There’s nothing like the steady application of eggnog, undesired presents (more socks, please?) and aggressive good cheer to bring out the Grinch in anyone. Here are four titles guaranteed to take the edge off.
BAD SANTA (2003)
A phenomenally rude movie about the phoniness of the holiday season, this comedy supplies Billy Bob Thornton with his signature role: a drunkenly profane department-store Saint Nick. (His “Ho ho ho!” is “Are you fucking with me?”) An unlikely bond with a latchkey kid is never made sentimental.
BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
Accept no substitutes. This truly unnerving slasher (not 2006’s slick remake) places the action in a snowed-in Gothic sorority house filled with coeds dreading their return home. Out comes the booze, courtesy of Margot Kidder, and soon thereafter, an attic-dwelling creep.
THE HEBREW HAMMER (2003)
Holy war is given a Jewsploitative comic spin as Hasidic superhero Adam Goldberg—a combo of Shaft and Barney Miller—fights the Christian forces that would have him decorating trees with tinsel. The evil plan comes straight from the top: Santa’s son, Damian (Andy Dick).
THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL (1978)
We don’t want to know where you found a boot of this notorious disaster—one that even George Lucas hopes to erase from public consciousness like a sci-fi Stalin. You will be laughing yourself sick, though. Diahann Carroll coos spacey sex talk to a Wookiee; Carrie Fisher looks like she wants to die.
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