Christmas and the movies go together like ... well, like Christmas and the movies. There’s no shortage of Yuletide cinema—and there’s more of it every year.
This season, we already have the dismal Fred Claus and the pleasantly undistinguished This Christmas—with the prospect of The Perfect Holiday still looming before us. Judging by the photos, it would appear that the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks has a Christmas setting—and a scene in which Alvin pops a rodent raisin into his mouth to bamboozle their human keeper (Jason Lee) into believing that Theodore is indeed housebroken.
I cite this merely to prove that, yes, there are worse things than a Tim Allen Christmas movie—and to illustrate that not all (or even most) holiday offerings are on their way to film immortality. More likely than not, most of them are merely trying to wrest a few bucks from hapless parents before finding their proper level in the Wal-Mart dump bin.
From the looks of things lately, it seems we will once more be seeking out our festive movies from years past. However, that in itself can be a grim experience. It may suit some folks, but the prospect of even one more showing of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) brings out the Scrooge in me. And while I firmly believe that any Christmas without Bing Crosby is no Christmas at all—you can expect to hear Bing and the Andrews Sisters (along with John and Yoko’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “I Believe in Father Christmas” and The Kinks’ “Father Christmas”) if you stop by my house during the season—I would subject no one to White Christmas (1954). If you really must have Bing on the TV, go with Holiday Inn (1942) or Going My Way (1944).
Better yet, just scrap the idea of the film being strictly seasonal and choose one of the “Road” pictures that Der Bingle made with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. I’m going to suggest Road to Rio (1947)—for no very good reason, except that it’s a film I’ve come to associate with the holidays over the years (probably because that’s when I first saw it).
Holly berries and blood are the same color
If you want a Christmas flick that’s a little different, yet still firmly tied to the holidays, I’d still say you can’t go wrong with Bob Hope in The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). It’s a pleasant confection that has never gotten its due. Originally planned as a Christmas release, the completed film was held back by an unsatisfied Hope. He called in Frank Tashlin, best known for helming Warner Bros. cartoons, to reshoot about a third of the movie and add the elaborate “Silver Bells” musical number. That last move made the film a bonafide Christmas classic, but releasing it in April killed it at the box office.
For that matter, John Ford’s rambunctious John Wayne comedy Donovan’s Reef (1963) is another choice offering that’s still partly in a traditional vein. Its South Sea-island version of a Christmas pageant—complete with Dorothy Lamour singing “Silent Night” under a leaky church roof—is a sequence to treasure. But let’s look a little further afield this year.
For starters, consider Lady on a Train (1945)—a nifty noirish mystery-comedy (oddly enough written by Edmund Beloin and Robert O’Brien, who also penned The Lemon Drop Kid). This Christmas-set thriller was an attempt by Universal to put their biggest star, Deanna Durbin, into something a little different than her usual musical-comedy fare—and it worked pretty well. Durbin plays a young woman on her way to spend Christmas with her aunt in New York City. En route, she just happens to witness a murder when her train stops outside Grand Central Station. The mystery element is fairly solid, and there’s scads of atmosphere, while the comedy is pleasant. Apart from the Christmastime setting, Deanna gets to sing a charming version of “Silent Night,” which should satisfy purists. And she offers a surprisingly sultry take on Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” and Maceo Pinkard, J. Smith and Roy Turk’s jazz standard “Gimme a Little Kiss,” for those wanting something a little less pure.
Keeping in the thriller vein, there’s Charles Laughton’s only directorial work, The Night of the Hunter (1955). This is strong stuff—and one of the greatest films of the 1950s—that is hardly what one thinks of as a Christmas movie. After all, it is the frequently terrifying tale of a psychotic “preacher” (Robert Mitchum) who slits a woman’s throat and goes in murderous pursuit of her two children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce), the key to $10,000 in stolen money. Not festive enough for you? Well, in the latter portions, the children come under the protection of an elderly woman (Lillian Gish) with a penchant for taking in orphans. In these scenes, the movie offers one of the simplest, most touching depictions of Christmas—and the spirit of the holiday—ever committed to film.
If you’re feeling especially irreverent, nothing could be better than a suggestion made to me by a singularly warped friend—Terence Fisher’s Curse of the Werewolf (1961), starring Oliver Reed as the lycanthrope in question. This one looms large in my personal history, because the trailer alone used to send me scampering to the safety of the theater lobby when I was 7, and it’s about as far from Christmassy as you’re likely to get. Yet the whole thing hinges on Christmas—and a bit of faux Spanish mythology that claims that an illegitimate child born on Christmas day will become a werewolf when he grows up. OK, so its myth and theology are both about as fuzzy as Oliver Reed’s chin in the final scenes. But the more jaded among us will agree that It’s a Wonderful Life, it ain’t.
In a similar vein (yes, that was deliberate), another friend (I know some strange people) recommended the bottom-of-the-barrel horror opus Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974). This Yuletide charmer is all about Christmas murders in a creepy old mansion/insane asylum. Patrick O’Neal (the poor man’s Jason Robards, Jr.) stars and drags along cult queen Mary Woronov, over-the-hill character actor Walter Abel (hey, he’s in Holiday Inn!) and John “$1.98 and I’m yours” Carradine. Even my friend admits that this is unadulterated drive-in schlock, but she claims it’s a must-have for those times when friends with children come a-calling during the holidays. Let your conscience—or lack thereof—be your guide. Say what you will, there’s even a fan site (http://www.freewebs.com/silentnightbloodynight).
If all this is a little too much for the faint of heart, the delicate of sensibilities or those with simply too much taste, there’s always Tod Browning’s The Devil-Doll (1936), in which a Devil’s Island escapee (Lionel Barrymore, who spends a lot of the movie in drag) exacts his revenge on those who wrongly imprisoned him. He’s aided by a group of scientifically miniaturized folks—one of whom is even hung on a victim’s Christmas tree as a potentially lethal ornament. Wayward holiday fun for all—with a surprisingly sour tone, as when the script notes that Paris is full of “religious fanatics” around Christmas. Even Mr. Scrooge himself might find it heartwarming.
Of course, you can always fall back on Miracle on 34th Street (the real one, from 1947) or the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol (1951). But for the adventurous, the above might prove an antidote to the sometimes syrupy excesses of the season.
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