Christmas movies from my childhood

[mothwing]

None of these have a Christmas theme, but they're movies which tended to turn up on TV around Christmas while I was growing up, so they've become Christmas movies for me. They're all Fantasy movies, most of them don't only border on but have invaded and taken over cheesy territories, they're WASP-targeted to a fault and none of them apart from The Last Unicorn passes the Bechdel-Wallace test.

5. Dragonslayer (1981)
A dragon terrorizing a village has caused the villagers to set up a barbaric lottery for choosing one virgin as the annual human sacrifice to the dragon. Magician Galen sets out to fight the dragon. I like this mostly because it's set in a post-Roman country just prior to the rise of Christianity, the idea that Fantasy world come with an expiry date, and of course because of the Smith's daughter Valerian, who was dressed up as a boy by her father to escape the lottery.


4. Labyrinth (1986)
After making an ill-advised wish, Sarah has to steal her baby brother back from the goblin king. David Bowie, glass balls, this movie has it all, though I still suffer third -degree pangs of secondary embarrassment at the clumsily excecuted scenes in which the character comes to terms with her ending adolescence through the loss of her beloved bear. Even at nine I doubted that at her age, the teenaged main character would still care that much for her bear, and as an owner of a stuffed zoo myself the anti-consumerism made me feel guilty.


3. The Princess Bride (1987)
Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.  This is cheating because for most of my childhood I wasn't aware that this movie was this movie. I once saw that when I was seven and spent the next ten years searching for this movie. I only dimly remembered this story about someone called Buttercup and a great swordsman (I wanted to be him ever after), but no one could help me out, and, in times Before Google, I had no one to ask, because all the people I did ask drew a blank. Once I had rediscovered it I fell in love with its tongue-in-cheek hyporbole.


2. Ladyhawke (1985)
Follows the story of thief The Mouse, who, fleeing from Aquila's prison, stumbles into the lovestory of Isabeau and Navarre, who, cursed by a jealous bishop, transform into animals during the day and the night respectively, so that they can never be close and are now trying to find  way around the curse. It has magic, adventure, Michelle Pfeiffer (who was, at the time, absolutely the most beautiful woman I had ever seen), a pretty black wolf, a beautiful Friesian, no depth, a terrible soundtrack  and contains a "Should I fail to break the curse, kill her quickly - it's what she would want."-dialogue.


1. The Last Unicorn (1982)
After being told that she is the last of her kind, the last unicorn goes to find out what became of the others and frees them. I usually don't prefer dubbed versions to originals, but this is one of the rare exceptions where I think the German translation rather exceeds the original ('Sie verschwanden von allen Straßen vor langer Zeit, und der rote Stier rannte dicht hinter ihnen und verwischte ihre Spuren' has just more onomatopoetic force than 'They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints," quite apart from the awkward energy drink associations today). Molly Grue is one of my favourite female characters ever, though my favourite character from that story is still Schmendrick.