LOS ANGELES, Dec 27 — Horror fans cherish Christmas, too. It’s just that their holiday cheer comes from watching deranged maniacs dressed as Santa going nuts with an axe.

The new horror comedy Krampus, despite its dark themes, has done unexpectedly well at the holiday box office. It’s the latest in a long tradition of frightfests to explore the Scroogey notion that “Christmas is hiding something,” as Michael Dougherty, the film’s director and co-writer, put it.

Centuries of pagan traditions and Bavarian folklore lurk behind Krampus, about a horned creature who hunts down the naughty at Christmas. He may be a cloven-hoofed terror, but this Krampus is not necessarily an anti-Santa to be feared — if you’ve been good.

“The irony of Krampus is that Krampus is here to punish the people who don’t cherish Christmas,” Dougherty said. “If you love Christmas, Krampus should be your best friend.”

This isn’t even the only film this year to feature a krampus; the creature in A Christmas Horror Story is a bloody-mouthed, muscled terror in white.

Here’s a look at other movies (and one television episode) that turn beloved Christmas traditions into holiday hell.

Elves (1989)

“They’re not working for Santa anymore” is the tagline for this straight-to-video oddity about a demonic elf — singular — who is summoned by a group of young women during a ritual and goes about killing. Apparently the elf was the work of the Nazis, who believed that if they made a creature that mated with a virgin, it would bring about a master race, or something like that. To the rescue comes an alcoholic mall Santa played by Dan Haggerty, best known as TV’s Grizzly Adams.

Treevenge (2008)

Vengeance smells pine fresh in this horror-comedy short from the gorehound director Jason Eisener. Torn from their roots by vicious fellers, angry Christmas trees exact a bloody Christmas morning revenge on unsuspecting families, using shiny stars as projectile weapons and branches and stumps as tools of death. For those who don’t speak Tree, subtitles translate the desperate conifers’ searing cries for help as they’re dragged away from their forest home. Eisener used real trees and life-size tree costumes to bring the villains to life.

Campfire Tales (1991)

Horror fans’ favourite holiday anagram comes to life when a demonic Santa figure named Satan Claus shows up in a sleigh, led by a skeletal reindeer, to kill an ungrateful man in “The Fright Before Xmas,” part of this 1991 horror anthology. There’s also Satan Claus, the 1996 low-budget slasher about a St Nick who terrorises New York City on Christmas Eve, using victims’ body parts as tree ornaments, and the 1996 Santa Claws, about an actress stalked by a deranged killer dressed as you know who.

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

So what if this isn’t a Christmas movie? With the aroma of gingerbread filling the holiday air, now’s the most wonderful time to watch this horror comedy about an armed, foul-mouthed cookie, voiced by Gary Busey, who goes on a rampage inside a bakery. Seeking to please fans eager for more evil-cookie films, it spawned the sequels Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver, and a spinoff, Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong.

Jack Frost (1997)

A freak accident turns a serial killer into a snowman in this horror comedy, which led to a sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman. The film features one of the most bizarre murders in any holiday horror movie, when a melted Jack emerges from a watery bathtub, turns into a snowman and bludgeons his victim, whose arms are frozen into the snowman’s body. Not to be mistaken for the other movie about a snowman who comes to life, the family comedy Jack Frost (1998), with Michael Keaton.

Seasons of Belief (1986)

The Emmy Award-winning actor EG Marshall stars in this episode of the ‘80s television series Tales From the Darkside. At Christmas, a mom and dad scare their kids with the tale of the Grither, a creature “with fists as big as basketballs and arms as long as boa constrictors” who lives near Santa’s workshop and, for some reason, hunts down and kills people who speak his name. Despite the savage ending, this one’s good for adventurous tweens who like a little holiday fright. — The New York Times