Christmas Movies: 'Blackadder's Christmas Carol' (1988)

'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' (1964). "Admit it: you want to see this for the title alone, right? Okay, this low-budget sci-fi saga, in which aliens kidnap Kris Kringle, is not very good, except in a 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' way, full of opportunities to howl and guffaw at its ineptitude. A quarter century ago, you could get a good laugh just by recognizing that one of the green-faced Martian tots is the young Pia Zadora, but nowadays, her brief adult career as a sultry starlet is as forgotten as her childhood role here."

Nobody should want to see this movie. C'est terrible.

 

It's also worth seeing if you've got five or so friends and some alcohol.

 

'Blackadder's Christmas Carol' (1988). Okay, it's a made-for-TV special, not a movie, but it's so good, and so rarely shown, that we thought it merited a tip of the Santa cap. The four seasons of Rowan Atkinson's 'Black Adder' series presented sharp-tongued schemers of the Blackadder family throughout history, but in this Dickens parody, he plays the one nice, milquetoasty member of the family. Then the Christmas ghosts who are out to haunt Ebenezer Scrooge meet him and inadvertently inspire him to become as selfish and cruel as the rest of his relatives. If you've seen too many versions of Scrooge's conversion this season, here's your antidote."