Top 10 Un-Christmas Movies

One of my favourite parts of this season is the movie binge. But one of my least favourite things about all the movie choices I'm given, is they're just too... well, Christmassy!

So here's my countdown of the best alternative choices that will probably still be shown in December, as they still technically count as Christmas movies!

10. Lethal Weapon

"Jingle Bell Rock", "I'll be home for Christmas", and "The First Noel" play over the speakers as blood spills and gunfire blazes, in this classic action comedy. Murtaugh, a steady cop on the verge of retirement, and Riggs, a decidedly unsteady cop on the verge of suicide, team up to blow open an organised crime ring operating a drugs business out of a Christmas tree farm. Producer Joel Silver wanted this and all his other movies to be set at Christmas, so they would keep being shown on TV in December, and he could keep cashing in. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson consistently act like they're in a serious action movie, and as a result make this an even better comedy than it would have been if they didn't. The sequels increasingly tried to bring the lead pair down to earth as relatable family characters, but it will always be the over-the-top silliness that makes this one so good.

9. Star Wars Holiday Special

This small-screen follow-up to the original Star Wars movie is, quite bluntly, awful. For fans who clamoured for anything Star Wars after the explosive original, it was a confusing disappointment. But for fans watching back now, knowing how bad it is, and having a host of great sequel material to enjoy, it can be a laugh to look back at, as we lay on the couch finishing off the last of the Christmas chocolates. Luke tries to help Han get Chewie back to his Wookiee family for the holidays, and after 10 minutes-worth of story is stretched out to feature length by musical numbers and cartoons (including Golden Girls' Bea Arthur as the eye-rolling landlady of the Tatooine Cantina), the storm troopers standing in their way are swiftly dispatched and they all gather round a giant tree to hear Princess Leia sing a holiday song. So bad that even George Lucas stopped it from ever being broadcast or released again, it's still part of the Star Wars universe for two reasons: One, when fans hear it's so bad it's banned, they immediately want to find it and watch it; and two, it has the first ever on screen appearance of Boba Fett.

8. King Lear

This dark but witty Shakespeare play has been on screen too many times for me to choose one version, but I will say that Lord of the Rings co-stars Ian Holm and Ian McKellen both gave great performances in the lead role. It's also been adapted into the American family drama A Thousand Acres and the Japanese period epic Ran. A once powerful, now foolish, old King is driven out of his realm, and into the madness and despair of a wild winter storm, by his ungrateful elder daughters, and only his sidekick, known simply as "The Fool", keeps his sense of humour all the way to the tragic end, when Lear's youngest daughter arrives to try and bring light to darkness. For some inexplicable reason, the original play was performed as part of King James' Christmas revels, on December 26th, 1608 - despite the fact that the only thing even remotely Christmassy about it is the old King's long white beard. I read somewhere that it can be interpreted as a Catholic rant against the Protestants for "exiling" the worship of the Virgin Mary, but I can't see it myself.

7. Die Hard

Higher on the list than Lethal Weapon, because it's more famous as a Christmas movie in spite of its blood-soaked and fire-lit thrill ride of gun fights and fist fights, though I actually prefer Lethal Weapon. In place of the larger-than-life Riggs and Murtaugh, Bruce Willis turns in a strangely relatable performance as an average everyday Joe of an ex-cop, trying to get his family out of the hands of terrorists and safely home for Christmas, using every tool at his disposal, from firearms to duct tape. No matter how many sequels get made, the original is the best, because the sequels turn John McLane into the larger-than-life indestructible hero he was never meant to be. The late Alan Rickman turned in a career making performance as villain Hans Gruber, and, fun fact: his shocked face, when he finally falls from the tower at the end, was real - the stunt team dropped him sooner than they should have, just to see his reaction!

6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I wasn't sure where to place this one on the list, because the book is one of the classics. One of the greats. But the live action screen versions, quite frankly, are not. And the best adaptation of this book to the screen, the animated one, cuts out the Christmas elements almost entirely. Christian writer C.S. Lewis introduced children to the idea of Jesus with this story of 2 brothers and 2 sisters, swept off into a magical land to fight the White Witch, who casts a curse that it be "Always Winter, but never Christmas", until the great lion Aslan arrives to save the day by sacrificing himself. Lewis wanted the book to be for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, but she had grown out of such things by the time he finished, so he wrote it to remind grown-ups of their childhoods instead. The dedication to Lucy inside the front cover reads: "One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

5. Gremlins

The cleverly ironic thing about this horror comedy, is that it's not the horror that's horrifying or the comedy that's comical - it's the other way around! What makes it a comedy, is how surreally funny it is that the horror is happening at such a ridiculously cheerful holiday time, with fairy lights and snowballs all around. What makes it a horror, is how creepily horrifying it is to make a joke out of such bloody chaos. The whole Gremlins franchise is so successful at not being stuck in a single genre box, that it's become the whole reason why the films have such a uniquely wide and varied fanbase. Some people love it as a kitschy horror; some people love it as a dark comedy; people who aren't that into typical seasonal comedies, like it because of how unlike all those other seasonal comedies this one is; people who aren't that into typical horror, can like it because it's so unlike all the other horror franchises out there. The chaotic little creatures are hard to contain in a box, on screen or off!

4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

The James Bond film with a difference. The character - heck, the whole franchise - might be painfully outdated; but however bad an example of a human being he is, we still get excited by his adventures and want to see him beat the odds. Just once, back in the 60's, we got to see him truly fall in love with his girl; truly shed a tear when he lost her; even start to sympathise and consider compromise with the criminal elements of his fictional world. The human side of Bond, played as a one-off by Australian George Lazenby. He had no experience starring in films when he auditioned- he'd worked as a model, a stunt double, and an actor in a few advertising campaigns. So he invented a resume of movies made on Soviet countries, where UK and US studio lawyers couldn't check. When he confessed to the director, he was told that he was so convincing in his lies that he must be a pretty decent actor after all! So he got the part, and we got to see him and his lady Countess Tracy - played by the incomparable Dame Diana Rigg - car-chase and ski-chase away from gun-toting villains through snow-covered Swiss Alpine Christmas scenes, and share a romantic snowed-in night in an old log barn. It's one of the least successful movies in the series, but its tragic ending remained an iconic part of the ongoing story, even getting a callback in the newest entry No Time To Die.

3. Batman Returns

In Tim Burton's dark sequel (does he write any other kind?) to his genre-reviving original Batman movie, the streets of crime-ridden Gotham are laced with snow. The funfair/carnival roles into town, with a deadly figure hiding at its centre. The city's Christmas-lights switch-on is being sponsored by a corrupt billionaire, who has his own sinister plans for Gotham. And Batman and Catwoman share a kiss - and a fight - under the mistletoe. Though its success was less than either its more serious predecessor or its more colourful sequel, Returns has a cult following of fans who consider it their favourite portrayal of Batman and Catwoman. Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer give irresistible performances, despite the awful dialogue they're given to say. "Mistletoe can be deadly, if you eat it." "A kiss can be even deadlier, if you mean it."

2. Twelfth Night

The second Shakespeare on our list, this was written to be performed on the night of the title. This "second Christmas" celebration marked the end of the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas, when revellers reversed their roles in society for a day - beggars were royalty, clowns were priests, and husbands and wives swapped wardrobes. In this romantic comedy of mistaken identity, a girl dresses as a boy, servants humiliate their masters, rowdy songs are sung at a house of mourning, and a dialogue between two sailors has very different meanings depending on whether you think the men are straight or gay. As always there are various screen versions to choose from - for me it's a tie between the Alec Guinness version of the 60s or the Helena Bonham Carter version of the 90s. This entry and the next one get the Number 1 and Number 2 slot on my list, purely for one personal reason why they're special to me. It was while I was appearing in stage versions of both of them at the same time (that's me in the middle of the cover picture of this article), that I came out of the closet, because I realised how much the queer colour of both stories was reaching me so deeply, and why. Comedy can touch people's lives just as greatly as tragedy can!

1. Rent

In theatre writer Jonathan Larson's love letter to the queer Bohemian side of 1980's New York, a cast of LGBTQIA+ characters brighten each other's lives in spite of the devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Coming together on Christmas Eve, they may only have a year left to live, so they decide to live it to the full, dropping out of the rat race and filling their last "525,600 Minutes" on Earth with as many of their dreams as they can. The stage musical has been constantly revived since its Broadway debut, though Larson didn't live to see its success. This oft-forgotten early-2000s movie version stars a host of familiar faces from today's TV, like Taye Diggs, Rosario Dawson, Jessie L. Martin, Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp - most of whom were in the original stage cast. The writer passed away the night before the debut stage performance, but the cast and crew decided to go ahead with the show, in his memory. As it ended, the audience was silent until one person, who had genuinely lived through the hard times depicted, stood up and said simply, "Thank you, Jonathan Larson."