Christmas, eh? A time to gather the family round, nibble on a nut or two, pour a glass of something special, and complain about the number of repeats that are, once again, filling up the TV schedules.

Of course, the advent of satellite and digital channels has ensured that viewers are now spoiled for choice, with hundreds of channels showing thousands of programmes that nobody really wants to see.

But what of the celluloid 'gems' that are seemingly only ever dusted off for this time of year? Well, I will be presenting a selection of underrated classics that you definitely should be setting the DVD for next week but, for now, a quick 'bottom ten' – movies that seemingly (and inexplicably) have an indefinite holiday-season shelf life, and which need to be put out of their misery, forthwith. Christmas may be the time of miracles, but some hope, right?


Gone with the Wind (1939)

Yawn – tomorrow may well be another day, but it’s doubtful whether you’ll give a damn. Victor Fleming (who also made the genuinely great Christmas movie The Wizard of Oz in the same year) created a film that’s only really for people who love superficial, conventional, sentimental and conservative hogwash lacking in any depth. And, I’m sorry, but Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara is simply one of the most irritating ‘heroines’ in screen history.

Fantasia (1940)

OK, OK, so it has Mickey Mouse in the excellent The Sorcerer’s Apprentice but, other than that, what ‘inner child’ is being appealed to by this truly yawnsome collection of animations to classical music ? Plus, the narrator’s sequences are just embarrassing...

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Charming? No. Sweet? No. Lightweight fluff with nothing at its heart? Bing! Director Blake Edwards never quite settles on a tone for his story of popular Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), vacillating between romantic comedy, personal drama and nutty farce, which never combine as they should, with the film shifting gears abruptly and awkwardly. How did this ever become a classic? Sure, Hepburn’s got the looks, but it’s a thin story and an erratic, unsatisfying tone.

Dr Zhivago (1965)

So overrated, it's untrue – David Lean's star-studded Leviathan comes in at an eye-watering 200 minutes and, with the exception of just how beautiful Julie Christie is, has very little else to recommend it. Sorry, but it’s boring.

Casino Royale (1967)

Not the remarkable 2006 Bond reboot with Daniel Craig showing how 007 should be done but, rather, an appalling mish-mash spoof, starring Sir David Niven as the ‘real’ Sir James Bond, who comes out of retirement to battle SMERSH and Le Chiffre (Orson Welles), and is appalled to discover how far standards have slipped, as is ably demonstrated by Evelyn Tremble, James Bond-007 (Peter Sellars).

Six directors (Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish and Richard Talmadge), an amazing cast, and it’s still so much less than the sum of its parts. There have been five (count ‘em) efforts made by your reviewer to watch this to the end of its 131 minutes, and all have failed. Maybe this year, eh?

Scrooge (1970)

Oh, Albert, how could you? A poor version of Dickens’ perennial Christmas tale was always bound to arrive, and this is the worst, by my reckoning. A central performance from Albert Finney that never rises above caricature, a really rather motley collection of songs (director Ronald Neame so wanted to make this into Carol Reed’s Oliver!, but is nowhere near the mark), and Alec Guinness taking the King’s Shilling as the ghost of Jacob Marley. ‘Thank you very much’? I don’t think so...

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

And this, worse luck, is where the 1970s disaster craze began – oh well, at least Ronald Neame (yes, him again, see Scrooge) contrives a somewhat better script than Roland Emmerich’s latest return to ‘things-exploding’, 2012 (2009), but that’s really not too difficult. This tale of a boat turning over and Father Gene Hackman hamming outrageously has acquired an inexplicable cult status over the years – why? Big, dull and stupid.

The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

Fame-o-rama – the other excess that the 70s did so well – is more than ably served by this silly, would-be conspiracy thriller. Richard Harris, Sophie Loren and a galaxy of other stars are thrown together in George P. Cosmatos’s runaway train, which also has a highly infectious bubonic-plague victim aboard. Burt Lancaster is on the case, however, and decides that a certain detour may be in order. It doesn’t get much more cheesy than this.

Bugsy Malone (1976)

On the other hand, maybe it does – it must have seemed like a good idea at the time for director Alan Parker (and, to be fair, it helped kick-start Jodie Foster’s career), but he doesn’t have to put up with it every Christmas, does he? Not big, not clever and, quite frankly, about as charming as an episode of The Mini-Pops, a Channel 4 show that came to an end when it was realised that children pretending to be grown-ups might well appeal to the wrong kind of viewers.

Octopussy (1983)

Roger Moore sank to his nadir as Bond with this, no question – moving away from the restrained but enjoyable seriousness of his previous For Your Eyes Only (1981), John Glen’s film reverts to the ludicrousness of Lewis Gilbert’s Moonraker (1979), without the laser beams, but with more than a measure of underlying racism and disdain for women back in the mix.

And please – Bond doing an impression (‘Sit!’) of Barbara Woodhouse to a tiger? That sound you can hear would be the late Ian Fleming’s underground revolutions going into overdrive...



James Drew
This article is one of Picturenose's regular film reviews