Holiday Classics: “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?” (1972)

When we first meet Rosie Forrest (Shelley Winters), she’s sitting by a child’s bed wearing a lavish burgundy gown and white gloves, rocking it softly as she sings. She appears sweet, maternal. But when she finishes her song, we discover that Rosie hasn’t been singing to a human child, but to the mummified remains of […]

Holiday Classics: “Hell’s Heroes” (1929)

If you like your holiday movies bleak and uncompromising, look no farther than 1929’s Hell’s Heroes. The early talking picture is a western based on the 1931 novel The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne, but it’s actually one of several screen adaptations of the story, whose Christmas setting, religious imagery (look no further than […]

Holiday Classics: “Cash on Demand” (1961)

Hammer Film Productions is the British studio primarily known for breathing new life into classic movie monsters that were generally Universal’s forte over in the States with their gory color productions beginning in the late 1950s such as The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and many others. But while in the decades since Hammer horror has […]

Holiday Classics: “My Reputation” (1946)

Barbara Stanwyck’s roles in the romantic holiday comedies Christmas in Connecticut and Remember the Night are more than enough to cement her as Old Hollywood’s Christmas queen, but if you dig a little deeper, several of her other films boast seasonal settings that make them perfect annual watches. One of Stanwyck’s most underrated, in terms […]

Holiday Classics: “Larceny, Inc.” (1942)

If you were to hear the title Larceny, Inc., you likely wouldn’t immediately cop it as a Christmas movie. And yet, this crime comedy’s seasonal appropriateness is immediately evident from the name of its source material: The Night Before Christmas, a short-lived Broadway play penned by Laura and S.J. Perelman. Edward G. Robinson stars in […]

Holiday Classics: “The Silent Partner” (1978)

“The Silent Partner” was a sleeper hit when it was released in the United States in 1978, but it seems like it has gained more recognition in recent years, and rightly so. The Canadian production- which won three Canadian Film Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and was one of the first movies produced under Canada’s […]

Holiday Classics: “Room for One More” (1952)

Believe it or not, 1941’s “Penny Serenade” was not the only movie Cary Grant starred in in which he plays a husband overcome with the care of an orphan or two. But while in “Penny Serenade” he played a new husband averse to the idea of having children, in 1952’s “Room for One More,” he […]

Holiday Classics: “Penny Serenade” (1941)

When I first became interested in classic film, I’d stalk the forums on tcm.com in an attempt to seek out movies to watch. Anytime the subject of tearjerkers came up, it seemed like the first and most discussed movie was a film that would likely have otherwise flown under my radar: the 1941 drama “Penny Serenade,” directed […]

Holiday Classics: “The Holly and the Ivy” (1952)

“The Holly and the Ivy” centers around a dysfunctional family gathering for the holidays, but while many movies play this concept for laughs, this 1952 British film directed by George More O’Ferrall from a play by Wynyard Browne is a melancholy drama. But that doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t end with the requisite dose […]

Holiday Classics: ”On Moonlight Bay” (1951)

“On Moonlight Bay” has often been written off as a less-impressive copy-cat of another holiday staple, 1944’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.” The reasons for this are obvious, because the two films share some remarkable similarities. Both are musicals set over the course of one year in a turn-of-the-century Midwestern family’s life, divided into chapters […]