Dan Mazer, who directed this, is the production partner of Sacha Baron Cohen and co-wrote Borat and Bruno with him. The writers of this were Mikey Day from Saturday Night Live and that show’s head writer Streeter Seidell. If you’ve seen the quality of what’s airing at 11:30 on Saturday nights lately, this movie should be no surprise, as it’s a soulless approximation of something that some people once loved shoved in your face.

It has Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper as a couple trying to keep the holidays happening despite money issues, the strange antique doll they have and the kid next door named Max (Archie Yates from Jojo Rabbit) who gets left home and battles them when they try to sneak into his house and get the doll back because they think he stole it. It doesn’t even get Home Alone right as with the couple being good people, we don’t want to see the pranks painfully stop their invasion.

Seidell is remaking Inspector Gadget and SpaceCamp as well. It’s Christmas and I shouldn’t be upset about these types of things.

At least Devin Ratray gets some work here and plays Officer Buzz McCallister, who is, of course, Kevin’s brother.

Chris Columbus, the director of the original, said of this movie “Nobody got in touch with me about it, and it’s a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. What’s the point? I’m a firm believer that you don’t remake films that have had the longevity of Home Alone. You’re not going to create lightning in a bottle again. It’s just not going to happen. So why do it? It’s like doing a paint-by-numbers version of a Disney animated film — a live-action version of that. What’s the point? It’s been done. Do your own thing. Even if you fail miserably, at least you have come up with something original.”

Directed by Jean-Marc Piché and written by Matt Roe and Avi Nesher (the director of Doppelganger) this movie finds the holidays coming at the worst of times, as all the signs of the end are there — it’s  super hot in New York City despite it being December — and that’s because The Minion is about to unlock the fourth of the Trinity — just go with it — the Antichrist who is locked inside the fortress of the Knights Templar and their strongest warrior Lukas Sadorov (Dolph Lundgren) must stop that from happening. He’s also a former Speznas who left the Soviet army after witnessing a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan — is this a Red Scorpion sequel? — who ends up working with a Native American archaeologist named Karen Goodleaf (Françoise Robertson).

The Minion has powers like The Hidden, jumping from body to body, but Dolph has a spiked glove so it seems like this is unfair fight for demons. Also: a subplot about nuclear waste on reservations, the alternate title Knight of the Apocalypse and the sad undelivered promise that Michele Soavi was one selected to direct this and man, what a movie that would have been. It’s still pretty good — I mean, Dolph praying before beating up cops and a bunch of Knights Templar in body armor fighting a body-switching demon, what else could you ask for? — but just imagine if this had been in the hands of a man who put a scene in a movie where a rabbit can use a remote control and it’s the least wild idea in that film.

Everyone compares this to End of Days but Lundgren got there first.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Beth Waldron for suggesting this movie. This was on the site originally on May 7, 2021.

After the success of Cat People, RKO demanded that Val Lewton get started on a sequel. The original director was Gunther von Fritsch, but when he fell behind schedule, Robert Wise took over.

It was the first film for both men. Fritsch would eventually make Body and Soul and Stolen Identity while Wise would win Best Director and Best Picture for both West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Of interest to genre fans would be his films The Body Snatcher, A Game of Death, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Andromeda Strain and, of course, The Haunting.

Sharing sets with The Magnificent Ambersons — just as the original Cat People did — this film may be a sequel and have the same cast and characters, but it is a much different movie. Lewton wanted to call it Amy and Her Friend, but the studio wanted to make money.

Lewton invested so much of his time and himself into this movie, basing it on his childhood and own mindset. RKO, on the other hand, was upset that it wasn’t the same movie that Lewton had already made.

Sometime in the past, Irena (Simone Simon) died — see Cat People — and Oliver Reed (Kent Smith, The Cat Creature) moved on to marry Alice Moore (Jane Randolph, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). Now, he has a six-year-old daughter named Amy (Ann Carter, The Boy with Green Hair) who lives in a dream world. At the center of it is Irena — now a ghost who she only knows from a photograph.

Amy also becomes friends with an aging actress named Julia Farren (Julia Dean, Nightmare Alley) whose daughter Barbara (Elizabeth Russell, who was also implied to be a cat person in the original film) hates her. Barbara also begins to hate the attention that Amy receives from her mother.

The end of this film — with Barabara about to kill the young girl and Irena’s spirit returning to save her — is sheer artistry on celluloid. It astounded me and I still can’t shake the feeling I had as I watched this film.

The theme of this film — everyone believes that Amy is insane because she cannot leave the world of fantasy — was pretty much how Lewton lived as a child. In fact, his wife believed that he never truly came back to the real world as an adult. He also based the tension between Amy and her father on the relationship that he had with his daughter Nina.

You could see this as a holiday movie. You could also see it as a story of what child abuse does. Several therapists used this movie as a teaching tool for years, even asking Lewton why he had such a silly name for such a serious movie.

Shout! Factory has a blu ray of this that I urge you to purchase. This is pure cinema and has my highest recommendation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on January 28, 2022. It was suggested for today by Kris Erickson. 

Also known as Blood Type: Blue, this movie is somehow way ahead of its time, as UFO abductees return to Japan with blue blood, which upsets everyone else because, well, do racist people really need a reason? And this also has a deeper story inside it, a remembrance of at least 17 Japanese citizens that were taken by the North Korean government.

Maybe it’s the time I’m watching this in — then again, you could have felt the same way at the start of AIDS or in how Japan and Korea view one another — but this is hitting too close to home. Reporters struggling to reveal the truth, lovers on opposite sides of a conflict united only by their hearts, human lives reduced to blood and organs under the scalpel, prejudice and feelings presiding over facts.

Director Kihachi Okamoto was drafted during the last years of World War II, into the very worst fighting, and was alone among his friends in that he survived. Most of his films have a very cynical edge, even his gangster films and it’s wild that this movie is from Toho.

There’s also the professor who broke this story, why he disappeared and where all the blue blood people are going. As for the UFOs, unlike most other Toho science fiction, they’re never seen.

Sure, this is long at 133 minutes, but it’s so strange, nearly shot like a parody yet dark in its tone. The closest thing I can compare it to is either Eyes Behind the Stars or Footprints on the Moon, but neither is anything like this. To be honest, the end of this has stuck with me for some time and this feels like another strange film that I’ll have to go back and watch several times.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally posted on December 25, 2020.

Barry Mahon’s real-life story offers movie maniacs the kind of thrills that we breathlessly devour and share with one another. After volunteering for the British air force before America officially entered World War II, Mahon earned the British Distinguished Flying Cross and escaped from a concentration camp twice after being shot down, then became the personal pilot and manager of Errol Flynn before going into making his own movies.

And oh his movies.

Barry’s oeuvre is a madcap mix of ripped from the headlines fearmonger films like Rocket Attack U.S.A. and Cuban Rebel Girls along with horror like The Dead One and Sex Killer, then some nudie cuties like Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico and The Diary of Knockers McCalla and finally, improbably, kids movies like The Wonderful Land of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Thumbelina movie that is part of perhaps the most berserk holiday movie of all time, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. Oh yeah — and he also made Musical Mutiny, a movie that I have yet to come to grips with*.

I hesitate to even call this a movie because it was made with all the motion of, well, a slide show. Instead, it’s a series of still images with a narrator speaking every single part. It is the very epitome of low budget, with puppets and people shot in only the murkiest of lighting.

If you ever watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and wondered why everyone treated the hero so poorly — and why he would not only forgive them but blame himself for so much of their horrific and abusive behavior — then get ready. Calvin gets brutalized throughout this movie with even the narrator continually reminding us of how ugly he is.

*Some people, if given a time machine, would go back to meet famous people or kill Hitler. I would just go to Dania, Florida and spend the day at Pirates World.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Barry Mahon! This was first on the site on March 27, 2021.

Yes, the same man who made The Sex Killer and Run Swinger Run also made an animated kids movie. Look, it’s all exploitation. In the 50’s, Barry Mahon was exploiting fears of Communism and then went from nudie-cuties to roughies in the 60’s and in the 70’s, he realized that the kids of the raincoater crowd could add some money into his pockets, too.

Mahon’s parts of the movie only ran in the theatrical version of this, in which a grandfather and his two young grandchildren sit and talk for four minutes before we see some toys, decorations and for some reason, a kitten. So yes, Barry is known for movies where women in states of undress sit and talk about nothing in particular. This is the kid version of his signature directorial move.

This is also not the only Barry Mahon Christmas or children’s movie I’ve endured. There’s also a cartoon about two little bears who believe in Santa and all their mom — voiced by Jean Vander Pyl, who was Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone and Rosie the Robot’s voice — wants is for them to settle down and hibernate. I get it. I used to wake up at 3 AM on Christmas morning and these days, I feel like apologizing to my parents for the horrific holidays of me being a toy-obsessed maniac child.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s 11 days before Christmas, so this movie counts. This was on the site on February 20, 2019.

When he was concepting the idea for this film, writer/director Thom Eberhardt (Sole Survivor) met several real-life teenage girls while filming a special for PBS. He asked them how they’d relate to the end of the world and they answered that they’d see it as an exciting adventure, with dating being the only downside. That real insight informs this film, taking what should be a depressing scenario and making it into a light-hearted romp.

The Earth is about to pass through the tail of a comet. The last time this event happened, the dinosaurs died. However, on this night, eleven days before Christmas, large crowds decide to party and greet the comet’s arrival.

Regina “Reggie” Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart, The Last Starfighter) stays late at the movie theater where she works, determined to wipe out the initials DMK on the Tempest arcade game that she’s laid claim to. Oh yeah, she also has sex with her boyfriend in the theater’s steel-lined projection booth. Meanwhile, her sister Sam (Kelli Maroney, Chopping Mall) gets into a fight with her stepmother and sleeps in the family’s steel backyard shed.

Those steel structures save our heroines, as the rest of the world has become piles of red dust and clothing where humans once were. Larry goes outside and is killed by a zombie. The girls find each other, as well as another survivor named Hector (Robert Beltran, Raoul from Eating Raoul) who slept in his truck and lived.

They decide to try and find the radio station that’s still broadcasting, only to learn that it’s prerecorded. Once there, Sam speaks into the microphone (she asks for requests from “all of you teenage mutant horror comet zombies,” which was the working title for the movie) and is noticed by a group of scientists. Hector goes to see if his family made it while the girls leave and decide to go to the mall for a shopping spree. After battling a gang of zombie boys, the scientists show up to save them.

Only Reggie is taken back to their base for testing while Audrey White (Mary Woronov!) stays behind to kill Sam with a lethal injection. However, she fakes killing her and instead murders the other scientist with her. It turns out that the researchers knew how the comet would destroy humans and prepared for it, but left on the ventilation in their base and were impacted by the dust. Now, they’re vampires living off the blood of humans. Audrey kills herself as Sam reunites with Hector and they go to save her sister.

The scientists are dealt with, Reggie falls for Hector and they save all the kids. Rain washes away the dust, leaving the world clean again and Sam is nearly run over by a sports car driven by Danny Mason Keener (DMK from the Tempest machine) who invites her for a ride.

If you only watch the surface of this movie or read the descriptions of it, you may think that the girls are vapid stereotypes. However, as the film progresses, they grow and become independent women who don’t wait for men to save them. Even Audrey, though twisted, chooses the girls to survive over the male-dominated scientists.

I love this movie. It’s not remembered as much as it should be. To get the best version of this film, Shout! Factory has you covered.

The artwork for this post comes from the incredible Pizza Party Printing, where you can always find some amazing shirts for so many of your favorite movies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site back on December 21, 2017. Remember, it’s not who’s first. It’s who’s next.

If you ever wanted to watch a movie where Bill Goldberg hits Chris Kattan with the same sidekick that ended Bret Hart’s career, good news. I have found the movie for you.

Yep, the Mason family — including James Caan, Rebecca Gayheart, Fran Drescher and Kattan — are all fighting during Christmas dinner, but Santa arrives in time to kill them all. And that’s just the start.

Santa is really Satan’s son — the son of a virgin birth like Jesus — who used December 25th as the “Day of Slaying” until an angel defeated him in a curling match and he was forced to deliver gifts for 1,000 years.

Now, it’s 2005 and Santa is ready to get some revenge.

This film was directed by David Steiman, who was a production assistant for Brett Ratner. It’s a slick-looking film, one that ended up way better than I thought it would be.

It has some interesting picks as stars, like SCTV’s Dave Thomas playing a perverted pastor and Robert Culp playing the hero’s grandfather (who ends up being the curling playing angel who defeated Satan’s son). Plus, you know, Bill Goldberg as Santa, which gives him the chance to use his “Who’s next?” catchphrase after the credits.

There are much better Santa as killer movies you can watch this holiday season. And we’ve covered so many of them over the last few days. But if you want to be a completist — and if you’re a wrestling fan and want to see Vince Russo die in a strip club massacre — then go ahead and watch this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on December 23, 2017.

After the father-and-son production team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind finished up with Superman III and Supergirl, what else was left but to explain the mysteries of Santa Claus to children all over the world?

Who should direct should an endeavor? How about John Carpenter? No, really. However, the auteur wanted to have a hand in the writing, musical score and final cut of the movie. Plus, he wanted to cast Brian Dennehy as Santa.

Other directors included multiple James Bond series director Lewis Gilbert, The Sound of Music director Robert Wise and again, another James Bond series director (and the man in the chair for Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins), Guy Hamilton.

Finally, Supergirl director Jeannot Szwarc was selected. He’d also directed Jaws 2 and Somewhere in Time. He had a great relationship with the Salkinds and TriStar Pictures.

The result? A movie that got horrible reviews and made half of its budget back.

But hey — sometimes bombs are great. So let’s get into it.

Back in the past, Santa (David Huddleston, The Big Lewbowski himself) is a woodcarver who takes his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?) and reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, into the snow to deliver gifts to children. One night, though, the snow is too much and they all die. The end.

The movie would be pretty depressing if this is where it all ended. Instead, they are transported to the ice mountains at the top of the world, some Shangri-La-type place where Dr. Strange and Iron Fist got his powers. They meet a whole bunch of elves, including Dooley (one of the blind men in 1972’s Tales from the Crypt), the inventor elf Patch (Dudley Moore, Arthur) and Puffy (Sean Combs). Our hero learns that his destiny is to deliver gifts every Christmas Eve, along with an entire team of reindeer. Finally, as the holiday approaches, the Ancient One (Burgess Meredith, The Devil’s Rain!)  — I told you this was Dr. Strange — renames our hero as Santa Claus.

PS — Anthony O’Donnell really played Puffy.

Fast forward to modern times and Santa is exhausted. His wife suggests he get an assistant and a competition between Patch and Puffy ends with Patch winning, but his modern machine makes work that isn’t up to Santa’s standards.

Santa meets some kids — a New York City orphan named Joe and a rich girl named Cornelia — and Patch quits his job and starts working for B.Z. (John Lithgow, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension), an unsafe toymaker that Congress is trying to shut down. Patch takes reindeer feed and makes lollipops that allow children to fly, allowing B.Z. to create a new holiday on March 25 — Christmas 2. This all makes Santa pretty sad, as Patch is becoming the new face of Christmas. Or Christmas 2. Look, I don’t know.

The newest toy for Christmas 2 will be candy canes that allow kids to fly (why a different product shape is needed is never really discussed), but when they are exposed to heat, they explode. B.Z. and Towzer (Jeffrey Kramer, Graham from Halloween II), his head of R&D, decide to let Patch take the fall. Joe and Cornelia get involved, Patch tells them he never wanted to take over for Santa and they all take the Patchmobile to the North Pole.

The reindeer — despite Comet and Cupid having the flu and who knows why this is even a plot point — help save Patch and everyone has a dance party because of Return of the Jedi. Santa and Mrs. Claus adopt Joe and Cordelia, keeping them away from the rest of the world and certainly adding the kids to some kind of Code Adam list, Meanwhile, B.Z. has eaten too many candy canes and flies into space, where one assumes he dies in the cold vacuum of space. Santa does not care, laughing heartily as he has crushed Patch’s spirit for good and kidnapped two human children to do his bidding. Or maybe it’s a happy ending.

For a movie that’s all about the magic and meaning of Christmas, the product placement for McDonald’s, Coke and Pabst Blue Ribbon — this is a kid-centric film — is problematic.

Marvel even did a tie-in comic, which at least has Frank Springer art.

These are the kind of movies I hated as a kid — message films that told me how to feel, act and behave. This is why Godzilla and King Kong are my idea of holiday films — beasts condemned by the world who only want to destroy the works of man! Feliz navidad!

Roberta Findlay knows how to make movies that entertain me and here, she takes a possession movie, sets it during the holidays and fills it with berserk set pieces and man, this movie got me through the day before all the family Christmas craziness begins and you know, Roberta has never let me down with a single thing she’s made.

Parker Brothers wouldn’t let this movie use Ouija, so there’s a stone hand that writes from the spirit world but who cares? This is so many times better than the Ouija films that got made by Hasbro years later and that’s because this is so strange. Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers, in the only movie she ever made) and her husband Ray (Roger Neil) have moved into the apartment of a dead psychic who has left behind that fortune telling object which allows Jennifer to be taken over by industrialist William Graham who gets her to figure out who killed him.

You can’t destroy that hand. A garbage man tries and strange creatures appear all over his body and he ends up stabbing himself in a scene that kind of destroyed my mind and when Ray tries later, he literally loses his head. All this happens while Findlay shoots in the New York City apartments that could be next door to The Sentinel or Inferno and certainly have the Argento lightning style intact from that movie. Plus there’s a gender switching killer played by Pam LaTesta on the loose like a John Waters character in a Bill Lustig movie and there’s even a scene set in the legendary occult store The Magickal Childe.

I realize that Roberta hates her own movies but I won’t hold that against her. I always find something to enjoy, like how the heroine has the wildest clothes, all berets and puffed-out sleeves and even a pair of red overalls. She dresses like a lunatic and it’s frankly charming, plus she screams nearly as much as a woman in a Juan López Moctezuma movie.

There are people who will say that this movie is trash and boring and those are people you want nothing at all to do with. Yes, this is trash, but it’s glorious. It’s the kind of movie I leave on when people come over and hope they ask me what it’s all about so I can talk about it with them. Just writing about it now I want to go back and watch it again. Will you sit down and check it out with me?

You can watch this on Tubi.