Day 14. Tokyo Godfathers

Tokyo Godfathers (2003) is basically Three Men and a Baby, except it's an animated movie from Japan. And the three men are homeless. Also, they're not all men. 

Look, I'm just trying to find a contemporary point of comparison. 

It's probably a lot closer to John Ford's 1948 3 Godfathers, but all of this ignores that, as far as I'm aware, Tokyo Godfathers is the only animated Christmas motion picture about homelessness. Except Hobo With a Shotgun. Which wasn't animated or set at Christmas. 

On Christmas Eve, alcoholic "old man" Gin (he's forty-something), transvestite Hana, and teenage girl Miyuki find an abandoned baby while scavenging through the trash. The three have formed a dysfunctional family of sorts on the city streets, and the baby dredges up feelings in them all, of their own abandonment, or of the wrong turns made, that led them here.

Tokyo Godfathers becomes an allegorical quest of sorts, where the Three Wise Men bear the gift of baby Jesus himself as a good luck omen on the trek to finding its parents. The movie is most successful in capturing nighttime Tokyo distinctively from its usual portrayal as a multi-million dollar electrical bill neon metropolis. This trio live in dimly lit back alleys behind brown and concrete slabs. It's another Christmas movie where festive cheer seems always just out of the characters' reach, and they find, in themselves, in each other, and the infant, a reason to continue.

The movie seems so good as a concept that it's frustrating how it never fully coheres. The tone is frequently loud and screechy, when it demands to be somber and poignant. The comedy is broad and easy, when it could be dry and truthful. Directors Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress) and Shogo Furuya work in some nice moments throughout, particularly in dealing with the pain and confrontation of the trio's past, but it's lazy how the story's progression is forced through a series of Christmas miracles. 

Tokyo Godfathers and The Meaning of Christmas

The major holiday standard in this film is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," which is used in Die Hard. Tokyo Godfathers occasionally becomes an action movie, because it suffers an identity crisis. In its heart, it's about family. Everyone needs one, at least of some type.

Day 13. Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) is often thought of as a Christmas movie, though it's pretty evenly divided over the course of a year.  Snowmen, carols, and decorated trees are just the elements most likely to linger. The film's final quarter did after all introduce the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." To many who haven't seen Meet Me in St. Louis (and I only saw it for the first time), the tune's origin may not be known, so give due respect. It isn't like "Hot Chocolate" from The Polar Express is being sung door-to-door by church groups or covered on Bob Dylan albums. 

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is sung by a heart-troubled Esther Smith (Judy Garland) to her distressed, somewhat demonic younger sister "Tootie" (Margaret O'Brien) on Christmas Eve, as the two sit on a bedroom windowsill of the house in the city they're unhappy to leave. The moment of one sister attempting to force optimism upon the other, through sentiment she's unsure she feels herself, expresses the classic movie musical's approach to the holiday better than any other. Christmas is a beginning and an end, a time of magic and rebirth, where all becomes possible even when it feels awful. It's of note that the initially penned lyric was, "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas / It may be your last." It was Garland, whose house once landed upon and crushed The Wicked Witch of the East, who would not approve such morbid words.

Meet Me in St. Louis functions as a Christmas movie, because it places it where it belongs, as the spiritual endpoint of a calendar year. Director Vincente Minnelli's moves Sally Benson's written memoir through the seasons of 1903, in painterly Technicolor and with a vibrant humour toward traditions of family, mischief and courtship. 

This is an era where the most important thing a young person can do is to prove themselves a "grown up," which in Esther's case is repeatedly thwarted by unrepressed and still pleasurable immaturity.The pressure of these social dynamics (if you're not married by the time you're twenty, you may as well kill yourself) is handled with both scorn and comic affection. 

Meet Me in St. Louis and The Meaning of Christmas

It would be easy to read Meet Me in St. Louis' final message as an affirmation of the status quo: do not seek change, because everything in your backyard is good enough. On the other hand, we probably should quit ignoring the good stuff in our backyards once in a while. 

Christmas isn't the only festive tradition covered in Meet Me in St. Louis. Both John Carpenter and Clive Barker have cited this film's Halloween sequence as a major influence on their work. 

Day 12. The Muppet Christmas Carol

By 1992, the Muppet Empire was going through a state of recession. Creator Jim Henson had died two years earlier, and I, of the X/Y-cusp Nintendo Generation, having grown up on TV and library screenings of the initial immortal Muppet trilogy (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan), did not feel the need to return to those characters as a pre-teen. It wouldn't be until the '00s that people my age would become hopelessly obsessed with childhood nostalgia, making 2011's The Muppets a must-see event. 

The Muppet Christmas Carol, which barely dented the '92 holiday family film market next to Home Alone 2 and Disney's other big release Aladdin, has acquired a fan base over the years. Though it's another adaptation of Charles Dickens' yuletide standard, it does at least one interesting thing. The movie adds an imaginative boundary for the audience, who is used to pretending actors they know are in fact different characters on screen. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, voice actors play Muppets who are playing characters from Dickens. That's Steve Whitmire as Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit. That's Frank Oz as Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit. For the most part, these characters are permitted to keep most of their defining Muppetness. 

Michael Caine as himself plays Ebenezer Scrooge. He's the heartless, greedy one-percenter amongst the Victorian poor, and can't stand their presence or Christmas cheer. Maybe if they didn't all sing a song with the lyric "There goes Mr. Humbug" whenever he walks past things would be different.

This is a sweet film, with a good spirit and a wisely conceived performance by Caine, who plays the part completely straight, the comic hijinks surrounding him only exacerbating his seriousness. The Muppets are reduced to supporting players in their own movie, and there was probably no way to escape that. Gonzo the Great and Rizzo the Rat get the bulk of the troupe's screen time, narrating the events in the roles of Charles Dickens and… his rat. 

I suspect children will really take to the film, but it must be said, it isn't stellar as either a Muppet movie or a Christmas Carol adaptation. The zaniness of the Muppets is tempered and so are Dickens' cold scares. The Muppet Christmas Carol finds a happy middle-ground for families. It's nice throughout, but refuses to veer far enough into the heartwarming and the heartbreaking. 

The Muppet Christmas Carol and The Meaning of Christmas

As the Paul Williams penned end-credits song informs us, "Wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas!" Scrooge is a non-believer, but his revelation is of the heart rather than of religious doctrine. Which is how it should be. We don't need the Muppets to become VeggieTales. 

Day 11. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

This is more like it.

I laughed out loud during Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

more than once, and I'm quite certain that was a desired response. Following the dreary initial film, this sequel is every bit as soul-sick, but it's self-aware. It knows how to flaunt its illness with pride.

This movie is remarkable in one way that won't possibly escape anyone who sees it. Almost its entire first half is recycled footage from the previous movie. Remember when the recap in Friday the 13th Part 2 lasted for ten minutes? Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2's lasts for forty!

Billy, the killer from the first film, had an infant brother in the back of his car when his parents were hijacked and slashed by a robber dressed as old St. Nick. Now that brother, Ricky (Eric Freeman, in what would still be regarded as the performance of his lifetime if he hadn't disappeared completely) is grown and manic. He recounts to a psychiatrist all of the events that transpired in part one--events that he could not possibly have known, and from the same camera angles, too.

This "highlight" reel supplants any need to see the original Silent Night, Deadly Night, and put me in mind of an idea I had when Jack Reacher opened. It would be maddening to audiences if the characters in that Tom Cruise film went to a cinema playing Top Gun, and the entirety of that movie played out, extending Jack Reacher's running time to four hours. The makers of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 were ahead of me, because in the last half of the film, Ricky goes on a movie date to see the first Silent Night, Deadly Night. 

I don't understand this at all. 

And that's okay. Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 should inspire as an example of making the most of a bad situation. The filmmakers were asked to re-edit the first film and pass it off as a sequel. I'm unsure how that could be expected to fool anyone, but to their credit director Lee Harry and his co-writer Joseph H. Earle have crafted a brand new, and thoroughly deranged last half. 

The film's "Garbage Day" scene became an Internet meme several years back due to Freeman's mega-acting, and the madness doesn't begin and end there. Campiness is not my preferred aesthetic (always play your jokes as drama), but it does a lot to palate the spiritual ugliness on display. Unlike his brother Billy, Ricky isn't simply set off by "Christmas triggers." He starts as a vigilante, avenging an attempted rape, and impaling a mobster with an umbrella, before he moves to firing at neighbours who step on their porches to investigate why he's firing at other neighbours. Freeman laughs maniacally after every kill. According to IMDb, he raises and lowers his eyebrows a total of 130 times in this film. It's a performance designed to keep Nicolas Cage, in his more adventurous phases, up at night, questioning the disappeared enigma known as Eric Freeman. 

Even though the next sequel is directed by arthouse auteur Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), I've had my fill of the Silent Night, Deadly Night series now. There are other Christmas movies to cover--movies that are classics, animations, come from foreign lands, or involve Muppets. When you can't leave a series on a high note, leave on a very bizarre one.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 and The Meaning of Christmas

It has absolutely no idea. Why would you ask?

Tomorrow: The Muppet Christmas Carol

Day 10. Silent Night, Deadly Night

In my Rare Exports write-up, I'd mentioned that it's a common bad idea in Christmas horror movies to make Santa Claus the killer. In discussing 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night (probably the most recognized title from the Killer Santa file) that deserves some clarification. Primarily, I feel the concept is opportunistic and cheap. 

It's easy to subvert a totem of innocence. Carrying Christmas into the slasher movie calendar sweepstakes of Friday the 13th and Halloween seemed the obvious next move. The difference is that turning Santa Claus evil demands meaning but is by default disingenuous. At worst, its entailment of childhood corruption is played as a cheeky joke. Yet without a basis of credible traumatic experience (as when Ice Cube corrupts nursery rhymes to express stolen innocence in his "Gangsta's Fairytale" raps), it comes across as a gag played at kids' expense. Who was ever scared of Santa Claus?

Everything in Silent Night, Deadly Night falls predictably in line. It doesn't much think or care about its meaning, only passing as entertainment for the undemanding. 

Upon visiting him in an institute, young Billy's grandfather breaks from a catatonic state to warn that Santa Claus will punish the naughty. Driving back home with his parents, Billy observes, wide-eyed and frightened, as the car is stopped by a thief dressed in Santa gear who murders his father, and strips and murders his mother. By the age of 18, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) reaches some level of stability, even finding work at a department store under the employ of Anthony Michael Hall's dad in Weird Science (Britt Leach). It's when he's asked to play store Santa that his Christmas trigger goes off, and people will be killed. 

Partially artistically salvaged in its edit and score, which bring some personalized idiosyncrasy to dead body and teamwork montages, the bulk of Silent Night, Deadly Night is creatively drained. Billy isn't a tragic outsider (like Jason Voorhees, Frankenstein's monster and others) because he's an inevitability of fate rather than an ugly product of the status quo. Fatalism and nihilism are the only messages here. Billy isn't allowed even the option to cope with his trauma. His tragedy must make him a remorseless killer, because apparently the world order (unlike the best teen slashers) does not believe in youth survival and empowerment. In Silent Night, Deadly Night, it isn't just the usual protocol where sex is punished. All joy is punished. Director Charles E. Sellier must have felt some remorse for this, as he quickly abandoned the slasher genre for a lucrative career producing Bible films. 

Which is fine because Silent Night, Deadly Night has only the most cynical understanding of slasher movies anyway. Sorry folks. This one just seems hateful.

Silent Night, Deadly Night and the Meaning of Christmas

Christmas sucks because it will cause those traumatized by the holiday to kill you. 

Tomorrow: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Day 9. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

The title already spoils enough, so I'll add that Santa Claus also wishes the Martians a Merry Christmas. That's how Santa works. He'll conquer your planet, and then push his own values on your people.

Considered one of the absolute worst movies of all time, 1964's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' whole ethos can be summed up in a line from its children's choir-sung Santa theme, "He's fat and round, but jumps and sings." In other words, I'm not sure what this movie is really trying to tell me.

The story, insofar as it can be labelled as such, opens with an imaginative approach to Communist Red Scare paranoia. Under the oppressive rulings of Mars, Martian children have started rebelling by watching Earth's television programs. Chochem (The Ancient one), who looks and sounds a little like the dying Mystic in The Dark Crystal, tells the Martian leaders that the kids on their planet are too smart, while their young spirits have been crushed by dogmatic compliance. The kids deserve to have fun. The problem is obviously that Mars has no Santa Claus, which isn't fair, and the one from Earth must be kidnaped.  

Of course, Santa Claus is pretty much a Communist with his red suit and ideals of wealth distribution, but we must pretend otherwise. Within this movie, he comes across as a nearly senile old man. He repeatedly tells jokes nobody laughs at, then he laughs at inappropriate moments, and can't adapt to Mars' high-tech toy making, which involves pushing a single button on a control panel. In his defence, he is not treated well. These Martians just want to help their kids, but aren't very skilled at foreign relations. 

This script required two writers, and is at its best in its attempts to blow minds. The whole thing is set in the Martian month of "mid-Septober." An Earth newscaster editorializes, ""This appears to be an age where everything is vanishing into thin air." It's well established that there was a things-vanishing-into-thin-air Zeitgeist happening in 1964.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was popularized in the '90s after it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I don't feel it quite joins the ranks of other really bad movies like Troll 2 and The Room, which have such an off-balance view of how people behave that to watch them is to enter another dimension of sensory perception. This movie meets its ridiculous concept with cluttered cheap sets, eyebrow-raising dialogue and performances without a director's tone control. It's bad. If you're in a group of likeminded friends, it's fun. It also lacks the radicalism that made Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space more than just an incompetent expression, but sincere in its out-of-sync anger toward the atom bomb and in its sympathy for cultural outcasts.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is undoubtedly one of the stranger Christmas movies out there. As for me, my search for the holiday's true meaning won't be ending here. 

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and The Meaning of Christmas

Chochem (The Ancient One) - It is an occasion for great joy and peace on the planet Earth. And for children, it is also a time of anticipation as they await the arrival of Santa Claus, and his gifts.

Some Jerk - Bahh. What nonsense! 

Day 8. Prancer

In the busy 1989 Christmas movie season, Prancer was respectfully buried and then forgotten. For kids, the other selections promised more fun. The multiplexes offered Back to the Future Part II, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Wizard, and, if your parents really didn't give a fuck, Harlem Nights. A holiday movie about a little girl who befriends a reindeer seemed too wholesome when there were grander, more dangerous adventures to be had. 

Watching Prancer now for the first time, it strikes me as a movie that takes risks and hits truths, and is about three times better than I'd expected it to be. I'd never thought of watching it before this project, but nobody suggested I might enjoy it, so I blame all of you.

If the film won't work for everyone, that's a probable attribute of its defiance of family-entertainment custom. Prancer's lead, eight-year old Jessica (Rebecca Harrell) is, like most eight-year olds, annoying. I like that her dialogue lacks adult polish. "Dad, I just saw a deer in the woods. It was interesting!" More than once, she wards off allies when she could really use them. And her stubbornness is the only line of defence for her self-interests. All this makes Jessica imperfect and human, rather than another pick off the Precocious Movie Kid Assembly Line. 

The world she inhabits is defined by hardship, and is similarly recognizable. Prancer is not bursting with colour or cheer, capturing the season when nature has killed itself and we must make our own warmth. Only, Jessica sees her relationship with her gruff widowed father (Sam Elliott) as strained, while his financial struggles and fear of losing their apple farm have made him increasingly short-tempered.

Always a beacon of hope, Jessica nurses a wounded reindeer, hidden from her dad, in the corner of a barn. She's convinced the reindeer is the Prancer of "The Night Before Christmas" fame, and that he will be able to help fly Santa's sleigh in time. Director John D. Hancock shoots this in a matter-of-fact way that captures small town life without resorting to pity or glorification. Prancer doesn't take a turn to fantasy, not explicitly anyway, though I feared it might. Without reaching the tragic depths of One Magic Christmas, it is as averse to tacky yuletide varnish in establishing its universe, placing a sweet story of a young girl within a context of eternal night. The movie believes in Jessica's hopes, and it becomes moving enough in places that I'm surprised it hasn't become a perennial Christmas classic.   

The Meaning of Christmas

Prancer is the first movie I've watched for this project that directly addresses the thread in these movies that believing in Santa Claus is believing in God. Jessica fights with an atheist schoolmate at one point, after she insists there is no Santa Claus. "You've never seen God either. Does that mean there's no God?," Jessica retorts. She overreacts, of course, and I can't take these theistic messages too literally or I'd have given up on Christmas movies by now. 

The point is when you have to ask your dad if you'll be starving one day, and he's always yelling at you, and your mom is dead, and your choir teacher thinks you sing too loud, it's good to believe things will get better. Even if you have to heal a reindeer yourself.