I wish I had thought of this idea for a column by Dave Larson of the Dayton Daily News – he compiled a list of the top ten worst Christmas Specials. I’m on board with every single one of them. If you truly hate Christmas, or just the spirit of Christmas, you must get a copy of each. Among other items, the column covers:

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS – Bad movie buffs rank this near PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, and the good news is it’s public domain. You can download it and burn it to a DVD right now, then play it on an endless loop until Christmas or until your neighbors find a way to stop you. What’s it about? Martians kidnap Santa Claus and force him to cheer up Martian children. It’s in color. It contains scientific inaccuracies.

THE STAR WARS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL – Some clips are available on YouTube from this, the Holy Grail of Star Wars spinoffs. First aired in 1978 and never again (under any circumstances! by order of George Lucas) the hour-long special featured all your Star Wars favorite characters along with Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur and the first appearance of Boba Fett, who is currently consulting with Carrie Fisher about putting together a one-man show about his experiences as the most beloved cult character of all time. Until THE PHANTOM MENACE, this was the worst Star Wars ever.

CHRISTMAS COMES TO PAC-LAND - Pac Man frolics in some sort of digital winter wonderland in an utterly un-interactive way. I’ve never seen this but I’ll move heaven and earth to do so now.

KATHY LEE GIFFORD CHRISTMAS SPECIALS – personally, I say why narrow it down? Every personality themed Christmas special  had something awful in it. Although with Kathy Lee, it’s hard to imagine where the non-awful stuff would come in. Still, who can forget the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet on Little Drummer Boy, where Bing’s body language screams, “This guys is a freak! I have to get out of here now!” Or the Johnny Cash Christmas special, where Johnny gets the same treatment from the entire Carter Family? There is a lot of speculation about what killed the Variety Show in America. I say, stop looking.

There’s also a surprising number of Christmas themed serial-killer films (well, maybe YOU’RE surprised) such as SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT and BLACK CHRISTMAS. Any one will do for me. I truly believe these movies tap into everyone’s secret fear that they are going to kill their visiting relatives. A lot of people were upset at the Santa-masked killer in SNDN – like Leonard Maltin said at the time, “what’s next, the easter bunny as child molester?” Sure Leonard, way to spoil DONNIE DARKO.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 6:18 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.