Wildly Inappropriate Christmas Movies! (1 Viewer)

Oh sure, everyone watches A Christmas Story or It's a Wonderful Life this time of year. But I'm more interested in completely inappropriate, totally un-christmas movies! I thought I'd see if anyone else has some thoughts on what non-mainstream stuff to watch this december.


My list of delightly bad Christmas movies:


SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

Is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians it the worst Christmas movie ever? While I'll freely admit that it's a horrible movie! The writers were selected from the least brain damaged the blunt trauma ward had to offer. The budget would make Doctor Who in the seventies look like it had major studio backing. The acting is wooden like Santa's puppets come to life, the "Alien Sets" are cardboard, the Martian makeup is ridiculous, the high tech devices are Korean war surplus bravely standing in for "State of the Art" - in short, it fails on just about every level.That said I think soulless films deigned by studio marketing departments to target your wallets, completely unnecessary films like Jim Carrey's The Grinch remake from a couple of years ago are far worse. Oh sure SCCtM is completely inept on just about every level, but at least its heart is in the right place. That counts for a lot in my book.


SANTA'S SLAY

Goldberg shows up, spouts off a couple of Christmas-centric one liners, kills every single person in the room and moves on. Meanwhile scrappy young teenager Nicolas Yuleson, his sexy girlfriend Mary 'Mac' Mackenzie, and crazy old grandpa have to stop Santa before he paints the town red.

That's the beauty of Santa's Slay - it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The opening scene pretty much sets the tone of the movie right off the bat. Santa starts off his night of yuletide terror by busting in on a rich snob family (Who's Christmas blessings include "Thank you god, for not making us poor. . . . or Samoan") and tears the place up. The kills are creative and funny (throwing star tree topper), the cast is rife with freaking cameos, and Goldberg instantly establishes himself as a commanding presence in the lead roll. While it's not a very - oh, how shall we say - demanding roll, the man has charisma, I'll give him that.

And no holiday tradition is left un-skewered, including one of my long time favorites: the Arthur Rankin/Jules Bass stop motion special, presenting Santa's story in flashback form, which brought a twisted smile to my face. Director David Steiman really seems to enjoy putting the thumb-screws to the holiday. And before you get offended, the murders are SO outrageous, they are overblown to the point of absurdity. Seriously, when you set Fran Dresher's head on fire with a mouthful of whiskey and a lighter before drowning her in a punchbowl of eggnog, you know you're in utterly ridiculous territory.


Is Santa's Slay a good movie? Good lord no! It's about a evil Santa Claus who is out for revenge against an angel who beat him in at curling a thousand years ago. That said - it is an entertaining movie! The cast is reasonably talented; the dialog is fairly clever in places ("Christmas can sure scare the dickens out of people!" Santa quips as he attacks someone with a copy of A Christmas Carol) and the typically boring ol' Christmas music that permeates the soundtrack is actually pretty good.


And come on, how can you not love a line like "I'm Santa Claus, not fucking Dracula!"


SANTA CLAUS

No, not the Tim Allan Santa Clause - although that belongs on the Crappy Christmas Movie list for it's own list of sins, nor do I mean the equally crappy Dudley Moore Santa Claus. No, in this case, I'm talking about the 1959 film by Rene Cardona, the Mexican director of such cinematic classics like Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy, Night of the Bloody Apes, and Santo versus the Riders of Terror. And believe you me, nothing you've seen can prepare you for the horrors within!


Santa Claus is no doubt one of the most colossal blunders in cinema history. Amazingly enough Rene Cardona actually does some good (if schlocky) work - his Santo films were entertaining, Night of the Bloody Apes is a Mexi-Horror classic (if a bit schlocky), and Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy is dumb (and schlocky), but fun. But Santa Claus - man, this takes the Bad Movie cake. Hell, it takes the whole Bad Movie Bakery, cake and all. It's bizarre, it's filled with non-sequiturs, it's shamelessly illogical and made for about a 30 pesos.

Its no good whatsoever, but my god is it B-Movie gold! Fantastic!

Of course Cardona is not alone in shouldering the blame here. No, the finger of shame must also be pointed towards, K. Gordon Murray. Murray is best known for buying up a whole ton of Mexican flicks on the cheap and dubbing on the cheap them for American drive-in fare audiences. Most of these movies were either low budget horror or the amazingly popular wrestling movies. In fact, without Murray's influence, the midnight movies that haunted the UHF frequencies would be much poorer for the experience.

It didn’t help matters that Murray's localization efforts would make Sandy Frank's Godzilla and Gamera movies seem Oscar winning by comparison. The translations were . . . dubious to say the least (actually, judging from the dub track, the translations were probably straight across 1-to-1 from Spanish instead of adapted to sound more natural in English). Add in that Mexican movies tended to over the top acting and goofy plots in the first place, and you have one messed up localization attempt.

Great thread/post! I'll have to think about it, and am looking forward to other responses.

Slightly off topic but here goes. Middle of December taking a plane full of troops to do a six month "peacekeeping" stint in Kosovo. Twenty minutes in to the flight the senior cabin crew comes to the flight deck and says," Guess what movie the company has provided? ........"I'll be home for Christmas"".


Thought the best plan was to give it a miss.

Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Chritmas are two that I always try to watch on Christmas time. And of course, Die Hard.

Gremlins, which is rated PG, may not fit the description of "wildly inappropriate" but has a Christmas theme and features drinking, smoking and plenty of (green monster) blood.

Two words:





Evil Santa (played by Andy Dick!) tries to destroy Hanukkah. What's not to love?

Bad(der) Santa

This is a new one, and don't let the fact that it's subtitled put you off. The filmmakers may be Finnish, but they've studied the classics of monster movies. It's called Rare Exports, and I loved it:

Probably doens't truly count as a movie, but I'll toss in "A Very Sunny Christmas" (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

"Christmas Evil" is my personal fave. Deals with a guy who is obsessed with christmas who snaps after getting fired from his toy factory job. It's pretty decent all things considered, the DVD has a commentary by John Waters who's a big fan of it.


That mexican "Santa Claus" flick is a must see. Santa battling demons? Sold! I brought it to a friends place to give them a taste of it's awesome badness, we were so mesmerized by it we watched the whole terrible thing. That's the sign of a great bad movie!

For more Christmas-themed Finnish humour from the filmmakers of Rare Exports, you can watch the original two short films that preceded the feature on YouTube.


Rare Exports Inc. (2003)




Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions (2005)




(Login is required at least for the first short film, probably due to some nudity which requires YouTube to check your age.)

Originally Posted by Michael Reuben

This is a new one, and don't let the fact that it's subtitled put you off. The filmmakers may be Finnish, but they've studied the classics of monster movies. It's called Rare Exports, and I loved it:

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That looks brilliant! it's SO going on The List next time I'm at the video store!

Originally Posted by TravisR [url=wildly-inappropriate-christmas-movies#post_3759868]

Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Chritmas are two that I always try to watch on Christmas time.

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I must hang my head in shame - I certainly know of the flick(s) but I've never actually seen 'em. It's a gap in my horror library that I must fill one of these days!

I saw the trailer for RARE EXPORTS before a screening of the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE remake. The same theater in Columbus is showing it on Christmas night but I won't be able to attend it. The thing did look rather fun.


SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT has to be the greatest of all these anti-Christmas movies. I plan on watching parts 3-5 this year since I've never seen them.

RARE EXPORTS is playing my town tonight, one night only. I have to miss it though.


I don't remember any of the "SILeNT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT" films other then the first two. The first one was pretty good, and the second I seem to think was mostly made of clips from the first one with a tacked on ending? I want to say I'm not remembering this right, but I'm sure there was some shenanigans with this series!

I think Silent Night, Deadly Night is OK but is really hampered by a very low budget. Black Christmas overcomes its low budget and is an effective movie that ended up being the prototype for the early 1980's slasher fad.


Christmas Evil is the one where the guy has a Santa hangup because he saw mommy 'kissing' Santa Claus, right?


I haven't seen the last 3 Silent Nights either.

I'm one of the few who prefers the BLACK CHRISTMAS remake. It's pure trash but I thought the gore, violence and story were just so far out there that it was impossible not to enjoy. I respect the original more than I enjoy watching it. I'm not sure what it is but knowing where the killer is always took me out of the film and I never really could enjoy the suspense of it.

SNDN is just so wrong that I can't help but enjoy it. It's poorly made and acted but seeing Santa doing these things is just rather disturbing and hilarious at the same time. SNDN2 is without question one of the worst films ever made due to all the borrowed scenes from the first and the "Garbage Day" thing is priceless.


We also have DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, ELVES and JACK FROST. I haven't seen any of these but apparently they're pretty bad as well.

Originally Posted by Michael Elliott

I'm one of the few who prefers the BLACK CHRISTMAS remake.

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I like both actually and probably would give the nod to the remake since it has a very dark sense of humor. Me and my friend went out on Christmas night to see the remake (the day it opened) and saw it in a near empty theater.

I think last night's episodes of Family Guy and American Dad could make a strong case for inclusion in this thread.

The Silent Partner


Although only the first 1/3 or so takes place in the Christmas season.

Watching Rare Exports now and it is a really good film, seriously worth a watch. Also there is a hidden feature on the pop up menu.if you move to the far left on the menu then go further a recipe for ginger bread cookies pops up.