If you’re dreading the start of another raucous Christmas run up, with enforced onscreen jollity, you could always find some different movies. Nina Romain pulls on her best bah-humbug hat and looks for a different celluloid take on the snowy season.
Apart from the obvious festive-themed horrors, such as the 1974 slasher Black Christmas and its endless remakes, and leaving aside the usual wrangles as to whether Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie or not, you can always enjoy some films with random festivities themes.
Whether they’re set in deep space, a snowscape run by a power-crazed Witch, or a New York City party attended by a glamourous serial killer, Christmas movies can take place in unexpected locations.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) shot in a sweltering Los Angeles centred around a murder investigation, is set in the festive season. There’s a surreal touch as the hero carries out an investigation in parties with Christmas-themed dancers dressed as living candy sticks and sexy elves bringing drinks. American Psycho (2000) as might be expected, has the titular anti-hero arrive at a festive work do with reindeer horns on his head and murder on his mind.
You can find Christmas references in some even unlikely places: Prometheus (2012) sports a decorated little fir tree in deep space. In 30 Days of Night, (2007) set in an Alaskan winter, the snow doesn’t bring festive joy so much an army of killer vampires after its trapped residents, who now have to survive more than just a month of darkness in a terrifying desolated town.
If you’re looking at Chrissie horrors aimed at kids, there are quite a few, including the Victorian-set tweenage fantasy Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), where a killer turkey comes to life. To a creepy rendition of Tidings of Comfort and Joy, the festive feast goes rogue and attacks the diner.
In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) Christmas is a surely a horror set for tweens. Once she arrives in Narnia, schoolgirl Lucy Pevensie may think she’s found an idyllic winter wonderland when she first visits Mr Tumnus the Faun in his little cave after he finds her in a deserted and beautifully snowy landscape. But it soon becomes plain that the evil Witch is lurking behind this snowscape so full of spies that “even some of the trees are on her side”, as the Faun nervously puts it.
While she tries to avoid the Witch and outrun the latter’s wolves, her Mr Tumnus is turned to stone and her brother is kidnapped after turning against his family. After she survives this, as a final festive touch, Santa arrives on a sleigh and hands out presents. Lucy receives a dagger, while her siblings get a sword and shield and bow and arrow, and told they have to use these weapons to battle it out against the Witch to the death. Have a holly jolly Christmas, kiddos!
So over this festive season break out the liquid cheer, and reflect that things could always be worse in the celluloid silver screen if you don’t feel like a re-run of something cheerful like 2003’s chirpy comedy Elf. Merry Christmas, one and all.
Nina Romain actually loves the festive season and plans to unwisely dress up in a slightly crinkled costume as the Christmas Tree fairy. She is living proof that small children shouldn’t be taken trick-or-treating in Alabama – they tend to end up obsessed with the creepier side of Halloween! If not behind the camera on horror-comedies, she’s generally found reviewing horror scripts in the nearest netcafe over a stonecold mocha. You can find her on www.girlfright.com or IMDB
