{"id":38203,"date":"2022-12-05T13:05:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T18:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38203"},"modified":"2023-01-03T11:22:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T16:22:58","slug":"38203","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/05\/38203\/","title":{"rendered":"BAD MOVIE MONDAY: THE CHRISTMAS TREE (1991)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today\u2019s BAD MOVIE MONDAY entry is a doozy. So thankfully it’s under 50 minutes long. It is one of the worst and most baffling Christmas Specials I have ever seen. That it actually played on the USA Network blows my mind. THE CHRISTMAS TREE came out in 1991 and was directed by Flamarion Ferreira. A man who is right up there with Valentino Balboni, Lamborghini\u2019s old chief test driver, when it comes to having a badass name that is guaranteed to get you laid. Joking aside, Ferraria actually has a huge resume and has worked on a truckload of various cartoons since the late seventies. I believe he\u2019s still working today in fact. So, before I go on, I want to say that I respect the man. Yes, he\u2019s credited as director for one of the worst movies ever, but he\u2019s a working artist and this was a gig. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s a professional and did his best with what he had. When a studio gives you no time and no money and no resources to make \u201csomething\u201d. Well\u2026 you\u2019re gonna get what you\u2019re gonna get. In this case they called the resulting abomination THE CHRISTMAS TREE.
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\nQuick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed \u201cBad Movie Monday\u201d. The premise was simple: We\u2019d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those night so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.<\/em><\/p>\n

This was obviously supposed to be one of those throwaway Christmas movies meant to be \u201cwatched\u201d by busy moms, drunk dads, and kids too excited about their presents to pay attention to the TV. Yet even by setting the bar as low as possible within this very forgiving genre THE CHRISTMAS TREE manages to fail in every single way. It\u2019s lazy, stupid, weird, creepy, slow, loud, confusing and cheap. It also manages to constantly make you go WTF without being interesting. In all my time watching bad movies, and I\u2019ve seen more than my share of howlers let me tell you, I\u2019ve never really seen a movie that\u2019s bonkers but also at the same time really kind of boring.<\/p>\n

So, let’s read the back of the VHS box, because apparently this thing also had a VHS release:<\/p>\n

This wondrous new Christmas classic is the story of a very special orphanage, whose children love a beautiful pine tree. The evil owner of the orphanage plans to cut down the pine tree and spoil the children’s holiday. But Santa hears their Christmas wishes and soon all their dreams come true.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I won’t say that any of this is outright bullshit, although the word \u201cwondrous\u201d is a bit of a stretch. This is a legitimately straightforward summary of the plot, or it would be if this film had a straightforward plot. This thing is all over the damn place. To the extent that I\u2019m reasonably certain that this movie had a lot of post-production fiddling. They probably started out with a sickly sweet and sort of bland story about orphans meeting Santa, and then later added bears and chainsaws and gambling addiction and Santa having force lightning and kids worshiping trees to spice it up.<\/p>\n

Alright! Onto my favorite part, where I list ten thoughts that went through my head as I watched this movie.<\/p>\n

#1\u00a0 There is not a single line of dialogue in this movie that wasn’t recorded in one take.<\/p>\n

#2 \u00a0Despite some slow bits, there is some real (unintentional) peanuts of comedy gold in this particular turd. You might have to tease them out by making the jokes yourself, but the comedy is there.<\/p>\n

#3 \u00a0The story manages to be both utterly insane and stupidly predictable, and I CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW IT\u2019S DOING THIS. How do you manage to overwhelm and underwhelm at once? It\u2019s like breaking the laws of physics.<\/p>\n

#4 \u00a0The IMDb rating for this \u201cmovie\u201d is 1.4 out of 10. To put this in perspective Tommy Wiseau’s THE ROOM got a 3.6<\/p>\n

#5\u00a0 Despite my complaints, and the film\u2019s very real terribleness, the hand drawn animation is competent and has a certain warmth and charm to it. I’ll take it over cheap CGI garbage any day.<\/p>\n

#6 \u00a0Some of the child actors either have just learned to talk or they were eating during the recording sessions. Perhaps both.<\/p>\n

#7 \u00a0The adult actors sound like they all took Ambien…<\/p>\n

#8 \u00a0…except for the woman who plays Mrs. Mavilda, who seems to have taken crack cocaine.<\/p>\n

#9 \u00a0The writer for this movie doesn’t seem to understand how orphanages work\u2026 or what trees are\u2026 or how children act\u2026 or what Christmas is\u2026 or what Mayors do\u2026<\/p>\n

#10 I’m not sure if the animators are going for cute or creepy. Every character has a flat expression and dead staring eyes. The animated version of David Lynch\u2019s Eraserhead wouldn\u2019t be this unnerving.<\/p>\n

So there we go. A beautiful terrible Christmas story just in time for the holidays. During the rest of the month of December I will try to review only Christmas or Christmas themed movies that my friends and I watched during BAD MOVIE MONDAY. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll break that promise instantly, but for now let\u2019s pretend that this is what I\u2019m going to do. Anyway, enjoy the review and happy holidays!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s BAD MOVIE MONDAY entry is a doozy. So thankfully it’s under 50 minutes long. It is one of the worst and most baffling Christmas Specials I have ever seen. That it actually played on the USA Network blows my mind. THE CHRISTMAS TREE came out in 1991 and was directed by Flamarion Ferreira. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badmoviemonday","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38203"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38210,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38203\/revisions\/38210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}