Unbeknowst to me, the property Babes in Toyland was originally based on a 1903 stage performance that yielded two feature films in 1934 and 1961 with a made-for-TV movie which is our entry today. 11-year-old Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, who on the way home with her sister and friends in a blizzard, is thrown from the car into a tree rendering her unconscious. The majority of the movie takes place in Toyland, a fictional town from Lisa’s subconscious filled with Mother Goose characters, walking, talking animals, and a sinister man named Barnaby Barnicle who wishes to rid the world of toys.

After interrupting the marriage between Barnaby and Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen), Lisa meets the citizens of Toyland and is caught in a web of lies and deceit as Barnaby tries to implicate his nephew Jack-be-nimble (Keanu Reeves) in a nefarious cookie heist to take control of the town and the domain of the Toymaster (Pat Morita). With the help of Georgie Porgie (Googy Gress), Lisa, Mary, and Jack set out to uncover Barnaby’s master plan and his deep corruption in the halls of Toyland. Yep, shit just got real.

I didn’t realize this was a made-for-TV movie until after the fact as even though it seemed cheap, there were a lot of name actors involved and some decent effects work on Barnaby’s trolls/minions of evil/whatever. Of course, having name actors means nothing when none of them can act worth a damn. There were some moments with Richard Mulligan that weren’t bad but he swung back and forth between tolerable to outrageous with not much in between. The rest of the actors were painfully bad. It seems silly to pick apart a young girl’s fantastical story, so I will withhold for the most part but there is no reason to have such awful acting even in a kid’s movie. Good thing for Barrymore that as a young actress that she had a few other entries on her resume before this. Even with Reeves, expectations are not too high for him (especially his earlier roles) but he still manages to deliver dialog as only he can like a slow man reading from a cue card ten feet away.

In my minimal research, it seems like all of the Babes in Toyland movies are different in their plot so the movie wasn’t being held to any particular template. It was cute but not particularly in depth and the characters are inept in their attempts to stop Barnaby from rising to power. A large part of the movie consists of the characters being trapped by Barnaby, only to escape and be recaptured minutes later. It gets tired quickly. There are some random songs sprinkled throughout, calling back to the source material I suppose, but they were sparse enough to make it not a musical but a movie where people break into song periodically. If I can commend it for anything though, the kids stayed put throughout the whole movie (almost unheard of in my house) so at least it works better as a family film than most.

Nora Ephron typically makes a certain type of movie. That movie: one which I do not care about. Her most acclaimed films run the gammit between romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks to other romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks. A bit of filler movies with Will Ferrell and Meryl Streep fill in the gaps. The thing I was most excited about with Mixed Nuts was Parker Posey, who I learned to love in Scream 3. Sadly, she appears with Jon Stewart in roughly 80 seconds of the movie. At least I had another Scream series vet to bide time with.

Mixed Nuts centers around a crisis hotline on Christmas Eve. Phillip (Steve Martin) runs this help center although needing some help himself with an immanent breakup, a pending eviction, and stupid people surrounding him. His neurotic co-worker Catherine (Rita Wilson) has a friend of sorts Grace (Juliette Lewis) who is potentially nine months pregnant by her seven-month paroled boyfriend Felix (Anthony LaPaglia). The other hotline worker is Mrs. Munchnik (Madeline Kahn), an older, battier woman who derives pleasure from absolutely nothing. When they meet up with Adam Sandler (Adam Sandler) and a cross-dressing Liev Schreiber, attempted comedy ensues involving dog tranquilizers, loaded handguns, and a serial killer.

On the surface, Mixed Nuts attempts to offer to the cinematic gods of yore the joy of an absurdist comedy set around a suicide prevention center at Christmas. After all, what could be better than a Christmas movie about overtly generic characters that endure such crazy situations? Oh, the answer is anything other than this movie. For a comedy, there sure was not too much funny in it. It is surprising that so many fairly good actors showed up only to be stuck in such forced, unbelievable, and very predictable predicaments. There is very little that is surprising about what unfolds in this movie: we have the unrequited love between two office mates, the shrill old woman turns around her ways, and the white trash couple fight a lot. With stock characters, it is difficult but not impossible to create a decent movie but we learn and care so little about the group that it really is inconsequential who shacks up with who, who makes it to Christmas dinner on time, or what will become of them all afterwards.

Given that I’ve never really liked Steve Martin, I wasn’t surprised to find him a bore in this movie that in better hands could have been much better. This was made apparently in the time that he was able to dye his hair but unable to behave in any other way than manically unfunny. At least he was better than the more-often-than-not unfunny Adam Sandler. He plays a ukulele and sings in the traditional Adam Sandler voice. The late Kahn is delightful though even if her character is not. The real star was Schreiber as the gender-bending Chris. Perhaps it is just because I enjoy the actor but seeing him attempt to pull off a woman with such a distinctive voice and stocky build was entertaining.

There are far too many decent Christmas comedies out there that watching this is just as futile as running a suicide hotline. You know some are not worth saving.

For a review of Scrooged, I could just point you to the first ever Movie Scum Episode up to the 2:45 mark and that would about summarize my thoughts on the movie. Based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Bill Murray assumes the role of Scrooge as Frank Cross, a deplorably inhumane man who thrives on the mean-streak that everyone else would just as rather ignore. As the president of a major television network, he takes great joy in firing those who rub him wrong and being miserly when we assume that he has all the wealth in the world. Frank is warned of his depraved ways by his late boss (John Forsythe) who also informs him of the coming of three ghosts. The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future all show Frank something he either wanted to forget or wanted to ignore in the hopes of turning him into less of a douchebag.

PBF said this was probably one of his favorite Murray movies ever (Bill, not the other brothers who turned up here) and I couldn’t agree more. This is classic, kind of goofy yet still serious Bill Murray like in Stripes or Ghostbusters. He plays Cross with a fervently intense hatred toward the world and humanity at large yet still in a comical way. Murray here, even in the early portion of the movie, steers his delivery in a way that hints at farce to take the edge off of the more harsher elements like the fired Eliot Milquetoast Laudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait) or his suffering secretary’s (Alfre Woodard) family obligations that are trampled by Cross’ agenda. The balancing act this movie pulled off was making Cross insufferable but not to the point that he could not be adequately redeemed by the end of the movie.

To a point, you can almost understand Frank’s dilemma as he is career-driven but to a fault as that has not only cost him his relationship with his only brother James but also his true love Claire (Karen Allen). Murray and Allen have either a cute chemistry or a healthy hesitation with each other depending on the story’s needs in the past or present times. While a great deal of Murray’s shenanigans are more of the self-loathing kind of humor, he gets some great lines and overall scenes such as the over-the-top lunch with the executive ending with his slipping in the foyer. A large amount of the humor also is derived from the first two ghosts played by David Johansen and Carol Kane as the past and present apparitions respectively.

While the story is predictable, that is largely expected coming from a source material that has been adapted so many times over the years. Cross’ transformation from Scrooge to saint is a little uneven but that can pretty much be chalked up to the character’s stubbornness. The ending though sucked hard. Understandably, the film has a limited scope of what the final destination of the character arc is based on Dickens’ story but we did not need to see Cross interrupt the live TV production to ramble on about the goodness of Christmas and the human spirit. Show instead of tell is the old adage but director Richard Donner (wait, Richard Donner directed this?) takes what could have been more powerful scenes between Cross and Claire, James, or his secretary Grace and inflates them into Bill Murray grandstanding in a crowd of thousands in front of a television audience. In a way, I guess that suits the character of Cross as well but there was certainly something off about the last ten minutes of the movie (singing aside). I’m not sure if it was all ad-libbed by Murray or written by a bunch of hacks yoked in from the streets but it was unfunny and almost painful to watch. This was not a good way for such a great movie to end.

I briefly considered watching the 1959 movie Santa Claus as originally intended for the Christmas Scum Marathon but the shoddy transfer and awful dubbing turned me off within about four minutes. I was fortunate enough to see that the geniuses at MST3k saw fit to bring their special blend of absurdity and humor to this horrible, Mexican-produced, nightmare-inducing tale of Santa as he battles the Devil. Needless to say, I watched the MST3k version.

While there are several notable episodes that I haven’t seen, I don’t think I’ve laughed so much at an MST3k episode before. Featuring the creepiest Old St. Nick I’ve seen yet, Santa Claus begins with a tour of the jolly old fattie’s celestial castle featuring cliques of children from random ethnicities and 1950s high-tech gadgetry to spy on little boys and girls. As Santa is about to set off on his all night journey to apparently only three houses in Mexico, the Devil is called upon by Lucifer (umm, what?) to rise up and turn all the children on Earth into evil minions of the dark side. Santa is well equipped though with a large satchel of unwrapped, generic gifts, fairy dust to induce sleep, and creepy mechanical reindeer to deliver the presents and restore goodwill in the world.

There are movies that are bad enough to be entertaining of their own right but Santa Claus is special as one of the most baffling movies I have seen (yes, even counting the previously derided Elf Bowling). This is one of those movies like Exorcist II that I cannot fathom how anyone in their right mind thought it was conceived as a good idea. José Elías Moreno plays Santa as you would expect an escaped psychiatric ward patient would with his maniacal laughter and creepy facial expressions. It’s a good thing that the Devil, also called Pitch here, is pretty inept and rather flamboyant for the guardian of the underworld. There is also a giant telescope with a detached eye. And a large pair of lips embedded in Santa’s control panel. Just saying …

The story is pretty disjointed as well as it cautions little kids against behaving badly, scolds parents for abandoning their children, and throws in rather random references to Jesus for good measure I suppose. The commentary of the unwilling human and robots participants is capable of transforming this crazy, piece of trash movie into a hysterical ninety minutes. Even the normally uneven host segments between the Mads and Mike and Co. are brilliant with the dig/in-joke at Joel’s departure, the musical segments, and meeting the Nelsons.

It is hard to fathom that such a god-awful movie could produce one of the greatest MST3k episodes ever. And you might be saying that reviewing a movie spoofed on MST3k doesn’t belong on a movie website like this. If that is the case, go to hell and start your own Christmas Scum Marathon!

Black Christmas is often lauded as being one of the pioneering films for many slasher movie staples. The menacing phone calls, the killer’s POV shots, or the general atmosphere of suspense have all been copied and ripped-off countless times to make watching Black Christmas for the first time is a rather odd experience. On one hand, you pretty much know what is going to happen, beats and all throughout the film, but the fact that it predates even the seminal classic Halloween makes it the template to which most all other slashers were created. Other than true horror buffs, the slasher subgenre is laughed upon and Black Christmas, while an admirable feat in some ways, did not set a very high standard.

Had I watched this movie twenty years ago, I would have been bored senseless. This was during the “dark ages” of my life that I considered Halloween 2 better than the original due to its higher body count. Even now having the appreciation for slow and methodical horror films that don’t rely on frequent jump-scares, I can’t say I really liked Bob Clark‘s ORIGINAL Christmas Story as I also have an appreciate for characters that don’t make me want to hurt myself. Just before Christmas break, the sorority house winds down to only housing a few girls and their drunk-ass house mother. In the midst of looking into the whereabouts of a missing housemate, the girls are stalked by a man who calls himself Billy and is truly insane judging from his obscene phone calls. The local inept police are called in to investigate and we soon find ourselves with one girl and one killer stuck in a house. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

I was pleasantly surprised with how quick everything started off with a disposable sorority girl getting offed pretty early into the movie but the next 50 minutes or so meanders around with just some phone calls and the killer creeping around. During this time, we are subjected to some of the most goddamn annoying characters ever including final girl Jess. Olivia Hussey is quite fetching but she either has one of the most annoying accents or method of delivering lines ever. I literally winced whenever a phone rang and she was around it because that meant I would have to endure her answering it in the most shrill way possible. Margot Kidder is pretty decent as the bitchy, drunk girl but she disappears far too early and has little to do in the climax of the film. Good ol’ John Saxon is present though and out acts everyone around him even during hilariously out of place scenes as when he and another detective rib on a guy for his ignorance of the act of fellatio.

Clark’s entire structure of the movie is quite odd as even though he goes to great lengths to create some truly creepy sequences, these are immediately cut to something different (and mostly irrelevant) entirely which breaks the tension. The story itself is all over the place ranging from the missing college girl, to the prank phone calls, to a wacky search party, to a random cop sitting watch outside the girls’ house (you know that won’t end well). The last 40 minutes or so are the best once the random characters are dispatched and it boils down to trying to nail down the killer courtesy of Saxon sitting tirelessly at a desk and some guy running around in a warehouse full of telephone switches.

Being that it has a 7.3 rating on IMDb, I was a bit disappointed in the film. The horror elements come off well (considering the sheer number of times I have seen them since) but the setup to that is largely forgettable. I have doubts that the recent remake improved on the problematic aspects but I suppose we’ll find out next year.

Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure why I picked Ernest Saves Christmas as part of the inaugural 12 Days of Christmas Scum Marathon. Perhaps it was because Jim Varney was quite comical as Slinky-Dog in the first two Toy Story installments. Or maybe it was nostalgia from the annual tradition of watching it around this time just before the long winter break in middle school. While I can safely say it was much better than Elf Bowling, Ernest’s antics were nowhere close to my fond remembrances of them.

I was shocked to learn (due to my extreme indifference toward him) that Ernest P. Worrell (Varney) was conceived as a local personality for television commecials which progressed into a TV series and no less than ten feature films. Having seen only a handful of those other movies, I cannot speak for the notion that Ernest is an almost self-aware, buffoonish caricature on purpose because his character merely comes off as a combination of annoying and “special.” Here we follow Ernest as he meets Santa Claus, a hot 80s teenage runaway, and some other stuff ensues as Santa attempts to woo a successor to take over the Santa throne.

The first few minutes are acceptable as even Ernest just comes off as a goofy, inept guy who has misplaced, but still good intentions. While his character may have still be the same by the end, I could not tell you as his mugging and vocal inflections get so ingratiating that I became angry whenever we left the more decent, or at least not as annoying characters, to get back to Ernest in some sort of get-up. In fact, I thought about Eddie Murphy a lot during this movie as well. I’m not sure that is relevant either but it still makes me angry.

Sadly, this doesn’t even work as a kid’s movie the way it used to in my day as my three kids who watched it with me could have cared less about anything going on other than debating if the old, bearded man was really Santa and laughing at the goofy fat guy in the warehouse. The story itself is pretty clever with Santa hounding this poor man to take over the gift distribution duties but yet still clichéd with the hot 80s runaway teenager having a change of heart away from her dastardly, Grinch-like gift stealing.

And I take issue with the overall title of the movie. How does Ernest save Christmas exactly? He drives a taxi, puts on wigs and false teeth, and kidnaps two elves while commandeering Santa’s sleigh. If all of that wasn’t enough, this movie should have been enough to put Ernest on Santa’s shit list.

In an effort to shy away from the mainstays of Christmas movies for this marathon, I turned to Netflix to deliver a nice package of obscure holiday fun. What it delivered was quite possible the most painful movie I have ever experienced. Fuck you movie!

Elf Bowling is apparently based on a computer video game of the same name that I have never heard of. In the game, Santa is pissed at his unionized, striking elves and apparently uses them as bowling pins. Seeing 82 minutes of that would have been far more entertaining. In a bastardized retcon of the origin of THE jolly old fat man in a red suit, Santa transforms from the captain of the Stinky Toe into ol’ Saint Nick that we know him as after his crew stages a mutiny and pushes Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle overboard into the freezing ocean waters. After thawing, Santa enters into a contractual agreement with the native elves on the North Pole to deliver the toys made by the elves as long as working conditions are happy. Dingle is tired of being upstaged by his brother and concocts a scheme with a couple of penguins to remove Santa from power and relocate the toy-making operation to Fiji.

To be honest, if I wasn’t in a crunch for a Christmas movie today, I would have turned this shit off in the first ten minutes. For a CG-animated movie made just a few years ago, the animation was embarrassingly bad. Being that I had never even heard of this fucker before watching it, I wasn’t expecting Pixar-like animation or story telling. But this literally looks like someone managed to hack a Nintendo 64 to create the visuals that look and move like stop-motion props carved out of wood based on a story that a drunken father tells his children on Christmas Eve. I’m not even sure what demographic is being targeted as there are some jokes that are a bit too overtly lewd for a children’s movie but a story and characters so woefully undeveloped that I fathom kids would be the ones most likely to to tolerate it.

Between the sheer absurdity of the story, the mild, cartoonish physical violence, and the random musical numbers, this was either created by a bunch of guys who’ve either never seen a movie or conversely seen way too many as it is all over the place. And someone should have sent them a message that having a song and dance espousing the virtues of slavery or a dark skinned elf rapping about wrapping probably isn’t the most appropriate in a family film. But then again, no one else is going to seek out this trash other than me so why bother?

So, I finally sat down and watched A Christmas Story. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I finally sat down with the express intention to watch A Christmas Story in one continuous sitting. Without the distractions of wrapping presents or the extended-family-induced alcohol coma, I was able to actually appreciate the movie without it being beaten into my head every two hours courtesy of cable TV.

Directed by Bob Clark, the genius behind Porky’s and Baby Geniuses, the story centers around cute little Ralphie who wants nothing more for Christmas than a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle despite the numerous warnings of shooting an eye out. The treasured BB gun is merely the common thread that holds together the various segments about Ralphie, his slightly deranged parents, and the dreams and crushing realities of being a nine-year-old.

What always got lost in the barrage of the Christmas Story marathon is the perfect way this film captures what it is like to be a kid at that age. Even though you or I grew up decades detached from the 1940s setting, many of the unforgettable memories of that age seem to be universal. You have absurd fantasies, aloof parents, and maniacal bullies peppering the humdrum life of going to school, doing homework, and marveling at adults and the questionable things they do.

The fact that this movie is so highly regarded almost thirty years later is a testament to the source material from Jean Shepherd (who also narrates) and Clark’s ability to weave mostly unrelated plot points into the story. A Christmas Story is nothing without the flagpole dare, the dangers of ingesting soap (and causal child abuse), or the atrociously tacky lamp the Old Man wins as a Major Award. While each are funny on their own, the blending of these side stories makes the film all the more relevant as it is told through the eyes of a child.

The biggest asset to the film was the nuclear family: Darren McGavin as the Old Man, Melinda Dillon as Mrs. Parker, and Peter Billingsly as Ralphie. In performances that channel almost every mother and father in existence, Dillon and McGavin are able to flip from standard parental moments of yelling or chastising to glowing at the reaction to a gift or comforting after a rough day. Some of these more poignant moments I hadn’t previously picked up on but they go miles escalating this story beyond Christmas about the trials and comfort of family.

It is almost disconcerting that A Christmas Story is so ubiquitous, especially this time of year. Its overexposure leads to more focus on the commercial-worthy bits with the deranged department story Santa and the savage beating of Skut Farkus as opposed to the real heart of the story. At least now I can keep things in context when I undoubtedly see the entire movie in three minute segments over the next few weeks.

I hate to quote the same thing in less than a week but Digger posited in his previous marathon that Predator is “without a doubt one of the greatest action movies of all time.” Die Hard certainly deserves a spot on that list as well and perhaps not coincidentally is directed by the same man: John McTiernan. You all should know the story very well so I’ll keep the synopsis short. John McClane is a NYPD cop. His estranged wife lives in L.A. and works for a powerful foreign firm. McClane flies in for Christmas. Terrorists take over the building which houses a shit ton of money. Pure entertainment for the next two hours ensues.

It may not be your go-to movie for Christmas like Elf or the Muppet Christmas Carol but Die Hard is not only an awesome Christmas movie in its setting and references but also a damn near flawless action movie. In fact, I would almost consider this the anti-action movie in that the normal conventions and clichés that are commonplace today are nowhere to be found here. The plot is solid, the terrorists are not simply one-dimensional, and the one-liners aren’t corny. It helps that Die Hard is lauded for pioneering some of the more outlandish action stunts in succeeding movies but the point still stands.

Unlike the mindless popcorn, ‘shoot-em up’ movies we suffer through nowadays, Die Hard is always on its A game. Bruce Willis‘ McClane is not the supercop that the later sequels made him out to be. Here he is just a guy in a wife-beater with no shoes stuck in a perilous situation, with nothing more than his cunning wit and whatever ordinances he swipes from the folks rendered dead by his hands. While the effects are extraordinary, there is nothing (save for Karl’s Christ-like resurrection) that strains logic or pokes at your fragile suspension of disbelief.

Besides McClane and Alan Rickman‘s chilling classically-trained, high class Hans Grueber, the rest of the supporting actors are crafted in the vain of actual human beings, not disposable plot contrivances. The fact that the main baddies have more depth and personality than most anyone in … Zombie Strippers(?) is commendable and even Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) has a more satisfying arc than characters with an entire two hours devoted to them.

Given that it was made in the ’80s, Die Hard does not look or feel dated other than the terrorists that look like they could start a pop band called “The East German All Stars.” (There’s a reference there by the way.) Of course, there are standard movie elements like the requisite douchebag characters, namely Ellis and the police chief, but even they get away with lines and delivery that are on point with some of the funnier movies I’ve seen. In fact, I could probably watch Paul Gleason‘s delivery of the line “For chrissake, he could be a bartender for all we know” on a loop and not get tired of it.

It’s unfortunate that I haven’t watched this movie in so long because it is, in the simplest terms, a veritable masterpiece.

Merry Movie Scum Christmas!