147 thoughts on “Best Christmas Movies Statistically Speaking”

1. Can we get Holiday Inn included here?

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2. BOB ROY’s PERSONAL TOP 12 CHRISTMAS MOVIES

   NOTES
   1/I have included TV movies that I have enjoyed more than I have most of the “usual suspects” that have tended to dominate the best Xmas movie ranking lists over the years. I know that The Work Horse looks down on television movies [in the way that Spencer Tracy looked down on TV actors and big screen B movie actors] but since this is MY list I claim the freedom to include the TV flicks that are in my own overall Christmas Top 12 from both types of movie outlets combined. As Lesley Gore sang in 1963 about being romantically-jilted at her birthday party “It’s MY party so I’ll cry if I want to!”

   2/Steve would probably feel I have a brass neck including Black Christmas in my 12 given that I have teased him over the years about including some of those cheap slasher films that he does in his own Xmas Movie video. However for me 1974’s version of Black Christmas has always stood out as THE slasher pic that at least gets accepted as a Christmas movie whatever my own doubts about the distinction.

   3/Sorry I can’t extend the same flexibility to Die Hard – but my final entry does offer a sop to The Work Horse: the title character of Joy is played by none other than Bonnie Bedelia aka the legendary Mrs Holly Gennaro McClane in the first 2 Die Hard movies.

   1/1954 White Christmas – Bing and Danny forever No 1!

   2/1951 Scrooge – director came from here and lived on my wife’s street

   3/2017 Maggie’s Christmas Miracle – TV movie

   4/1946 It’s a Wonderful Life – I have seen it too many times for it to be my No One

   5/1988 Scrooged-Murray and Mitchum, what a team!

   6/2011 A Christmas Kiss – TV movie

   7/2014 Another Christmas Kiss – TV movie; viewers couldn’t get enough of a good thing!

   8/1944 Meet Me In St Louis – ah Judy!

   9/2019 Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen – very touching TV movie

   10/1945 Christmas in Connecticut – Tony Curtis made an inferior TV movie version co-starring Dyan Cannon aka the once Mrs Archibald Alec Leach.

   11/1974 Black Christmas-Mother Bates would have enjoyed this one!

   12/2017 A JOYous Christmas – TV movie as mentioned in Note 3 above. Bonnie Bedelia getting a break from 4-letter-word scripts in a TV movie that respects Christmas!

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   1. Hey Bob. I can forgive you for not including Die Hard. I have only seen 6 of the 12. Sadly I have not seen any of the TV movies you listed. White Christmas is an all-time classic for sure. One of the greatest misconceptions is that the song, White Christmas, came from this movie. That is not the case at all….as it was first song by Bing in Holiday Inn about a dozen years before the 1954 movie. I saw Murray’s Scrooged in theaters….how can that be so many years ago? Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen looks the like the one that one interest me the most. Good list. FYI – A Xmas movie that we have watched the last three Christmas is Klaus…..that one even picked up an Oscar nomination. Good comment….enjoy this holiday week.

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      1. HI BIG BOY: Thanks for the comments. It is in a way topical that 1983’s Trading Places is on some Greatest Xmas Movies lists because that’s what you and Steve seem to have done: on occasions when you were frantically living up to your Work Horse reputation you used to be the guy that nobody could contact and now Steve has usurped your place in that respect.

         I’ll wait until HE’s been missing for a while longer and then maybe award a Golden Raspberry Razzle for which of you two has been the more elusive over the years!!!

         I mentioned that the director of the 1951 Scrooge -Brian Desmond Hurst – lived in the Belfast street where my wife was born (and raised until she was 20 and married me). She was at 52 Ribble Street and he lived in No 23 – though they were like ships that passed in the night as she was born in 1951 the year that he directed his Scrooge of course! [His entire family workded in the Belfast Shipyard at one time or another].

         Coincidentally the Strand Cinema which is about 2 mins drive from where I now live is the only Northern Ireland cinema still standing that was around in my youth-

         and that was where the young Bob in the 1950s sat enthralled with for example Brando in Guys and Dolls and Sayonara, The Duke in Hondo and The Searchers, Golden Holden in Escape from Fort Bravo and The Proud and the Profane, and Laddie in O’Rourke of the Royal Mounted and The Proud Rebel –

         and at the entrance door to the Strand there is today a plaque commemorating Brian Desmond Hurst and his connection with both Scrooge and Ribble Street Belfast.

         Anyway the other GOOD NEWS: IMDB – which does include TV movies in its list of 100 Greatest Xmas Movies! – rates Hurst’s Scrooge as not just the definitive version of Scrooge but 3rd the best Christmas movie overall EVER.

         And the BAD news? Sadly IMDB lists that 1951 Scrooge just below Die Hard which is at no 2. I suppose that you can’t win em all as the saying goes [the likes of The Duke and Laddie apart of course] .

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         1. Hey Bob, lots of great information in this comment. I am glad the Strand is still standing. The theater I saw many movies in during my youth was the Churchland Plaza theater. It was pretty small, but it had three theaters and I must have seen 400 to 500 movies there. Our second youngest child just got their first job. It is at a grocery store that was built where the Plaza used to be. So weird to think about how that area has changed so much. That is cool about Desmond Hurst and your connection to him, you and your wife and the movie. Good comment.

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3. Now I have a machine gun…. Ho Ho Ho. Glad to see Die Hard made the list. Where would The Shop Around The Corner (1940) measure up on this list?

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