5 'So Bad They're Good Christmas Movies

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5 'So Bad They're Good’ Christmas Movies

We all know Christmas movies. Every year, dozens and dozens of them are released, ranging from family-friendly fare to the sorts of films that only a niche audience enjoys. Some are good, most are mediocre, and many are truly awful.

Now, in my opinion, the best Christmas movie ever is the original Die Hard (it could only work at Christmas time. Not any other time of the year – don’t @ me!), and I have a soft spot for many versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol . But the worst film I have ever seen is a Christmas movie! The thing is, I also have a soft spot for bad films.

So, I was asked to find a truly bad Christmas film, but one that would be fun for a group of early-20-somethings to watch and maybe riff on. That got me thinking. What bad Christmas movies are actually fun to watch?



And so started this list. Here are 5 bad Christmas films that can be worth watching at least once. Just don’t take them seriously. I got them all from lists of terrible Christmas films, from imdb , Rotten Tomatoes , and a list I found on Reddit.

Here, in order of release:

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)
Directed by Nicholas Webster
Starring John Call, Leonard Hicks & Vincent Beck

Where to start? First of all, Pia Zadora is in this film as a Martian girl, so her Golden Globe for ‘Best New Star’ some 10 years later is a lie. Okay… plot. Martian children are sad, so the leaders decide to kidnap Santa to cheer them up, and they also take 2 Earth children. The bad guy hates the idea, they set up a workshop, Droppo (a Martian who is not the brightest bulb in the box) takes a liking to Santa, the bad guy somehow mistakes green-skinned Droppo for white-skinned Santa, there is the least intense battle ever, and Mars has its own Santa.

Where to start? The acting is non-existent, the story is inane, the robot is made of cardboard boxes, the polar bear is a man in a skin-crawling on hands and knees (which you see), there seems to be a total of 9 people who live on Mars (including an old man in a cave!), and it is silly. But it is great to watch with friends and just laugh at. This is cheap and awful, but it is also crying out for a remake with modern CGI (hear that, Asylum Pictures?). This is truly awful but worth watching. Oh, and the colourised version is just as good. Both are available for free on YouTube, by the way.
Oh, and it has the worst Christmas song ever as a theme song.


Jingle All The Way (1996)
Directed by Brian Levant
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger & Sinbad

The critics hate this film, and yet it made a good box office and people watch it when it is on TV (which seems to be every single year!), so I think the critics are out of step with almost everyone here. The story is about a man with no time for his family trying desperately to keep promises to his son (for once), and what that leads to. Yes, the film is really that simple. It is not a high-concept movie, and is really just an excuse for a bunch of scenes of slapstick comedy. Yes, there is a mawkishness about it at times, but its heart is in the right place.

Look, it’s Arnie and Sinbad, so the acting is not going to be Oscar-level, but they do well with a slightly uneven script. This is a bad film in many ways, I know, but it is fun and is certainly a decent film to share with a family. It has that feel-good ending (though the final scene with Arnie and his wife made the cinema I was in seeing this burst out laughing) and is harmless.

Jack Frost (1998)
Directed by Troy Miller
Starring Michael Keaton & Kelly Preston

Again, this is not the best film ever made, but when watched in comparison to other movies that have come out since, I think, like Jingle All The Way, this film’s heart is in the right place. The story is weird, a kid’s rock star father dies, he builds a snowman, plays a magic harmonica, and his father’s spirit comes back inside the snowman, and then he does the dad things he never did in life before things go downhill a bit (snowmen struggle as it warms up), but in the end it’s all okay and Jack returns to heaven or wherever.

This film is built on the charisma of Michael Keaton and while not his best work, it is still strong enough and better than many others I have seen, especially since. This is another family film. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and I have seen people cry at the end. It is just a nice film, and I think critics maybe felt it was too slight a movie. There is a darkness about the film, yes, but, in the end, it is all good. I really don’t mind this film.

Santa’s Slay (2005)
Directed by David Steiman
Starring Bill Goldberg & Robert Culp

I have written an entire column about this film ! I think it is a great horror-comedy, and it most definitely does not take itself seriously, but the reviewers seem to hate it. The story – Santa is Satan’s son, and his time of being good is up, so he’s out to wreak revenge on people in the town where the angel who imprisoned him now lives. There’s a game of curling involved and, in the end, there’s a lot of heavy artillery. It is insane and I love this film. The reviewers are wrong.

There’s not a real lot more to say – I like this film. It is gory and bloody, but deliberately funny. This is the film I recommended to the 20-somethings. I do not think this film deserves to be on a ‘bad movie’ list, but who am I to argue with critics? Oh, yeah, I'm someone who thinks for himself.

Okay, this last film is out of chronological order. There is a reason for that. Read on…

Santa With Muscles (1996)
Directed by John Murlowski
Starring Hulk Hogan

This, in my opinion, is the worst film ever made.
Ever.
You can talk Ed Wood films, exploitation films, The Room, Birdemic, the works – this is it for me. I own it on VHS and DVD. I watch it every single year. I can’t help myself. It is truly terrible… but…

So, Hogan plays a rich man who is known everywhere and he teases the police and gets amnesia and only one person recognises him (?) and convinces him he’s Santa (?) so he beats up some robbers and goes to help an orphanage built over caves filled with exploding gems (?) that the bad guy wants to take over because he’s evil. He beats up some goons and is knocked out by a clockwork thing and gets his memory back, but only his recent memory because it turns out he and the bad guy were friends at that same orphanage (?) and Hogan didn’t realise he’d even been to the orphanage (?). He fights the bad guys, the orphanage blows up, and the orphans move in with him. Yep. That’s it.

So… why is it so bad? Well, the acting. Ed Begley Jr looks like he’s there for the pay-cheque; Clint Howard is in full-on over-acting mode; the child actors (including a young Mila Kunis) appear to have been crafted from wood; and Hogan is truly, truly awful. As you can tell by all the question marks, the story makes no sense. It’s a mess.

So, why do I watch it so often if this is the worst film I have ever seen? No idea… but I do. Horrible, awful film… but so much fun to sit down and just make fun of. Best watched in a group and best watched if you don’t care how much of it you miss as you laugh at one another’s jokes.

And there we are - 5 Christmas movies that the critics hate but which I think are really worth watching. Even if the first and last are worth watching ironically.

Hope you all enjoy this!

Happy Holidays!


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