Frankie Dymon Jr’s bizarre slice of surreal agit-prop holds the distinction of being Britain’s only “black power” film, a short howl of rage that vanished into semi-obscurity for many years, remembered now largely by lovers of late 60s British progressive rock thanks to the soundtrack by short lived band Second Hand. Dymon was a member of the British wing of the Black Panthers movement and Death May Be Your Santa Claus is very much a call to arms based on the Panther’s political ideologies.
A young black militant, Raymond, (Ken Gajadhar) has fallen in love with a never-named white woman (Donnah Dolce) and wanders around late 60s London considering his place in a British society that seems to be breaking down around him. A man is cannibalised by a gang in a park while people go about their business seemingly unaware and at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, a black man is subjected to often ludicrous racism (“We white people gave you the London Transport to play about with”) as we listen to Raymond’s internal monologue and witness what may be his fantasies.
The film’s core concerns about race and the status of non-whites in British society remain intact and sadly as relevant as ever but Death May Be Your Santa Claus goes off on some very odd social and political detours whose meanings are now obscure. It has plenty to say, but it’s unfocused and all over the place, whatever point(s) it was trying to make often lost in Dymon’s scattershot approach to the material. The cannibalism scene seems to be hovering on the very edge of profundity but exactly what point it’s trying to make is hard to determine and it quickly descends into farce – the scene begins with a black man being pushed into a pond by white bullies and him pursuing them, but ends with the now mixed race trio thugs attacking a seemingly innocent passer-by.
The inspiration of Jean-Luc Godard’s work, particularly One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1968), a film that shares much in common with Dymon’s, is all over Death May Be Your Santa Claus but Dymon’s film doesn’t feel as complete, not as finished or well-structured as Godard’s. It feels like a rough outline for a better film, a series of sketches and random thoughts that haven’t yet found their final form. The film was shot against the backdrop of British politician Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech and Dymon’s anger is both palpable and justifiable. It’s just too unfocused, content to lash out in all directions at once and in the process blunting the message he was trying to deliver.
What makes Death May Be Your Santa Clause striking now is its almost dreamlike imagery – Dolce wanders through the film like some inexplicable elemental force, briefly transforming into a black woman after making love to Raymond; what appears to be the Pope turns up as a street preacher, having a baby forced upon him by Che Guevara; and a man in traditional Chinese garb reads political tracts to a disinterested market crowd. None of this may actually be happening of course, it might all be the fevered imaginings on an angry young man railing at the injustices he sees around him – it was that period in British social history when this sort of weirdness was briefly a commonplace and nothing we see on screen can be taken at face value.
For all its tackling of big – and depressingly still very relevant – social issues, Death May Be Your Santa Claus is also a very personal project. Dymon, who turns up as a would-be revolutionary talking straight to camera in a junkyard, clearly meant Raymond to be both an avatar for all young black Britons but mainly as a stand-in for himself, the film as much a way for the writer/director to work out his own feelings and express his own anger as it was a warning to others. It may be muddled but there’s no questioning its righteous anger and political commitment.
Today the film has a small cult following among music lovers thanks to the score by The Second Hand, who turn in briefly in a weird and seemingly disconnected “freak out” scene in an abandoned house. The band named their second studio album in 1971 after the film and Mott the Hoople used the title for a track on their album Brain Capers, also released in 1971 though it has no connection to either the film or the Second Hand track. The title song gets repeated rather too many times throughout the film.
The film’s assistant editor was Harry Bromley Davenport who later directed the British horror film Whispers of Fear (1976) and the cult science fiction film Xtro (1982).
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