If you've seen the epic theatrical cut of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse, you probably remember the faux trailers spliced in between the double-feature. Attack of the Plastic Santa Gnome is like one of those - a joyously cheesy but savvy horror send-up.

The movie's cinematic references are jam-packed into two-and-a-half minutes of utter absurdity: The Puppet Master and Bride of Chucky, The Faculty and Village of the Damned. According to a creepy voice-over (the funniest I've heard since Eli Roth's Thanksgiving trailer),the students of Lansing High were a bunch of happy, peace-loving bookworms before the evil Santa Gnome arrived to collect their souls and turn teacher against student, boyfriend against girlfriend, man against plastic garden fixture. A series of attacks and Body Snatchers-style betrayals ensues. My favorite moment is when the students decide they're tired of looking at this creepy garden gnome, and one of them kicks it into a backroom like a football.

The youthful cast effectively mimics the hysterical acting style of 1950s monster movies. (Props to the guy wearing the University of Kansas basketball shirt, KU being my alma mater.) Genre-appropriate use of the Dutch tilt camera angle proves that, despite all the silliness,we're dealing with a bunch of classy, literate filmmakers.

Plastic Santa was made by FetusFilmsInc, a group of remarkably productive 17-year-old filmmakers from Kansas. They've uploaded 23 videos in the last three months, some of them experimental, technically ambitious horror films and others comedies like Plastic Santa. I'll spotlight some of their more serious work in future blogs. They're not just fooling around.