Released today, Fred Claus - starring Vince Vaughn as Santa's idiot brother - adds to the already too-large canon of ham-fisted Christmas movies. Make it stop, writes Donald Clarke
CHARLES Dickens has a great deal to answer for. You might reasonably argue that any man capable of creating Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend should be forgiven any unintended misdemeanour. Really? Well consider this unhappy list of recent seasonal outrages: Christmas With the Kranks, The Santa Clause, Surviving Christmas, Deck the Halls and, coming your way this week, Fred Claus.
Each of these terrible films focuses on a grumpy misanthrope who, after encounters with reindeer, holly, urchins and so forth, gains a belated appreciation of Christmas. The films are, thus, all variations on the theme of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
Keep in mind that we haven't yet even considered the worst formal adaptations of Dickens's tale (the animated version from 2001 was particularly gruesome) and you begin to understand the malign influence the great man has had on the season.
It appears that, when asked to make something jolly out of the advent period, directors, writers and producers find it hard to resist the entreaties of their own inner Scrooge. Conjure up, if you will, an image of the archetypal movie mogul. Do you have jolly Bob Cratchit or sour Ebenezer in your mind? Thought as much.
The inherent cynicism of so many movie people - writers make producers seem positively jolly - perhaps explains why they can't look at a candy cane without thinking both "bah" and "humbug".
It also helps clarify why the opening sections of unsuccessful Christmas films are generally more tolerable than the final acts. Vince Vaughn is passably convincing as Santa's jerk of a brother in the first half of Fred Claus. When, however, he is asked to cheer up and make with the yuks, his performance begins to reek of last year's plum pudding.
No. The best Yuletide films tend to be those where the festivities are merely a backdrop to some apparently season-independent comedy or drama. Freed from the need to pretend that Christmas is, for any sane person over the age of 15, anything other than an orgy of overpriced misery, films such as The Apartment (suicide), Die Hard (murder) and Gremlins (alien infestation) get the true wretchedness across.
Even George Bailey, hero of It's a Wonderful Life, a rare example of a quasi-Scrooge tale that works, encounters the bleakest despair before eventually embracing qualified optimism.
Merry bloody Christmas, one and all.
THE BEST CHRISTMAS HORROR
Deranged killers have many more opportunities to conceal themselves when the sun goes down before teatime. It is, therefore, surprising how few shockers take place during this most horrific period of the year. There are plenty of jolts in Gremlins, and the best episode in Tales from the Crypt (1972), one of Amicus Productions' great anthologies, finds Joan Collins being pursued by a maniac dressed as Santa.
But for proper, unrelenting Yuletide horror seek out Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974) or, best of all, Bob Clark's original Black Christmas (1974), a precursor of Halloween. Interestingly Clark also directed 1983's A Christmas Story, a festive staple in America that has never found an audience across the Atlantic.
THE BEST ARTHOUSE CHRISTMAS
One of most bewitching Christmases in all cinema crops up in the opening scenes of Ingmar Bergman's colossal Fanny and Alexander (1982). Following the performance of an elaborate nativity play in Stockholm, the titular heroes, son and daughter to an actress, retire for a traditional Swedish Christmas.
As the buns are passed around and the family frolic from room to room, movie fans dare to suspect that Bergman may have foresworn misery. Then the kids' dad dies and their mother marries a psychopathic minister with a penchant for recreational barbarity. That's more like it.
THE MOST MISERABLE CHRISTMAS IN CINEMA
The only serious contender has to be the grim 1950s Yule in Mike Leigh's great Vera Drake (2004). Nice old Vera, played with relentless fortitude by Imelda Staunton, is about to go to jail for carrying out illegal abortions, but she still insists on having the family round for grey turkey and sweet sherry. As her ghastly snobbish sister-in-law scowls from the corner, Vera passes round a pathetic box of chocolates and tries to gee everyone up.
Eventually - to the relief of audience and guests alike - Reg (Eddie Marsan), her heart-breakingly sweet son-in-law, makes as if to leave. "It's the best Christmas I've had in a long time," he says. The saddest part is that we half believe him.
BEST NATIVITIES
"The true meaning of Christmas" has been rather poorly served by the movies. Last year's The Nativity Story was deathly dull and the birth of Jesus in such epics as The Greatest Story Ever Told and King of Kings tends to feel somewhat perfunctory. There are, however, two first-class takes on the episode.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964), the greatest cinematic telling of Christ's mission, finds the three magi approaching Mary to the strains of the African-American spiritual Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.
They receive a warmer welcome than the self-proclaimed wise men in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). "What are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o'clock in the morning?" Terry Jones's crone asks. "That doesn't sound very wise to me."
FIVE GREAT CHRISTMAS SPECIALS TO REVISIT ON DVD
The League of Gentlemen's Christmas Special
Splendid homage to the horror anthologies of Amicus Pictures in which Herr Lipp does something awful to choirboys, Dr Chinnery's ancestor has grim adventures in Victorian Royston Vasey, and Reverend Bernice receives an unsettling visitor.
Party Games
This is the episode of Yes Minister in which Jim Hacker, hitherto the bumbling Minister for Administrative Affairs, gets elevated to the highest office. I, Claudius in lounge suits.
A Christmassy Ted
It's Christmastime on Craggy Island. and Father Ted is confronted by a sinister priest (sinister enough to be played by Gerard McSorley) who claims to be an old pal named Father Todd Unctious. Mad stuff happens.
The Office Christmas Special
Some viewers objected to the happy ending, but this remains another classic exercise in comedy of embarrassment from Ricky Gervais and his team.
Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire
So it's far from being the best Simpsons episode. Indeed, it may not even be the best Simpsons Christmas special. But it is the first ever full-length episode of the series and, therefore, cannot be ignored.
Bad Santas: the worst Christmas movies
Christmas With the Kranks (2004)
Based on a book by John Grisham, of all people, this horrible film constitutes the ne plus ultra of Christmas fascism. A family (headed by festive recidivist Tim Allen) dare to ignore the season and are persecuted by their ghastly neighbours.
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)
It's Tim Allen again (see below). The first film, in which a grumpy businessman mutates into Santa, was bad enough, but this second sequel manages to drag the reliably hopeless Martin Short into the frame. Sadly this has just been released on DVD.
Santa with Muscles (1996)
Hulk Hogan stars as a nasty millionaire who has a funny turn and imagines himself to be Father Christmas. Not as good as other Hogan vehicles such as Mr Nanny or 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.
Home Alone 4
The first film is, to be fair, still quite funny after a lowbrow fashion. The fourth episode stars some child named Mike Weinberg. Who? Well, exactly.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
A tricky one this. Long a favourite of bad-movie specialists, this Yuletide Plan Nine from Outer Space has taken on the status of a camp classic. Still, the presence of a young Pia Zadora - as useless then as now - secures its inclusion on our list.
Crackers: the best Christmas films
Gremlins (1984)
Joe Dante excels himself in this timeless combination of horror and comedy. Remember, a Mogwai is not just for Christmas.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Unavoidable really. Though only the final act is set at Christmas, the scenes in which Jimmy Stewart wonders snowy streets made more miserable by his obliteration offer iconic images of the season.
The Apartment (1960)
Jack Lemmon does his best for poor Shirley MacLaine when she tries to commit suicide on Christmas Eve. It reads like an odd choice, but, actually, few films do a better job of getting to grips with the way Christmas can really screw up the lonely.
Scrooge (1951)
Brian Desmond Hurst, the great Irish eccentric, directed by far the best formal adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Mind you, with Alistair Sim, the greatest of all British comedy actors in the lead, he could hardly fail.
Die Hard (1988)
Everyone's is happy celebrating Christmas in Nakatomi Plaza when a deranged Alan Rickman bursts in waving guns around. Don't worry. Bruce Willis is on hand to launch a franchise.
The Thin Man (1934)
Another copper-bottom classic that just happens to take place at the festive season. William Powell and Myrna Loy - bickering, boozy, brilliant - play the husband and wife team caught up in murder.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Just noses ahead of Mickey Mouse's amusing version of the perennial classic. Michael Caine is fine as Scrooge and the shivering rats are a constant delight.
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
A big man with a white beard claims to be Santa. No, not the fluffy, tedious remake. The original version, though achingly sentimental, remains a genuinely moving exercise in emotional torture.
Bad Santa (2003)
Brilliantly funny, relentlessly nasty attempt to undermine all the gooey sentiment and shameless commercialism that surround the season. Billy Bob Thornton boozes and swears his way into the bad books of Pollyannas everywhere.
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Somewhat inert, but still charming adaptation of James Goldman's play following Peter O'Toole's Henry II and Katharine Hepburn's Eleanor of Aquitaine as they squabble over the Christmas goose. Good work from young Anthony Hopkins as a sexually confused Richard the Lionheart.
