Well, we’ll start with alert regular Jenny:
There are TON of Christmas movies on TV and movies that are asking for MST3k treatment. (Oh David Hasslehoff you shall be mocked in that sweater.) Which ones do you think need to be riffed and which on do you riff your self? I would love the crew do “Jingle all way”, ” 8 crazy nights” and “Jack Frost” (both the killer snowman one and Michale Kenon one). As for ones I’ve riffed with my friends, well, we used do the Stars War Holiday Special (but then everyone did it). Now its the Power Rangers Christmas and the He-Man Christmas special and Jack Frost (the killer snowman one). What about you?
And alert regular “SittingDuck” adds:
If MST3K had featured more Christmas episodes, what movies do you think would have been worthy of their treatment? My pick would be the 1984 TV movie “The Night They Saved Christmas,” in which Santa’s operation is being endangered by oil drilling (real subtle :P).
I forget what I said last time and I am too lazy to look it up but the ridiculous-but-toe-tapping Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye vehicle “White Christmas” is a yearly favorite and oh so riffable (starting with the way Danny’s shoes always match his suit. Oy).
What are your suggestions?
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1- Any Lifetime Christmas movie (all Lifetime movies are ready wrapped for riffing)
2- A Pac Man Christmas
Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986) Dolly Parton and Lee Majors. Directed by Henry “the fonz” Winkler. Ah, the holiday adventures of “Mountain Dan”. Break out the Egg Nog.
For some reason, TV insists on inflicting the Sound of Music on an innocent world. It’s my choice for worst movie ever made and would be ideal for riffing. Even the songs beg for mockery.
Be advised, “Christmas Story 2” is NOT the direct sequel to “A Christmas Story”. That would be “My Summer Story”, which was directed by Bob Clark and starred Charles Grodin and Mary Steenburgen, and was narrated by Shep. It was based on some of Shep’s stories, and is actually pretty good.
As for “Christmas Story 2″…ugh.
#53 @doug
I have a feeling the live remake with Carrie Underwood NBC is planning will be rife for the riffing next year.
Just a hunch. :-)
@43: SOL Daria, your wish is Rifftrax’s command:
http://www.rifftrax.com/vod/christmas-rifftrax-santas-village-madness
One last Canadian Christmas movie I’d love to see riffed: The Silent Partner. It’s the heartwarming Christmas tale of a bank teller who discovers Santa’s going to rob his bank, so he robs it first. It stars Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer. :-)
1967’s Cricket On The Hearth. So bad on so many levels.
I forget what I said last time and I am too lazy to look it up but the ridiculous-but-toe-tapping Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye vehicle “White Christmas” is a yearly favorite and oh so riffable (starting with the way Danny’s shoes always match his suit. Oy).
Oh lord, does “White Christmas” give me hives: Not so much for the movie itself (which is more an Army comedy for recently returned Korean vets sentimental about their WWII-buddy days than anything remotely Yuletide, which we get in the last five minutes, period–And even then, that little pedophilic ballet-school production seems a little squicky), but for a great mass of idiots who think they HAVE to proclaim it a “Christmas classic” because it was The Movie With the Song.
Nnnno. That was about twelve years earlier, with “Holiday Inn”, a much better B/W musical with Bing Crosby at a snowy rustic inn, and with Fred Astaire to boot….Or even worse, that Holiday Inn “doesn’t count” because it wasn’t in Technicolor. (By the time most musicals were in Technicolor, it was the 50’s, musicals were dying out, and ones like these were getting way too Vegas-y and gay. Or else making sour-grapes jokes about the new rise of jazz, rock and beatnik, which Danny Kaye also does here.)
But I digress–Compared to MST3K’s Mexican/Martian legacy, even White Christmas is unriffable.
I know Ballyhoo Productions did a documentary featurette on the Italian “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t”, in lieu of not being able to get the rights for the shows or RT, and it seems like the one the “always wanted” to do. Can’t say as I blame them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUhVvEFMnsM
Me, however, I always wanted to see CT tackle that one strange French import that showed up on VHS in the 80’s as “Here Comes Santa Claus”–where a little kid goes to Santa’s workshop to ask Santa to rescue his parents from African rebels, in a sort of Yuletide re-enactment of the last twenty minutes of The Gods Must Be Crazy–but which is also now tied up with another video company under its original title, “I Believe in Santa Claus”.
You may not have heard of this movie…But if any old enough here went searching the backwater local cable stations around Christmas time, and tried to figure out what in sweet heck they were watching, has any of THIS escaped your head in the last fifteen or twenty years?: :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdI8zGdIvqo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvMYHpCaaoc
Really? “A Christmas Story 2”? Oh, that’s just sad. I read the description, and I take back what I said about “Frosty Returns”–this one surely ranks as the the worst Christmas sequel ever. Makes me want to stick the director’s tongue to a flagpole and leave him there.
#57: I remember that movie! There was a charming scene where Santa decapitates a woman with the broken glass of an aquarium.
They should riff all of the Silent Night, Deadly Night films alond with the recent remake Silent Night (2012). I saw the first three films in the orginal series and watched the remake recently. All they have going for them is gore, nudity, and Bill Moseley in a ridiculous exposed brain tank headpiece (!)
#60 Smiley
Yes, there is that touching scene. Santa was such a jolly fellow in that film, wasn’t he? Always laughing, especially on the phone.
Elf
Not a single mention for Ernest Saves Christmas? Tisk.
I second the Pac-Man Christmas Special.
On a nitpicky note, the Star Wars Holiday special was released on Thanksgiving, not Christmas. But given the whole “Life Day” celebration it’s easy how people can associate it with Christmas.
We could add the Star Wars Holiday Special, but then, Rifftrax already took care of that.
So, we will go with any holiday movie starring Adam Sandler…
Never could stand Tim Allen, so the Santa Clause films are perfectly acceptable — especially the third one with … spirits, no … Martin Short.
Oh, and of course, Jingle All the Way. oy…
The Marlo Thomas “It’s A Wonderful Life” remake.
And two more (related) specials that was played annually by a local UHF station between 1995 and 2005 – The Magic of Christmas and Christmas With the Stars. Any special that can give us this needs to be lampooned (beware – nightmare inducing):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF8IHu89_Vc
Anybody for Robert Zemeckis’ mo-cap “Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge and the ghosts for some reason? I can only wonder what they’d say about the chase scene they put into the movie two-thirds of the way in for no reason at all.
The Nutcracker, from 1986, directed by Carroll Ballard, narrated by Julie Harris, featuring the Pacific Northwest Ballet with Highland champion Hugh Bigney as Drosselmeier. Rats running all over the house, snot-nosed kid tearing up girl’s toy in front of God and everybody, Mom is a peacock (not a peahen), Bad Touch Drosselmeier … oh, my, Drosselmeier! … and just whose dream is it anyway? The music is wonderful, the dancing superb, but the plot of the play is just plain weird.
I saw a modern dance version of Nutcracker earlier today on Ovation that looked like a bastard stepchild of Nutcracker, Willy Wonka, Ziegfield Follies, and Legally Blonde. Our family’s amateur riffing team was having a field day with it – I’m sure the pros would be even better.
i know it’s been mentioned already, but the ‘Star Wars’ Christmas special really needs that special MST3K touch. i also would like to see the bots take on ‘Mr. heatmeiser’ and the gang.
RE: 67 –
Oh wow – The Marlo Thomas It’s a Wonderful Life? I completely wiped THAT one from memory. Thank you so much. Wasn’t Wayne Rogers playing George Hatch (?) in that one? Jeez…
Okay, one more for my list. Rifftrax, please take notes…
There was a really dark creepy Nutcracker that came out a few years back with all sorts of WWII allegories, or so I’ve heard.
I think most of the Rakin Bass specials are too good for riffing. (This year’s Spongebob special was done in stop motion as a homage to them.) Hanna Barbera on the other hand, did some questionable entries over the years. The Smurf’s Christmas Special they did implied the villain was Satan, (or his minion) who was going to drag two little kids down to hell! I kid you not.
Another HB holiday special, “The Little Troll Prince” has some really creepy theology going under the surface. Cartoon Network used to inflict it every year.
#73 Joel mentioned it during Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It was in a batch of VHS tapes he had tricked Frank into sending up to the SOL. :)
I actually wouldn’t mind seeing it again, as Orson Welles played Mr. Potter!
Christmas Vacation 2. I’ve heard that is beyond awful.
RE: #75 — Yeah, I remember that now. Of course, Joel was “reading” the bottom of his unpackaged VHS tapes to find out what they were… Oops.
Orson Welles played Potter in that thing? Wow. I didn’t realize that. I might have to actually look into seeing it at least once…
RE: #76 – It’s a National Lampoon movie. They’re supposed to be beyond awful. Haven’t heard of one that’s worth the time of someone who doesn’t worship Beavis and Butthead.
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Said it in every Christmas riffing thread before,
And I’ll say it again:
C-A-N-D-Y
C-L-A-U-S
Hoo-RAY for Can-dy–
Actually, y’know what? Having found and watched the uncut Candy Claus VHS tape 3 Yuletides in a row now, and slowly resigning myself to the cruel reality that the epic part 2 never actually got made, my new holiday-unholy-grail is a tape of the cartoon featured in the first trailer at the end:
The Christmas episode of “Lollipop Dragon”. I don’t know if that’s actually a euphemism for 2 tabs of ecstasy stuck together with a drop of black-tar heroin, but the Brains could surely come up with something better.
Also found a bargain basement DVD with Christmas episodes of cartoons from ‘Busytown’ to ‘Archie’s Weird Mysteries’ to ‘Gadget Boy’s Adventures in History’, plus the “Hey Vern, It’s Ernest” about celebrating every major holiday within 24 hours. More than enough for another Rifftrax holiday special if the rights were still as cheap as the collection implies.