Santa’s Christmas Circus Starring Whizzo the Clown

• Year: 1966
• Director: Frank Wiziarde
• Starring: Frank Wiziarde, John Bilyeu, Cindy Dallen

There are certain forms of entertainment that never really made sense to me. Why would anyone think, for example, that ventriloquism is an acceptable form of entertainment? Yeah I’m just going to stick my hand in a puppet and pretend like I’m not talking at all. Totally normal. In the same vein, who ever thought that clowns were an acceptable form of entertainment for children? If a child is already afraid of strangers, why is a creepy man in a costume and white face paint going to make it any better?

Well, apparently Kansas native Frank Wiziarde thought kids would just love clowns, because for many years, he “entertained” the Kansas City area with his creation (and I mean that in the truest Dr. Frankenstein way) Whizzo the Clown. Why is there an “H” in there? Don’t think about it too much. In 1966, Whizzo decided he wasn’t terrifying enough on regular days and produced his nightmarish Christmas opus Santa’s Christmas Circus Starring Whizzo the Clown.

Right from the opening credits, I have some issues with this thing. The intro music is a medley of Christmas carols, played on what sounds like an organ at a baseball stadium, but is probably just some episode of The Twilight Zone where an organist sold his soul for eternal life and is now forced to play Christmas carols for eternity.

Santa Claus created by John Bilyeu? Unless you’re going to credit the historical Saint Nicholas, Thomas Nast, the Coca-Cola company, or perhaps Clement Clark Moore (and that’s a stretch), I don’t think you can really credit anyone with the “creation” of Santa Claus. Is it an animatronic? Well we’ll find out shortly.

Anyway, the special takes place in Whizzo’s Wonderland (not the adult bookstore, the other one), which looks like it was designed by Mrs. Carruthers’ second-grade class for a special art project.

Within seconds, someone offstage throws a smattering of cocaine in Whizzo’s face, because we apparently needed to learn something about this film’s creative process. (Alright, it’s probably supposed to be snow because it’s Christmas, but cocaine makes more sense.) Not only does Whizzo the Clown not have a clear speaking voice, he also NEVER SHUTS THE HELL UP. Most of the time he’s not saying anything at all, but he keeps just mumbling something under his breath. His performance is like the worst parts of the collective fever dreams of Jimmy Stewart, Don Knotts, Pee-Wee Herman, Miss Velma, and John Wayne Gacy. He’s clearly not working off any kind of script, and it was obviously all done in a series of long takes, so all the mistakes are left in.

After having some trouble with his gifts, Whizzo says he needs to change his clothes, because this thing isn’t terrifying enough already. Besides the creep factor, isn’t it great the movie started here? What a compelling plot. A character gets home from shopping and has to change his clothes. Whizzo summons his magic curtain (a stage hand throws it to him, because they couldn’t even do an edit to make it “appear”), and has to decide what clothes to wear (He considers his Hawaiian outfit, or as he pronounces it “Hi-why-an.”). After fiddling with his magic curtain for far too long, Whizzo goes through a few costume changes like he’s Cher stalling for time.

Oh good his… Scottish schoolgirl Sherlock Holmes outfit. I hear that one’s a big hit. He finally decides on his “loungewear” and realizes he still hasn’t swept the cocaine up off the floor. Seeing as how there are kids coming soon, he decides it’s a good time. He forgoes the traditional broom, because no one can do anything normally in this special, and he instead blows hot air into a balloon, and unleashes the hot air onto the cocaine. Now his room, like this special, is full of hot air and swirling drugs. When he realizes that won’t work, he picks up the broom after all, because he has an hour to fill and he’s going to do it in the dullest way possible

Next, we get a cameo from the Whizzo dog, who I suppose was a beloved character in this rogue’s gallery of demon spawn.

I’m sure Frank Wiziarde thought he was doing an entirely different voice for this character, but it really just sounds like Whizzo doing a bad impression of Scooby-Doo’s dim-witted cousin Scooby-Dum (This is a real character, look him up.). Whizzo Dog quickly signs off by saying he has to go do his guitar lesson (I don’t know either), so he disappears, ending this pointless cameo that only exists so the floor can be cleaned.

We are now ten minutes into this nightmare, and so far the plot has only been “Whizzo changes his clothes and sweeps the floor.” I’m sure the kids are still totally invested in this, Frank. Please, keep going. I have not seen a circus or Santa Claus yet in Santa’s Christmas Circus Starring Whizzo the Clown, so maybe we could get one of those in the next few minutes.

A bunch of kids rush in to greet Whizzo, and I’ll just say I hope they were paid well. He even calls one his girlfriend because we have to continue to make this literally the creepiest thing ever put to film. Whizzo then tells them they all need to put on their circus clothes, because we’re apparently going to see that circus thing in the title, now that we’re a quarter of the way in. However, since Santa doesn’t show up for the circus, he can’t really call it Santa’s Christmas Circus can he? Why isn’t it called Whizzo the Clown’s Christmas Circus Featuring (A Possibly Animatronic) Santa Claus?

He wants the kids to step behind the magic curtain with him so they can change their clothes (There’s no good way to say any of this, and I’ve given up trying), but he has to sprinkle them with Whizzo Dust first. Um… you used this magic curtain earlier and didn’t have to sprinkle yourself with Whizzo Dust. Is it made from Whizzo? I could see in that case why you wouldn’t have to use it on yourself. Second, didn’t you just clean the floor? It was a major plot point! Now you’re going to sprinkle these kids with more cocaine?

After the kids change into their circus clothes, they perform some circus acts using the power of their imaginations. What? Were you expecting actual circus acts in Santa’s Magical Circus That Doesn’t Feature Santa But Features A Creepy Clown? One girl does all of four dance steps, a boy pretends to be a drum major because this special couldn’t even afford a baton, and two girls and a boy pretend to walk on a tight rope. Worst of all, Whizzo introduces one girl as “Someone from The Orient.” She doesn’t have a name… or a country… or an act. Her entire shtick is “Being from the Orient.” Wait a minute, pan that camera back and show me who’s playing that organ music.

Between casual references to “The Orient,” a narrator who won’t shut up, and the organ music, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a sequel to the Mexican Christmas classic Santa Claus.

The “circus” continues as we get a person in a lion suit, and a boy lifting up a girl and claiming to be an acrobat. If this was someone’s home Christmas movies, it would be cute for that family I’m sure, but why would they want the whole world (or at least the greater Kansas City area) to see it? Throw in the clown and no parents, and it’s horrifying.

Well, Whizzo’s Culturally Appropriated Circus from Hell finally ends, and… we’re not even halfway through this special! Whizzo goes up to one little girl who looks bored (Gee I wonder why), and asks her why she’s feeling down.

She says, “There must be more to Christmas than fun,” which is odd, because it suggests fun has been had so far. At one point during their conversation, a child loudly coughs and they just keep it in! Who needs another take? If you’re going to keep it rolling live, can you at least get the child some water?

Whizzo tells the girl he’ll make her start liking Christmas, because he’s going to take the kids to some places in his atomic time machine. So this creepy TV special with a budget so cheap it can’t even afford a baton is now going to do time travel. Well this should be fun.

Yeah that’s about what I was expecting. We never see any of them actually “time traveling” but just see some things on the screen and Whizzo describing them. First up, it’s little decorations featuring Santa and the reindeer playing instruments. I don’t know what this has to do with time travel, but whatever

Oh no! I think my joke about animatronic Santa came true. Is this the Santa that was “created” by John Bilyeu? Whizzo is clearly making up his narration as he goes along (I guess he didn’t see the videos beforehand for “authentic reactions” or whatever), and he offers nothing of substance. “Look at that kids, a balloon’s going up.” Thanks Whizzo, they saw that on the screen. It’s like the Geppetto’s workshop portion of Pinocchio if it was far less creative and had the world’s worst narrator describing everything on screen. The video seems to go on forever, and it adds in the one nightmarish aspect this special hasn’t covered yet—creepy dolls.

The video finally ends, but the kids say they want to see more of this because I guess the cult programming is almost complete. Whizzo has his atomic time machine show them… more decorations.

At least some of the clips in the first video felt like they were being filmed inside a store or at someone’s home, but these are clearly shot from OUTSIDE A STOREFRONT WINDOW! You can see the people and the cars passing by. Don’t you just love the escapist medium of film? You are now watching someone standing outside a shop window and recording! Remember in Fun in Balloonland where we watched as a woman described a parade? This is, somehow, more boring than that. Apparently, Whizzo thought that the time machine in the 1960 film The Time Machine wasn’t a time machine because it traveled through time, but because it showed the time traveler storefront windows.

Whizzo asks the bored girl if she now understands the magic of Christmas, as if watching a video of someone standing outside a store window and recording would change someone’s mind about a holiday. Kirk Cameron presented better arguments than this! She smiles and nods though, so I guess she’s changed. Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t need a whole night of ghosts visiting him, he just needed Whizzo to show him storefront windows! They could have saved so much time. At least now that the girl is convinced, we don’t need to see more decorations in storefront windows. Whizzo has her sit back down and then shows his audience…

MORE DECORATIONS IN STOREFRONT WINDOWS! What level of hell was this thing filmed in? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to turn into a Christmas special. We’re more than halfway through this thing and we still haven’t met one of our title characters, save in creepy animatronic form. It’s as bad as Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, where the titular bunny didn’t show up until the very end.

Well after promising the kids food and not giving them any, Whizzo says they should all sit down and let the time machine show them one more thing. Hmm I wonder what it could be? His home colonoscopy video? A snuff film? A community theatre production of Pagliacci?

MORE DECORATIONS IN A STOREFRONT WINDOW! Who could have guessed it? After four straight videos of storefront windows, Whizzo finally decides to take the kids to the North Pole to see Santa Claus, because admiring an animatronic version from a distance just isn’t the same. He pulls out his magic carpet, and he makes sure they spread out, because sometimes it gets a little “tipsy.” Yeah I bet some people were a little tipsy in the production of this special.

Anyway, they get on their magic carpet, and Whizzo hands out the magic paper that makes the carpet fly. This goes on for a solid 60 seconds! One whole minute of HANDING OUT CONSTRUCTION PAPER. How much script did Frank Wiziarde write for this thing? A quarter-of-a-page? Finally all the paper is handed out, and Whizzo and the kids fly (against a completely black backdrop) to the North Pole.

Wow, that background prop in the North Pole set sure looks like a lot like your “atomic time machine,” Whizzo. What does theirs do? Show them pictures of clowns in storefront windows?

Whizzo contacts Santa on his way to the North Pole, because I’m sure Santa isn’t busy in December or anything! Whizzo is the worst kind of company. Santa tells the elves he’s kind of busy, but he obliges anyway, and sets up his toys to show the kids when they arrive. Maybe up until this point you were thinking, “Sure this is just as boring as Fun in Balloonland, but at least it doesn’t have offensive depictions of Native Americans.” Well it’s got you covered.

Just like Whizzo, Santa never shuts up as he does things on screen. I guess Whizzo and Santa bonded over their fear of even one second of silence. It’s just surprising that they aren’t both played by the same actor. When Whizzo does walk in, everyone just starts laughing hysterically, because apparently the thought of a clown walking into a room is hilarious.

Whizzo pulls Santa aside, and tells him that one girl still doesn’t understand the true meaning of Christmas. What, those four videos from outside a storefront window didn’t convert her? Shocker. He asks Santa to tell everyone about the spirit of Christmas, which he does in the vaguest way possible. He says that Christmas is a feeling like the one you have when you go to the circus. What feeling would that be? A combination of utter fear and sheer boredom? Also, even if you think this is a good comparison (which it objectively is not), the girl you’re trying to turn around was bored when you were doing circus acts! They had nothing to do with Christmas. She hated your lousy no budget circus, not the holiday, you Megan’s Law harlequin. Now you’re telling her the spirit of Christmas is the feeling you get at a circus?

Anyway, Whizzo and the kids leave just as quickly as they came (Real meaningful visit you had there with the TITLE CHARACTER, Whizzo.), and they fly back to Whizzo’s abandoned warehouse. He makes them all change their clothes again, because apparently it’s 5:00 and time to go. It was dark outside when you left for the North Pole, which means this either exists in some dystopian reality where night starts way earlier, or this was some overnight thing, neither of which is a great reason.

Seriously, what is this? I want an explanation for the existence of this special. Who thought this would be entertaining for children? What parents let their children hang out with this man? Go on little Timmy, the clown is going to show you storefront windows for 20 minutes. He clearly was working with nothing. Say what you will about Miss Velma’s Christmas in America, but that woman was prepared. She had like five different totally insane scenes ready to go at the drop of a hat! Whizzo didn’t have anything, and kept filling the time with his “hilarious” clown antics and mumbling. Unlike Miss Velma, which was at least entertaining in a “Can’t look away from a train wreck” kind of way, Santa’s Christmas Circus Starring Whizzo the Clown manages to be both completely insane and utterly boring at the same time. This is very possibly the worst Christmas special I’ve ever seen. The sheer incompetence and unprofessionalism of the man who put this together is staggering. No child could ever be entertained by this.

MATCH-UP HOME

HOME

Magic Gift of the Snowman

• Year: 1995
• Director: Toshiyuki Hiruma, Takashi
• Starring: Tony Ail, Nathan Aswell, Bailee Reid

Movies with cheap animation always have to stretch the truth a bit (or a lot) on their covers, don’t they? I’ve come to expect it, so it doesn’t bother me that the characters look far more professionally-drawn on the cover than in the film. My real problem with the cover art on Magic Gift of the Snowman (No “The” at the beginning of the title, I don’t know either) is that the snowman looks NOTHING LIKE THAT. See the totally normal, non-creepy looking snowman on the cover art? Here’s what the one in the movie looks like.

Alright look, I understand that a child designed him, but really look at him. He has a trench coat, sunglasses, a goofy wide-brimmed hat, and he’s looking right into a child’s bedroom window. If I’m being gracious, he looks like an undercover cop failing desperately at fitting in. If I’m not, it’s a lot worse than that. Also, none of the voice actors in this thing are credited to their parts, so I won’t even guess at who is playing whom here.

Now that the character design is out of the way, let’s talk about the story. Hoo boy. This set-up is so bad that there is almost no way it could be saved, but here goes nothing. On a winter night, a doctor is leaving a family home out in the country.

The doctor tells them that if their very sick daughter can make it until Christmas, she’ll be fine. Great diagnosis there, Doc. I guess she has that very rare Merle Haggard Syndrome. The parents thank the doctor for doing literally nothing, and explain to their son Landon what’s wrong with his sister Emery Elizabeth. We learn that she is also unable to walk, and the doctor has said there’s nothing he can do. She has to want to get better. Landon asks the reasonable question of why there isn’t any medicine that can help her, but his dad says, “The most important medicine has to come from within Emery Elizabeth herself.” What? You’re going to blame the little girl for her own death if she doesn’t get better? I kept waiting for the twist that they were a member of some religious cult or something, but nope, these two are presented as good and loving parents. The dad also says that they have to stick together and that family is the most important thing. Yeah I guess you’re not including the deathly-ill child in the other room there! Haven’t you heard of getting a second opinion? “Oh she’s dying. I can’t do anything, and she can only save herself.” “Thanks Doc, you’re the best.”

The mom isn’t much better, as she says “It might take a miracle for Emery Elizabeth to get better, but miracles can happen any time, especially at Christmas.” Huh? So miracles are random but they’re more likely to happen at a certain time of year? They’re not random then! That is quite a confusing sentence there.

Landon goes outside and builds the titular snowman, and then promises his sister he’ll tell her a story about him if she eats some oatmeal. However, he clearly takes all day to think up this story, because he makes her do all kinds of things before he tells it to her.

Sadly none of these involve taking medicine, but according to the medical rules of this film, they’re making her better. After all this time he finally tells her the story of Snowden the Snowman. Since it’s about a talking snowman and a girl with a terminal illness, I’m surprised he didn’t go with “Me and Burl and the Dying Girl,” but hey, to each their own. Also, I imagine Snowden is a pun on “Snowed-in” and has nothing to do with whistleblower Edward Snowden, although that might be a more interesting film (unless Oliver Stone directs it).

Landon tells his sister about the kingdom ruled by the Princess Electra, where there are only kids and no adults, and everyone is happy because of the power of Electra’s smile. I’m not sure that’s exactly a solid set-up there, and to add insult to injury, the allegedly perfect kingdom looks like it can pretty easily be attacked by sea.

However, Magic Gift of the Snowman does the same thing other bad specials do so you can’t make fun of the holes in the storytelling. “Oh a child is telling this story, so that’s why it’s not perfect.” No, I’m sorry, I will make fun of that child’s storytelling abilities, and also those of whoever wrote this thing.

Landon then inserts himself and his sister into his story, because he hasn’t had enough time to come up with something creative. Landon and Emery Elizabeth meet the only adult in the kingdom, Snowden the Snowman, who calls himself the Grand Vizier. Not only is this incredibly creepy, but it’s also clear that he is going for some kind of power grab since there is a literal child on the throne.

Emery Elizabeth learns that in this magical world… she’s still in a wheelchair. Great storytelling there. I’m sure this is real escapism for your sister who can’t walk. It’s OK though, because she can turn her wheelchair into anything she wants… as long as it has wheels. Anyway, Snowden has her turn it into a train so they can explore the land. I guess trains don’t have to travel on tracks in this world. Whatever, Landon.

As they tour the land, a song plays that sounds like Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now” on downers. Look at these lyrics: “Join the fun, won’t you stay a while? The only rule is to wear a smile.” That doesn’t sound like a cult at all! You won’t genuinely be happy, but we’re literally enforcing that everyone smiles. Also, Landon said there is always snow on the ground in this kingdom, but here, they’re clearly traveling on grass.

Landon created the rules of this fictional country! Why can’t he follow them? I mean, the snowman is walking, so I guess technically there is snow on the ground, but I don’t think that’s what he meant.

Also, this place is essentially Pleasure Island from Pinocchio but presented like it’s a good thing. Snowden also tells them that the secret to Princess Electra’s power is in her smile. Wait, he’s just telling them secrets of foreign dignitaries? I’m starting to see why this guy is called Snowden.

After meeting with the princess, which didn’t really add anything to the plot and mostly just reinforced what they already knew, Snowden shows Landon and Emery Elizabeth their beds. This isn’t creepy at all, seeing as how he’s the only adult in the entire land. A group of birds sing them to sleep in four-part harmony, which is admittedly pretty nice, but there is also a quintet of insects for some reason!

WHY? That’s just going to gross them out and keep them awake. Like the other songs in the thing, it goes on forever and adds nothing to the plot. Also, the animation makes it look their beds are very far apart and very close together at once. I know this is low budget, but come on.

Well I guess Landon realizes his story has no conflict in this perfect world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, so he creates a villain.

In the middle of the night, Snowden wakes them up and explains that Princess Electra’s smile has been stolen by the Charlatan, and now no one is happy anymore. I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that your kingdom only has children and is very easy to attack by sea, but hey, that’s just me. Also, you kind of built your whole kingdom on dentistry, so it seems a bit flimsy. However, when things are just picking up, Landon decides to Scheherazade his sister and leave the story hanging for the night. I guess he’s really believing this “If she hangs on until Christmas, she’ll be fine” nonsense. Whatever.

When he gets back to it, he tells us about The Charlatan, who makes kids bring their candy and rainbows (He actually says rainbows) and turn them into yuck in his yuck factory. Sure, whatever, he’s a villain a kid make up. Does he need a motivation or backstory? Nope, he’s just evil and makes kids do evil things. Sounds about right. Let’s see what he looks like.

He’s wearing a mask, so we’re going the Scooby-Doo route, eh? Alright let’s see, who could be under the mask? Well I assume it’s not Snowden seeing as how he’s the title character who gives them the magical gift, but he’s the only adult in the land! Who else could it be? We haven’t met any of the kids, so they’re out. I’m going to have to go with a guess out of left field and say… The Doctor from the first scene!

Oh he’s not one of the other characters, he’s just hideous. Got it. (I mean, unless bald Joker/Gollum/Tell-Tale Heart Man dressed as Willy Wonka was a character I missed.)

When Snowden tells them he needs their help, Emery Elizabeth has some questions, but he says “There’s a time for questions and a time for action.” Um… yeah, it’s usually normal to make the two children visiting your kingdom for the first time assist you with defeating a villain they weren’t even aware of an hour ago. Why would they ask questions? Just follow the snowman with the creepy voice and wardrobe, kids.

The trio has to cross a lake to get to the Charlatan’s lair, and Snowden asks Emery Elizabeth to come up with something. When she doesn’t come up with an idea immediately, he tells the little girl… in a wheelchair… with a terminal disease… to stop feeling sorry for herself. Yes, because sheer willpower will make any disease better. That’s a great lesson to teach to kids! She does eventually come up with an idea, but since the snowman is the Grand Poohbah of the Flim-Flam or whatever, why hasn’t he thought this out in advance? Was there really no back-up plan?

As they’re climbing up the mountain to the Charlatan’s lair, Emery Elizabeth’s wheelchair gets stuck, and she tells them to go on without her and let her freeze to death. Yes, please, let me die to save this kingdom I have absolutely no investment in. Wouldn’t a more believable breaking point for her just be “Let’s go home, I give up” instead? Anyway, Landon tells her this is ridiculous, but Snowden just up and abandons them!

I know he’s doing it because he thinks they’ll come up with a plan, and they need to learn to think for themselves, but THEY’RE LITTLE KIDS. You brought them here, and when they say it’s frustrating, you just abandon them on an icy mountainside. I know there’s one adult in the whole kingdom, but why did the princess pick this guy to be the High Priest of Pickle Jello or whatever? How has this country not been invaded before?

This is where Landon leaves the story for the night, which I get since he wants to leave it hanging, but maybe it’s best to not leave the cliffhanger here. Your sister is dying, and you think “positive thinking” or whatever will make her feel better, but this is where you leave the story? This is the last thought she’ll have before bed? Being abandoned by a creepy snowman on a mountainside?

When Landon gets back to the story the next night (Christmas Eve), Emery Elizabeth turns her wheelchair into a plane, which she flies to the top of the mountain where Snowden is waiting.

They walk right into the palace, which I guess the villain keeps unlocked and unguarded. In fact, we don’t see any other minions of this Charlatan except a rat. How does this guy rule anything for any length of time?

Right as the Charlatan is about to destroy Princess Electra’s smile forever (apparently he waited a while), Emery Elizabeth takes it from him and the three pass it around and try to make an escape. However, the Charlatan decapitates Snowden and they start throwing his head around too, until it gets screwed back on properly. She then unleashes the smile on the Charlatan, blinding him, and he trips and falls into his own cauldron, causing the whole place to burn.

This sugary sweet diabetes trip suddenly took a dark turn there, Landon. The two kids escape, and happiness is restored to the kingdom, but the Charlatan and Snowden both burn to death in the fire. I guess Landon read some critical reviews of his story and adjusted accordingly on the third day.

On Christmas Morning, Landon wakes up to find Emery Elizabeth magically healed and celebrating Christmas with their parents. She has a snow globe with Snowden inside that says “The magic is inside of you,” and when Landon asks her how she got better, she repeats Snowden’s line that there’s a time for questions and a time for action. I mean, sure, but what’s the action here? Who did the action to make her get better? It sure wasn’t the doctor! Did the snowman have the cure for this soap opera disease all along? Is that the magic gift of the snowman? Well we don’t have much time to ask these questions, because the movie just ends. Cool, miraculous healing. Who needs doctors? They can’t do anything anyway. If you have a positive attitude, you too can get healed of your terminal illness. What a great message to send to kids! Merry Christmas.

Sure, The Christmas Light had far worse animation and slightly worse voice acting (This one is still pretty bad), but at least it didn’t have the message that terminal diseases can be cured by telling your sister a story! This one is worse.

MATCH-UP HOME

HOME

The Christmas Light

• Year: 1995
• Director: Michael DeVitto
• Starring: Dan Haggerty, Jerry Lonergan, Evan Dee

The special that I’m starting this year’s Match-Up with is a pretty obscure one, but you know what? It’s actually a historical landmark. That’s right. The Christmas Light from 1995 is the first computer-animated Christmas special ever made. Without it, we wouldn’t have classics like Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa or Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. How do I know it’s the first computer-animated special? It tells you right on the cover! It also says “If you liked Toy Story, you’ll love The Christmas Light.” Oh because that one thing was computer-animated, and this other thing is also computer-animated, the quality must be comparable! If you liked Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you’ll love Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

Despite its own self-obsessed marketing, The Christmas Light wasn’t much of a hit and remains pretty obscure to this day. In fact, its entire IMDB plot summary is “Christmas special whith santa.” Those aren’t typos; that is exactly how it’s written. The biggest name this thing could get is its narrator Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty. There’s really no need for a narrator in this thing, but they got him to do it, so they’re going to use him.

This is my fifth Christmas reviewing Christmas specials, and to this day, I do not understand why they need narrators. Is it just because How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph did it so well? Haggerty is like “Ken Smith” in Santa Claus in that he tells us things we are clearly seeing on screen. We see a sign that says NORTH POLE, so you don’t need to tell us this is the North Pole!

Anyway, this is Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, which for some reason looks a lot like the Washington Monument? Oh great, now the History Channel is going to have do a whole special about how freemasons designed the North Pole in an attempt to claim world domination.

Why does Santa need a watchtower anyway? It’s kind of phallic. I guess I know why it’s called the North Pole now. Also, if you think these pictures look blurry, don’t blame me. The film was apparently recorded on home video in Extended Play mode, which was the lowest quality option for VHS tapes. Why they would use Extended Play for something that is only 22 minutes long is beyond me.

In his office, Santa (Jerry Lonergan) is worried because toy production is down.

Hold on a second! It’s November and you’re just looking at these charts now! It’s been drastically dropping and clearly was almost at zero back in September! Why were you not worried about this before? I mean, maybe you’re trying to be a hands-off boss, but it’s clear something is going wrong here.

Santa goes to visit his “inventive elf” to see what is going wrong.

Well I guess I see why it looked like this thing is set in Washington, D.C. Santa’s head elf is Bill Clinton!

Actually, this is Isaac (James Grotto), and he has a machine that will produce toy trains faster. Does it make other toys or just trains? Because it’s 1995, and I’m pretty sure kids’ interests have evolved.

Santa congratulates Clinton on a job well done, and says they should start using the machine this Christmas. It is November. Maybe you should have started using this a while ago. Wouldn’t the “Inventing new gadgets” process be in like January and February, and the “Toy making” process be in the later months? Haven’t you don’t this for 2000 years?

Isaac and Santa get an urgent voiceover from Burton Lemon (yeah great elf name there), who the narrator tells us is Isaac’s chief competitor. Well, we only see two elves in this whole special so I would imagine he is also Isaac’s only competitor.

Maybe this is why production is down—You only have two elves! Apparently there are other elves though, because the narrator insists that all the other elves hate the guy. Yeah, you won’t believe what they do. Tell us, Dan Haggerty.

“They all call him The Lemon behind his back.”

Oh no, I don’t know if I can deal with this. They call this guy… by his actual name! That is just too cruel. Anyway, Burton “The Lemon” Lemon (Jamie Horton) has a new machine that will create any toy at all. This seems like it might be helpful seeing as you have made ZERO TOYS in November, but what do I know? To show it off, Burton has it create… a train. You aren’t proving anything when the other machine made a train too, but apparently this special is very proud of its train design.

Burton gloats that there will be no need for elves running around after this, despite the fact that he is also an elf, but he’s obviously not thinking ahead. He has the machine spit out a train, but it quickly shakes, glitches, and blows up. In case you aren’t aware what it’s doing, the narrator describes the train blowing up! Yeah thanks, we didn’t see that on the screen, Dan. I do love the escapist visual medium of film.

Burton says the machine will work when the time comes (When is that? It’s November!), but Santa says it’s too risky (Instead of asking for improvements or something), so Burton storms off. For some reason, he walks right up to the edge of the frame like they were trying to get a close-up of his crotch. I’ll spare you the picture, but it is weird. He begins what is I guess a musical number, but he kind of just shouts some lines over an offbeat backing track, and says “I’m the one” over and over. It does include the line “You’ll rue the day that you had your way with me,” and you could write a whole psychology textbook about the inclusion of that single line.

Burton then falls off a ledge and into his machine, and I wondered if this special had just killed off a character 5 minutes in, but he is quickly spit out of the machine and turns into a snowman. He then says he’s going to cause a blizzard to make sure Santa doesn’t get the toys delivered. I mean, he’s worked with Santa for a while, right? I have to assume he knows about the reindeer with the red nose who got him through that blizzard the last time. Also, his master plan is to turn into a snowman! Just don’t… go indoors, I guess. Solid plan there, Burt. You’ve been spending all this time on a special machine that will turn you into something that will melt at room temperature. Perhaps this isn’t his plan at all, but he actually did slip up and the machine just turned him into one anyway. You know, that interpretation makes somehow even less sense, so I’m going with the former.

On Christmas Eve, Jennifer (Amy Donofrio… I feel like there should be an apostrophe in there, but she’s not credited with it), is tucking her brother Jeffrey (Evan Dee) into bed. Jeffrey admits the weather (caused by Burton) is scaring him, so Jennifer sings about the titular Christmas light.

It’s barely a song, but it’s more of a song than that… thing… Burton sang earlier. Get a load of these lyrics:

There is a light that’s inside you, that’s inside me, that we all see. There is a light, a light of hope, a light of love, a light of peace, a Christmas light. When you feel afraid, it’s in your heart. It will guide you, The Christmas Light.

I can only imagine the writing process behind this one. “Hey you know how this thing is called The Christmas Light? Well we need to add an extra 30 seconds to this movie, so can you just write a song with that title? You’ve got 4 minutes.”

Back at the North Pole, Isaac shows Santa what he calls Sled 2, because who needs the magic of Christmas reindeer? The narrator tells us it can go three times faster than the last sled.

That’s… really not that impressive. Oh look, I invented a plane, but it only goes three times as a fast as a reindeer! Also, why is he waiting until Christmas Eve to show Santa his new sled? That’s kind of last minute.

As they’re flying, Jennifer’s house pops up on their monitor, and since it’s illuminated, they assume the Christmas Light must be giving them a sign. Never mind that it could just be a street light or something. No, it must be The Christmas Light (TM). Everyone talks about this light like it’s so important, but we never actually learn what it is, besides just a magic light. I get that it’s just a plot convenience, but also the whole story is named after said convenience. It can’t be both! Tell us why this light is so important. Did Santa not know what do the first time and he followed the light? Is it the Northern Lights like Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July?

Santa appears in Jennifer’s house and wakes her up. The narrator of course feels the need to tell us that Jennifer is waking up AS WE SEE HER WAKING UP. Thanks. Really helpful there, Grizzly. Earn that paycheck.

Santa says he needs Jennifer’s help for… some reason, and while Jennifer says she’ll dress warmly, Santa says there’s no need because he has a new sled. Wait. Hold on. Really think about this discussion they are having during a snowstorm. “I’ll dress warmly.” “No, that’s OK, I have a new sled.” Santa doesn’t even know what his plan is, but he’s this positive it won’t involve going outside for even a minute?

Santa and Jennifer teleport back to Sled 2, and then Isaac says they should find the Snowman (formerly Burton, but they weirdly never call him this). Almost immediately a Snowman alert shows up on his screen.

You made this ship long before Burton turned into the Snowman. Why do you have a Snowman Alert screen prepared? That doesn’t make any sense. Also, what do you need the kidnapped girl for? You could have found the villain without her.

Isaac sends the sled’s one weapon against the Snowman, but right as it’s about to destroy him (which he also wants to do to them), Jennifer tells them to stop. Santa tells Isaac to stop it, which he reluctantly does, but then the Snowman just bonks the ship and it falls out of the sky. Great going, Jennifer. I’m really glad they brought you along.

When the ship crash lands and Santa and Isaac try to fix it, Jennifer wanders off to the Snowman’s cave. Well I have some questions.

1. How does she know where the Snowman’s cave is? How does she even know they’re anywhere near it? Heck, how does she even know he lives in a cave?
2. How did Santa and Isaac not see Jennifer walking off? It’s not like there was some crazy hullabaloo. There are three total in their party! If one disappears, you won’t wait 10 minutes to find out what happened, like our narrator says they do!
3. Even if they did miss her walking away, isn’t this Santa? You know, the guy who sees you at all times! Don’t they feel a little responsible for the random little girl they so lovingly abducted from her home?
4. Why didn’t Santa let Jennifer wear warm clothes? “Oh don’t worry, I have a new sled.” Well yeah, now it broke down, you’re all stuck in the cold, and she just wandered off. Nice going.

Jennifer makes her way to the cave (I guess the Christmas Light guides her or whatever), and she confronts the Snowman.

He says he’ll destroy her, but she says there’s good even in him, because the Christmas Light is inside him “especially now at Christmas.” Yeah thanks for clarifying that the Christmas Light is especially meaningful at Christmas. She sings to the Snowman that the Christmas Light is inside him, and although he keeps singing back “There ain’t no way,” he begins to melt. Oh I don’t know, perhaps it’s because his master plan was TURNING INTO A SNOWMAN.

Santa and Isaac walk in right after the Snowman melts because they have done absolutely nothing useful in the entirety of this special! Toy production is down to zero, Isaac is inventing things in November, they’ve spent all their time trying to stop a guy who started a blizzard when they could have just used the reindeer with the red nose, they kidnapped a little girl because a light in the sky told them to, then they lost her and let her walk into the villain’s lair alone. These are the heroes.

Santa tells Jennifer that she did her best and so did Burton. Um… you’re congratulating the villain who tried to kill her? OK there, Santa. However, Jennifer continues to believe the Christmas Light is inside Burton too, and…

Why is everything in this movie phallic? Anyway the Snowman shatters and is revealed to be Burton once again. He apologizes for everything he’s done wrong, and Santa surprisingly takes it in stride, saying “We all make mistakes.” Yes, who among us hasn’t tried to stage a coup, turned into a killer snowman, tried to kill our former boss and cancel the holiday he bases his entire industry around? It’s just another day at the workshop for Burton.

Burton tells Isaac that the evil has left him now, and he will spend the rest of his life doing good. He says they can bring the joy of Christmas to every day, and that they’re The Christmas Brigade. Um… why does the guy who rebelled against his friends get to name the group? It would be like Judas walking up to John and Peter after the crucifixion and being all “Hey that whole traitory part is gone now, trust me. We’re the Jesus Troupe.”

Sled 2 takes off into the night, and while I guess there aren’t any toys to deliver, at least they didn’t get a little girl killed. Small victories and all. Grizzly Adams gives us some very bizarre closing narration that rivals the one at the end of The Christmas Tree. He says “Every year on Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth” and I couldn’t believe with 30 seconds to go they were going to suddenly turn this into a religious special. Was it like Plan 9 from Outer Space where a church sponsored the bare-bones production, so they had to slip this in? Well the special threw me for yet another loop when that wasn’t what he said. “Every year on Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of the Christmas Light.”

Is the Christmas Light the God of this film’s universe? I’m so confused. Why aren’t they calling it Lightmas? Well then if it wasn’t named after Christ, it wouldn’t be the Christmas Light, it would be the… Lightmas Light. Did the original script just outright have religious text, and the final cut dropped it? I mean, I saw a movie once where they had clearly dubbed the word “iPhone” with “smartphone” because the Apple company was probably not OK with being namedropped in such an offensive film. Did… Did Jesus threaten to sue the production of this movie if they used his name?

“Yeah sorry guys, it’s just bad for my brand.”

The plot of The Christmas Light is all kinds of confusing, but I genuinely find this one sentence in the closing narration more mind-boggling than anything else in here.

The Christmas Light, unsurprisingly, boasts terrible animation, but that’s to be expected seeing as how it was made on a shoestring budget in the primitive days of computer animation. If there was anything resembling emotion in the voice acting, or maybe just a story that makes sense, I could get past it. However, it’s a combination of literally everything just being terrible. Did they find out like a week before Toy Story came out that computer animation was now a thing, so they hastily threw together a story and grabbed some of their friends to do the voices? I can’t find anything regarding the budget of this production, but the only way it had more than three digits after the dollar sign is if there was a decimal in there.

The good news is it’s only 22 minutes, and it was such a failure that these people were never heard from again…

Oh you have to be kidding? There’s a sequel? Not this year. Maybe some other time.

I’ll put The Christmas Light into that best slot for now, but I can’t imagine it will be there too long.

Well we’re off to a fine start with a Christmas special that is truly disastrous in every way, and there are plenty more to come.

MATCH-UP HOME

HOME

The Worst Christmas Special 5

INTRODUCTION

The special that I’m starting this year’s Match-Up with is a pretty obscure one, but you know what? It’s actually a historical landmark… (More)

Movies with cheap animation always have to stretch the truth a bit (or a lot) on their covers, don’t they?… (More)

There are certain forms of entertainment that never really made sense to me. Why would anyone think… (More)

Well so far this year, I’ve reviewed a special about elves, a special with an unintentionally horrible message… (More)

Where do I start with today’s special? Is it the weird parenthetical title? The fact that only one person is credited? (More)

I have watched a lot of bad Christmas specials over the last few years… (More)

I didn’t know a lot about today’s movie going in, although I did know one pretty major fact… (More)

Oh goody, another Christmas special based on a famous Christmas song… (More)

HOME

The Worst Christmas Special 5: Introduction

It’s been a crazy year, but the calendar suggests that Halloween has passed, so it’s time for another round of terrible Christmas specials. Once again, I’ve got a weird mix of animated specials and live action catastrophes, like the self-proclaimed first computer-animated Christmas special The Christmas Light and Santa’s Christmas Circus Starring Whizzo the Clown. I’ve brought back The Nutcracker: The Untold Story, which I replaced last year when I watched the newest version of A Christmas Carol. It’s the fifth year I’ve done this, and I keep finding more specials to review, so get ready for another year of bad songs, abysmal animation, and unintentionally terrible messages.

MATCH-UP HOME

HOME

The Devil Through the Decades: 1988-Present

After the three in 1987, there weren’t too many Devil films for a while, but as the world inched closer to the beginning of a new millennium, filmmakers started thinking about literal personifications of good and evil once again. The first of these turn-of-the-century Devil films was the (in)famous Al Pacino vehicle The Devil’s Advocate.

One of the most unapologetically overblown movies of all time, The Devil’s Advocate is something of a joke to a lot of viewers, from Keanu Reeves’ poor accent and generally just being out of his element to Pacino’s completely over-the-top monologues, and I won’t act like I can’t see it. It’s a pretty silly movie, but yeah, I unashamedly enjoy it anyway. This one used to be on TV all the time, and I would always catch myself watching until the end.

Hotshot Florida lawyer Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) is contacted by the mysterious New York firm Milton, Chadwick, and Waters.

The head of the firm John Milton (Pacino) takes an interest in Kevin and his young wife (Charlize Theron), but it’s gradually revealed that the firm is pretty sinister. Yes, it’s essentially John Grisham’s The Firm if it had demons instead of mobsters. It’s no real twist that Pacino’s Milton is Satan, as it is right there in the title and the plot is heavily pointing that direction.

This film’s portrayal of The Devil owes a lot to The Devil and Daniel Webster, which Al Pacino watched to prepare for the role. Interestingly enough though, even though this is a courtroom film, the climax is not in a courtroom like The Devil and Daniel Webster. In Daniel Webster, Mr. Scratch targets an average man with a particularly hard life, playing to his sense of utter desperation as well as what little honor he has left, but here John Milton targets a talented lawyer and plays to his inner greed and cunning from the get-go. Obviously it’s a gradual decline, but it’s pretty clear Kevin Lomax is a man who sell out his morality to win a case. In the film’s opening scenes, he sees his client, a pedophile teacher, masturbating during the trial and learns he’s obviously guilty.

He calls for a recess, debates with himself what to do, but goes back and wins the case by presenting surprise evidence (which isn’t legal, but it’s a movie) that leads the jury to believe the client’s victim is lying.

I’m not entirely sure if Kevin’s lack of sympathy from early on is intentional or not, but I lean towards yes. Milton does tell him in the climax that he was looking to “better deal” his wife from the moment he arrived in New York, and while situations were definitely engineered to draw him closer to Christabella (Connie Nielsen), this is still essentially true. He is pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to further his career, and he does continually abandon his wife over-and-over as the film goes on, even as her mental state continues to seemingly decline.

The film’s major theme is the war between free will and fate. Milton reveals in the climax that he has always been keeping an eye on Kevin and has engineered certain things to go in his favor.

He’s done this because Kevin is one of his many children, and he wants him to help create the Antichrist. Kevin argues that he’s gotten where he is in life because he’s a good lawyer, and while Milton does acknowledge that free will plays a part, he’s been helping him along. Weirdly, although I don’t think it was the intention, the casting of Keanu Reeves kind of works here. You’re right Al Pacino, I don’t believe a lawyer as uncharismatic and unintelligent as that won case after case by his own skill. If I saw that guy winning over a jury with his alleged intelligence and good-ol-boy charm, I would have to believe there was something supernatural at play.

Like in The Omen, there are some mysterious deaths of characters who get too close to the truth. The firm’s managing partner Eddie Barzoon (Jeffrey Jones) is preparing to testify about Milton’s illegal international dealings, when he is murdered in the park by two homeless men who are likely demons. The way the scene is edited all but outright states that Milton is taking him out, but that theme of free will creeps in again when the men ask Eddie to hand over his watch. When he doesn’t, they beat him to death. When Mitch Weaver (Vyto Ruginis), the head of the committee Barzoon will testify to, is killed while walking into traffic, we’re led to believe that Milton killed him.

However, we see him not look both ways before he very pridefully steps into the street. He is doing the right thing by trying to bring down a corrupt firm, but here in a moment of weakness, he makes a mistake.

However for all The Devil goes on about free will in this movie, he is of course a hypocrite. Kevin’s wife Mary Ann does nothing wrong over the course of the film, and yet she has worse things happen to her than anyone. She finds herself going stir-crazy having to stay home while Kevin is working long hours, she discovers she is unable to have children, and she is eventually raped by Milton. This leads to her being committed to a mental hospital and committing suicide. The Devil can’t get her with any actual temptations, so he just cheats and gets her out of the picture.

Like in The Devil and Daniel Webster and Angel Heart, the climax is a battle of wits against Satan, and Kevin’s chances are somewhat in the middle of the bleakness scale between those two films. In Angel Heart, everything is pre-ordained and Harry Angel simply needed to find out the truth about himself, so there is nothing he can do at that point. In The Devil and Daniel Webster, there is nothing Jabez himself can do, as he knows he made a deal, but he has Daniel Webster on his team, and it’s Webster’s oratory that gets him out of it in the end. Here, Kevin has no one on his side, and he’s up against The Devil and Christabella, but he does have free will or at least the illusion of it.

He gets out of the situation by killing himself and seemingly thwarting the Devil’s plan, but all of a sudden he’s back in the courtroom from the opening scenes. He loudly announces to the court that he’s taking himself off the case, and a reporter (Neal Jones) insists on getting him a high-profile interview. Kevin agrees, and the reporter morphs into Pacino’s Devil, who says that vanity is his favorite sin. There are a lot of different ways to view this ending, but I reject the all-just-a-dream one, because it’s simply too easy, and also we see plenty of scenes where Kevin isn’t present. Maybe it’s God giving him a second chance, maybe it’s Satan hitting the reset button, but I lean towards the latter interpretation. He’s going to just keep doing this over and over until he gets what he wants.

Pacino’s character is a very ’90s Devil, with his fancy tailored suits and luxury penthouse apartment. Unlike the con man in The Devil and Daniel Webster, he thinks he’s the kind of person Kevin wants to be. However, he makes a mistake in thinking Kevin cares more about greed and lust than he does about pride. He thinks the exorbitant lifestyle will win him over, but it’s the pride in himself and his own vanity that’s his true weakness. That’s the route The Devil takes at the end, so maybe he’ll win this time.

There are lines about preparing for the year 2000 in The Devil’s Advocate, as he takes complete credit for everything that happened in the 20th century and says he needs a child for the next one. End of Days is a totally silly movie that came out in 1999 and played up the end-of-the-millennium aspect to ridiculous levels.

In 1979, the Vatican sees a star in the sky that signals the birth of the mother of the Antichrist. Some of the cardinals think the baby should be killed, as if The Devil wouldn’t just choose someone else or whatever, but The Pope says that evil can’t be used to fight evil. So what’s the evil plan of the Satan-worshipping cult to raise the Antichrist’s mother? Just… let her live a normal life. She is eventually raised by a Devil-worshipping stepmother, but everything is kept hidden from Christine York (Robin Tunney) as she grows up.

Why wouldn’t they just lock her away somewhere for 20 years until it was time? Or at least why not tell her? If you’re a cult, and this woman is your chance at bringing about the end of days, why are you not gaslighting her?

The premise sounds like a very serious religious horror film… but the lead is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s definitely among his darkest films, but it’s hard to take the movie seriously with Arnold as the lead. Arnold plays Jericho Cane, an ex-cop and current private security guard, who is having a crisis of faith due to the horrific murder of his wife and daughter. While protecting a mysterious banker (Gabriel Byrne), he battles a priest named Thomas Aquinas (I don’t know if it’s supposed to be that one or not), who says that the thousand years are up and the beast has been unleashed. See, Satan has chosen a host in Byrne’s random Wall Street banker to impregnate Christine and bring the Antichrist into the world. So Satan’s been bound for a thousand years, where he could think about all the people he could possibly possess, and he just picks a random Wall Street guy?

I shouldn’t complain, because Gabriel Byrne is one of the few unironically good things about this movie. Sure, he’s over-the-top and kills off people basically on a whim, but I mean, he’s The Devil and he’s been bound for a thousand years. It’s to be expected. Also, compared to Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate? He’s positively subtle. Unfortunately, one of his biggest scenes feels like rejected lines from the end of The Devil’s Advocate, as Byrne rages against God in front of Jericho. Regardless, Byrne is so good in this film that I wish he had a better religious horror film to make up for it.

Well that one is marginally better. Thankfully, he does have a much better one coming up on this list.

End of Days has everything you could expect from a cliched Devil-worship movie. There’s a ritual with cloaks and hoods, a villainous sect within the Catholic Church (although they’re not Devil-worshippers, they just want to kill Christine), pacts with The Devil, and totally insane eschatology. Jericho meets with a priest (Rod Steiger) who lays out the film’s plot to him.

Every 1000 years Satan is released into the world, because the number 666 is not actually 666. He claims that numbers in dreams often appear backwards and upside down (Is this a thing? I’ve never heard of it), and therefore Satan is released on every year that ends in 999. Do I even need to explain why this makes absolutely no sense? Arabic numerals weren’t invented until AD 500, more than 400 years after the Book of Revelation. The Gregorian calendar wasn’t around until the 16th century! The movie does kind of poke fun at the date and time part at least, when Arnold quips “Is that Eastern time?” and Father Exposition explains it really only has to do with star alignment. While I’ll begrudgingly accept that handwave in regards to time, it doesn’t explain the upside down and backwards nonsense.

This film is almost entirely cut-and-paste from other religious horror movies, but there is one single moment that I actually do think is done well. When Satan appears in Jericho’s apartment, he tries to get him to reveal where Christine is being kept, and he tries to tempt him with something he really wants in exchange for the information. So many Devils or at least Devil-worshippers in previous movies offer up naked women or fame and fortune in a moment like this, but not Byrne. He creates an illusion of Jericho’s wife and daughter being alive and celebrating Christmas, and promises he can bring them back.

Jericho does eventually reject the illusion, but it’s such a smart temptation compared to other films, and we understand why it almost works on him. It’s a small thing, but Byrne really sells it, and I find it to be a genuinely interesting moment.

End of Days was also one of the first films to unabashedly portray a sexy Devil (I mean, maybe some find late ’90s Pacino shouting at the sky sexy, whatever does it for you), as the charming and charismatic Gabriel Byrne immediately begins making out with a woman moments after being possessed.

Apparently the female extras in this scene were competing to be the one Gabriel Byrne got to make out with. The film is incredibly over-the-top and unsubtle, with our hero whose initials are JC being crucified at one point and saving humanity later, but I still hold by my argument that The Devil’s Rain is the most ridiculous Devil film.

Also in 1999, we got The Ninth Gate, a film about a New York book collector named Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) who is hired by Devil worshipper and academic Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to look into his copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.

Only three copies of the book exist, and it’s the Holy Grail of Devil books, because it is apparently adapted from a book written by Satan himself and includes instructions on how to summon him through a series of nine etchings. Through his travels, Corso comes across all kinds of people, including a mysterious woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who seems to have supernatural powers and helps him at every turn.

It turns out that three of the real etchings are in each book, and everyone is willing to kill for them. Liana Telfer (Lena Olin) steals them from Corso, so he has to go undercover at her Satanic mass where she attempts to use them to summon The Devil.

The film seems to be deconstructing the Devil worship tropes of the past, and sort of commenting on religion as a whole, as Liana’s sect is pretty much just in it for the orgies anymore. They are the groups you’d see in the Distant Devil films who meet in castles in the European countryside and wear black robes and say the mass backwards. Boris Balkan is a more modern Devil-Next-Door style villain who will live in the modern world and will even be cordial enough assuming you do what he wants, but is still only in it for himself. However, in the end, it is Corso, our greedy, lustful, entirely self-centered and unsympathetic protagonist, who gets to enter the ninth gate. Like The Devil, he is the only one truly in it for himself, and not out to worship someone like a religion.

It’s implied that the mysterious woman might be Satan, and a lot of people interpret the film this way, but I don’t so. I think she’s definitely a demon in human form, but I think the film intentionally tries to leave some mystery about Satan himself, and this would answer too much. I’m giving the Cliffnotes version of the film here, because I have written a very long piece on this film after I gave it a much-deserved rewatch a few years ago. It’s kind of oddly paced and is far from perfect, but I think The Ninth Gate offers an interesting perspective on how Devil films had been done up until that point, and it’s especially pointed in a year that gave us such a cliched film as End of Days.

After the turn-of-the-century, The Devil mostly disappeared from horror films, mainly just appearing in comedies (like that awful Bedazzled remake) and superhero/action films. Then, horror started to pick up again in the early 2010s, and a little studio called a24 brought us some modern horror masterpieces.

The first of these was The Witch (Or The Vvitch if you’re using the stylized title with the spelling of the era it’s set in), a quiet and chilling independent horror film from first-time director Robert Eggers. The film is set in New England in the 1630s, and follows a family of Puritans who abandon their community and go off to live on their own, unaware that they’re moving into the woods where a witch lives.

While the film is a very slow-burn, character piece, it makes a very interesting choice by having a witch kidnap the family’s baby in one of the first scenes. Teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is playing peekaboo with baby Samuel, when a witch kidnaps him, kills him, and uses him to make flying ointment!

It’s quite a shocking sequence, especially so early in the movie, but Eggers is establishing that all bets are off and he’ll be doing his own thing with this movie.

The family patriarch is William (Ralph Ineson), who has taken his family away from their community over a religious dispute. We’re not told what it is, but the implication is that he’s a fundamentalist, even by Puritan standards. Unfortunately for his family, he’s a horrible farmer, can’t hunt to save his life, and is consistently dishonest. His wife Katherine (Katie Dickie) isn’t great either, but since we see so little of the family before the loss of her newborn son, it’s hard to judge how she would have been before that. She does favor her son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) over Thomasin, placing the blame squarely on her for Samuel’s disappearance. The other two children, the twins Jonas and Mercy (Lucas Dawson, Ellie Grainger) are quite strange and seem eerily obsessed with the family’s goat, Black Phillip.

Like The Exorcist or The Omen, The Witch is a family drama as well as a horror film. We genuinely care about these characters, or at least the kids who are there through no fault of their own. When Caleb is abducted and comes back seemingly in a trance, it’s genuinely frightening. When he dies in front of his family, we feel his family’s pain, but also understand their real, palpable fear about the horrors living in the woods.

After Caleb’s death, things somehow get even worse and fast. Katherine is convinced that Thomasin is a witch, and Thomasin is convinced that Jonas and Mercy have made a pact with Satan in the form of the goat, so William brilliantly locks all three of them in the barn overnight with the goat. (I’m mocking the character himself here, not the writing, as this is entirely in character for the exasperated and pathetic William.)

Katherine has a bizarre vision where she sees her two dead sons coming back to her, and she might sign a pact with The Devil or it might just be a dream. In the morning, William finds Jonas and Mercy gone, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it long, because the goat fatally wounds him in a particularly disturbing sequence. William finally shows some remorse for his sins and accepts his imminent death. Katherine tries to kill Thomasin, but she tearfully fights back and kills her mother in self-defense, leaving her completely alone.

The film’s final scenes confirm what Thomasin has believed all along. She asks for the goat to speak, and all of a sudden, Black Phillip appears in human form (Wahab Chaudhry) and confirms himself to be The Devil by offering Thomasin the chance at a better life and asking her to sign his book. We never see his human form in great detail, but he definitely has hoof-like boots and is dressed in traditional Puritan garb with a hat and beard.

It’s really a creepy scene as he leers over the young girl and makes her disrobe before signing away her soul. Thomasin then follows Black Phillip (back in his goat form) to a Witches’ Sabbath, where it’s confirmed that there was not only one witch but a whole coven’s worth! She gleefully laughs as she rises up into the night sky, and the film ends. It is a shocking ending, but tonally, it works and is wonderfully creepy. That said, it’s a bit surprising how literally the evil in the film is portrayed.

The Puritan family is unquestionably portrayed as very dysfunctional and the parents are in the wrong a lot (if not all) of the time, but this ending seems to confirm that their worst fears were entirely accurate. A real coven of witches was working against them, Satan was in their barn, and he made their daughter a witch. Why is a 2010s horror film portraying it this straight, 90 years after a movie like Haxan portrayed this as entirely inaccurate and outdated? I think there a few different ways to look at it. One is that the movie simply poses the question “What is the scariest thing that could happen to a Puritan family from their own perspective?” The subtitle calls it “A New England Folktale,” so it’s easy to view this as the kind of story these families would tell around a campfire. “Don’t be like that one family who abandoned the community. They got attacked by a witch and The Devil himself.” In that way, the film could be viewed in a very similar way as Haxan. Another way to look at it is that William and Katherine fear something so much that it drives their daughter to interest in it. All they do is talk about evil and witchcraft in the woods, so by the end, she wonders what it’s all about.

A third view suggests that nothing supernatural happens in the film at all, and the family is just going crazy. William is a terrible farmer, and it is possible that his rotted crops bring about ergot poisoning, the same thing that many historians believe plagued Salem and was partially responsible for the delusions of the Witch Trials. We see a lot of shots clearly showing rotted crops, and if you add this in to all the isolation the family must be feeling, plus the loss of two sons, it’s a perfectly reasonable way to look at the film’s supernatural horror.

Everyone only sees the horror they expect. Thomasin believes the goat is genuinely speaking to her siblings, but we only ever see it talk to her. When it walks her to the coven, she could easily just be following a goat into the empty woods, completely delusional by this point. Really think about it—How is there a coven of witches already formed in New England in the 1630s? There are only a few settlers, and they’ve only been in the country a few years!

Honestly, I swing back and forth between the “Puritan campfire story” and “They’re just going crazy” interpretations, but either way, The Witch is a deeply unsettling and atmospheric horror film that benefits from close rewatches. Apparently a lot of viewers were disappointed because they expected a faster-paced horror film, but a24 kept doing what it was doing, and gave us an even more unsettling Devil film a few years later—Hereditary.

Hereditary might just be the darkest film I’ve discussed in this series, even more so than Rosemary’s Baby or The Witch. Hereditary’s trailer was not dishonest about the film, but it left a lot of the story a mystery, as trailers should do, especially for films like this that rely heavily on twists. The trailers made it seem like the film’s horror would come from creepy child Charlie (Milly Shapiro)…

…which it does, until she dies half-an-hour in! The family was already clearly having a tough time with mother Annie (Toni Collette) dealing with the recent death of her distant and cold mother Ellen, totally unaware how to grieve. After Charlie’s death however, Annie, husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and son Peter (Alex Wolff) completely (albeit understandably) fall apart.

Annie is utterly distraught and is even willing to attempt a séance to connect with her daughter, which was suggested by Joan (Ann Dowd), a woman she met outside a support group meeting.

Joan seemingly connects with her dead grandson, and Annie is willing to do the same. However, when the family does perform the séance, there’s an odd invocation in an unknown language, and things don’t seem to go right.

As Annie goes through her late mother’s things, she finds books on the demon Paimon (an actual demon in demonology), seeming to suggest Ellen had sold the family out for her own personal gain.

Ellen had wanted Paimon to possess Peter from birth, as Paimon requires a male host, but Annie wasn’t speaking to her mother at the time. Instead, he possessed younger-child Charlie from birth, as Annie felt bad and was now on better speaking terms with her mother. Paimon, with the help of Joan who is revealed to be Ellen’s friend, is now bringing out his ultimate plan to find a male host in Peter. However, he always will latch on to the weakest host first, no matter the gender.

Things only continue to get worse, but there is one last moment of hope. Charlie had collected a notebook of creepy pictures of Peter apparently as Paimon, which Annie tried to throw into the fire earlier in the film. However, it didn’t burn and instead her arm began to burn.

She quickly pulled it out of the fire, but later on has a revelation—If she throws the book into the fire, both she and the book will burn, ending the whole affair. She tries to get Steve to do it, but as he continues to deny that anything supernatural is going on, he refuses, so she throws it in. Instead of Annie burning to death and ending the whole thing, Steve catches on fire and quickly dies. It’s not the single-most shocking moment in the film, but it was the one where I realized there was no chance things were going to end remotely well for this family. There were no rules, and the villains were out to get them.

Annie gets possessed, but she is soon killed, as it’s all a means to get to Peter. As soon as Peter is at his weakest point, he finds himself in the treehouse surrounded by the occultists, and Joan crowns him as Paimon.

The Devil himself is never mentioned in Hereditary, but Paimon is specifically identified as one of the “Eight kings of Hell” in this final scene. There a lot of little details here that you can catch on rewatches, once you get past the initial shock of the scene. Paimon’s name allegedly translates to “a tinkling sound” in an unknown language, which we definitely hear in this scene, as well as the fact he is said to be preceded by trumpets, which we also hear. Paimon is often depicted as riding on a camel, which explains the mysterious clicking noise Charlie made when she was possessed by him.

Director Ari Aster said he wanted to make a horror film from the perspective of the “sacrificial lamb,” and the final scene is very reminiscent of the final one of Rosemary’s Baby. Everything has been pre-ordained by Annie’s mother’s generation, and there’s nothing the Graham family can do about it, which is reflected by the miniatures Annie creates over the course of the film. The older generation sold their children out to get rich, and now those children are stuck with the consequences when they grow up. It seems like a pretty clear metaphor for the current economic situation, and it handles this symbolism far better than The Believers ever could.

Both Hereditary and The Witch portray villains who seem to be somewhat open-minded but are actually extremely misogynist and backwards-thinking. The Puritans in The Witch are undeniably sexist and patriarchal, and some have interpreted the Deal with The Devil at the end as a sort of happy ending for Thomasin as she is now liberated from her family and can see the world. Yes, she was stuck with nowhere to go, even when her family was alive, but I think the movie goes out of the way to avert this. She just ends up signing her soul away to another man, who makes her strip naked before doing so. Maybe on the surface it seems showier, but it won’t be any better. Hereditary‘s villains seem to be the same way, as it seems that Annie’s mother was the leader of the cult, but it turns out that she was merely Paimon’s “bride.” Paimon hates women so much that he will do everything he can to get out of a female host and take on a male one instead.

Who knows what future Devil films will bring? Regardless, the best ones (like all great horror movies) will have something to say about the time in which they were released. It’s exciting to be in what seems to be a new golden age of horror.

HOME