Deck the halls with the worst Christ­mas movies of all time

Even in these times of great upheaval, when the hol­i­day sea­son has been knocked for a loop if not can­celed entire­ly, one Christ­mas tra­di­tion will remain unchanged. As every­one hun­kers down around the tele­vi­sion, the annu­al argu­ment over what to watch will inevitably break out among fam­i­lies num­ber­ing greater than two. You’ve all seen It’s a Won­der­ful Life a thou­sand times, you can do Home Alone by heart, and you’ve just about had it with Nation­al Lampoon’s Christ­mas Vaca­tion. You need some­thing fresh.

In that spir­it, why not con­sid­er some­thing ter­ri­ble? Instead of putting pres­sure on our­selves to select the per­fect Christ­mas view­ing, just as we run our­selves ragged in our attempts to cre­ate the per­fect Christ­mas, it’s worth a shot to cut loose and embrace the mess. This time of the year is chaos – there’s relax­ation and lib­er­a­tion to be tak­en in allow­ing your­self an iron­ic dis­tance from which you can safe­ly chuck­le at it, and noth­ing plays into that like the most splen­did­ly awful movie you can find. Read on for a sam­pling of the best of the worst:

Net­flix joined forces with the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary for this sun­ny work of state pro­pa­gan­da sport­ing the ric­tus grin of a rom­com. Strong-willed but non­threat­en­ing con­gres­sion­al aide Eri­ca (Kat Gra­ham) has been tasked with find­ing some fat to trim from the Air Force bud­get, so she trav­els to an oper­a­tional base in Guam with plans to assess the use­ful­ness of a pro­gram that sees trainee pilots air­drop­ping crates full of Christ­mas toys and dec­o­ra­tions to the locals every 24^th of December.

Her courtship with the cocky cap­tain on the island (Alexan­der Lud­wig, doing a tru­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble ren­di­tion of Tom Cruise in Top Gun) isn’t quite enough to dis­tract a crit­i­cal-mind­ed audi­ence from the grotesque jin­go­ism fes­ter­ing in the absent space where this film’s heart should be. Its part­ing mes­sage would seem to per­tain to the mag­ic of Christ­mas or some oth­er rea­son for the sea­son, but a clos­er look reveals the ulte­ri­or motive of flat­ter­ing PR for the Amer­i­can impe­r­i­al project. The islanders actu­al­ly love hav­ing a gigan­tic mil­i­tary base tak­ing up space in their right­ful home, we’re shown. The last thing we should be doing is defund­ing the Air Force, pur­vey­ors of hol­i­day cheer that they are!

There was once a time, believe it or not, when the celebri­ty pro­file of mus­ta­chioed wrestler Hulk Hogan was so great that the view­ing pub­lic was pre­sumed to be will­ing to watch him do any­thing. John Mur­lows­ki put that to the test with his Christ­mas­time vehi­cle for the Hulk­ster, in which Hogan plays a self-made fit­ness guru bil­lion­aire who conks his head while wear­ing a San­ta suit (he was evad­ing cops chas­ing him for reck­less paint­ball-play­ing, an ear­ly sign of this film’s ten­u­ous rela­tion­ship to plau­si­bil­i­ty) and wakes up to believe he’s real­ly Kris Kringle.

Else­where, mad sci­en­tist Ed Beg­ley Jr. wants to destroy an orphan­age so he can get at the pow­er crys­tals buried beneath it. Doesn’t make much more sense in con­text. Cheap pro­duc­tion val­ues, a script of proud and blithe inco­her­ence, Hogan’s bru­tal inabil­i­ty to ful­fil the basic require­ments of an actor, and an unearned George Bai­ley-lev­el sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty in the con­clu­sion instant­ly paint­ed a tar­get on this film’s back, with crit­ics peg­ging it one of the worst of all time upon its ini­tial release.

What says ​‘Christ­mas’ quite like Pagan blood rit­u­als, neo-Nazi con­spir­a­cies, and car­niv­o­rous imps? Writer/​director Jef­frey Man­del want­ed to mix some scares into the peace on Earth and good­will toward men, but his attempt at deck­ing the hor­ror genre’s halls veered into unin­ten­tion­al com­e­dy. A plain-spo­ken syn­op­sis sounds like a joke: a teenaged distaff Scrooge (Julie Austin) has no idea that she’s the Aryan Nation’s cho­sen one, her pure DNA des­tined to bring about a mas­ter race of half-human-half-elf abom­i­na­tions. A down-on-his-luck cop (Dan Hag­ger­ty) helps her out, though they’re both get­ting a hand from about a half-dozen deus ex machi­nas lay­ing ply­wood over the script’s many plot holes.

Per­haps Man­del was bank­ing on the pub­lic con­fus­ing his film for the super­fi­cial­ly sim­i­lar and far more pop­u­lar Grem­lins. Per­haps his eggnog had gone sour. What­ev­er his rea­sons, he gave the world the rare Yule­tide enter­tain­ment that can make late Decem­ber feel like Hal­loween. There’s no wrong time of year to drunk­en­ly hoot and holler at the over-the-top arti­fice of a good Z‑movie.

Of course it would be wrong to dose a child with high-poten­cy psy­che­delics, but what is film for if not to express our for­bid­den urges with­in the social­ly sanc­tioned safe space of art? That’s the thought exper­i­ment artic­u­lat­ed through the kid­die night­mares hid­ing with­in Andrei Konchalovsky’s ani­mat­ed take on the clas­sic bal­let by his Russ­ian coun­try­man Tchaikovsky.

Strokes of vis­cer­al body hor­ror per­vert the fes­tive tale audi­ences know and love, as the nutcracker’s wood­en flesh mutates into human skin with vivid gore verg­ing on the Cro­nen­ber­gian. The rat army’s aes­thet­ics have been informed by Hitler’s Ger­many, ren­der­ing them as goose-step­ping fas­cist ver­min starved for the blood of chil­dren. Some of it is just plain strange, such as the musi­cal num­ber in which Nathan Lane appears as Albert ​‘Uncle Al’ Ein­stein. A fla­grant dis­re­gard for the orig­i­nal text fused with Konchalovsky’s evi­dent belief that he was put on this Earth to trau­ma­tize his younger view­ers, all amount­ing to a sin­gu­lar­ly ill-advised Christ­mas car­ol in hell. It’s a handy way to put some fear and respect in the more ram­bunc­tious tykes stay­ing over dur­ing the holidays.

At last, a Christ­mas movie that salutes mate­ri­al­ism, pet­ti­ness, and your a‑hole neigh­bors. Matthew Brod­er­ick leads as mil­que­toast optometrist Steve, the ​“Christ­mas guy” in his cozy Mass­a­chu­setts ham­let. That sta­tus gets threat­ened by the new guy next door, uncouth used car sales­man Bud­dy (Dan­ny DeVi­to, his Dan­ny DeVi­to-ness undi­min­ished by his regret­table dia­logue), who ini­ti­ates a piss­ing con­test over which house will have the most gar­ish and eye-sear­ing lights dis­play. It is his goal to have a house so bright that it can be seen from space; the film accepts this as a noble, wor­thy mission.

We’re sup­posed to be hav­ing fun with the rival­ry that breaks out between the two man-chil­dren, but that’s dif­fi­cult when they’re so indi­vid­u­al­ly irri­tat­ing that we want them to both have bad lives. The final act makes a feint toward redemp­tion, as they lay down arms and remem­ber that Christ­mas is about togeth­er­ness, or what­ev­er. Even then, all of the char­ac­ters are still worth loathing, as they delight in fill­ing in a cli­mac­tic black­out with the lights of their cell phones. It’s too tacky to be a cher­ished mem­o­ry, a taste­less person’s idea of heartwarming.

Years before Life Itself gave us an idiot savant’s take on the every­thing-is-con­nect­ed movie, we got this mosaical­ly struc­tured melo­dra­ma trac­ing lines between five strangers through the respec­tive mag­icks of Christ­mas and con­ve­nient coin­ci­dence. As direc­tor, Chazz Palminteri is respon­si­ble for this bizarrely mis­cal­cu­lat­ed slice of fruit­cake, in which the inter­linked char­ac­ters all seem to draw the wrong les­son from their expe­ri­ence. Susan Saran­don learns that it’s okay to give up on her Alzheimer’s‑stricken moth­er, Pene­lope Cruz and hub­by Paul Walk­er repair their strained mar­riage by doing noth­ing, and Alan Arkin thinks he’s found the spir­it of his dead wife in Walker’s character.

Some mis­er­able sap (Mar­cus Thomas) real­izes that his only hap­py Christ­mas mem­o­ry comes from the night he spent in the ER and crashed the hos­pi­tal par­ty, so he tries to get his hands bro­ken for a repeat vis­it. (This brings about the immor­tal line of dia­logue, spo­ken to a shady char­ac­ter: ​“Glenn said that you break hands.”) What we’re sup­posed to take away from all this, apart from it being hor­ri­bly sad, is unclear. And with­out any real guid­ing idea or moral van­tage point, it turns into a dish that’s all glaze and no ham.

Nora Ephron, direct­ing peak-of-his-pow­ers Steve Mar­tin, work­ing from the premise of a well-fet­ed French com­e­dy, fea­tur­ing an appear­ance from a young Adam San­dler on the verge of blow­ing up – how could it have all gone wrong? Blame it on the lan­guage bar­ri­er, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to trans­late the daffy ener­gy of Le père Noël est une ordure with tip­ping over into shrill far­ci­cal excess. Everyone’s doing too much in this hay­wire mish­mash of furtive liaisons, acci­den­tal mur­der, unfor­tu­nate­ly regres­sive trans rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and gal­lows humor per­tain­ing to suicide.

Mar­tin plays the phone oper­a­tor on a pre­ven­tion hot­line, caught up in a con­vo­lut­ed plot that cross­es his path with the land­lord try­ing to evict the ser­vice (Gar­ry Shan­dling), his mad­cap cowork­er (Made­line Kahn), an ex-con painter on the line (Antho­ny LaPaglia) and a hand­ful of oth­er all unit­ed by an unfun­ni­ness that blan­kets the film like a new-fall­en snow. Char­ac­ters run from one hys­ter­i­cal­ly-pitched, laugh­less set piece to the next, cre­at­ing lit­tle more than stress as they go.

The sea­son­al sci-fi show­down that put Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 on the map has lost none of its bum­bling charm over the years, its incom­pe­tence every bit as win­ning now as it was for the first mid­night-movie crowds. A species of moron­ic lit­tle green men on Mars fig­ure that the chil­dren of their cul­ture need a lit­tle sparkle in their lives (the rea­son­ing real­ly is this vague, though it sounds bet­ter com­ing from a seer with an inex­plic­a­bly Hebrew name) and go to the third rock from the sun to kid­nap San­ta him­self. This proves eas­i­er said than done, in part because Earth is crawl­ing with imi­ta­tion San­tas and in part because these aliens are so very dumb.

Evi­dent­ly pro­duced for a grand total of 18 dol­lars, enact­ed by an ensem­ble that could be most gen­er­ous­ly described as ​“flu­ent in the Eng­lish lan­guage,” this three-alarm dis­as­ter is shot through with an earnest­ness that casts a lov­able light on its tech­ni­cal and artis­tic fail­ures. Direc­tor Nicholas Web­ster owes a debt of grat­i­tude to Ed Wood, god­fa­ther of the so-bad-it’s‑good curio: it’s bet­ter to go all in on a bad idea than to half-ass a pass­able one.