRIVIA & SPECIAL PRIZES

Be the first to answer our trivia questions during the introduction to this screening and win an issue of Drive-In Asylum, courtesy of Groovy Doom; a Blu-ray of John Russo’s Santa Claws (1996), courtesy of Terror Vision; a special satanic selection on Blu-ray, courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive; or a copy of Silent Night, Deadly Night: The Game, courtesy of Stop the Killer, the creatives behind My Bloody Valentine: The Game and forthcoming Halloween II: The Game!