Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Search for Christmas Horror

Hallway

I’ve been racking my brain trying to find the most Christmas themed horror films as possible. I’ve narrowed it down to 18 Christmas based horror films. That’s right, there are only roughly 18 true Christmas horror films. Every horror movie blogger out there is trying to do reviews on Christmas movies, and most of them are doing the obvious ones, and of course so am I. However, a whole month of Christmas horror? That just can’t happen.

As a horror movie writer, I’m running into a wall of sorts. I can’t find more than 18 dvd’s and vhs that are explicitly Christmas related horror. Plus, everyone I talk to seems to think that the Christmas horror theme is a played out and overdone concept, which is wrong! It’s not overdone. You know what’s overdone? Dracula (vampire) movies; there are hundreds of thousands of vampire movies and even just Dracula movies. In fact, if you wrote on a board what you know about Vampires compared to topics such as “The President of the United States”, “God” or even “Christmas” you’d be surprised to see that the Vampire side is massive in comparison to all three of those things combined! So those that say that the Christmas (killer santa included) horror theme is overdone or overblown, you’re not correct in saying so. If that were a true statement, there would be more than 18 movies based on Christmas terror. I even let a couple of films slide (Ie Gremlins), and even allow some others into the category based on my own experiences (Chopping Mall), but overall, this is a genre that has not been explored nearly enough in comparison to far other topics. I mean, it’s not the least known horror genre, like the killer 800 number (976 Evil and it’s ill fated sequel, both courtesy of Robert Englund)

Still not convinced?

Here’s genre’s with more horror movies than the Christmas horror genre:

Vampire Movies, examples:

Dracula
John Carpenters: Vampires
Fright Night
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
Fearless Vampire Killers
The Hunger

Werewolf Movies, examples:

Wolf
The Howling
American Werewolf in London
Teen Wolf (I’m kidding)

Slasher Movies, examples:

Slumber Party Massacre
Scream
Child’s Play
April Fool’s Day
My Bloody Valentine
Terror Train

You’re starting to get the point, seriously, the Christmas horror genre is seriously lacking heavy hitters and flooded marketing schemes. There are just not THAT many, so next time you think that this genre is overblown, overdone, or over rated, you need to reconsider the other genres of horror that truly deserve that title.

As for me and the search for Christmas horror movies, I’m having a harder time finding all these movies than it’s worth. Does that mean I’m not going to review more holiday horror movies as I promised? No. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve, including at least 10 of the 18 movies that I can find, and that’s not including the movies that feature whole series. That’s right, I’m giving you guys a good amount of holiday horror, however, I am not going to be hitting up a lot of sequels, mainly the Silent Night Deadly Night sequels, which stretches to 5 movies, and I won’t be reviewing the horror movie “Elves” which I can’t seem to find on dvd and don’t really want to try my luck at ebay and/or hunt it down via a used vhs store. All this to say that I wish there were more scary holiday movies.

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3 comments:

  1. I hear ya Bro!

    Have you added Gingerdead Man to your list?
    I just can't seem to click the "Add" button on my Netflix Queue... I am curious to read a review on it though :-)

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  2. I have it on the list, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get it in time to review it by the end of the month. I really stacked the deck on myself with this bold "theme" month.

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  3. Don, what a coincidence we both posted a Christmas horror movie editorial on the same day!

    I agree with ya on the marathon though; I want to do a marathon of several different movies instead of an entire series. Less boring for the reviewers! ;)

    @bonbreaker - SquidFlicks reviewed Gingerdead man quite some time ago, and it is strangely one of the most popular reviews on the site...
    http://www.squidflicks.com/reviews/featured-films/the-ginger-dead-manthe-ginger-dead-man/

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