One of our favorite things to do around the holidays is simply watching one of our many favorite Christmas movies or TV specials. Rudolph, Frosty, Scrooge, or Charlie Brown are as familiar to us as any Christmas carol on the radio. These visual stories are lovingly watched every year, but we’ve noticed one or two things that get a little… creepy.
Granted, this is not usually done on purpose, but you’d be surprised at how many beloved Christmas flicks come across as unsettling. Allow us to peel back some of the tinsel and holly to look at some of the ten creepiest moments in our favorite Christmas flicks.
Jim Carrey’s Grinch
To be fair, the Grinch isn’t supposed to be all warm and fuzzy until his heart-enlargement-process at the end of the film, but that still doesn’t mean he isn’t just the slightest bit creepy. One major factor in this has to be Jim Carrey’s phenomenal performance behind all that makeup and special effects.
The Grinch is supposed to be more than a bit unpleasant. He’s the antithesis of everything the Whos down in Whoville stand for, so it makes sense that he’s a tad unsettling. With termites in his smile and garlic in his soul, he’s definitely top of the naughty list.
Nutcracker: The Motion Picture’s Designs by Sendak
Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is one of the most beautiful ballets and most beloved Christmas stories. Shockingly, there are very few film adaptations that capture the classic story. One notable version, however, is Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, namely for featuring the Pacific Northwest Ballet and designs by illustrator Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are.
The performances and story are both fine, but some of the design choices by Sendak get a bit, shall we say, freaky. From the bulging-eyed nutcracker to a Drosslemyer with some serious stranger-danger vibes, this version of the classic story definitely ventures onto the wild side once or twice.
Distorted Santa Sequence
A Christmas Story is kind of a weird movie when you get right down to it. After all, it’s sort of an altered conception of reality seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. We can totally get behind that method of storytelling, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t get the creeps from a certain mall Santa.
The wide-angle shots, the distorted sounds, and the almost-demonic ho-ho-ho from the overworked Santa at Higby’s store make this feel like a holiday hangover. It totally clashes with the rest of the holly jolly atmosphere, but it sits with us nonetheless.
Heat Miser’s Lair
Heat Miser isn’t the villain in The Year Without a Santa Claus, but he’s the closest thing to one. He’s really more of a grump than anything antagonistic, but his place of operations definitely suggests something more sinister. Just as his bro Snow Miser lives in a castle of ice and frost, Heat Miser has a volcano.
We’re not talking something fitting a Bond villain, we’re talking something akin to Satan’s throne room with a hellish interior. Heat Miser might be someone who likes it hot, and he means really hot, but this definitely made us somewhat uneasy as kids.
Winter Warlock Reveal
Although his heart of ice is melted by the act of Kris Kringle’s generosity, when we’re first introduced to the Winter Warlock, he’s not exactly the most friendly face in Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. With his gnarly fingers and jagged sharp teeth, he probably chilled a few young viewers once or twice.
That first moment when we see him in the lightning flash was enough to give us a scare, but then we see the closeup of his freaky fanged face amidst a swirling blizzard to top the game. Thankfully, this guy’s easily swayed by an act of kindness, because we’d hate to get on his bad side.
Christmas Past From The Muppet Christmas Carol
Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has given us some of the most marvelous and magical creations to ever grace the silver screen. That being said, what on earth were they thinking when they made this creepy thing? We get that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story, but Christmas Past is supposed to be haunting but beautiful, this thing looks like a doll’s head on used kleenex.
Isn’t Christmas Yet-To-Come supposed to be the scary one? We don’t understand why the filmmakers went with this mess, but it’s definitely not something we’d want to wake up to in the middle of the night.
Jack Skellington’s Haunted Holiday
Twas The Nightmare Before Christmas and all through the flick, there were pumpkins and snowmen and a skeleton Saint Nick. Tim Burton’s Christmas tale might be Disney’s biggest cult classic, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t insanely creepy at times. All the more reason to rewatch it this year.
How many other Christmas films have evil clowns, shrunken heads, and cannibal Christmas wreaths mixed in with their holly and ivy? It’s over-the-top and absolutely insane, but at least good old Jack Skellington is having the time of his afterlife. Definitely something we could expect out of the mind of Burton.
Christmas Future from Mickey’s Christmas Carol
The last thing we’d expect on a list of creepy Christmas moments would be something involving Mickey Mouse, but we’ve got to talk about Disney’s interpretation of Christmas Future. Not only do we see a full shot of Mickey Mouse silently and pitifully mourning the death of Tiny Tim, but Scrooge McDuck thrown into the fires of Hell!
Not only did this scare us as kids, but it shocked us as well. A Mickey Mouse Christmas movie has a character being thrown into a fiery grave to be doomed for all eternity. There is such a thing as overkill, Disney.
Polar Express’s Toy Car
First of all, why was this sequence needed? Though it might represent the protagonist’s struggle with doubt, why would a magical train to and from the North Pole need a car dedicated to creepy abandoned toys? It might be to refurbish and recycle them, but it’s still shady as can be.
If that wasn’t enough, the hobo decides to up the creep factor by bringing in a demented marionette version of Ebeneezer Scrooge to scare the living daylights out of both the boy and the audience. Definitely not a part of the Polar Express we’d like to see a second time around.
Most of Disney’s A Christmas Carol
We have to give Disney some credit here for recognizing that Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a ghost story first and a Christmas story second. That being said, they really lay on the dark stuff in this motion-capture masterpiece. For Disney, that’s a gigantic deal.
From the rotting corpse of Marley’s Ghost to the absolute horror show that is the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come’s segment, this film really ventures into the horror category more than once. We’re surprised it actually got away with that PG rating. If you’re looking for some creep in your Christmas, this is the way to do it.
