CHRISTMAS FAVOURITES
With Christmas creeping closer, the Gore in the Store team dusted off their Christmas jumpers, grabbed some eggnog, and huddled together to spread a little… holiday fear.
This year, our regular collaborators came together to uncover the twisted tales and frightful flicks that keep their spirits up during the festive season. The results? A gloriously gory and bizarre mix of seasonal favourites!
Prepare yourself for everything from a 70s slasher classic to Gremlins causing chaos, creepy Korean child-snatchers, vintage ghost stories that’ll chill your eggnog, and even Dolph Lundgren (because Christmas isn’t complete without him, apparently).
So dive in, discover some new favourites to add to your annual watchlist or reading pile, and let the season be scary!
Maybe it’s the ever-decreasing hours of daylight or the frosty nights and the twinkling tree invading your living room…or perhaps it’s just a refreshing alternative to the festive televisual schedule of family movies and “special” episodes of sitcoms less funny than testing out that new cheese grater on your own ball bag. Either way, Christmas is the perfect time for a ghost story.
Many great ghost stories are, logically enough, set in the dead of winter and the King of such tales is, of course, M.R. James, whose catalogue of shivery tales are perfect reading this time of year. Several have been superbly adapted by the BBC over the decades, including my personal favourite, OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD, first published 120 years ago. It’s a mini masterpiece of dread and terror, filmed unforgettably in 1968 with Michael Hordern as the sceptical, eccentric Professor protagonist.
James finds major frights in the mundane (bed linen!) while summing up, in a single line, the ways creepy tales like this worm their way into your brain and remain dormant (awaiting appropriate triggers) for the rest of your existence. James leaves us with the thought that, after a truly alarming final manifestation of something most likely paranormal, the Professor “cannot even now see a surplice hanging on a door quite unmoved and the spectacle of a scarecrow in a field late on a winter afternoon has cost him more than one sleepless night”. For best effect, read it Christmas Eve around midnight after a couple or more of the other kind of spirits…and then wait to see how long it takes you to move that dressing gown from the back of your bedroom door. And, if someone gifts you a whistle the following morning, ask if they kept the receipt.
Steven West
So, alternative not so family friendly Christmas movies you say? Well have you ever wondered what HOME ALONE would be like if Macaulay Culkin was a grown up? Or maybe if in fact Santa had to protect himself against mercenaries taking over a place he happened to find himself at, like Bruce Willis in DIE HARD? Well combine the two and you have VIOLENT NIGHT (2022), where Santa is played by David Harbour, the head of the mercenaries is played by John Leguizmo and Beverly D'Angelo as the Matriarch of the family Santa is helping.
This is a great Christmas movie simply because Santa takes care of the mercenaries while being a badass himself. The festive feeling is alive and well in the form of the child star of the film Leah who believes in Santa and the Christmas spirit more than anyone!
Packed with action, VIOLENT NIGHT gives us some cracking kills too, with candy cane stabbings, impalements, eye trauma, and a sledgehammer put to good use. This is what I like about this film, it doesn’t hold back, it's got the Christmas vibe going on but it's super violent and hugely entertaining and should definitely be on your Christmas film rotation, though maybe not for the kids.
It’s an action flick, it's a wild festive ride, it's a ho-ho-whole lot of fun and Santa gives plenty of Good Hidings!
Mal Jutley
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005) sees schoolgirl Lucy discover herself in a snowcovered winter world, where she meets the faun Mr Tumnas. She mentions the positive sides of winter as involving festive treats such as “iceskating…and snowball fights…and Christmas”. However, the faun replies that this is a wintry nightmare reigned over by the Witch, where it is “always winter and never Christmas...it’s been a long winter“.
When Lucy escapes back to her own world, he warns that the surrounding snowy forest is “full of her spies”. The festive family atmosphere reaches a new low when later her brother Edmund has to trek through the frozen forest to meet the Witch with “great loads of snow sliding down his back”. Trudging along, he thinks about his sibling rivalry with his elder brother Peter: “he thought more and more about how he hated Peter – just as all of this had been Peter’s fault”. We also see his sweet tooth get the better of him when the Witch enchants him with seemingly-harmless treats of hot chocolate and an enchanted Turkish Delight, which both makes him feel ill and want more.
ANTIQUE (2008) sees Jin-hyuk (Ju Ji-hoon), a young Korean man who opens a cake shop, as it’s supposedly a great way to meet sweet-toothed girls. He attempts to deliver Christmas treats in the snow, helped by Yang Ki-beom (Yoo Ah-in,) and dresses up as Santa to bring their customers their favourite festive treats. To Jin-hyuk’s horror, he finds this supposedly sweet existence involves dealing with violent exes and troubled pasts. Underneath the meringue-sweet fluff of broken hearts and ruined gateaux, there’s a darker storyline of child abduction and murder which underlines the less-sweet side of the season.
Merry Christmas, everyone...enjoy the sweet treats!
Nina Romain
The festive season is now upon us, and horror fans are always inundated with plenty of great material to watch over Christmas. Here are some of my favourite festive season-themed horror films, which Christmas simply would not be the same without.
Firstly, GREMLINS (1984) is simply a wonderful film which successfully mixes the joyful spirit of Christmas with monster horror elements, making it an essential watch around the Christmas season. The film was directed by Joe Dante and produced by Steven Spielberg, and it showcases a swarm of hideous Gremlins wreaking havoc in a small town of Kingston Falls. With its fun humour, likeable characters, convincing monster effects, and its overall whimsical tone which perfectly balances Christmas, drama, comedy, and horror, Gremlins is certainly one of the most enjoyable festive season-themed horror films ever to have been released.
It also goes without saying that THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1994) is one of the best Christmas-related horror films ever to have been released. Directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, the animated classic has developed a huge following over the years, and with good reason. Mixing Christmas with Halloween, the 1993 animated film focuses on Jack Skellington introducing Christmas to the residents of Halloween Town, while Santa is kidnapped by the villainous Oogie Boogie. The animation was gorgeous, the songs were catchy, and the story was engaging, making The Nightmare Before Christmas into a festive season horror film which can be enjoyed by viewers of all ages
David Gelmini
Around this time of year I usually watch ROCKY IV (1985) (it is a Christmas film – remember when the main fight takes place?) and BATMAN RETURNS (1992). I also enjoy watching old black-and-white Universal horror movies at this time of year; not one particular movie, but Eureka have put out some wonderful Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi box sets during the past couple of years so some of the titles in those will probably get watched – THE BLACK CAT (1934) is a favourite.
I shall probably also read some BATMAN graphic novels when it gets dark and the house is quiet, as that seems to make the stories more engaging. I love rockabilly so my Brian Setzer Orchestra DVD will probably get played very loudly at some point, and if you like metal then I can recommend WE WISH YOU A METAL XMAS - which features Lemmy, Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Billy F. Gibbons and others – plus Christopher Lee’s Christmas singles are always worth a blast.
Chris Ward
They say Christmas is for kids, right? Well, there's another, darker side to this child and cheer-friendly time of year—a stocking full of fright, violence and bloodshed, even a home invasion or worse still, an apocalypse. That's right folks, it's never out of season to dip into the darker recesses of our imagination and share a tale or two.
Now, GREMLINS freaked me out when I was a kid, so my inner child is crying out to make this my go-to pick. He can go fuck himself, because I'm choosing, with no regrets, Bob Clarke's seasonal slasher, BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974).
I love this film because, despite a friend and fellow horror aficionado hyping it up many years ago, it exceeded my wildest expectations. John Saxon is great as Lt. Kenneth Fuller and Olivia Hussey is perfectly cast as the "final girl." Then there's the creepy and terrifying premise of an intruder hiding in the attic, and the weird and unsettling phone calls from "the moaner."
It's the perfect go-to film for Christmas, in part because it's set in a sorority house during the festive holidays, but the suspense and violence Billy, the intruder, unleashes perfectly juxtaposes all the cheer and good will with slasher vibes. And it would be the gift that keeps on giving, serving as inspiration for John Carpenter's masterpiece, HALLOWEEN.
Paul Risker
For an action movie made at the dawn of the 90’s, DARK ANGEL (1990) packs a lot into its one hundred minute running time, including but not limited to Dolph Lundgren as a cop who breaks the rules, smarmy drug dealers, alien drug dealers, a Jan Hammer soundtrack, and exploding cars roughly every eight minutes. Most importantly it also includes an otherworldly tall white haired figure shouting “I COME IN PEACE” as well as a smattering of Christmas carols and decorations scattered amongst its glorious cliches making it more than eligible to be included here.
Stuntman turned director Craig Baxley helms this massively underrated b-movie that makes the most of its premise of an intergalactic drug dealer running into a renegade cop on the streets of Dallas. With a bevy of high-tech weaponry, including flying razor sharp compact discs, a tall white haired alien rampages through the streets harvesting his victims for endorphins he uses to peddle as a high-end drug back on his home planet. In one of his best roles, Dolph Lundgren proves that he was perhaps the most underrated of the action stars of the 80’s and 90’s as he leans knowingly into every single action hero cliche whilst getting to deliver one of the greatest one liners of all time in the film's fiery climax.
A staple of the action movie section in many a video library back in the 90’s, the film has unfairly vanished into obscurity since then making it ripe for rediscovery. If you are looking for something new or feel like revisiting an old favourite in all its ridiculous glory to complete your Christmas then you can’t go wrong with DARK ANGEL. It really is one of the best cops versus aliens/Christmas/action movies of all time.
Iain MacLeod
