From The Idea Hole: Holiday Movies - Eight Days Of Night, Turkillikus, and Santa Claus Conquers The World

Now that Halloween is over, we're coming up on the last two months of 2012, where, like every year, what was once several holidays is now celebrated as one massive clusterfuck of a holiday season that I like to call Thank Christ (it's the) New Year! (Coincidentally, before Thanksgiving was incorporated, it was just Christ, it's the New Year, which was considerably more depressing). Anyway, recently I talked about my favorite modern day Christmas movie, Fred Claus, and how its secretly horrifying premise makes it a masterpiece, as well as a warning for all future generations. So, today I thought I'd try my hand at forging a new holiday classic of my own. Here are some of my ideas for Kick Ass Holiday Movies.

1: Eight Days Of Night 

Okay, this one stems from an episode of my podcast where I was mystified and a bit disturbed by the fact that whenever we have a horror movie, the pious religious figure that uses his faith and holy artifacts to fight evil is always Christian, and for the most part, Catholic.  You see this mostly in vampire movies, what with the cross and holy water often being depicted as core weaknesses, but the fact that that's all we ever see hurting them almost suggests that Christianity has a leg up over the other religions, which as an enlightened, pan theistic 21st century chap I find a bit offensive. Not that there's anything wrong with being Christian mind you, but my point is, why should they get all the fun? Where are the kick ass monster hunting Rabbis? So, in honor of Hanukkah, my thought - Hasidic Vampire Hunters! Think of how you could expand the idea of vampire killing. Now, instead of just holding up a cross to ward them off, you can use the Star of David, which is a much more useful weapon, at least when turned on its side and used as a, wait for it, motherfucking throwing star! Or what about automatic motorized dredels with sharp wooden points that burrow into a vampire's chest like drills and dig straight into the heart? And in place of holy water, you've got Kosher foods, sanctified to burn a hot dog shaped hole inside any unsuspecting vampire's face. What else? Fuck I don't know, extra garlicy potato pancakes? The sky's the limit. According to Wikipedia, the closest thing Jewish people have to an ancient vampire is the biblical Lilith, so I say she takes on the Dracula role, building an army of the undead to take on a small Jewish enclave community. Maybe they even go to a priest first, just because they've seen it in so many movies, and all he can say is "maybe she should confess or something," and then Lilith rips his fucking heart out, and the secret order of Hasidic Vampire Killers bursts in to kick some ass. Yeah, this needs to happen.




2: Turkillikus

I don't have as solid an idea for this one, but the basic concept is that every year, on Thanksgiving, as the entire country celebrates the holiday by cooking turkey, unbeknownst to anyone directly involved, a massive worldwide ritual sacrifice is performed. Every year, somewhere in the country, a monstrous creature appears to avenge the senseless deaths of its feathered brethren - Turkillikus, the God of Death of Turkeys. All I've got for it, apart from the risen turkey God's murderous rampage, is that we would focus on the secret annual government response to the crisis, following a special strike team set up to bring Turkillikus down every year before he ruins the holiday. The idea is that they would be really callous and ironically detached from the whole thing, like the lab geeks from Cabin in the Woods, and we would reveal that the only reason they don't alert the public to stop killing turkeys is because of the boost to the economy the holiday always brings. Maybe at one point the strike team fails, and it looks like Turkillikus will reign, and then on cue an army of Pilgrim zombies rises up to finish the job. I also have this notion of a Native American shaman that some goes to for advice, and when he looks at the situation, he just says "Turkeys and Pilgrims, that's all white people shit, I'm getting the fuck out of here!" and runs away.

3: Santa Claus Conquers The World

This idea started completely differently and then went through various permutations. The first ideas was called "The List," and would follow a career criminal who is breaking in to a house on Christmas and inadvertently kills Santa Claus, who is delivering presents to the same house. The criminal gets away and grabs a piece of parchment that turns out to be the naughty and nice list, which magically contains all the misdeeds of everyone on Earth, and he proceeds to use it for the purposes of blackmail. I could never make it work, so I toyed with it, and eventually came to a killer Santa Claus creature based on the Krampus who would possess Santa Claus impersonators and wreak havoc, but I'm pretty sure something close to this has been done. So, I worked on it a little more, and came up with something I think could work, as long as you can imagine Santa Claus as a brutal totalitarian dictator. Easy enough I think. The idea is that Santa Claus gets so sick of being under appreciated through the commercialization of his holiday and so many people no longer believing in him, that he just gives up and decides to turn his vast magical operation into an army to take over the world. He turns his workshop from toys to weapons manufacturing and trains his elves into a savage fascistic fighting force. The result is swift and complete. The governments of the world surrender, and Santa Claus is declared undisputed emperor of the world. Many years later, a small but committed resistance movement fights against the tyranny of Santa Claus and his Elvish Gestapo. Their main goal, capture the List, a magical artifact that allows Emperor Claus to see anyone in the world and record their deeds. The only defense against it, Mistletoe, which protects against unwanted magical spying (which is why so many people used to use it to kiss total strangers, free of moral judgement from supernatural forces). I'm thinking we could throw the Krampus in here too, maybe as Santa Claus' secret genocidal weapon in case the human population gets too rowdy to control, but in the end, the resistance uses it against him and he is devoured.


So, there you go, three new holiday movies that are guaranteed to be better than most of the crap we're gonna see this year. As always, let me know what you think in the comments if you have time, and if you have any better ideas, feel free to post them as well. Happy Holidays everybody!