Christmas movies are eternally revered, but in recent years a (relatively) new format has gained in popularity: the Bad Christmas movie. You’ve likely seen the online rankings—“Top 10 Bad Christmas Movies,” etc.—that have been proliferating, and you may have also noticed a newfound affection being shown to craptaculars like SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964) and ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS (1988). To quote one anonymous imdb user, “There’s nothing like sitting down and watching a cheesy Christmas movie on a cold afternoon.”
ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS (1988) Trailer
I say great. If Christmas themed movies help inspire normie viewers to follow Ado Kyrou’s urging to “learn to see the “bad” movies, they are sometimes sublime,” then by all means bring ‘em on. Another unexpected bonus of the Bad Christmas Movie craze is that it’s encouraging people to seek out obscure flicks like the jaw-dropping evangelical loaf KIRK CAMERON’S SAVING CHRISTMAS (in which Mr. Cameron ties himself in knots trying to provide a Biblical justification for holiday consumerism) and A KARATE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE (whose title is pretty self-explanatory).
I do, however, have a question: What precisely makes a Christmas movie bad (or cheesy)? More to the point, how does SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS differ from apparently “good” Christmas fare like HOME ALONE and ELF? All three films, in truth, are cloying, implausible and dated, with SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS striking me as the standout, being funnier and more entertaining than either HOME ALONE or ELF (or other supposedly good Christmas comedies like CHRISTMAS VACATION and LOVE ACTUALLY).
ELF (2003) Trailer
Let’s face it: all Christmas movies are bad in one way or another, an inevitability in a format where cloying sentimentality and implausible romance are the norm. Christmas has itself been rendered increasingly saccharine, with one iconic holiday song having had a signature lyric, “Till then we’ll have to muddle through somehow,” replaced with the more blandly optimistic “Hang a shining star upon the highest bow.”
This explains why cable networks like Lifetime and Hallmark have turned Christmas moviemaking into an industry. The annoyances of this particular filmmaking brand, which tends to promote sappy love stories, impossibly cozy small town settings and cooking competitions, make these films (whose titles, which include A GINGERBREAD ROMANCE, MAKE OR BAKE CHRISTMAS and JINGLE BELL BRIDE, reveal all you need to know about their qualities) ideally suited to the Christmas movie format.
A GINGERBREAD ROMANCE (2018) Trailer
In the cable TV Christmas lexicon I’d recommend A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS (2018), a Lifetime offering in which Melissa Joan Hart falls in love with a Nutcracker figure that somehow becomes a goateed man (Barry Watson). It’s standard cable movie BS in most respects, which of course renders it a prime Bad Movie Hall of Fame candidate. For more Melissa Joan Hart awfulness, see the ABC Family product HOLIDAY IN HANDCUFFS (2007), in which she kidnaps a hot dude (Mario Lopez) at gunpoint and forces him to take part in her family’s Christmas celebration.
HOLIDAY IN HANDCUFFS (2007) Trailer
Mention of A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS brings up the category of Bad Nutcracker Movies, which happens to be an extremely crowded field. Examples include the Macaulay Culkin headlined NUTCRACKER (1993), the computer animated BARBIE IN THE NUTCRACKER (2001) and the Disney production THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS (2018). For truly sublime “What were they thinking?” bad movie bliss, however, you’ll have to check out Andrei Konchalovsky’s 2010 attempt at modernizing E.T.A. Hoffman’s immortal tale, an “Untold Story” that involves an army of Nazi rats looking to take over the world.
NUTCRACKER (1993) Trailer
This leads us to the ever-popular category of Christmas horror movies. Most are pretty insufferable, yes (would you call SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT and JACK FROST good?), but a few attain the coveted Sublimely Bad designation. Included therein are the Norwegian CHRISTMAS CRUELTY! (O’Hellige jul!; 2013), which has the designation of being the nastiest Christmas movie ever made (and also one of the most formless and meandering); ELVES (1989), in which Nazi elves invade a small town Christmas celebration; and THE DAY OF THE BEAST (El dia de la bestia; 1995), about a priest looking to commit all the evil he can on Christmas Eve. That film’s bad movie bonafides are debatable, as THE DAY OF THE BEAST can be viewed as sublimely terrible or an evocation of warped genius—or, better yet, both.
Rounding things out, we’ll have to include depictions of the season’s most iconic figure: Santa Claus (or if you prefer, Father Christmas) and his eight tiny reindeer. The 1985 movie bearing his name isn’t much in my view, failing to attain so-bad-it’s-good status (it’s just plain bad), and nor are most other Santa movies.
The film that put Santa C. over the top for me was the opulent Mexican fantasy SANTA CLAUS (1959), in which the big man, who’s depicted as nothing less than a stand-in for God, goes mano-a-mano with the Devil himself. We also mustn’t forget SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972) from WWII hero-turned-trash movie auteur Barry Mahon, who incorporated footage from two of his own grade-Z epics THUMBELINA and JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (both 1970) into an altogether ludicrous depiction of Santa Claus stranded in Florida.
That leaves us with the Unclassifiable Oddity category. One such example is FUN IN BALLOONLAND (1965), a film that’s truly one of a kind (and a good thing, as two would be too much); filmed at a Christmas parade in Davenport, Iowa, it has a young boy interacting with giant balloon figures amid outrageously unreal painted backdrops. Another for the unclassifiable category is the French made jaw-dropper I BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS (J’ai rencontre le pere noel; 1984), apparently the “masterpiece” of director Christian Gion (often dubbed the worst French filmmaker of all time), who spins an alternately appalling and downright creepy account of children asking Santa to rescue their kidnapped parents.
There’s also the Macedonian oddity GOODBYE 20th CENTURY! (Zbogum na dvaesetiot vek; 1998), a post-apocalyptic head-scratcher which may well be a legitimately good film (it was Macedonia’s official Academy Award submission for Best Foreign Language Film), although, as with THE DAY OF THE BEAST, it’s hard to tell. That’s something I’ve found to be true of most transcendently bad movies, which at their best/worst tend to transcend categories.
GOODBYE 20TH CENTURY! (1998) Trailer
Ultimately Bad Christmas Movies are like any other: they’re hard to classify, but you’ll definitely know them when you see them, and once you do you may just find yourself hooked for life.