Well watching 31 horror movies in October damn near killed me so I figure the most logical decision is to do it again with Christmas movies! Of course thanks to the famous 12 Days of Christmas song, I get to be lazy and only do this 12 times this month. And to be extra lazy I’ve asked other people to help write some reviews with me. Also I’m allowed to talk about movies that I’ve already seen. So basically I went down a checklist of all the ways I can be supremely lazy about this whole thing. Sooooo...enjoy?

Holy shit, Disney made an animated movie centered completely around video games. Not only that, but classic video games. I knew the very second I saw the teaser image for this about a year ago, that I was there opening weekend. I was excited since I thought it would be nice to see gaming culture depicted in a classy way. It’s not a shitty video game based movie, or a bunch of teens running around playing Xbox and yelling about pussy, but a high budget, Disney cartoon that is also a complete celebration of arcades and classic gaming.  

As it stands, Wreck-It-Ralph is also easily one of the best movies about video games ever made.

Something strange happened in the days before Medal of Honor Warfighter was released. Sites weren’t given review copies, Wal-Mart dropped the price, other outlets offered to match that price, and EB Games was willing to give buyers back almost the full price of the game were they to trade it in. Needless to say, wasn’t looking too good for this one. I won’t lie, I only picked it up because I saw the Walmart price online and thought it was a mistake, so I wanted to buy it before they corrected their error. Nope, no mistake. It’s the same price as I write almost two weeks later.

So do I regret my purchase? You know where to go to find out.

Hide and Go Shriek was my white whale from back when I was collecting horror movies from the eighties. I knew it existed, I knew I wanted to get it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere and eBay prices were more than I was willing to pay (which was only like 15 bucks but you have to remember I was working part time at Harvey’s back then), so I never actually got it.

UNTIL NOW!

The Brain marks the first time that I had to resort to VHS in order to watch one of these horror movies. At this point in time I figured every movie had made its way from VHS to DVD, but apparently that is very much not the case. I heard about this movie a few weeks back and knew immediately that it had to be a part of this. So I hit up eBay and bought the only copy available there at the time. I have to say that it was completely worth the effort.

I own Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, I own Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube and now I have a copy of it for Xbox Live Arcade as well. Strangely this marks the first time that I’ve actually played it. After the discovery a few years back that Sonic Adventure isn’t nearly as fun as I remember, I was curious to see what I would end up thinking of this one about a decade after it’s debut.

I remember actively avoiding watching The Funhouse when I was younger because of the giant creepy clown face on the cover of the box. I ain’t fucking with no clown movies if I don’t have to. Turns out, clowns don’t even play a part in this movie. So if you have a clown phobia, you will be totally safe. However if you have a mutant kid in a Frankenstein mask phobia, this one might not be for you.

You know, the entire time I was watching it, and even right now as I sit down to write this, I’m not 100% convinced I haven’t seen Terror Train before. There were several moments where I had wicked déjà vu, and was absolutely sure this was my second viewing of this movie. But I’m so sure I haven’t watched it before! I’m guessing this has to do with the fact that Terror Train is crazy generic, and even if you haven’t seen it before, you can predict exactly where things are going from the first minute onwards, though there are some unique touches here and there to keep things interesting.

At this point Hocus Pocus could never live up to the legend surrounding it. For years, anyone I ever mentioned this movie to expressed their immediate love for it. My wife, my friends, everyone loves Hocus Pocus. And they don’t just love it, they loooooove it, making sure to stretch out the word. On top of that, I worked at a video store for two years where we had one lone VHS copy of Hocus Pocus. Not once did that movie get put on the shelf. It was either rented, or we had a list of people waiting to rent it. Not just at Halloween, but all year round. We even had people offer to buy our copy. I can’t accept we possessed the sole copy on the planet, but it sure felt like it.

The time had come to finally sit down and watch it. And yes one could argue that this barely qualifies as a horror movie, but one could also argue that you should SHUT YOUR GOD DAMN MOUTH!

I honestly can’t believe Silent Hill Revelation (I just now learned that it’s not actually called Revelations, apparently there’s just the one) even exists. It has been six years since the original movie and while there was always talk of a sequel, I figured it was a lost cause. The first one didn’t do great and nobody really liked it (for the record I totally did) so it seemed unlikely but hey, it was cool we even got one. But holy shit we got another one! It exists, I know because I’ve seen it! And they didn’t reboot the franchise like many expected - they made a goddamn sequel!