Christmas On The Blog Of Lies! Yule Love It!

Christmas Day is just around the corner. I'm sure you don't need this little reminder, but I'm still throwing it out there. I'm a big fan of the Christmas. I always have been. Sure, the delightful wrapped gifts nestled under the plastic, pre-lit Douglas Fir Tree are a plus. I mean, who doesn't enjoy unwrapping a little enigmatic box only to discover with dawning horror that what you had hoped to be a signed first edition of Frank Herbert's "Dune" is in actuality a tattered paperback of Brian Herbert's "The Butlerian Jihad"?! That kind of crippling disappointment is what the holday is all about!

No, Dear Imaginary Reader, Christmas is about more than simple commercialism. It's about spending quality time with family and friends. It's about downing a six pack of expensive imported ale with your distant cousin over a friendly game of billiards, while he rambles about his obsession with former WWF wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's about ignoring the piercing cries of a neglected baby because you can't be bothered to pause your "Rock Band" game in the midst of your soaring rendition of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.

Yes, Christmas means a great deal to me. The food, the company, the uncomfortable silence that stretches on and on when your inebriated mother wonders aloud when her worthless son is finally going to do something with his life instead of typing endlessly on some stupid blog...

It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

It's also the perfect time of year to dust off some of my favorite holiday-themed DVDs and give them a mandatory holiday viewing. Now everybody has their own definition of a "holiday classic", a film that they watch year after year, their personal cinematic tradition. For the longest time, one of my holiday classics was Bob Clark's adaptation of Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story".

I remember the first time I saw the film, spending the Thanksgiving holiday with my grandparents in Arkansas. My grandfather got a real kick out of Ralphie's touching quest to receive a Red Rider bb gun for Christmas, despite the constant blithering of seemingly every adult in the film concerned that he will shoot his eye out. Who can forget the heartwarming story? The profane-yet-lovable Old Man, the doting mother, the demonic Scut Farkus, the hilariously destructive Bumpus hounds, and the "electric sex" that is the ubiquitous leg lamp. It brings back fond memories...

When TNT (and later TBS) began their "24 Hours Of A Christmas Story" marathon on Christmas Eve many years ago, I thought it was a great idea. It's such a perfect movie for the holidays: it's sweet, sentimental, and charming without being overbearing. I would fall asleep on Christmas Even with "A Christmas Story" on TV, and wake up on Christmas Day with "A Christmas Story" on TV. It was a lovely way to get in the mood for the festivities that were to come.

Of course, I don't give a shit about "A Christmas Story", anymore. I've seen it so many times, I know the entire movie by heart. And I don't ever want to see it again. Just thinking about accidentally glimpsing a few moments of the movie during its opressive 24 hour marathon causes me to shudder. TV killed "A Christmas Story" for me. These days, I'm more likely to watch Bob Clark's other holiday classic, "Black Christmas". Hell, I'm more likely to watch the ill-conceived 2006 remake of "Black Christmas". GOTUS knows I would enjoy it more.

My "holiday essentials" boil down to four movies: "Scrooged", "Santa Claus: The Movie",  "It's A Wonderful Life", and "Silent Night, Deadly Night". I'll pull these four DVDs from my collection every year, and I'll watch them at my leisure over the Christmas holiday. Each of these films captures a different aspect of what the season means to me. As far as I'm concerned, they're all essential.

"Santa Claus: The Movie" represents my childhood, plain and simple. I watched this damned movie a lot during my formative years. The first half of the movie is a colorful, charming Christmas fable, detailing the "true" origin of everybody's favorite home invader. The second half, which loses most viewers over the age of 7, drops up waist-deep in the vapid decade of "me" (hello, 1980's!), where the increasingly consumer-driven culture has minimized the need for a benevolent gift giver like Santa Claus.

Enter John Lithgow's "B.Z.", the sadistic owner of the world's most irresponsible toy manufacturing company. Do you remember those hilarious Saturday Night Live sketches featuring Dan Aykroyd as the maker of such toys as "Teddy Chainsaw Bear" and "Bag O' Broken Glass"? That's who B.Z. is. We're introduced to him at a Senate subcommitte hearing, where his latest hit toys are being revealed to the horrified masses as terrifying instruments of death.

An aide retrieves an innocuous-looking teddy bear, twists its head off, and pours out the contents of its hollow, huggable body onto a table. It's literally filled with rusty nails and shards of broken glass. Why? Apparently B.Z. hates children so much that he's made it his life's mission to destroy them through his cute, deadly toys. There is absolutely no reason why any corporation would ever fill their mass-marketed teddy bears with rusty nails and broken glass. Unless they deliberately wanted to cause harm to children.

Gosh, that's creepy. And hilarious. With "Santa Claus: The Movie", I come for the delightful first half, but I stay for John Lithgow. His over-the-top, gleefully cruel, borderline insane villain is the real reason why I watch this fucking movie year after year. He's the guy who drinks cheap beer out of a brandy snifter because he believes that it's "classy". He's the guy who openly plots to overthrow Santa Claus as the King of Christmas because the jolly old elf never brought him any presents when he was a child. He's the guy who would kill a hapless little hobo child because he knows too much.

He also invented "Christmas 2!!!!!!!!"

Richard Donner's "Scrooged" is just great. All of the early television promos work like gangbusters. "The Night The Reindeer Died" is hilarious. Robert Goulet drifting on the bayou, singing "Silver Bells" whilst being chased by a hungry alligator is an image I'll never be able to forget. And the amazingly innappropriate "Scrooge" promo featuring ecploding airplanes, extreme road rage, and drug abuse is classic.

But Bill Murray is the reason why this movie works. His portrayal of cold-hearted television executive Frank Cross is laugh-out-loud funny, surprisingly touching, and at times heartbreaking. His performance has me laughing uproariously one moment, then fighting back tears the next. And the result of his Christmas Eve transformation, crashing the "Scrooge" broadcast and seemingly having a nervous breakdown on live television,  is an amazingly inventive way to subvert the Charles Dickens tale.

I don't see why I even need to justify "Silent Night, Deadly Night". It should be required Christmas viewing for everybody. TBS needs to have a "24 Hours Of Silent Night, Deadly Night" marathon. Fuck that, Showtime needs to do this. This shit needs to be uncut.

"Silent Night, Deadly Night" is the story of young Billy Chapman. On Christmas Eve, Billy and his little brother Ricky accompany their parents to see their grandpappy at the old folks home. As soon as Billy is left alone with seemingly catatonic old man, gramps springs to life, rambling semi-coherently about how Santa Claus is the baddest motherfucker on the block, and if you're naughty, he'll gut you like a fish and festoon his festive fireplace with your entrails. Man, old people are weird.

Coincidentally, Billy's family is confronted by a shady dude dressed as Santa Claus on their way home from the retirement community. Dad pulls over to see if this stranded Santa needs assistance, and he's quickly shot in the face for his trouble. Billy grabs baby Ricky and hides out in the woods while his poor mother is raped and murdered by this counterfeit Saint Nick.

So... yeah. I can't see how this terrifyingly traumatic experience could ever come back to haunt Billy as he grows up at an orphanage operated by the angriest nun in existence. "Silent Night, Deadly Night" has everything: creepy dudes dressed up as Santa Claus, raping and killing folks with impunity, douchebags getting their heads lopped off as they go sledding, Linnea Quigley taking her top off then getting impaled on a mounted deer head in her parents' rumpus room, drunken toy store owners forcing clearly disturbed young men with a pathological fear of Santa Claus to dress up as the thing they most fear, and of course, Britt Leach.

When it was released in 1984, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was almost universally condemned by critics who thought of it as nothing more than an irresponsible slasher film using the iconography of the Christmas season for added shock value. Sure, one could view the movie as such, if they were so inclined. But I think those charges are off base. Underneath the surface, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" tells the story of a mentally disturbed young man who was never given the proper tools or guidance to deal with the trauma that shaped his life.

During his formative years at the orphanage, the cruel Mother Superior's idea of therapy is routine physical abuse coupled with the attitude that poor Billy will simply grow out of his psychosis. She has no idea how to truly help this child, and no desire to even try. The vivid memories of a disturbing caricature of "Santa Claus" destroying his happy family, compounded by Mother Superior's belief that any healthy behavior in which your average horny teenagers engage is inherently evil and therefore worthy of severe punishment puts Billy on an irreversibly destructive path that will only end in a night of  bloody, puritanical mayhem. Billy Chapman is a tragic, even sympathetic character in the film, which is a breath of fresh air when compared to the standard mysterious (boring) killers that populate most slasher cinema.

Yes, boys and girls, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is a classic.

As for "It's A Wonderful Life"... if you still haven't seen this movie, or if you just don't like it, then you can go right ahead and fuck yourself. It's a masterpiece. The life of George Bailey, chronicled by the celestial Joseph for the benefit of Angel Second-Class Clarence Odbody is one of the most touching, heartbreaking things I have ever seen in a film. And George's eventual realization that his life is truly blessed is one of the most uplifting endings in cinematic history. I will adore this movie until the day I die.

And because I can't think of any kind of transition, I bring you, Dear Imaginary Reader, the latest installment of The Podcast Of Lies!! In this episode, entitled "The Metropolis Podcast", I sit down with my ever-present cousin Ky and discuss Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis", Alec Baldwin's anger issues, and robot love. Consider it my Christmas gift to you.

P.S. - "Faster" review coming soon. I am nothing if not timely.