Category: Christmas Clusterfork

Bloodbeat (1982)

Directed by Fabrice A. Zaphiratos

If you’ve heard of this movie at all, then what you’ve heard about it is this: “This movie is so weird, it’s a Christmas movie set in Wisconsin where a woman gets possessed by the spirit of a Samurai warrior!” That much might be true, I’m not completely sure because very little is clear about Bloodbeat, but it completely glosses over 99% of the actual weird stuff in this movie. It is impossible for me to overstate how aggressively strange Blood Beat is on every single level and I still don’t know if I love it or hate it. Probably both. Anyway, when siblings Ted and Dolly return home for Christmas it is a joyous occasion, that is until their mom meets Ted’s new girlfriend, Sarah, who she seems to take an instant dislike to. After a failed hunting trip, Sarah is possibly possessed by the spirit of a Samurai who kills people and I think she has sex with the Samurai ghost while he’s killing people, or he’s feeding off her sexual powers to take corporeal form? It’s unclear. But what is clear is that this happens halfway through, and the majority of the first half of the movie is everyone’s terrible relationship drama because everyone is miserable and weird. Oh, also Ted and Dolly’s mom is a psychic painter. Because that really matters in the second half of the film.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression with that introduction. The first half of this movie is really really hard to get through. Everyone’s dialogue is redundant and awkward, sequences go on for waaaaaay too long, and there are many scenes discussing stuff that has either already been talked about or stuff that we don’t care about. Sometimes there are other problems, many scenes towards the end have such bad audio that the subtitles just gave up, and entire sequences look so bad that they must have either been shot on a different camera or there was some kind of problem  with the film negative. This isn’t a high energy bad movie where anyone could enjoy the insanity, this is a movie for people who like unlikeable cinema. This is an experiment to see what would happen if a director put forth a movie that had no structure of any kind. Blood Beat bonelessly flops forward, sometimes being a haunted house movie, sometimes being an erotic arthouse piece, and sometimes being a terrible slasher movie with not nearly enough Samurai action. Once you get through the first half, the second half really ramps up the insanity and introduces a ton of stuff that should have been in the first half but now feels even more like a jumbled mess when everything happens at once. I desperately wish the first half of this movie was more enjoyable because no one is sitting through that in one sitting, I couldn’t even do it. I’d recommend Blood Beat, but only for people who want to see something really out there and who have a lot of patience.

Christmas In Compton (2012)

Directed by David Raynr

When aspiring music producer Derrick finds himself hoodwinked by a big time record company executive, he’s desperate to get even and remain manager of up and coming singing group Suga Stuff. At the same time Derrick’s father learns about how to move on from the past, find new love, and accept his son for who he is. This may be shocking, but the dad’s storyline is significantly better, not only because it doesn’t include drugging, theft, and attempted sexual assault, but also because the dad is played by Keith David, and he rules.

Christmas In Compton plays like a better version of a Madea movie, there’s tons of racial humor, almost all of it directed as the lone Korean lead, a story about the importance of family/community, and a cast of colorful characters who don’t do a whole lot. There’s kind of a lot of plot that gets established, which I like that they tried to include, but the story isn’t exactly thrilling and I didn’t really “get” the movie so to speak. Is it obvious yet that this movie really wasn’t made for me? I can’t say I enjoyed it very much but I understand that the Madea movies are very popular and I can see the similarities between this and those, Though I do think this movie has better acting and less annoying characters than the Madea movies generally have. So if you enjoy that type of movie you might get more than I do out of this, but if not, then steer clear.

Directed by Paul Tanter

Once Upon A Time At Christmas (2017)

Another entry in the deceptively generic titled category, Once Upon A Time At Christmas is the story of a Santa and Mrs. Claus themed slasher duo who terrorize an Upstate NY town right before Christmas. While that is happening, Jen, a young woman who is dealing with her parents’ impending divorce, tries to make it through this tough time of year. Jen seems like protagonist material, which makes it even stranger that 90% of the movie focuses on the police investigation into the killings, rather than on her. Once Upon A Time At Christmas has a ton of problems, like bad pacing, bad editing, and awkward dialogue, but this plotline sticks out to me because unlike the other things I just mentioned, this plotline was a conscious decision to focus on these two cops instead of the characters you would assume to be the protagonists in a slasher film.

Combining elements of detective work with horror isn’t a bad idea, there’s an entire subcategory of Whodunnit Slashers that can be quite fun, but the problem comes from the mystery being completely obvious to the viewers from scene 1, and the identities of the Slashers should be obvious to the cops 20 minutes in. It’s very frustrating when you clearly see a pear being eaten by a villain in scene 1, and it takes the cops over an hour to figure out what the pattern of the murders is based on, especially when they bring the FBI in and even they can’t figure it out! There are so many breaks with logic that happen in this movie that it is impossible to list them all, but suffice it to say that the narrative definitely isn’t precise enough to work as a detective movie. Sloppiness is fine in a slasher film but when the plot is about a criminal case I need a bit more structure and clear progression to make it feel like things are happening. Not an hour of two cops standing in a room saying, “Well I’m stumped, let’s go look at more bodies.” It’s kind of fun to discuss movies like this but not much fun to watch them. If you see this on a streaming service you can give it a pass and not miss much.

Christmas In New York (2005)

Directed by Orlando Corradi

Ever wanted to watch a Christmas film that isn’t burdened by the cruel mistresses of logic and causality? Then do I have a movie for you! Christmas In New York is a deceptively blandly named film about the adventures of a young man named Ari. After living for an unspecified amount of time in an unnamed jungle, Ari learns about Santa Claus from his tutor, a talking owl named Professor. To get presents for his friends, two talking dogs named Fox and Winner, Ari travels to NYC by using a magic tree man that can transport him to any forest on earth so he can hand-deliver his letter to Santa. None of that was a joke. Those are the first five minutes.

What follows during Ari’s escapade in NYC is a cavalcade of high-energy nonsense. I regret not keeping track of how many times I threw up my hands and gasped, “WHAT?!?” during this movie because I’m sure it would be approaching the triple digits. What I love about this is that I was constantly trying to figure out either what was happening or why it was happening, so I never really got bored. Bad family films can so easily become boring but there’s always something weird and interesting happening, whether it’s a backstory that never gets elaborated on blatant animation errors, or even random English words on buildings. Seriously, there’s a building that has the word ‘Harem’ on it, in a CHILDREN’S CHRISTMAS MOVIE. Not everyone will get the kind of wild-eyed enjoyment I did from this movie, but if you’re looking to expand your Christmas horizons, this may be the good-bad Christmas cartoon for you.

The Christmas Chronicles (2018)

Directed by Clay Kaytis

Viewed on Netflix

Summary: Kurt Russell’s presence does nothing to stop Christmas Chronicles from being another DOA attempt at making a modern Christmas classic. Trite and kind of gross.

Now it is officially Christmastime so I can present you with a piece of newly minted Christmas history. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the first found footage Christmas movie! Now, I am a connoisseur of terrible found footage movies, so it is my sworn duty to watch this movie and report back to you on its quality. To my delight I learned that not only is this a found footage movie, it also stars Kurt Russell as Santa Claus! How could I not want to watch this movie?!? Time to grab that eggnog and get ready for our first real Christmas extravaganza with The Christmas Chronicles!

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The Grinch (2018)

Directed by Scott Mosier & Yarrow Cheney

Viewed in Theatre

Summary: Though it has slick animation and a good cast, this new entry to the Grinch franchise adds nothing and makes the story weirdly off-putting by turning Whoville into a Communist Ethnostate. Just watch the original.

I really wanted to wait until it was December proper to start reviewing Christmas related things, so I figured The Grinch would be a perfect fit to hold us all over until we get to some truly awful holiday schlock. I mean, this can’t be a Christmas film, right? It was released in November, before Thanksgiving, and I don’t see Christmas in the title, so let’s see what is going on in The Grinch! Little bit of a side note, this is a mildly historic occasion for me, because this is the first movie I’ve seen from the Illumination studio, the group behind movies like Despicable Me, Sing and another Seuss based adventure, The Lorax. Hey, they already have one Seuss movie under their belt, so this movie has to be good, right? Right???

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