Many Reasons For the Season

So I queued up Red Christmas via Netflix because hey! I like a good seasonal horror flick. With Christmas looming, why not devote that Monday to a new yuletide slasher?

Then I slogged through the mean-spirited coal that was Red Christmas and thought to myself, you know Emily, this year has been ugly enough without ending it on such a negative, punishing, anti-choice, mixed garbage statement of a movie. Let's find a happier note to play, something seasonal but positive.

So here are a few random things to love about horror movies during the holidays. And if nothing here works, just screw it all and queue up The Muppet Family Christmas for the 9,00th time. No judgement here. 

The Crypt Keeper Singing Holiday Jingles

Easily the best item ever to be purchased in the '90s by a teenage Emily at the Spencer's Gifts, this album (originally on cassette tape, natch) includes a dozen holiday tunes with the lyrics rewritten to be more fitting of the singer, John Kassir's pun-wielding, tale-spinning Crypt Keeper. Can't get your Walkman working? Revel in the kindness of strangers with YouTube accounts.

The Very Fact That There Exists Not One But Two Killer Snowman Movies

And yet, the unrelated but weirdly similar Michael Keaton family film of the same name is somehow far creepier

The Choice to View Christmas Evil As a Magical Tale of a Lonely Santa-Loving Man Ascending to Angel Status

My (and John Waters) favorite holiday genre film can be viewed as a lot of things: a an early entry into the slasher Santa trend, tragic tale of mental illness taken to extremes, the chance to spot a way-pre-Home Improvement Patricia Richardson in a tiny role. For my money, it's something even more special (that's also all of those things). The key to keeping Christmas Evil on the right side of your heart is to make the conscious decision that SPOILER ALERT! Harry Stadling's van doesn't crash and burn after his killing spree is over, but rather, transcends into the heavens, transforming into a magical sleigh and changing our sad sack factory worker into the real deal Santa. 

Margot Kidder In Black Christmas, Goddess

Easily on the top five list of Film Characters I Want To Lost a Drinking Game To. She. Is. Divine.

Vincent Cassel's Insanity In Sheitan

The movie itself? Somewhat insufferable. The MAN himself? 

A god. Or, well, technically agent of the devil. 

The Most Feel-Good Pop Montage In the Least Feel-Good Slasher

I've said it again and I'll say it an estimated 781 more times before I die: Silent Night Deadly Night is memorable for a bevy of reasons, but none more so than the weirdly placed, tonally mismatched "The Warm Side of the Door" sequence, wherein a sweet country tune cheerfully plays as our soon-to-be-mass-murderer learns about friendship, work ethic, and the joy of having alcoholic bosses.

Eric Freeman's Case For The Academy Awards Adding a Category for Best Performance By a Pair of Eyebrows

I mean...

Clint Howard's Phallic Coven Mask

Everybody forgets Silent Night Deadly Night Part 4 because it doesn't have The Warm Side of the Door or eyebrows, but you what it does have? Murderous roller blades. Also, this:

Ray Wise & Lin Shaye In Dead End

A good but flawed little Christmas Eve ghost story, Dead End deserves to be seen more, mostly because, you know, Ray Wise and Lin Shaye. 

Disco Cameo Greatness

Don't Open Til Christmas is filled with a lot of wonderful things, among them, a smily plastic mask, Halloween costume holiday parties, charmingly innocent peep show conversations, a sleazy male flutist, and insanely slow motion overwrought flashbacks. But you know what REALLY makes it exciting? That it has Caroline Munro randomly performing a disco number. Because if that's not the real reason for the season, what is?

DJ Tanner In Your Stocking: Moonlight & MIstletoe

Let's start by examining the box cover to Moonlight and Mistletoe:

Based on the framing, what might you think this film is about? A mismatched love triangle where Tom Arnold fights for Candace Cameron-Burke's heart, battling her blandly handsome hug partner? I'm an avowed hater of the floating head poster, but seeing the full bodies awkwardly photoshopped in positions that don't make any sense isn't THAT much better.

But relax, my little reindeer, for Moonlight and Mistletoe does not ask you to imagine Roseanne's ex-husband pursuing a bleach blond D.J. Tanner. Though you might not guess it from the bizarre cover, Cameron-Burke plays--hold your breath--a no-nonsense business woman who HATES Christmas (shocked gasp) because DAD Tom Arnold has spent his whole life playing Santa Claus.

By whole life, I REALLY mean whole life. Arnold runs one of those creepy year-round Santalands where IT'S ALWAYS CHRISTMAS! While this sounds like a charming idea to some, I've personally always thought such a business to be incredibly off-putting in a Twilight Zone manner. The people inside Snowglobe? Not. Healthy. Then again, I also work an actual job so perhaps it's just that I need a handsome man, fading C-list celebrity, montage, and a few commercial breaks to teach me the true meaning of the holiday.

Quick Plot: All her life, young Holly has had to work as Santa's head elf--not daughter--prompting an eventual move to Boston where the grown up and severely arched eyebrowed young woman acts as any single career gal by speaking on her blue tooth and eating Chinese takeout with chopsticks.

They're all the same.

Now that it's the holly-days, Holly heads home to the country to visit Dad--I mean, Santa--and his new head elf/wood carving assistant Peter. We first met Peter in the prologue where his family made a pit stop at the winter village and he had a two minute conversation with the fellow tween Holly about nutcrackers. Now grown up and handsome by bland family channel standards, Peter has spent the rest of his life carving said nutcrackers because he was always charmed by that elf he met and eventually decided to hunt down her father and work for him for free.

Nope. Nothing weird about that at all.

Being home for the holidays, in case you don't know, is REALLY hard for a career woman like Holly. There's the uncomfortable meetups with old high school frenemies, something Holly thwarts by asking said local if her high school sweetheart's husband still has acne (apparently they don't teach manners at business school). Frenemy's payback is to set Holly up with a handsome, dark-haired fellow city boy (cue ominous music) who works as a financial analyst (cue mustache twirl) and most nefarious of all, is quite eager to help Santa Arnold out with some new financial woes (might as well cut to lair filled with dead orphans stuffed inside dead puppies).

See, Santa doesn't exactly make big bucks, especially when he's played by Tom Arnold as a borderline mentally challenged doofus. Arnold has been ignoring the pile of bank bills, saving them as a Christmas present for his dear daugh--er, elf to deal with. Turns out, the village needs to make $50,000 by New Year's Eve to stay in business, otherwise--with the 'help' of the Evil Financial Analyst--the property goes to cruel land developers who hate Christmas and Deserve To Die.

I mean, they don't SAY that but as an informed audience member, you know the truth.

Also, Holly teaches her pops what a blog is and yes, the results are as obnoxious as you imagine. 

Lessons Learned

Never trust a man who opens his presents on Christmas Eve. It's like the Holiday In Handcuffs equivalent of twisting your Oreos!

Sorry doesn’t feed the cat

50 grand is a lot of money, so much in fact that it will make Candace Cameron-Burke's voice SOUND REALLY ANNOYING

Montage Mania

You can't make $50,000 in one month without one!

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

You need a lot of eggnog to survive Moonlight and Mistletoe. That or a weird attraction to Tom Arnold. I’m not judging or anything (past crushes include Rick Moranis and Jon Lovtiz) but you know...I’m just SAYING it’s not a good movie. 

And crushing on TA is weird.

Poop In Your Stocking: The Dog Who Saved the Holidays

When I learned that someone had essentially done a remake of Home Alone with an adorable yellow lab cast in the role previously played by the adorable blond Macauly Culkin, I ran to Netflix faster than a Greyhound at the racetrack. Searching for The Dog Who Saved Christmas led me instead to what I assumed to be its alternate title, The Dog Who Saved the Holidays. Imagine my confusion when upon popping in the DVD I was greeted with a trailer for The Dog Who Saved Christmas (starring Mario Lopez as the voice of the title character), only to wonder why a movie is advertising the very movie you're about to watch. But see, THAT trailer was followed by one for The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation, now with Paris Hilton paycheck grubbing along to voice a poodle. Finally, the DVD menu showed me the title of the movie I was about to watch, "The Dog Who Saved the Holidays."

So to recap, this is a film franchise that goes as follows:

The Dog Who Saved Christmas

The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation

The Dog Who Saved the Holidays

Maybe they feared that calling this one The Dog Who Saved Christmas Again would scare off those who never watch a sequel without seeing its source? Or maybe they wanted to be more inclusive? There is indeed ONE mention of Hanuka in this movie, although it's basically thrown in when a bratty child complains about going to church and his dad (played by Kevin James' older brother, proving here that things can always get worse) says something to the effect of "Be Jewish and you can celebrate Hanuka."

Note: the dog (now voiced by Joey Lawrence, presumably because Mario Lopez got too expensive) does not seem to give a sh*t about Hanuka. I declare false advertising.

Quick Plot: Zeus is an extremely talented Labrador living with the terrible horrible no good very bad Bannister family. Dad George (Kevin James' aforementioned brother) is a terrible human being with little manners and two nasty, whiny, ungrateful and disloyal children. Mom Elisa Donovan (whose resume post-Clueless is about 85% these types of Christmas movies, making her the Lance Henrikson of the genre) is okay enough, save for the fact that she's pregnant which means this terrible horrible no good very bad family is getting bigger. Which is terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad.

The Bannisters are heading to Malibu for Christma--er, I mean THE HOLIDAYS where they'll be staying with Babs, George's wealthy sister played by a sad Hostess snowball that tragically ate Shelley Long. 

Co-PRODUCER Shelley Long.

For THE HOLIDAYS, Babs bestows upon this unworthy family an adorable puppy who, as fate turns out, is about as big an a$$hole as the family she joins. Really the only likable characters in this movie are Zeus and Michael Gross as Babs' neighbor, mostly because his role lets us realize that Michael Gross is on the same sacrifice-a-virgin diet plan as Vanna White.

Conflict arises in two places: Zeus' challenge adjusting to his bitch of a little sister (literally) and a pair of thieves who must steal Babs' diamond-encrusted star (not a vaginal reference) in order to pay back their mob loan shark. Played by the once mighty Dean Cain and the always farting Joey Diaz, the duo tries in vain to channel the way superior Wet Bandits. It's not pretty for any of us.

Nothing about this movie is pretty. We're about 10 minutes in when Kevin James' brother prances around his bedroom wearing a color-matched satin pajama suit, all the while begging his pregnant wife for a massage. Yes director Michael Feifer, THAT'S what the ladies want to see in their children's films. Because he is overweight, Kevin James' brother's character constantly farts, as does the OTHER overweight character, and a llama. You think I'm kidding, but were I to track it, I'd say a good 37% of The Dog Who Saved the Holiday's dialogue is just farts.

One of which is Kevin James' older brother

Things are no better in the non-fart filled scenes. Take, for example, a simple conversation between Elisa Donovan and The Sad Hostess Snowball That Ate Shelley Long. For some reason, Feifer chooses to shoot it in extreme closeup, meaning we're off-centeredly shoved in the faces of these two unknowing actresses. This is sad for the otherwise attractive Donovan and truly tragic for the hasn't-aged-great Long, especially since the EXTREME CLOSEUP forces us to stare down some of her otherwise unnoticeable blemishes. Look: I get pimples too, but that doesn't mean a camera is supposed to focus on them.

Sadly the big Home Alone-ish finale doesn't make anything better. After two films of outwitting the bad guys, I expected great things from the Kevin McAllister mind of Zeus. All he actually has to do to thwart Dead Cain and his farting assistant is throw tennis balls down the stairs, fake rabies, and dial 9-11 with his (admittedly adorable) paw. We don't even get a good groin injury!

The Dog Who Saved the Holidays is a rather dreadful little film, mostly because it expects us to care about a group of disgusting human beings and their mean-spirited puppy. Yes, you read that right: I didn't even like the puppy in this film, and she was adorable. That's a problem.

Sass Factor

An angry black car rental employee serves it up well to the terrible human beings who attempt to bribe her into a reservation. Note that the actress Shirell Ferguson-Coleman also stopped by Feifer's A Christmas Wedding Tail to give Kelly Taylor a touch of urban sass

Lessons Learned

A girl shouldn’t have to ask for a man to lick her face

Just because it’s the 21st century is no reason for today’s youth to not say ‘radical’

Cujo is a good movie

Holiday saving boy dogs do not have genitalia

Token Slapstick Alert

Dad FALLS. At the BEACH. It's HILARIOUS. 

Montage Mania

Almost as many montages as there are farts! We get a slow motion dramatic recap of the Bannister family unwrapping presents and singing carols, a token decorate-the-house montage, and what I imagine must be clips from the first two movies as Zeus remembers being adopted by the terrible horrible no good very bad Bannisters

Stocking Stuffer or Coal In Your Stocking?

As I sit here thinking about how much I hated everything about this movie save for the dog, I realize how unhealthy a person I've become because damnit, I know I'm still going to seek out The Dog Who Saved Christmas AND The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation. So what does that say about me? I guess that I deserve coal and dog poop in my stocking. But dear readers, please love yourself more and demand better from your canine holiday cinema. The world should not follow my example.

The Triumphant Return of Cheese In Your Stocking: Christmas Town

Those with excellent memories or systems that abuse alcohol far less than mine might recall that at this time last year, we were knee-deep in covering made-for-ABC-Family-Channel movies about the spirit of Christmas, i.e., that successful career women should abandon any ambitions they have to move to small towns, marry blandly handsome local artists, and end the day wearing Santa hats. 

No wonder why Billy & Ricky Campbell hate the holidays.

This year, I didn't quite get around to the complete Hallmark archive, but I did manage to cram in a few festive watches, including today's tale about a successful career woman who learns to abandon her ambitions, head to a small town, fall in love with a local (diner owner), and end the day (SPOILER ALERT) in a Santa hat.

Quick Plot: Liz is a superstar real estate agent and single mom to a bratty 10 year old son Mason. Less than two minutes in, we're told that she is indeed lacking the Christmas spirit, and if you're wondering, that's essentially the 8th deadly sin in holiday cinema. When she learns that her formerly rigid banker dad has quit his high-paying job and moved to a quaint little circuit called Hollyville, she throws Mason in the car to spend Christmas checking in on pops.

Oh, and along the way, they stop at a hotel. Then continue on the journey.

I tell you this because the movie pauses to do so, so I figured it must be important.

Once in Hollyville, Liz and Mason notice some strangeness. Despite the fact that everyone wears t-shirts, the town seems to be oozing in holiday cheer from the mysterious N.P. Enterprise Corporation that seems to be guarded with maximum security to the local diner where Liz's dad is a greasy spoon line cook and Days of Our Lives first Austin (or Starship Troopers brain-sucked pilot) Patrick Muldoon is an overly friendly waiter. Yes, go ahead and assume that N.P. stands for North Pole and the town is the headquarters of Santa himself.

Who, sadly enough, apparently stations his workshop in a dank gray-walled factory where the only real hint of holiday charm comes from the kind of green-tinted light bulbs you can find in Party City.

Compared to overly gooey fare like The Christmas Shoes, Christmas Town is slightly less offensive. At the same time, the very ho-hummness of it makes it far less fun to watch than something as weirdly misguided as A Christmas Wedding Tail or aggressively preachy like Christmas With a Capital C. The production values are on par with your average made-for-some-offshoot-of-the-Family-Channel-and-filmed-in-Canada original, with mildly fresh-faced C-listers rushing through their scenes so they can check their voicemail on break to see if their agents remembered their names.

Look, I won't lie: I watched Days of Our Lives during the Second Wave of Supercouples and had quite the schoolgirl crush on Patrick Muldoon. While he's aged as well as any Hollywood regular making weekly virgin sacrifices on Mullholland Drive, Muldoon has never been a good actor, and listening to him force enthusiasm in his scenes makes me more uncomfortable than enamored. Nicole de Boer (whom genre fans will remember as the math whiz in Cube) doesn't have much to work with, but it's still worth noting that her style of line delivery makes you wonder if whoever she’s talking to just stuck gum in her hair or stepped on the back of her heel.

It’s a tad grating.

Lessons Learned

You can sell anything at Christmas if you know the right buttons to push

Never interrupt a mechanic when she’s enjoying her (possibly crack laden) hot cocoa

Contrary to popular belief, Santa prefers to work in warm climates

When your prop department is really out of ideas, take no risks. 555-555-HOME is a perfectly acceptable stand-in phone number for a real estate agency, right?

Montage Mania

Sadly, the meager budget doesn’t allow for one, unless you count the very quick driving-to-dad’s-while-the-annoying-kid-sings-Christmas-carols quick scene

Sass Factor

Not much. Liz’s assistant has a squeaky voice and does speed dating, so I guess that’s the closest we get

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

Eh. Christmas Town is less offensive than some other holiday fare, and unlike most movies about dedicated career women, it doesn’t overtly end with Liz forsaking her job because the movies told her to. Still, without the bizarre quirks of something like Snowglobe (remember, the movie where a woman gets sucked into a snowglobe) or the heart of the genuinely sweet Cancel Christmas, Christmas Town just sorta happens. 

Much like Patrick Muldoon's career