Know what the greatest movie ever made about Christmas is? Gremlins. You think its a movie about monsters attacking a small town, but its really a cautionary tale about how imbuing an arbitrary date with significance can impact on peoples lives. You see, Kate (Phoebe Cates) was decorating the tree with her mom one year, waiting for dad to come home, but she didnt know that hed already finished work and was planning on surprising them both. Which he did: while dressed as Santa, he attempted to navigate their chimney, slipped and broke his neck, lying there until his 9-year-old daughter discovered his body hours later. And thats how she found out there was no Santa Claus. Fast forward a few years and theres Gremlins everywhere, exposing themselves to Kate when theyre not killing her neighbours or attacking her boyfriend, giving her yet another reason to hate Christmas. For everyone else, theres a perfectly decent reason to hate the festive season that has nothing to do with dead parents or a Mogwais bastard offspring. Spend a few moments in front of the tube on Christmas Day, and youll see what I mean. Nothing symbolizes the holidays better than the kind of disposable, insincere, crassly commercial movies set during Christmas, which while they give couch potatoes something to look at while getting drunk on their own, are unable to come up with worthwhile stories. Movies like the following, in fact.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
