Billy Bob Thornton plays the title role in “Bad Santa.”Between Halloween and Christmas, the Hallmark Channel is broadcasting 1,800 hours of holiday programming, a schedule that includes 12 brand-new Hallmark Christmas movies. Such a movie marathon fills many souls with dread since so many holiday movies tend to be sticky-sweet, badly acted and focused on what comedian Louis CK dubs rich “white people problems.”
One of the new Hallmark movies (“One Starry Christmas”) is about a pretty astronomer whose problem is she likes a cute cowboy she meets on Christmas and her handsome boyfriend. What woman on Earth considers beauty, a prestigious job and two hunky beaus as a problem?
Now, consider two beloved classics. “It’s a Wonderful Life” opens with the hero contemplating suicide, while “A Christmas Story” ends with a working class family’s fun in a Chinese restaurant after their Christmas feast is destroyed by “the Bumpus hounds.” Both movies earn the joy audiences feel at the end.
That in mind, here’s a list of “alternative” Christmas films, some with charm and wit, some oddball and twisted, but all decidedly different than the usual holiday fare. Some make the spirits soar; some make the adrenaline flow; some make you go “huh?” But in all cases, they’re more than just a forced sugar rush.
• “Curse of the Cat People.” Not rated. (1944) : As Chattanooga horror film expert Chris Dortch says, producer Val Lewton made brilliant films with lurid titles. This film, a sort-of sequel to “The Cat People,” follows a lonely, imaginative little girl whose best friend is the ghost of her father’s beautiful first wife, a suicide. Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese wrote that World War II audiences embraced this beautiful frost-swept film perhaps because it unforgettably shows kindness can triumph over death to comfort the living.