Paramount+ Now Streaming the Quintessential Holiday Horror Comedy: “A Christmas Mainstay”
I wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies as a kid, but looking back, in some ways, I didn’t need them. Horror found me through back doors, from scary stuff my friends had lying around, to movies made in the ’80s that brought loads of creepiness to supposedly family-friendly fare. Which is how, sometime before I turned 10, I ended up watching Scrooged.
On the surface, Scrooged is a broad, big comedy blockbuster starring Bill Murray, directed by Superman architect Richard Donner, and co-written by Saturday Night Live legend Michael O’Donoghue. It’s absolutely that, but it’s also stealthily one of the best horror comedy films of the 1980s, and a holiday essential you can stream right now on Paramount+.
Murray is Frank Cross, a jaded and cutthroat TV executive in New York City who, after firing one of his employees (Bobcat Goldthwait) right before Christmas, gets a visit from the ghost of his old boss (John Forsythe). If you’ve read A Christmas Carol, you know what happens next. Frank is visited by three ghosts. A grungy, good-natured spectral cab driver (David Johansen) takes him through Christmas Past, a deranged sugar plum fairy (Carol Kane) through Christmas Present, and arguably the most frightening (and non-human) incarnation of the Ghost of Christmas Future ever put to film takes him through his eventual death if he keeps on the same cruel path. Along the way, Frank reconnects with a lost love (Karen Allen), comes to understand his long-suffering assistant (Alfre Woodard), and maybe, just maybe, learns the true meaning of Christmas.
Because it’s the most famous Christmas ghost story of all time, any adaptation of A Christmas Carol has to reckon with the horror elements of the tale in some way, and Scrooged goes all in. Frank’s former boss Lew doesn’t arrive as a translucent specter, but as a shambling corpse in golf attire whose eyes have rotted right out of his head. The Ghost of Christmas Future emerges as a giant skeletal figure draped in black, with monsters living in its ribcage and a static-y television for a head.
In the film’s most heartbreaking moment, Frank stumbles upon the frozen body of an unhoused man he’d only just met shortly before. Thanks to makeup effects by Tom and Bari Burman, Scrooged will send some legitimate chills down your spine, while also, of course, making you laugh. Throw in music by Danny Elfman, and it becomes a whimsical, occasionally quite creepy, Christmas blockbuster.
Watch the Trailer Below:
Scrooged, Murray’s first film in four years by the time it reached theaters, was a major hit when it landed over the Thanksgiving holiday in 1988, and time’s been kind to it. It remains one of those films you can happily put on just about any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I personally still consider it one of my gateway horror movies, and you can watch it just in time for Christmas on Paramount+.
Categorized: Streaming News
