When we think of Christmas movies, we imagine non-threatening family-friendly tales of nice apple-cheeked kiddies getting into minor scrapes and learning big life lessons. But the Christmas movie is not confined to a single genre: there are Christmas comedies, Christmas slashers, even a Christmas sci-fi. So grab your hymn sheets, raise your voices and sing along as Time Out presents the Twelve Genres of Christmas…
Twelve creatures killing… Eleven kids a-carolling… Ten lawyers yelling… Nine Griswolds swearing… Eight soldiers shivering… Seven Martians marching… Six bankers thieving… Five! Gangland! Thugs!… Four dancing fools… Three victims… Two braying Gauls…… and Bruuuuce Willis – in – a – white – vest!
12 Gremlins (1984)
Genre: Monster Movie
Christmas credentials: Arguably the single greatest moment in a Christmas movie comes roughly midway through Joe Dante’s small-town satirical juggernaut, as winsome barmaid Phoebe Cates, recovering from an extended bout of verbal and physical abuse by a gaggle of drunken green monsters, recalls the night her beloved father disappeared. We won’t spoil it for those readers who’ve not seen it; suffice to say the idea of Santa merrily slipping down the chimney will never seem quite the same again.
Cockle-o-meter: More cackles than cockles.
11 A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
Genre: Animation
Christmas credentials: Pea-headed masochist Charlie Brown and his muckle-mouthed chum Linus, repelled by the crass commercialism and insane cosmic fury of the festive season, attempt to divine the true spirit of Christmas, bumming everyone else out in the process. A cast-iron cracker that still packs a Proustian wallop, the first and best of the Peanuts animated specials is a grubby bauble whose sparkle remains undimmed.
Cockle-o-meter: 999/1,000.
10 Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Genre: Courtroom Drama
Christmas credentials: Santa on trial! Yes, the idea of a kid-friendly courtroom drama sounds about as much fun as an adult-oriented Tinkerbell adventure, but this perennial ’40s charmer has a lot to recommend it (which is more than you can say for the ’90s remake, which attempted to coast by on the avuncular charm of our own Sir Richard Attenborough). And while it’s some-times tough not to side with the
prosecution (frankly, locking up a guy who wants to annually break into your kids’ bedrooms sounds like a pretty sound idea), the film’s twinkly, child-eyed charm should win over the hardest hearts.
Cockle-o-meter: Off the scale.
9 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
Genre: Comedy
Christmas credentials: Okay, so Bad Santa might be smarter, Elf sweeter and Home Alone louder, but Christmas Vacation has Chevy Chase in a housedress, and you DO NOT argue with Chevy Chase in a housedress. By far the funniest of all the National Lampoon movies (which is a bit like being the best Jimmy Buffett album), Christmas Vacation has the best theme tune, Randy Quaid’s best pre-Kingpin comedy performance and features in its phenomenal cast Juliette Lewis, Elaine from Seinfeld and Mae Questel, the original voice of Betty Boop, as the legendary Aunt Bethany. To paraphrase Chevy himself, watch this and you’ll have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny Kaye.
Cockle-o-meter: In the high 900s.
8 A Midnight Clear (1992)
Genre: War
Christmas credentials: Perennial second-stringers Ethan Hawke,
Gary Sinise, Peter Berg, Kevin Dillon and Arye Gross yomp their way through the frozen countryside of war-torn France during the Battle of the Bulge in a solid adaptation of a novel by William Wharton (‘Birdy’). Crimbo also formed the backdrop of Joyeux Noël, which told the of 1914’s football-based First World War truce so beloved of Sir Paul McCartney.
Cockle-o-meter: Frozen stiff.
7 Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Genre: Science Fiction (In the Loosest Possible Sense)
Christmas credentials: Is there anything Santa Claus can’t do? Not only does he shower us with cut-price electronics on an annual basis, but in the late ’60s he led the counter-insurgence against a battalion of imperialist Martians who attempted to kidnap him and put him to work on their forsaken planet. Looking like it was made using the contents of a skip found next to a recently out-of-business Mexican knocking shop (if such a place even exists), the Martians themselves resemble nothing more than a cadre of clueless extras with green crayon on their faces and salad bowls on their heads. Of course, beneath the
excruciatingly amateur façade was a nasty anti-communist allegory, and even though the Martians learn the error of their kidnapping ways, they also learn that the conservative Wasp way of doing things is probably best for the entire galaxy.
Cockle-o-meter: Just one (cruddily made out of paper maché).
6 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Genre: Melodrama
Christmas credentials: Admitting that you don’t care for Frank Capra’s impossibly slushy Yuletide parable is the cinematic equivalent of confessing that you spend your weekends throwing seal pups in front of trains, but for some, the whole saccharine-centred confection is too much to bear. James Stewart pushes the Credulous Hayseed schtick way past tolerable while the odious cutesy moppets, amiable angels and serene snow-scapes nail down the coffin. Roll on, Boxing Day.
Cockle-o-meter: I have no cockles!
5 R-Xmas (2001)
Genre: Crime
Christmas credentials: The fortnight run-up to Christmas is a busy time for all, what with all the doilies, games consoles and Yule logs that require purchasing before stocks start to diminish. But not everyone gets to bask in the noggy goodness of the festive period: just take Abel Ferrara’s underrated (read: not released in cinemas) R-Xmas, about a husband and wife out to make a big pre-Crimbo purchase that goes south before anyone gets to even glance at wrapping paper. No, instead of a stint of carefree capitalism, she has to hit the streets and amass as much cash and drugs as she possibly can in order to pay off a ransom to the gangsters (led by Ice-T, no less) who have kidnapped (and are threatening to whack) her hubby. Happy Christmas!
Cockle-o-meter: Think low… lower.
4 White Christmas (1954)
Genre: Musical
Christmas credentials: Lengthy, aimless and only tangentially concerned with Christmas, Michael Curtiz’s partial remake of 1942’s Holiday Inn – minus the questionable ‘blackface’ Abraham Lincoln number – endures largely because of its irrevocable connection with its title song (which was also used in Holiday Inn!). Danny Kaye and Ba-Da-Bing Crosby are agreeable as a couple of war buddies turned song and dance men, but it’s otherwise a bit of a turkey.
Cockle-o-meter: 183/1,000.
3 Black Christmas (1974)
Genre: Horror
Christmas credentials: No, not the rudimentary blaxploitation Christmas movie that everyone was waiting for, but a thoroughly nasty slasher movie from those lovely folk in Canada. It’s your usual thing, as the film follows a group of hopped-up, scantily-clad college students who decide to host a Christmas party in their sorority house. Like clockwork, a murderous pervert has – in homage to St Nick – sidled up the side trellis and in through an open window where he lingers with his arsenal of regular household items – most famously a sandwich bag – to dispatch the shrieking lovelies one by one.
Cockle-o-meter: -70.
2 A Christmas Tale (2008)
Genre: Arthouse
Christmas credentials: We feel obliged to return to the family nest for Christmas, and this superb movie from French director Arnaud Desplechin shows that behind all the hugging and roll-neck cashmere sweaters lurks deep-set familial abhorrence. The film has a wonderful ensemble cast, with special mention going to Mathieu Amalric as the eccentric black-sheep son, and Catherine Deneuve as the glamorous matriarch. And to give the film the feel of a genuine French bourgeois Christmas, Desplechin has his camera racing around the corridors of the large family home like a child who’s eaten too much taffy.
Cockle-o-meter: It wavers between 250/1,000 and 750/1,000.
1 Die Hard (1988)
Genre: Action
Christmas credentials: For a whole generation of messed-up moviegoers, nothing says Christmas quite like Bruce Willis in a dirty white vest cussing up a blue streak while gunning down miscellaneous murderous mittel-Euros with an Uzi. This thoughtless appropriation of the season of goodwill season for what is definitely badwill ends may rankle the purists, but what would you rather have: a bearded idealist who dies for his beliefs, or Alan Rickman?
Cockle-o-meter: Slightly higher than ‘Die Hard 2’, but not exactly chestnuts on an open fire.
