The Best Of The Worst Weird Christmas Movies
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There are bad movies, and then there are bad Christmas movies. For some reason only known to the film-makers themselves, they seem to lose all sense of taste, perspective, and artistry when it comes to making a movie based on the theme of Christmas. At the moment many of those TV channels that go into double figures on your channel listings are churning out terrible made-for-TV movies to fill the afternoon TV schedules. However there are some movies that are so bad they won't even make the schedule list of the smallest budget constricted cable TV channel. Here I present the worst of the worst weird Christmas movies. Everyone one a "what were they thinking" gem in its own right. At least one has become an infamous cult classic, most have disappeared into movie history, kept alive by geeks who love to pass on the pain they have suffered watching these movies.
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The Dark Side Of European Christmas Traditions - Across Europe there are many dark and creepy figures associated with Christmas, whose folklore origins stem from pagan winter celebrations.
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Top Ten: Christmas Slasher Movies - A festive season sub-genre of the slasher movie genre. And one that in many ways started it all with 1974's Black Christmas.
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Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny (1972): There's so bad it's good movies, and there are so bad it's just bad movies. Then there is those rare, so utterly mind-blowing bad movies that for cult film masochists they are a must see. Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny falls into that latter rare category. A movie so few have seen, and bothered to vote on IMDb, it doesn't even make the worst 100 movies of all time. It's literally off the scale. (The worst movie of all time according to IMDb is 2014's Saving Christmas, with a rating of 1.5 out of 10.)
Made to by director R. Winer frame porn director Barry Mahon's brief foray into children's movies, it was primarily used along with his 1970 production of Thumbelina. The "action" focuses around Santa's sleigh being stuck in the sand on a Florida beach. (Yep, I know! It gets worse.) Santa uses telepathic powers to bring children to help him, using various odd choices of animal to pull his sleigh out of the sand. One of which is a man in a gorilla suit! Watching all this, for no explainable reason are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. All attempts fail, and so to segueway into the Thumbelina segment Santa tells a story of a girl who goes to a theme park and hears said story. The larger better produced middle section finishes, with its own credits and everything, and we return to the Santa story. In which the Ice Cream Bunny of the movie title finally shows up in fire engine. He and Santa go off to do Santa's Christmas deliveries, leaving the empty sleigh in the sand still and a bunch of confused children. Like the viewers, they seem bemused by what just happened and that fact there was no mention of "ice cream" in reference to the Ice Cream Bunny!!! |
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The Magic Christmas Tree (1964): A boy is given a ring by an old witch. He uses the ring to bring a Christmas tree to life, which grants him three wishes. However we're getting ahead ourselves here. The movies actually starts on Halloween, and in black-and-white. When our "hero" attempts to get an old woman's cat out of a tree, from which he falls and is knocked unconscious. From here on in, the film is in colour (Wizard of Oz style). The lad wakes up to discover that the old woman is actually a witch, who gives him a magic ring. She tells him to bury the ring, which he does on Thanksgiving. (Yep, shoe-horning in all the holidays of the season here.) Overnight an effeminate talking tree appears, which grants him three wishes. The lad's first wish is for one hour of absolute power. His second is to have Santa all to himself. When he sees the unhappiness his selfishness causes, he uses his third to return Santa to the children of the world. On Christmas Day, he wakes up and realises that it was all a dream! (Tah Dah!)
The effects in this are bad, the acting is atrocious, the sound is out of sync most of the time. And the scene where the lad meets the giant in the woods is only slightly more creepy than the whole weird sanitized eerie suburb setting of the movie. Oh and then there's the infamous (for those poor unfortunates who have seen it) elongated lawn-mower scene. Which has to be seen to be disbelieved! If you thought the Ice Cream Bunny was weird, this is that times 10 made by a David Lynch wannabe on the worst acid trip of his life. |
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Santa Claus (1959): A Mexican fantasy movie (dubbed into English) in which Santa works in outer space and lives in a floating castle in the clouds. In the movie Santa does battle with a demon called Pitch sent to Earth by Lucifer to ruin Christmas by killing Santa and "making all the children of the Earth do evil." Santa must defeat the demon, with the help of Merlin the Magician who is Santa's assistant. There's also a poor Mexican family involved, caught between the demon and Santa. That's about it really for this one. Oh and did I mention there's robot reindeer?! I guess either they couldn't afford or find real reindeer in Mexico.
You and your children will sit open-jawed in disbelief at this piece of utter gaudy surreal nonsense. You'll think your having an acid flash-back and your kids will get straight on the phone and call child services. Over-the-top doesn't even begin to cover this piece of ridiculous weirdness, that was actually shown quite often on TV at Christmas during the 1960s and 70s. (On the IMDb worst 100 movies, this comes in a 77.) For me though, what saves this movie from being worse than the other two already mentioned is Pitch the demon. His wild over-acting, manic eyes and crazy prancing around are mesmerizing. You want to look away, you want to switch it off and watch something else, but the scenes with him in seem to draw you in. |
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Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964): Of all the movies on this list, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is probably the most famous, or infamous depending on your take on it. Making it in at 88 on the IMDb worst list, on often appearing on various lists of the worst movie ever made. For me however, this is one of my favourite Christmas movies of all time. It is a tradition to stick it on at midnight as Christmas Eve ticks over into Christmas Day, crack a beer and then just kick-back and enjoy the ride. And its not just me, the movie has gained a massive cult following over the years. Spawning spoofs, a stage musical and a comic book all based on the movie.
In the movie the children or Mars live in a strict controlling regime, where their education is fed to them by machine. They find distraction by watching Earth TV shows, and see Santa being interviewed on one of these shows. It's decided that the children of Mars need to be able to have some fun, and a Santa type character would provide that fun. So they decide to kidnap "the" Santa from Earth and bring him back to Mars. Which they do, along with two children from Earth. On Mars they are set to work making toys for the Martian children, but due to political shenanigans are sabotaged. Meanwhile there's a comic Martian Dropo, who starts dressing and acting like Santa. Eventually the saboteurs are caught, and Santa along with the Martian king decided that Dropo should become the Martian version of Earth Santa. Santa and the two Earth children go home. The end! |
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Santa Visits The Magic Land Of Mother Goose (1967): Sometimes just referred to as The Magic Land Of Mother Goose, as the Christmas element was spliced in at some later date. This short piece of madness was directed by the godfather of gore Herschell Gordon Lewis. (I Know! Just that in itself would make this worth giving a go. Or maybe not!) As this whole movie was filmed on an auditorium stage, they literally filmed a stage production. I know Herschell Gordon Lewis prided himself on cheap productions, but this is really pushing the boundaries of "cheap". If you read reviews of this movie, if you can find the few there are out there, nearly every single review talks about how they struggled to make it through the whole thing. Or in many cases, just simply had to give up to avoid going insane. It may have achieved a 3.1 on IMDb, but note that's only based on (as of the 17th December 2014) 40 votes. In my humble opinion, this is the worst of the bunch on this "naughty list" of bad Christmas movies.
So what's it about? Who cares? Certainly not to seemingly drunk slurring Santa that is in the inserted segment at the beginning. Apart from that, you have a mixture of classic fairy-story characters coming out of a big Mother Goose book. There's a bunch of badly done magic tricks, some awful ad-libbing, excruciatingly painful dead-air pauses... And... That's as much as I could take. I will hold my hand up to this one, I too haven't seen this all the way through. The others on the list so far, I own and have seen at least once. I've even seen Santa Claus Conquers The Martians into double figures. But no I just haven't made it all the way through this one, and hence why I personally declare it the worst of the worst. |
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The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (1966): The original title is "Il Natale Che Quasi Non Fu", as this is an American/Italian co-production. The other movie on this list that I don't own, and don't want to. It's so saccharin sweet it puts my teeth on edge. Many people of my age and older may have fond memories of this movie. I'm glad I didn't see it as a kid, as it may well have given my vomit induced nightmares. The musical numbers just make you cringe. Oh sorry, didn't I mention that this piece of claptrap is replete with musical numbers, throughout? As if it wasn't bad enough already.
So what's it about I hear you scream with anticipation after that diatribe. Phineas T. Prune is an old miser who holds the deed to the North Pole. It seems that Santa Claus is behind in paying his rent. Prune plans to have Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves evicted and keep the Christmas toys. Santa asks Sam Whipple an attorney in once-upon-a-time-land for help. Santa is calling in a favour from Sam, as Sam sent a letter to Santa as a kid thanking him for his presents and offering to return the favour one day. Can Whipple and the children around the world help Santa and prevent Christmas from being cancelled? (What do you think?) The whole movie was filmed without sound, as the mostly Italian cast simply mouthed the English script, and the voices were dubbed in by voice actors in post-production. |
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As usual, I have listed the movies by their IMDb rating, and usually I mostly agree with the way the lists fall. However in this case I have to give you how I would order these awful movies from best to worst. As you may tell Santa Claus Conquers The Martians goes at the top of the list as the best of the bunch, followed by Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny. But it is a close run thing for me between that and The Magic Christmas Tree. Then way way down the list is Santa Visits The Magic Land Of Mother Goose, for its utter awfulness and connection to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Beating out The Christmas That Almost Wasn't by a long way. Which for me is the absolute worst of the worst.
Bad Santa: 12 Creepy Christmas Clauses - From a drunk department store Santa to a happy hirsute hobo. We all love a dishevelled dude in a Santa suit.
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Santa Theme Park In California - Sat in the mountains of Southern California, Santa's Village was the first ever franchised theme park. Opened in 1955, a month before Disneyland.
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Take Off That Christmas Jumper, It's Not Ironic You Just Look A Twat! - Tis' the season for usually sane people to blow money on clothing they will only wear once, in order to look like an idiot.
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Xmas Games: Festive Freebies & Christmas Cassettes - In the heady days of early home computing, magazines often gave away festive themed cassettes to get us in the holiday spirit.
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Weird Toys Not To Be Found Under The Tree This Christmas - Before parents wrapped kids in cotton wool, and heeded recall warnings about dangerous toys. Things were much more fun!
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William S. Burroughs: The Junky's Christmas - A dark take of heroin addiction and redemption, in a short story my Burroughs. Later made into a short film produced by Francis Ford Coppola.
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