Monster of the Day #2035

Updated on December 2, 2019 By Ken Begg 24 Comments

Neat! Wow, late Thanksgiving means Christmas is rushing right up. Maybe this year I’ll actually watch some of the tons of Christmas movies I’ve bought on DVD over the years.

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  • Gamera977

    ‘The Demonic Mascara’ *

    Is that a make-over to die for???

    *I’m too lazy to look up a correct translation.

  • Marsden

    Ernest Saves Christmas and Scrooged are my favorite Christmas movies.

  • Mask of the Devil, better known as Black Sunday. I had it pegged with the names Barbra Steele and Mario Bava. Those two only made one movie together as I recall, and it’s this winner.

    Seriously.. This is a great flick.

  • I’m partial to “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” (USSR, 1961) and the 1984 TV version of “A Christmas Carol” starring George C. Scott.

  • Gamera977

    Lol, I think I like my title better! I’ve always heard of how good it is but never seen it. I picked up ‘Black Sabbath’ on Blu-Ray for Halloween this year and kept waiting for Steele to show up. I went and checked the internet later- DUH! Just like me to confuse the two films!

  • Gamera977

    ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’…

    Ok, maybe not – I love the George C. Scott version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ too.

  • KeithB

    “The Thin Man” 8^)

  • Eric Hinkle

    Talking about Christmas movies make me curious. Just what is considered the best cinematic take on ‘A Christmas Carol’ ever done?

  • zombiewhacker

    For most people it’s a toss-up between the Alastair Sim and the George C. Scott versions, though that’s not to say that other versions don’t have their own merits.

    Here’s a related question: what is considered the best animated version? Razzleberry dressing, anyone… hmmm?

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes!

    My favorite Christmas movie is The Cheaters, an obscure film that used to play every year on WGN in Chicago when I was a kid. Eventually they stopped showing it and nobody even on cable seemed to show it. Finally it came out on a DVD (although I think it was a burned one.) I hadn’t seen it for years but it was great to watch it again.

  • Ken_Begg

    I’m a Sim man, no surprise.

  • A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite stories, so I’ve watched about every version I could get my hands on over the years, I like Sim, but hate the pointless additions to the Christmas past section of the story.

    I have never warmed to the Scott version at all, and even revisiting it this many years later, I don’t like it any better. Scott is just too hale and hearty for a guy who lives on gruel and whatever is cheapest.

    The TV version with Patrick Stewart is probably truest to the book and has a few nice touches, but overall can’t escape it origins on TV and looks weird and cheap in too many places (I do adore Ian McNiece of Fezziwig in that one).

    My dad likes Reginald Owen, but I think that adaptation suffers even more than the Sim one for pointless additions (Cratchett getting fired on Christmas Eve being the most egregious) It is fun watching 3 members of the Lockhart clan all playing Cratchetts though.

    Don’t talk about the animated Jim Carrey nightmare, yuck! Or the terrible musical they tried to do on NBC with Kelsey Grammer, I don’t think I made it 15 minutes in to that one.

    So I am going to show that I’m a heretic here and say that my favorite Cinematic Scrooge is actually Albert Finney. He captures the character better than anyone else and his old age makeup is done well enough (and the difference in the physicality of his acting as old vs young Scrooge so dramatic) that I was an adult before I realized it was the same actor in both the Christmas Past and Cristmas present scenes. The script takes some massive liberties (It’s a musical, so duh) the worst of which is the Scrooge in Hell bit (added because Sir Alec Guiness wanted more screen time a Marley), but overall I think it is the adaptation the is truest to the emotional “feel” to the story. Also some of the songs are catchy as hell. I bet most folks can hum a bit of “Thank you very much” without a clue that this is where that song is from.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    “Rare Exports” is pretty good, “Krampus” (the Michael Doherty one) is first-rate, and I’ve always liked “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

  • KeithB

    I really like the Muppet Version, it uses the narration straight from the book and Michael Caine gets to chew the scenery as Scrooge.

  • I was pleasantly surprised at what a faithful adaptation that one was, and it’s one of the only ones I saw in the theater the first time around. But I don’t have quite the same nostalgia for it that a lot of people do. Definitely one of the better ones ones overall.

  • Gamera977

    I’ve always heard the Sim version as the best. I still like the Scott version better, though as GJ points out he’s kinda big and burly for the role described as skinny in the story.

  • Gamera977

    I have to be that guy and bring up ‘Die Hard’ though… ;)

  • Eric Hinkle

    The Magoo version was my introduction to ‘A Christmas Carol’ back when I was a boy. For all that people dump on that age of animation, the Magoo material in both ‘Christmas Carol’ and his rather loose adaptations of various works of literature were a joy. The way racism and prejudice were done in his take on ‘Gunga Din’ impressed me more than any of the thuddingly obvious works I’ve seen since.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I saw the Finney ‘Carol’ in school. It was shown to us over a week before the Christmas holiday. I did like it.

    Looking back my high school showed us a LOT of movies in class rather than teach us. I think the local parents were cheated out of their school tax money by those teachers.

  • KeithB

    I watched “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” for my final in Medieval History class. 8^)

  • I think I’d rather have mine watch movies than have the current crop of nonsense shoved down their throats. But then I gave up and started homeschooling mine so YMMV.

  • I do it all the time, too. Having the same director does not help any…

  • Eric Hinkle

    At my school they really didn’t teach us much of anything. There are times I think the local parents could have sued those teachers for fraud; they said they would educate us and did nothing of the kind.

  • Rodford Smith

    Remember, this was the first animated holiday special. Yes, it was before the Peanuts Christmas one. It has some pretty good music, too.