Top 10: XMas Horror Flicks #2
Dec. 13, 2007
Source: AITH
by: Matt Withers
Ho, ho, ho. Don't ya just love them ho's! 'Tis the season where the ideology of a poor skinny hippie meets the unrepentant consumption that a fat man in a red suit can inspire.
So how better to enjoy the holidays than to cozy up with some Christmas horror flicks, that for better or worse, turn the expected joys of the season on their f*cking heads.
Now this list is slightly hamstrung by the fact that there are barely ten Christmas horror pics worth mentioning, but we've put the AITH braintrust together to come up with the most awesome reasons to give Kris Kringle the finger we could think of.
Spit bullets below on your favorites, or just offer up some Christmas cheer to your fellow Arrowheads!
El Dia de la Bestia is the original title of this Spanish flick that is just f*cking fun! It's a weird mix of comedy and horror, but somehow it all works - like if Monty Python or The Marx Brothers made a legit genre pic. It centers around a priest who discovers that Satan will return to Earth in Madrid on Christmas Day. The padre figures the best way to find evil is to act evil, so the goodhearted priest tries to be bad enough to find and stop the Devil. It's a unique genre experience for your holiday season.
OK, so Child's Play isn't technically a Christmas movie, but it's always felt like one to me. After all it is winter time (November at the start), and it does center around a gift (B-day, but close enough). To me the ever-present sweaters, fireplaces, and toy induced mayhem all scream holiday cheer. I particularly love to watch it around Christmas time when I'm ready to rip the wings off an angel if It's A Wonderful Life plays one more f*cking time!
I'm not as big a fan of Tim Burton's as some. It's a 50/50 proposition with him in my opinion. Sometimes great, sometimes tedious and pretentious. But I don't know anyone who would argue that The Nightmare Before Christmas isn't one of his home runs. This sucker combines two favorite holidays and turns them on their head. Plus Jack Skellington gives us a hero who is sympathetic, but also scary as hell when circumstances call for it. Added bonus for the holidays, you can watch this one with the whole family - maybe.
Phobe Cates hates Christmas because her dad died in a chimney dressed up as Santa. One of my all time favorite exposition scenes. You get the feeling through the whole film that director Joe Dante wanted to see how much he could get away with. It's like genre fan play time, twisting an idyllic small town into the Main Street of Hell. The fact that the studio turned around and successfully sold it as a family film in some markets, in my view, just makes the whole thing even better.
A lump of coal for the remake, but the original bad boy Christmas fright flick still creeps me out to this day. It does everything a slasher film is supposed to do and does it well. A lot of times it's easy to think slashers don't really work anymore because the formula has been used so many times, but anytime you have atmosphere, suspense and a genuinely threatening villain, the damn thing is gonna work. And it works here baby! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
3:00PM on 12/13/2007