I really do enjoy visiting the sites or locations where movies have been  shot, whether they are classic award-winning dramas or forgotten little b-movies. Apparently so do a lot of other people, because movie tourism accounts for the latest trend touted by the travel industry. [Okay, I confess, I actually co-wrote a book about movie tourism in Florida called FLORIDA ON FILM, published by the University of Florida Press in 2007, but even before that, I was drawn to visiting movie locations.] 

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This year, some might wish more longingly for one fewer excursion in search of something perfect for that special someone or for reasons to be rushing around. Whenever the charged emotions and high expectations overwhelm me at the holidays, I find myself looking for some forms of escape, which, of course, may sometimes be a movie.

There’s a part of me that craves the films of my youth at Christmas, even though not all of them have anything to do with the holiday.  This entry in our Movie Morlocks blogathon generally falls under the heading of Movies I Loved as a Kid (and still do). Intellectually, I can see that each of these films acknowledges that there are similar themes in each person’s life of paradise lost, found, and rediscovered, as well as the mysterious serendipitous events  that connect us and and occasionally give us a glimpse of a deeper understanding of the ebb and flow of life. Having seen more in real life–especially this last year–I can also cherish my visceral, wholly instinctive reaction to these stories and the feelings that they evoke as they unspool on film.  Perhaps you can too :

Mighty Joe Young (1949) is indelibly imprinted on my memory’s hard drive. This film, which used to be broadcast every year at the holidays, is a less ambitious successor to King Kong (1933) with many members of the original team lending a hand, including director Ernest B. Schoedsack, writer and producer Merian C. Cooper, and creator of the original Kong models, Special Effects master, Willis O’Brien. Interestingly, the legendary Ray Harryhausen was “first technician” on this movie, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, he saw “Joe as young, mischievous and unaware of his own strength”. I think that Harryhausen, O’Brien and the other special effects men did a great job of making Mighty Joe a more expressive, sensitive, and less adult creature than Kong was in the 1930s pre-code production.

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I am loath to watch anything twice; I’m a compiler, so anything that I willingly watch over and over again is an exception to my rule.  Therefore, my habit of choosing to view the same movies and programs each Christmas holiday season is unusual.  While not all of the following are movies (in the strictest sense), a Christmas without seeing these shows would be breaking a holiday tradition for me.  So here they are: 

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 I had more trouble making this list than I did finding Christmas presents for everyone. My initial list seemed so “normal” that I was disappointed with it. I kept thinking there must be films out there that I had forgotten about.  I looked at endless lists of Christmas movies online; I looked at anti-Christmas lists; I looked through catalogues of movie titles. For awhile, I got hung up on looking for really “special” movies — highly regarded classics, the rare, the bizarre.  But, then I decided that this was not in keeping with the spirit of the blogathon topic.

 Perhaps part of the problem is that I am ambivalent about Christmas; for many reasons, I truly dread this holiday, and this Christmas has been more difficult than usual. On the other hand, I know there will be genuine moments of joy, such as when the carolers come around to my mother’s house in the country and serenade us. I was torn between those favorites that make me feel like there really could be peace and good will on earth, and those that remind me that there won’t be.  Finally, I decided to include both.  Some are Christmas movies that are festive, warm-hearted, and joyful; others are anti-Christmas in their cynicism, dreary mood, or pessimism.

 So, for what it’s worth, below is my list of movies that make the holidays go smoothly for me. . . or, at least, faster. 

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On Tuesday, December 16th, the Grindhouse Film Festival at The New Beverly Cinema will present the perfect antidote to Yuletide schmaltz… a blood-soaked double bill of Bob Clark’s BLACK CHRISTMAS (aka SILENT NIGHT, EVIL NIGHT 1974) and Theodore Gershuny’s SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1972).  I reviewed both of these movies here in 2006, as part of my “Cruel Yule” review series of holiday-themed horror movies.  I quote myself in saying that I found BLACK CHRISTMAS had an eerie magic present in very few slashers new or old and that SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT was and remains an a resonant study of human disaffiliation taken to its logical and gory extreme. READ MORE

In considering the darker aspects of Disney movies with my fellow Morlocks this week, I’ve been mulling over my own shifting emotions about these undeniably compelling movies.

One of the joys, and occasionally jarring aspects of relishing Walt Disney movies is that your perception of them can change–sometimes drastically–when seeing these films over a lifetime. As I mentioned in an earlier blog on Swiss Family Robinson (1960), mischievously endearing characters such as child actor Kevin Corcoran in that movie were the kind that I keenly identified with when I first saw the film. Now, however, well, let’s just say I’d probably swim away from that island if I were stuck there, sharks or no sharks.  As the youngest member of the shipwrecked family, Kevin‘s pleas in that film to keep every living thing as a pet, his wheedling complaints whenever his elders tried to keep him from harm, and his misplaced sense of injustice touched me once, giving voice to all the grudges I probably nursed as the youngest of four, though now, that piercing whine of his could probably crack crystal.

There are some characters in almost every Disney movie that I once wholeheartedly enjoyed whose rants, capers, and irksome pleas for attention now make me lunge for the fast forward button. For want of a better term, I’ve decided to term this evolving movie-going experience as “the Corcoran syndrome”. By the same token, there are often other, once stodgy figures in Disney movies, whose mild, wet blanket tendencies or ambivalence once dismayed me, but who now seem to be among the saner, or at least, realistic and perceptive characters in these films. Even Walt himself and his corny, avuncular manner bored me as a kid during his seemingly endless self-congratulatory introductions for The Wonderful World of Disney, which once seemed in the way of the story that was coming up. Today, despite all his salesmanship and blather, he seems to be a much more interesting, even complex cultural figure.

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Twice over the weekend, I found myself in conversation about Thanksgiving movies, particularly the fact that there are so few of them. On each occasion, the group of movie-savvy people that I was with struggled to think of the names of even a few films. Considering Thanksgiving is a major holiday that even Grinches look forward to because of the four-day weekend, there are surprisingly few TG movies. Perhaps it is because TG comes between two other holidays that are rife with related movies  - Halloween and Christmas. Or, perhaps it is because the male of the species thinks that football is the only choice for Thanksgiving viewing.  (I’ll start watching football on Thanksgiving when the coaches make their players dress like Pilgrims.)

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