I am now officially on Christmas Movie Overload.
I am not talking about the movies that came through the
theater and are shown repetitively; I'm referring to the made-for-TV movies
that have taken over the Lifetime and Hallmark cable channels. Some of these movies are fair, and a few are
even pretty good. Some of them are
hideously awful.
Yet -- I watch the bloody things. Okay, not actually watch in the true sense of
the verb. Mostly I have the TV on as
background noise in one room while I work in another room. But I have seen some all the way through and
most others in snippets to get the main idea of each. There are no less than six movies based on A Christmas Carol (that includes person
falls, smacks head, wakes up in alternate universe how their life would be if
only…), the same amount of movies about being a pretend spouse/fiancé, and
there are numerous ones about some member of the Claus family going rogue. There are also the ones that are not really
kid-centered but are littered with elves and reindeer.
Of course, my all-time favorite remains Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story, which is based on an
excerpt from a short story in his compilation In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. If you ever get a chance to actually read the
original in print, you'll discover it's deliciously more sinister and snarky
than the toned-down kiddies' version. (I
also like that Shepherd made cameos in all his movies.)
There is one holiday movie that has haunted me for years,
however. I saw it quite accidentally,
and it has been touted as one of the worst three movies of all time. It should surprise no one that I have seen all three of
the worst movies of all time that made the original list I stumbled across
years ago: #1 = Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
(seen it, yes I have); #2 = Attack
of the Killer Tomatoes (for some reason I only recall the pool scene, and I
remember laughing my ass off over it); and (drum roll, please) #3 = Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
Yes, indeed, I have witnessed the horror that is the
Christmas movie from Outer Space. There
are only two reasons to ever watch this movie, and I would recommend you try
this only using clips from YouTube lest you want your eyeballs to bleed out,
and these reasons are a young Pia Zadora stars in it, and one Martian look
suspiciously like Frank Zappa. To make
matters worse and embarrass myself even further, I didn't stumble across this
movie on the ScyFy channel nor through the honorable and noteworthy Mystery Science Theater 3000 (mst3k, to
connoisseurs), on which Santa Claus
Conquers the Martians was featured.
I saw it in the theater a couple of years after it was
originally released. Yup, this means
that good money was paid for me to witness this horror, but it also means that
this movie had been to theaters every Christmas for four years before I had a
chance to revel in its glory.
I'll be honest with you - It wasn't my fault. Cindy Carr's parents offered to take us to
the store. Turns out they wanted to go Christmas shopping themselves and dumped
Cindy and me at the theater with enough popcorn and candy and soda to stuff the
Trojan Horse. I can remember the
theater, the red burlap seats, and I can even remember my coat draped over the
back of the chair and dangling into the row behind us. It was okay since I seem to recall we were
two of probably twelve people in the theater watching this ridiculous
movie. The fact that other people were
there makes me wonder just how many losers like us were out there in the world.
Decades later with the installation of cable that brings
hundreds of crazy-ass channels into our homes, it is impossible to avoid
running into a Christmas movie at any given moment during the month of December. Turn on the telly at 5 a.m. looking for news,
and you'll run across Dolly Parton and Lee Majors in a movie I've yet to figure
out, but I think she is trying to breastfeed the world. Flick around looking for some campy CSI Miami re-run, and you'll probably find
Tim Allen flaunting his bulbous Santa stomach on a treadmill. Think you'll enjoy some late night
humor? Guess again as Joey Lawrence
pretends to be Jewish.
Nothing, though, nothing you could watch or stomach or even
imagine can ever be as horrifying as Santa
Claus Conquers the Martians. It may
be two movies behind Billy the Kid vs.
Dracula on the all-time worst list, but I'm not certain that's fair. I think it was worse than Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which was
supposed to be a comedy in its own way. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians takes
itself all too seriously and makes Plan 9
From Outer Space look like an Oscar contender.
Folks, when choosing your holiday movies this year, choose
wisely and sparingly unless you want to end up like me -- bleary-eyed,
overloaded on Christmas cheeriness, mouthing the wrong words to carols, and
cringing every time someone sings, "It's the most wonderful tiiiiiiiiime
of the year" because you think the Henry Winkler movie is coming on
again. And whatever you do, do NOT go to
Youtube (like I know you already did) and watch clips from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (like I know you're going to as
soon as you're done reading this because you cannot believe that a Martian
could truly look like Frank Zappa without actually being Frank Zappa).
Happy Holidays, kiddies.
Film at 11… and 12 … and 1 … and 2 ….
