Editorials
What Horror Movie Do You Celebrate Christmas With?
Christmas isn’t always the best season for horror enthusiasts. Sure, every now and then we’ll get a Black Christmas or a Silent Night, Deadly Night, but it’s typically a time of year where we are pretty much ignored by movie studios. Nevertheless, I still find plenty of ways to get my horror fix during the holiday season. I watch lots of non-Christmas related horror movies, but the one movie I have to watch every Christmas is Joe Dante’s 1984 classic, Gremlins.
Gremlins, aside from Black Christmas, is probably the most obvious choice for an annual Christmas viewing, so I apologize for not being a bit more original. There really isn’t anything to say about it that hasn’t already been said before. Gremlins is the perfect gateway horror movie for a child and in my opinion should be mandatory family viewing for everyone each Christmas. Maybe put it right in the middle of viewings of A Christmas Story, Love Actually and Christmas Vacation.
Gremlins is one of the first movies I remember really scaring me as a kid (also, Mrs. Doubtfire. I don’t know why. I always used to cry when his fake boobs caught on fire). The exact moment where I had the “oh crap” reaction was when the transformed gremlin escapes from his crate in the school’s science lab and the teacher is reaching under the desk to grab him. As you all know, things do not end well for that teacher. I had nightmares for weeks about that particular scene.
The movie definitely balances comedy and horror pretty well, as evidenced by the infamous kitchen scene (which also freaked me out a little bit as a kid):
That microwave bit gets me every time. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have watched Gremlins at such a young age, but I’m glad I did because I have some great memories showing it to my friends. I’m one of those people who likes to watch other people watch movies I like (weird, I know) and if I ever find someone who hasn’t seen Gremlins I light up like a Christmas tree (sorry) and put it on. It’s just become one of those movies that I feel everyone should have seen. And it’s not easy to find a Gremlins virgin nowadays!
We have a lot of reasons to be thankful for Gremlins. It (along with Poltergeist and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) led to the creation of the PG-13 rating, though some may not see that as a blessing. It led to a fantastic sequel (I still prefer the first one because of all the horror elements but I can’t deny that The New Batch is a brilliant film). It gave us one of the best Christmas monologues of all time. I actually had no idea that some people (Roger Ebert) thought Phoebe Cates’ monologue was supposed to be funny. It always stuck out as the one true depressing moment of the film.
So what horror movie do you watch every Christmas? It doesn’t even have to be a Christmas-themed movie. Maybe you like to go against the grain and watch Halloween every December 25th. Who knows? But feel free to discuss in the comments below and share your Christmas movie with everyone!
Oh and also, the Gremlins theme song is one of those pieces of music I occasionally jam to in my car. Imagine my surprise when this popped up right here on Bloody Disgusting a few weeks ago!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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