Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#644

Des’ admiration for Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog are unparalleled...so why not celebrate them with a review of a film that unites them together?  Join Des and Darryll as they view the film that made Abel Ferrera vow to kick Herzog’s ass, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.  Then I drop by to discuss the curious Season of the Witch, in which Cage shares a scene with Christopher Lee!  Finally Des closes out the episode with a Cage/Herzog Top Five!

The trailers are here, as are an essay exploring whether Cage’s acting is Deep or Dumb, Werner Herzog’s Ant-Man and music from Herzog and The Magnets and an awful young Crispin Glover and Cage from the TV pilot Best of Times!

Listen to Dread Media #644 here

THE SEVENTH LABOR OF HALLMARK: A Christmas Melody (2015)

Hope you enjoyed The Holiday of Your Choice, ladies and gentlemen!  Here’s me suffering some more for your enjoyment!

When Special Hallmark Christmas Consultant William Bibbiani told me there was a Hallmark film directed by Mariah Carey--whose biggest (and, to the best of my recollection, only) cinematic offering was the manic, treacly Glitter--I had to make it a Labor.

And, to be fair, this is nowhere near as bad as the atrocities I’ve seen committed by Candace Cameron Bure and those ‘godwink’ people.  Oh, it’s bad...and a portion of it is thanks to Ms. Carey, who insists on playing the ‘bad guy’ as well as directing and apparently prepared for the role by bingwatching every prime time soap Aaron Spelling ever produced.  But maybe it’s because I am over halfway through this terrible trek through the Hallmark Holidays, but there’s a certain charm to its awfulness that makes me want to pat Carey on her head and say, “At least you tried,” before giving her a participation medal.

Kristen (Lacey Chabert) moves from Los Angeles to her hometown of Silver Falls, Ohio after the failure of her fashion boutique.  While she and her daughter Emily (Fina Strazza) adjusts to small town living, both become involved with the local Christmas Pageant.  While Kristen endeavors to make the pageant costumes, Emily collaborates with local music teacher and Designated Hunky Hunk O’ Destiny Danny (Brendan Elliot, who is channeling Jason Bateman something fierce) to compose an all-new Christmas song that she hopes will serve as a magical letter to Santa...who may or may not be hanging around Emily’s new school as a janitor (Kevin Chamberlin).

There are some of the Kabuki-like elements that seem to infect all of the Hallmark Movies I’ve encountered--we do have an inconsequential ‘complication’ that hits exactly at the one hour mark, and that chaste kiss that seems to signal the movie is over--but I was surprised at the things that didn’t appear.  I suspect the presence of Carey assured that we would have a more diverse cast, and a lot of the trappings are non-existent.  No snowball fights, no hot chocolate, and no Christmas crafts permeate this little ditty. 

However....

I could not help but notice that this is the second film in this gauntlet which treats the heroine being offered the career of her dreams as a complication.  I’ve suspected for a while that Hallmark Christmas Movies, much like the sitcoms of Chuck Lorre, are designed to assure small town America that they’re superior to Us Big City Folk.  It’s one of the reasons I think the only big city that is shown in a positive light amongst these films is Chicago, which happens to be part of what was once referred to as ‘Flyover Country.’  The message in both this film and Christmas Connection, whether intentional or not, is ‘Your ambition and dreams are secondary in worth to the love of a good man and a deep, abiding love of Christmas.’  Not Christmas in the religious sense, although we’ve seen a couple of these films dancing close to Evangelical values and beliefs, but Christmas as a holiday in and of itself.

Maybe because I’m now deep in my Labors, but A Christmas Melody doesn’t bother me all that much.  I’d put it closer to Santa’s Summer House (bad, but entertainingly so) than Christmas Connection (actively, if inadvertently, frightening).  I get why Lacey Chabret is one of the Queens of Hallmark--she’s attractive, even a little sexy, without being threateningly so, and her acting style is just quirky enough to seem endearing to people who don’t want any depth.  It didn’t hurt me, and on a lowered-expectations-scale of Hallmark Christmas Films, this wasn’t too bad.

Now if only Hallmark had continued this experiment of letting former Pop Idols direct their films, I’d be enthusiastic.  I want to see what, let’s say, a Christina Aguilera or a Avril Lavinge Christmas Movie was like.

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William Bibbiani's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

So next time, I think I’m going to reach back fifteen years to one Alonso told me was infamous in its awfulness, Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus, which features both Steve Guttenberg and Crystal Bernard.  The ghosts of the 80‘s are alive and...well, they’re alive at least.

THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: SCROOGED (1988)

I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised that this was the film y'all chose for me to watch to honor the passing of the great Michael J. Pollard.  After all, it is Christmas time, and this was arguably the biggest title of the four I posted on the poll.  I think it also has a rep as being something of a modern Yuletide classic alongside A Christmas Story.

I saw this during the film's initial run at a theater on Long Island, and haven't watched it since.  Revisiting it after over thirty years, I am now really worried.

I'm beginning to worry that, unlike the others of my generation, I've allowed my sense of humor to wander into a territory where it doesn't find the things funny it thought was funny back in the 80's.

I think I don't have to go too much into the plot; one of the reasons Dicken's A Christmas Carol is such an evergreen is because it's easily 'reskinned' to adapt to whatever time frame/style/milieu the adapter wants it to be.  In this case, our Scrooge is Frank Cross (Bill Murray), the president of a television network who is spearheading an...ambitious Christmas Eve night of programming.  The crown jewel of this night is a live broadcast of a...liberal adaptation of the Dickens classic, called Scrooge and featuring Buddy Hackett, the Solid Gold Dancers and Mary Lou Retton.  However, on this Christmas Eve he is visited by his old boss (John Forsythe) who has arranged for three ghosts to visit him in the hopes of getting Frank to change his bah-humbugging ways...and maybe reunite him with the estranged love of his life, Claire (a luminous Karen Allen).  Cue the modernized window dressing!

Apparently the script for this film had existed for two years prior to being made and was extensively rewritten by Murray, Mitch Glazer and the great Michael O'Donoghue.  For those of you who don't know who O'Donoghue was, he was a National Lampoon alum responsible for some of the most delightfully vicious stuff on the earliest seasons of Saturday Night Live.  The best moments during this rewatch--the moments where I felt the sense of fun I felt in that movie theater in Long Island--were the ones where I could see O'Donoghue's black-as-pitch cynicism poking through like a compound fracture.  When those moments meld with the admittedly great special effects, it is magic.  I would like to have seen the Scrooged where Donoghue and Glazer was given free reign, as I suspect that is the movie that lived in my mind for the last three decades....

...but those moments are submerged by the insistence that Dis Be A Holiday Movie, Damnit, and that other impulse hobbles the film.  Supposedly Murray and Donner was at loggerheads throughout production, and I can almost see it.  It is obvious that Donner won many of the fights, judging from the way the treacle seeps through.  It's also obvious by the way Murray is kind of walking his way through most of this (Don't blame your four year sabbatical, Bill; I know when you're not trying).  I got no sense of Frank being a being that lives and breathes outside of this movie--this is him doing what he thinks the director wants him to do.  And this sort of lazy acting permeates a lot of the characters, to the point where Bobcat Goldthwaite's Loudermilk is based pretty much entirely on his stand-up persona.   And there is so much run time taken up by stuff like the obvious Tiny Tim analog and his mother (played by a young Alfre Woodard) or the going ons at Claire's outreach center that keeps reminding us this is ultimately supposed to be a sentimental thing.  Sometimes those sequences go a little too far, like when Frank is transported by Carol Kane’s Ghost of Christmas Present (whose sadism I did not find funny, even in 1989) to see the corpse of Pollard’s Herman; it’s at those points where the puppet strings being pulled is right out there in the open.  Donner keeps pulling us toward that final moment where everyone is singing ‘Put A Little Love In Your Heart,' and no amount of cynicism is going to stop him.

So, yeah...I did not get on with this film as I thought I was going to, and I think it’s because I have become a different person with age.  I wonder if this is a film that can hit a viewer as hilarious at the right age and I’m not that viewer any more.  I’m loathe to recommend or not recommend this as I suspect I am not the audience anymore and I don’t want to seem to be throwing shade at the people who are in that audience. So I’ll just say...not for me.

If you enjoy my journey through my cinematic past, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi.

THE SIXTH LABOR OF HALLMARK: A Godwink Christmas (2018)

I know, I know.  I took a break.  But since Hannukah started on Sunday and goes eight nights, I can still wrap this up during the Holiday season.

...and after the goofiness of Santa’s Summer House, we’re back to the Kabuki-esque shores of Hallmark Hell.  This one was picked out by Alonso Duralde, and, well, it’s not much different from the other four films I watched from Hallmark.  Granted, I have to give it credit for having the person gaslighting our heroine, Paula (Kimberly Sustad, who is the most Lauren Graham-y a person can be without actually being Lauren Graham), actually admit to doing it.

Paula works for an auction house in St. Louis and is seeing a Businessman Who Loves Business--okay, he’s an assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri, but he otherwise behaves just like a BWLB--who proposes just before she heads off to a weekend with her aunt Jane (Kathie Lee Gifford).  Cue a series of...comedic misunderstanding and coincidences that leads Paula into the arms of inn keeper and Official Hunky Hunk O’ Destiny Gary (Paul Campbell, who looks disturbingly like Joel McHale with Christian Slater’s facial features grafted to his face)...with a little gaslighting from Jane and Gary’s assistant Dorothy (Dolores Drake).

I fear that a sort of malaise is setting in with me, as these films are beginning to blend together.  I refer to these stories as ‘kabuki-like’ and I’m not joking; there are certain things that happen like clockwork in the scripts that I could set my watch to them.  There’s a weird staidness and chasteness to the films--the most romantic these things get up to is that last-minute kiss between our protagonists in the third act.  There’s dialogue that is more expositional than anything else, and ‘banter’ that seems like it should be light and funny, but really come off as stilted.

What bothers me the most, especially in the case of this film, is the presumed Predestination of the plot.  While there is an attempt at a conflict in a last minute appearance of the Businessman Who Loves Business at the aunt’s home for a surprise visit, there is no pretense that Paula is conflicted.  I will freely admit to laughing at the moment when Paula tearily tells Gary, “I should have told you when we first met...but I’m in a relationship,” as it felt at turns both manipulative and inconsequential.  Hell, these two are meant to be together, the movie seems to say; look at how furiously God is winking at them!

As I was live-tweeting this film, some of my tweets were liked by Squire Rushnell, the author of the books (supposedly based on true stories; we see the real Paula and Gary at the very end of the film) this film and its sequels were based on.  I don’t think he understood what I was saying in those tweets.  He seems like a lovely person who truly believes in what he’s writing, but I don’t think he realizes how unsettling this film can be.  With its bare bones characterization, its plot on rails and its fetishization of the trappings of a certain holiday, it’s kind of off-putting.  It’s barely a story; it’s a dramatized ritual.  I do respect that, unlike previous films in The Labors, there is more than lip service paid to the religious aspects of Christmas....but I think I would respect it more if it leaned into it instead of dancing around it.

This is not as bad as Christmas Connection or A Shoe Addict’s Christmas*, but it’s still dwelling there at the bottom of Christmas sludge like the others. 

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William Bibbiani's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

I’m beginning to despair at the saminess of all these films.  I think I need something...unusual.  Which is why I invite you to join me next time for A Christmas Melody.  Yes, this is another Lacey Charbet joint....but it co-stars and was directed by Mariah Carey, so this might be weirder than normal!

*-I should mention that My Nemesis Candace Cameron Bure shows up in a tag claiming she loves watching ‘heart-warming movies like this.’  The warmth of these movies is...negligible at best.

If Everybody’s Doing, Why Can’t We: A Little Lump Of Coal From Me To You

Yes, I am a Grinch.

Yes, I still owe you Seven Labors of Hallmark.

But I had to do something for my Patreons for the holiday.

So if you are a Domicile of Dread or Dread Media Patreon, you are going to get a link to a personally selected bundle of Christmas not-quite-cheer called A Crumudgeon’s Christmas.  This includes some of my favorite holiday songs, a number of audio dramas from the Golden Age of Radio, a Christmas themed episode of one of my favorite things of all time, The Goon Show...and one of my all time favorite episodes of the podcast I did with the esteemed Derrick Ferguson, Better In The Dark, where a discussion of some existential car movies ended up in a tangent where Derrick and I debated the charms of certain Christmas songs.

This package will be available for the next few days.  Anyone who signs up at the Patreon or makes a one time donation at Ko-Fi  will receive the link to this special curated collection of curiosities and surprises.

Enjoy the Holiday O’ Your Choice, People!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#643

It’s that time of the season, and Des and I are celebrating...in style?  First up, we get a lovely gift with Tibor Tackis’ follow-up to The Gate featuring the woefully underrated Jenny Wright (Expect a lot of squidging from me.  She’s luuuuuuurvely), 1989's I, Madman...that we discovered, to our surprise, is a Christmas film. Then I get a big ol’ lump of coal from a director I have defended in the past, 2018‘s Secret Santa.

The trailers are below, as is a radio interview with the divine Ms. Wright from 2015, an essay about making a Nuclear Hot Phone for a Secret Santa, and music from The Mummies, Manafest...oh, and Gus.

Listen to Dread Media #643 here

THE FIFTH LABOR OF HALLMARK: Santa’s Summer House (2012)

I want to emphasize that I recognize that this is a bad film.

It’s going to sound like I liked it a lot, but it is ineptly done and badly acted (for the most part) and, as a David DeCoteau* film, has several sequences that are....meandering and pointless.

But compared to the last four films?  I can’t deny I had fun with it.

A group of travelers get lost in a fog bank and end up at the house from A Talking Cat? run by Nana (Cynthia Fucking Rothrock!) and Pops (Chris Fucking Mitchum!).  As the holiday resort this sextet was heading for was overbooked, they are invited to stay at the ‘old’ couple’s home.  During the course of a weekend, the six people--four Business People Who Love Business, the son of two of them and the sister of one of the others--learn that a) Pop and Nana are actually Santa and Mrs. Claus, b) there are valuable lessons to be learned about loving and trusting each other, and c) the rules of croquet.

No, seriously.  Roughly fifteen minutes of this film is composed of the cast (which, in addition to Rothrock and Mitchum, includes Gary Daniels and Jessica Morris, who should really just give Cybill Shepherd her act back) playing croquet.  Nothing else, just a bunch of guys knocking balls through hoops.

This is really amateurish stuff, and it doesn’t help that for the most part the cast is as expressive and nuanced as that side of meat that Rocky practiced on back in the 70's.  However, the few members who do show expression and nuance do their damndest to have fun with the role--especially Rothrock.  I swear, every time Rothrock speaks, it’s like the film brightens for a few seconds.  She, and Mitchum, have the right idea...namely, lean into it and just enjoy yourself.

That’s not to say this film is without the creepiness of my previous labors.  In this case, it’s primarily provided by the...questionable decor of the house.  There’s one statue in particular that has a positively Lovecraftian horror where it’s genitalia should be and red stilleto heels that icked me something fierce every time a character passed by it...and it made it even scarier when you realized that it was positioned in such a way that everybody eating in the dining room could see it.  These weird pieces placed about the room amidst some cheap-ass props (the photoshopped pictures of the Clauses on vacation and Santa's ‘letter file’ which is composed of a plastic household organizer you can find at Dollar Tree for twenty bucks decorated with wrapping paper and bows) gave it an uncomfortable mis-en-scene throughout.

The fact of the matter is that, as bad as it was, there’s some...warmth...that’s missing from the Christmas Recruitment Propaganda I’ve been watching these past few days.  I found myself laughing several times--sometimes, admittedly, at the film--and didn’t feel the sort of annoyance I felt watching A Shoe Addict’s Christmas or Christmas Connection.  Okay, I will admit that at one point I wished ninjas would break into the house so Mrs. Claus could kick all the asses, but that was more of a ‘you know what’d make this film perfect’ sort of wish.

(By the way...I will once again state that I am shocked that y’all didn’t know how awesome Cynthia Rothrock is until recently.  I remember seeing her in Righting Wrongs back in the early 90‘s on a Hong Kong bootleg and just falling in love with her skill, personality and kick-assedness.  Seeing her and Michelle Yeoh back during my deep exploration of Hong Kong films may be the reason I actually prefer female-led action movies!)

I think this is the first time since starting the labors I was enjoying myself...and that has to count for something.  I’m not going to recommend it, but I won’t have nightmares about it.

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William Bibbiani's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

Tomorrow I return to the darkness with one of the first things Hallmark Christmas Consultant Alonso Duralde named.  You wanna know how dark this Sixth Labor is?  Kathie Lee Gifford is in.  Even the title makes it sound unappetizing.  Are you ready for A Godwink Christmas?

*-Mary Crawford my rosy red rear end!

THE FOURTH LABOR OF HALLMARK: Christmas Connection (2017)

This labor....was terrifying.

I mean, I’ve made reference to the fact that gaslighting seems to be a common possible interpretation of Hallmark Movies.  There is an element of our heroine being manipulated into falling for the Hunky Hunk O’ Destiny in all the films I’ve examined.  But in this film, poor Brooke Burns is pressganged into being the Mother Figure for some weird family that only allows for Traditional Christmas Worship...and if you want to celebrate Christmas in other ways, like travelling the globe to experience Christmas Traditions in other countries, that’s Too Damn Bad.  Unlike with the previous Labors, Burns’ Sydney is not unsettled or restless...but that doesn’t stop Jonathan’s family of wacky eccentrics in forcing her onto Jonathan.

Sydney, you see, is a flight attendant who is accompanying Jonathan’s daughter Leah (Sophie Neudorf) to Chicago from a visit with her grandparents.  Jonathan (Tom Everett Scott, who seems a bit out of place here) is a newspaper columnist who writes heartwarming human interest stories...and he sees a story in Sydney, who was born here in The Windy City but lost her parents when she was very young.  He offers to help her find out where her parents met while she waits for an open seat to Bali.  And in searching for that story, Jonathan and his family brainwash her through frequent Traditional Christmas Rituals to the point where she gives up her dream job in Rome to become Leah’s New StepMom.

This one actively disturbed me because Sydney seems to literally have no free will whatsoever...and that so much of the backstory--which previous films could not shut up about--is unsaid.  I was particularly worried that at no time are we told anything about Jonathan’s ex-wife...except, of course, that she’s dead.  I like to think she was sacrificed by the family when she expressed, I don’t know, a desire to do something other than drink cocoa and decorate Christmas trees.  The family members have no characterization; hell, the majority of them have no lines that don’t specifically refer to them telling Jonathan how Perfect Sydney is.

This film really made me uncomfortable.  I certainly understand what my Hallmark Christmas Consultant William Bibbiani said about this being a cult-like experience.  It really would not take much tweaking to make this into some indie-darling horror film that would end with, I dunno, Sydney helping the family stuff Uncle Arthur into a giant plum pudding or something as a final initiation.  It’s funny, because it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen so far...but if given a choice between watching this or A Shoe Addict’s Christmas again, I’ll gladly do battle once more with my nemesis Candace Cameron Burr.

There’s other things I could talk about--this is the first film on my journey where I saw no people of color--but I think the best thing to do is to just step away from this creepy-ass artifact and never speak of it again.

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William Bibbiani's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

I feel I need something less...disturbing for tomorrow’s Labor.  So how about we take a visit to the place Santa hangs out when he’s not gearing up for his worldwide distribution trip?  Join me and Cynthia Rothrock (I still can’t believe you folks are only just now discovering her; I was grooving on her martial arts prowess back in the late 80‘s) as we take a tour of Santa’s Summer House!

THE THIRD LABOR OF HALLMARK: A Shoe Addict's Christmas (2018)

I think I have found my nemesis, and her name is Candance Cameron Bure.

Quentin Tarantino's favorite Christmas movie

Bure is another of the Queens of Hallmark--she was apparently the hostess of the night this film was premiered on--and throughout this repellent thing, I was wondering why she annoyed me so much.  And I realized that, much like Lacey Charbet's appropriation of Anna Kendrick, Bure is stealing her act whole from equal parts Anna Farris and Mindy Kaling....only without either woman's energy, physicality, nuance or personality.  You never get an impression that Bure is anything other than an actress who's Trying Too Hard to be Upbeat and Perky and Clever.  It is as if there's Dennis Hopper from Speed just offscreen with a gun pointed to Happy the Dog's* head, ready to shoot the poor animal if that forced, rictusy smile lags.

Bure plays Noelle Carpenter--do you have to be that on the nose, Hallmark?  Why not call her 'Merry Yulelog' or something?--who gave up her photography career three years ago when her boyfriend dumped her.  She's now working as a HR Associate (?) at Fulton's Department Store in The Big City (I think it's supposed to be Chicago, but you would not know it) and is organizing this year's Christmas Gala for the local firehouse. She also likes shoes.  A lot.  While doing a favor for her boss, Noelle gets locked in the department store during a blizzard--and comes across Charlie (Jean Smart), a woman who, we find out very early, is an angel.

What follows is a weird, garbled Frankenstein's Monster pieced together from someone's third-hand recollection of what A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life was about.  Charlie takes Noelle into the past and alternative futures--only with shoes instead of ghosts--all with the purpose of bringing her together with Jake (Luke MacFarlane), the Hunky Hunk O' Destiny who works in the firehouse that is benefiting from the gala.  There's 'comedic' bantering, that third act complication that seems to bubble up because we need some form of complication, some gaslighting of our heroine, a prefunctionary Person of Color who is Noelle's best friend and a climax that has Noelle in a red dress round out the proceedings.

Now that I'm three days in, I'm struck with the Kabukiesque ritual of the Hallmark Christmas movie.  While this one, like Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe, doesn't indulge in heavy handed Christmas porn (although there is an emphasis on Christmas Cookies that freaked me out), I am beginning to see the essential elements that make up the Hallmark Formulae.  These elements, like the Snowball Fight Outside The House, seem to slot into the plots at exactly the same moments as if our (assumed) 'Aaaahs' are codified responses to the movie's calls.  When you get something that codified, you're relying on the charisma and chemistry between our characters and while I may admit I felt Noelle and Luke deserved each other, it had more to do with wanting to punch the both of them in the face than with romance.

Sadly, I cannot provide a photo of Bure in a shapeless grey sweater that ties around the waist that may be the most distracting thing in the film.  If the costume designer was given the instruction to make Bure look absolutely unpleasant, then he or she did their job.

Even though Christmas at Graceland is more badly made, this is a worst movie experience.  The forced nature of the plot and the insect-buzzing annoyance of our heroine wore on me within a matter of minutes.  There is no saving grace here, just someone yelling right into our face 'Christmas!  It's awesome!  It brings love!'

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William Bibbiani's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

Tomorrow's labor is the first thing my Christmas Advisory Council named when I asked for The Worst Hallmark Christmas Movie.  Join flight attendant Brooke Burns, Tom Everett 'I Used To Be Someone' Scott and a precocious eight-year old in a film William told me he expected to climax like The Wicker Man, Christmas Connection!

*--I'm not sure, but I think Happy The Dog is the Hallmark Holiday Mascot.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#642

Let's get ready to Ruuuuuuuuuumble!  This week the theme is 'wrestling horror,' as Des and Darryll hit the road for a Roadkill Review of the documentary Nail In The Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro.  Then I travel to Pennsylvania for a film starring Pittsburgh's own Olympian Kurt Angle looking like he was smacked with a 2x4, 2011's River of Darkness.  And to wrap it up, Des gives us a Dread Media Top 5 Wrestling Documentaries!

The trailers are below, as are an essay on horror-themed wrestlers, a discussion of 2013's infamous Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies (at least it does what it says on the tin), and music from Blind Fool Love and The WWF Wrestlers!

Listen to Dread Media #642 here

THE SECOND LABOR OF HALLMARK: Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe (2018)

The good news is this was better than last night's labor.  It has some of the things I expect in a movie: a definable character arc for our heroine, a bit of forward momentum, some lines of dialogue that actually don't feel like we're having backstory forced upon us.  It also has Lacey Charbet, one of what my esteemed friend and half of my Official Hallmark Advisory Council William Bibbiani call 'The Queens of Hallmark,' who has acting experience and some charisma.

...the kind of charisma, in fact, that I could not stop thinking of how this was Anna Kendrick's future if she acts carelessly.  If I did not know better, I'd swear Charbet was consciously doing a Kendrick imitation in an effort to conceal the creepiness of this particular Hallmark Hell.

Because make no bones about it--there is still plenty of creepy to go around.  I was particularly aware of how, for the first half of this film, the only people who are noticeably People of Color are clearly made The Bad Guys (They have to be bad guys; they're Business People Who Care Only About Business).  Just like in Christmas at Graceland, I got a definite sense that someone was gaslighting Charbet's Darcy--in this case, her mother and best friend Kaylee--about twenty minutes in.  And there's a weird cleanliness to the film, not only to 'Permberly, Ohio' (played by Pembroke, Ontario, Canada) but in the opening scenes supposedly set in New York City*, that gives the film a strange unreality.  I do feel there are actors chosen here not for their talents but for the quirky thing they're capable of doing.  It's the only way I can explain the presence of Anna Hardwick, who's only purpose in this story is to show up just when Charbet and her Hunky Hunk O' Destiny, Brendan Penny, are underneath some mistletoe, smirk and urge them forward on  their Destined Path Of Holiday Happiness.

The thing that really annoyed me is how the film took its sweet time meandering around until we're stuck in the last act and writer Nina Weinman suddenly forces a crisis between our two destined lovers.  There's no reason for this character who was set up within the first five minutes as Darcy's ex to profess his love until the last minute in such a way that the Hunky Hunk O' Destiny can misinterpret the scene except that we need that little bit of artificial anxiety.

Thankfully, there's a lot less Christmas Porn than the previous film....but there are some scenes that are scarily identical to ones in Christmas at Graceland.  The Playful Snowball Fight in front of the house between our two leads specifically made me feel like I'm stuck in repeat.

This is better than Christmas at Graceland, but I don't think it's particularly good.  If you remove Charbet and put some other actress in the role of Darcy, I think this would've been a disaster.

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon  and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso Duralde's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas!

Tomorrow's Labor features another Queen of Hallmark, Candace Cameron Bure, as she is trapped in a department store after hours on Christmas Eve with her Guardian Angel.  Sadly, I suspect there will not be the kind of mayhem that usually results from this scenario in A Shoe Addict's Christmas!

*--The biggest annoyance?  Watching Charbet walk pass a downtown subway station entrance marked 'Stone Street' where you can catch the P,I, 14, 15, and 16 train.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no Stone Street in downtown Manhattan, and none of those trains exist.  If you're going to associate my city with Business People Who Care Only About Business, show some respect for its geography!

THE FIRST LABOR OF HALLMARK: Christmas at Graceland (2018)

*deep breath*....make a promise, keep a promise.

You know, when I got together with my Hallmark consultants William Bibbiani and Alonso Duralde, the two of them had differing opinions on what constituted the worst of the Hallmark Christmas movies...but they both agreed that the worst actress in Hallmark history was one Kellie Pickler.

Considering she acts like a deer in
the headlights, this is appropriate.

I remember seeing Pickler on a season of American Idol (I used to watch the auditions for entertainment value, then bow out once they moved to Hollywood), and she seemed like a decent, charismatic young lady.  I wondered why these two men I respected disliked her so much.

And then I saw this film.  It seems Kellie Pickler only has one real acting style: be Southern and open your eyes wide whenever you want to emphasize something.  I just could not buy her character as she regurgitated loads of expository dialogue that seems more like Cliff Notes than actual lines of speech.  Her emotions seem creepily forced, as if she is being held at gunpoint in an effort to keep her cheerfulness up.  She has no real purchase in her story, as this is one of these movies where the star is there to be acted upon as opposed to acting....

...but then, I don't think people watch this for things such as story and characterization.  My overall impression--aside from the fact that Wes Brown's Clay had orchestrated all this so he could gaslight Pickler's Laurel into moving back to Memphis--was that this serves the same purpose as porn.  Laurel's journey, weak as it is, is secondary to us watching the characters make Christmas Krispies or Pine Cone Elves or Christmas Plates.  Those sequences are shot in this lush, glamorous way that makes whatever else is going on Inconsequential.  This, I think, is why people watch this, which is why the script is so lacking in nuance and wit.  The actual details of the story is inconsequential....what's important is the Beauty Shot of Pickler, her daughter and her friends making Snow Angels.

The other thing I noticed is that, for a Christmas RomCom...I think this counts as a RomCom...it's shockingly without romance.  Pickler and Brown don't kiss until the very end, and their interaction up until then is restricted to some chaste hand holding.

This was brutal...made all the more brutal when I realize there's two sequels to this poo, both directed by the actor who directed this one, Eric Close.  There's no there there unless you like to see other people luxuriate in Christmas Porn.  I wanted to tap out after a couple of minutes, and couldn't go five minutes without rolling my eyes and trying not to think that I have eleven more trips into this specifically fetishized world.  I just hope I will be able to be eloquent through this ordeal.

If you enjoy my journey through Hallmark Hell, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.  If you'd rather not make a monthly commitment, please consider making a one shot donation through Ko-Fi. Please also visit William's great podcast network Critically Acclaimed, and buy Alonso's definitive book on Christmas movies, Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas

Tomorrow's Labor features one of the Queens of Hallmark, Lacey Chabert, as a Business Woman Who's All About Business (I never understood what that means until I watched this movie, William) who travels to her hometown for a charity event only to reunite with her high school rival....who happens to be hunky.  Oh, and she's named Darcy to make a Jane Austen reference pertinent.  It's Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe, wittily swarming your way tomorrow!

MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC: Being Santa

This was supposed to be all about The Dollyrots.

You see, even though Kelly and Luis formed the Dollyrots during the administration of H.W., I became acquainted with them about two years ago.  Their cheerfully agressive form of what I like to call 'power pop punk' really helped me through a traumatic year, and being in touch with them via Twitter--maybe the first celebrities I communicated with on that social medium--elevated my mood as I navigated some real horror.

Perhaps their biggest hit is 'Because I'm Awesome,' an ode to self-confidence that is as peppy and uplifting as anything on the pop scene (hell, I'd say it aces out that Lego Movie song something fierce).  With crunchy guitar riffs and Kelly's growly vocals, it never fails to elevate my spirits.  Hell, most of their work does so.

...and Kelly and Luis love them some Christmas.  But usually, amidst all the baking of homemade brownies (made available to fans), they have made a tradition of releasing a Christmas single every year.  It's usually a typically pop-punked-up cover of a Christmas fave...but for 2012, they decided to adapt 'Because I'm Awesome' for the Yuletide...and it is glorious.

Not only is it glorious, it is available on a name-you-price through Bandcamp as part of their Mini-Christmas Album, which includes a bunch of covers and such interesting originals as 'I Saw Mommy Biting Santa Claus.'

I'm a sucker for POV songs--there's a reason two of my favorite Bond themes are those that are written explicitly from a character's POV (Chris Cornell's 'You Know My Name' and Garbage's 'The World Is Not Enough')--and there's something joyous and...for a moments...kinda creepy about Kelly's voyage inside Santa's mind.  And it retains the original song's earwormy nature.  It's not just a rocking song, it's one that celebrates Christmas' biggest brand without appearing saccharine.

(Incidentally, this year's Christmas single is a cover of my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time, 'Fairytale of New York,' which is also available on a name-your-price basis.

Now this would have been enough if I just put that wonderful piece of work here and walked away.  But I stumbled across this when I went looking for a video to accompany the Dollyrots song....

This is Psychostick's 'Zombie Santa,' a Yuletided up version of Rob Zombie's Dragula (a song I used to shred on when I was doing karaoke shows).  These Chicago-by-way-of-Tempe boys take the same tack as the Dollyrots--giving Santa an 'I am' song--and ratchets up the creep factor.  We're not even halfway through the number when our metalled-out Santa is boasting of being a dictator abusing his slave labor force.  And those little additions make some of the boilerplate admissions come across as skeevy--not just that 'sees you when you're sleeping/knows when you're awake' thing, but the simple 'have you been a good/bad girl/boy this year?' kinda sounds like this Santa isn't asking about whether you helped old ladies across the street and ate all your vegetables.

I love both of these songs.  They take the same idea--adapt an already extant song to be a Santa Claus POV--but go in different directions.  And they both manage to make you pause when considering that 'Jolly Ol' Elf.'

The Domicile Needs A Christmas Miracle!  Recent events have demanded that the Domicile's laptop be upgraded...and we need your help.  Please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon Page, which will net you exclusive essays, podcasts, movie commentaries and even the chance to assign me articles that'll be published on this very blog depending on the level you sign up for!  If you can't commit to a monthly contribution, consider a one-time tip by buying me a Ko-Fi.  Every little bit helps!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#641

It's time for an episode that's just Des and some guys reviewing some prize winning films!

No, not those kind of prizes.

Join him, Adam, Jeff and Scott as they take a look at 2011's winner of the Grindhouse Trailer Competition Hobo With A Shotgun and 2005's  winner of the horror-themed season of Project Greenlight, Feast!

The trailers are below, as are some other trailers associated with Grindhouse (subtitled for some reason), a clip from Project Greenlight where Feast director John Gulager sits down with Wes Craven, and music from Nico Vega (in a video Gulager acts in!) and Grindhouse (hope you like man boobs!)

Listen to Dread Media #641 here

MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC: Father Christmas by The Kinks

If you ask me ‘Beatles or The Stones?,’ I’ll invariably respond ‘The Kinks.’

Ray Davies and his band were in the trenches during the British Invasion, but they were...odd.  I don’t think anyone simultaneously hated and loved the national image of his nation as much as Ray; when he wasn’t sneering at the typical British Gentleman in ‘Well-Respected Man,’ he was decrying the disappearance of Iconic Britain in ‘The Village Green Preservation Society.’  He seemed torn between wanting some utopian ideal of his country and advocating for tearing it down....

Which is why ‘Father Christmas’ is such a great Kinks song.  In it, Ray recounts his fondness for Christmas in the old days, and contrasts that with a more recent memory, where he was mugged while playing Santa Claus outside a department store.  The muggers are what I think my good friends Andrew Leyland and Jim Moon would charitably call 'chavs,' and are certainly the chatty sort about their lot in life and what they really need to prosper.  So we get both sides of Ray's conflicted view of his native land--a harsh political polemic and wishes that we be mindful while drinking our wine.

The song is also near timeless...if it wasn't for that damn reference to 'a Steve Austin outfit.'  That is kind of jarring.  But because of the narrative, it's fairly evergreen....Hell, we're at a point where the economic divide between rich and poor is just as great as it was in the 70's when this song was written.  And there's something timeless about the rather insistent (and catchy) drum fills contrasted with those jingle bells.  This is not sugary sentiment; Ray is painting us a picture of how the real world is as we're lost in holiday fantasy land and is trying to pull us back just a little bit.

So enjoy some social commentary from the band that should've been namechecked in the same breath as The Big Two.

The Domicile Needs A Christmas Miracle!  Recent events have demanded that the Domicile's laptop be upgraded...and we need your help.  Please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon, which will net you exclusive essays, podcasts, movie commentaries and even the chance to assign me articles that'll be published on this very blog depending on the level you sign up for!  If you can't commit to a monthly contribution, consider a one-time tip by buying me a Ko-Fi.  Every little bit helps!

If Everybody’s Doing, Why Can’t We: The Debut of A Special Giveaway, Ko-Fi and...The Twelve Labors of Hallmark!

I'm going to be hawking a few things here, and I'm going to be hawking them hard.  You see, on Friday--moments before I was about to conduct a Livestream on Facebook updating y'all on what I've got going on this December--the Asus Laptop I have used for almost a decade to bring you all the creative musings and efforts that bleed out of my fervid brain (ick!) just stopped working.  As of this writing, turning it on only prompts the lights in front to go on; there's no sound of anything working like it used to, just silence and four mocking green glows.

Luckily, I decided to hold onto Wonderbox The Iron Horse Toshiba laptop when my mother was planning on turning in our unused electronics for recycling.  This thing has literally been kicking around since the turn of the millenium (to give you an idea of how aged it is, it operates on Microsoft Vista!) and, even though it is slow as hell, it still works at a reasonable pace.  This is what I'm using until the Asus comes back to life...but there is the very real chance that the Asus is truly dead.  That means I'm going to need a new laptop if I am to continue my efforts to illuminate, inform and entertain you.

So there's several things I am going to do.  First up, I've set up a Ko-Fi Account.  This is for you folks who might want to support me but don't want to commit to a monthly donation.  Just head on over here and throw me a few bucks...

Secondly, I've got a special giveaway to encourage you to join the Patreon at the $7 level or higher.  The $7 level (The Domicile of Commentaries) nets you any writings on my Patreon like my review last month of Greg Lamberson's new film Widow's Point and the ongoing serial Liberty*, advance access to the TV podcast Thomas Deja's Watching, two Patreon Exclusive Podcasts (Cinematic Mirage: The Theater of Movies That Don't Exist and Pacific Rim Rialto), any special gift I devise for my followers like the upcoming audio chapbook recorded for Halloween Wings of Fame, and quarterly movie commentaries.  The next two people who sign up for this level will also get a softcover copy of The Best of bare bones, a collection of essays, articles and interviews that originally appeared in the magazine that rose from the ashes of The Scream Factory.  I'm represented in this book by an interview with detective novelist Richard Prather--if you aren't aware of Prather or his series character Shell Scott, you need to get acquainted with his work!--and an overview of George S. Chesbro's sci-fi/detective/spy thriller mash-up Mongo.  I will gladly personalize it for you, and it's yours for free if you sign up this month.

The final one is one I've been teasing for a few days now.  And now, thanks to Chris Honeywell, who lives to creep out people, I even have a banner for it:

I'm striving to keep alternative universes of Kelli Pickler from colliding!

So what are The Twelve Labors of Hallmark?

I know you enjoy seeing me suffer.  You know I loathe Christmas; hell, I spend the holidays trying to get Jólakötturinn The Yule Cat the attention she deserves.  So, to encourage you to donate either through Patreon and Ko-Fi, I am going to subject myself to twelve examples of the absolute worst Hallmark or Hallmark-adjacent (you know...ABC Family/Freeform and the like) Christmas movies starting December 14th and running through Christmas Day.

To make sure I am subjecting myself to an actual cesspool of Sugar Sweet, Misguided Yuletide Yuck, I have the list curated by two men who know Hallmark Christmases: Critically Acclaimed Network  maven William Bibbiani and noted writer and editor Alonso Duralde.  You know a bit about William, but Alonso is the writer of Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas, the definitive tome on the subject.  They've come up with a gauntlet that would give even the most enthusiastic fan the worst douche chills...and I am going to go through it for your entertainment.

All I ask is that you please donate to keeping the Domicile afloat by either becoming a Patreon** (which will net you cool stuff) or dropping a few dollars into my Ko-Fi cup.

So please...I need to get this thing upgraded if I am to continue entertaining you.  I am not asking for a handout--I am making myself suffer for your amusement, and if you join the Patreon you're getting new, cool stuff made just for you--but I am asking for your help.  I like to think y'all are kind, compassionate people who just happen to enjoy making my cry on special occasions.  I am determined to continue my quest to make the world stranger into 2020 and beyond...hopefully, you'll come along for the ride.

*--The almost complete second segment of Liberty is trapped in the hard drive of the sick-maybe-dead Asus...so I have to start from scratch.  Expect the next segment shortly after the new year.

**--and, if you have a little left over in your monthly budget, may I suggest joining the Critically Acclaimed Network Patreon?