Episode 174: A Very Merry Amazon Prime Christmas

Merry Christmas, friends! We've finally made it to the big day, and we hope you all are having a lovely holiday wherever you are in the world. It's time to sit back, relax, mix up some fun Yuletide cocktails and listen to us yak about some Christmas movies! On this episode, Joe and Nikki discuss a pair of new holiday offerings from Amazon Studios. First we take a look at The Merchants of Joy, a documentary about families who make their living selling Christmas trees in New York City. Following that, we get into the dysfunctional family comedy Oh. What. Fun., which follows Michelle Pfeiffer as a mom who feels wholly ignored by her family around the holidays. Ha ha ha! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro: Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses) Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0  

Shane Black Friday returns! Our favorite purveyor of holiday action nonsense is back with another Christmas-themed feature to jingle our bells and deck our halls. Or something like that. On this episode we're discussing Play Dirty, the latest from filmmaker Shane Black. Play Dirty is based on Richard Stark's long-running series of "Parker" crime novels. But rather than adapting any novel in particular, Shane Black elected to concoct his own with the help of Mark Wahlberg, Lakeith Stanfield, and Rosa Salazar. It's got twists and turns! It's got heists and wacky characters and double-crosses! It's got all the things we come to expect from a Shane Black movie. And it also has the baggage of being an Amazon-produced film meant for 'second screen viewing'. What does all that mean? We'll get into it! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Home For the Horrordays continues as we enter spooky season proper! We've been sampling the wares offered by everyone's favorite streaming service, Tubi, and landed on the 2023 found footage horror flick Werewolf Santa! It's Christmas Eve in British seaside town of Hastings, and amateur monster hunters Lucy and Dustin encounter Santa Claus just in time to watch him get mauled by a werewolf. Now it's up to Lucy and her family to save Christmas before the feral monster Santa can devour the entire town. On this episode, we discuss the film's found footage bona fides, ponder the logistics of lycanthropy, and reminisce about our own misspent youth as high school filmmakers! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0  

It's the most wonderful time of the year, friends! Home For the Horrordays, our annual celebration of all things festive and spooky, makes its triumphant return! Also returning this week is our guest, film critic Alonso Duralde! The second edition of his book "Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas" arrives on shelves this week. (Pre-order your copy today!) Alonso joins us to discuss the explosion in the holiday cinema landscape since the book's original release. Afterward, Alonso brings us the 2022 Adult Swim Yule Log for discussion. Produced in secret and released with zero fanfare, the Adult Swim Yule Log starts simply enough: just a video of a festive fireplace. It soon veers off into some wildly grotesque directions, including a hillbilly killing spree, alternate dimensions and timelines, aliens, sentient yule logs... You know what? We've already said too much. Jump on in and join the insanity! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

It's been a long, hot summer, but we're back just in time for Christmas in July! We've been playing the heck out of Nintendo's new Donkey Kong Bananza game, so we thought we'd take a look at the Christmas episode of the Donkey Kong Country TV series! "The Kongo Bongo Festival of Lights" has everything you could want out of a holiday-themed cartoon episode: A holiday-themed light display, a wacky O. Henry-esque gift-giving mishap, two warring factions coming together in the name of peace, and even a festive song or two! So yes, we're talking all about Donkey Kong this episode. The first half of this episode covers the Donkey Kong TV show (and also Avatar: The Way of Water, for some reason). The second half is when we pull the ripcord and just gush about Donkey Kong Bananza. Strap yourselves in, kiddos! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

We crash into June with the grand finale of this year's Ani-May block! This episode we're talking about Spy x Family Code: White. And to help us break it all down, we've enlisted two experts in all things animation: Returning guests Niall Flanagan and Dwayne Moloney! The Forger family—career spy Loid, his secret assassin wife Yor, and their psychic adoptive daughter Anya—takes a holiday vacation to the cozy mountain town of Frigis. Anya needs her father's help to bake the perfect dessert for a school contest, but along the way the family find themselves embroiled in a plot to kickstart a war. As one of our guests puts it: "What if John le Carré wrote one of his spy novels and accidentally wrote a sitcom instead?" That's about the size of it. And, hey! It's also a Christmas thing! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Ani-May 2025 continues! On this episode we're discussing Mobile Suit Gundam's "War in the Pocket" OVA from 1989. It's Christmastime on the Riah space colony, and eleven-year-old Al has made friends with Special Forces pilot Bernie, who's on a secret mission to destroy the Gundam being built in the colony. The two improbably become fast friends, and along the way Al learns some hard truths about all this war business he's dreamed so much about. It's a harrowing tale, and our resident Gundam expert Dr. Nick is here to explain all of it. And I do mean alllllll of it! So crack open a cold one and get yourself some burgers. It's gonna be a wild ride! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Ani-May is back once again! We're dedicating the month of May to all things anime. First up is "The Sleight Before Christmas", from the second series, released in 1977. Lupin and the gang are out to steal the last bottle of Napoleon's wine, on it's way to be delivered to the President of the United States for Christmas. In this episode, Joe and Bradford discuss expensive wines, cheap wines, the phenomenon of subs vs. dubs, and compete to see who can do the best Bill Clinton impression. Also, stay tuned for what's coming up on this year's edition of Ani-May! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Christmas Eve is the worst travel day of the year, which means an airport is also the best, most dramatic setting you can get for a Christmas movie. At least, that's what this week's film will have you believe. Carry-On is the latest holiday offering from the good people at Netflix: A tense, smartly-written thriller about TSA agent Taron Egerton trying to stop mercenary terrorist Jason Bateman from detonating a chemical weapon in a crowded airport on Christmas Eve. Along the way, we get a few classic holiday needledrops, some excellent action sequences, and a chilling villain turn from Jason Bateman. Also in this episode, we discuss the possibility that Carry-On may be the true ending to Arrested Development, the phenomenon of "Whamageddon," and the state of Netflix's original film slate. Check it out! Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Outro: Carry On (fun.)

Our 2025 podcasting year begins in earnest with Golden Winter, an Asylum knockoff of an Air Bud spinoff about a family of golden retriever puppies who lose their mother, bring a family together, and help foil a bank robbery just in time for Christmas! Proving that there is always more and it is always worse, our descent into madness finds us discussing the films of The Asylum, pitching our own ideas for a Die Hard sequel, and questioning our own existence. You know, the usual topics for this podcast about Christmas movies! Anyway, we hope you enjoy it, and we promise a more coherent episode next time. Maybe. If you've been good. Questions/Comments? Email us at [email protected] us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0