12 Days of Christmas Movies, Day 5

"A Christmas Story" (1983)

"Only one thing in the world could've dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window."

Director Bob Clark followed up his films “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” “Deranged,” “Deathdream,” “Black Christmas,” and “Porky’s” with this seminal holiday film, which can be enjoyed in twenty-four hour rotation on Christmas Day, courtesy of TBS, and I bet everyone reading this will watch it all the way through at least once. All the makings of a classic film are here: The endearing story, the characters that are easy to relate to, and the many one-liners that you can quote in mixed company and everyone will know what you’re talking about:

"You’ll shoot your eye out."
"’Be sure to drink your Ovaltine?’ ‘Ovaltine?’ A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch."
"’Fra-gee-lay.’ Must be Italian."
"Deck the harrs with berrs of horry, fa-ra-ra-ra-ra, ra-ra, ra, ra."
… and so on.

As innocent and as well-developed as holiday films can get, I take a marathon of this film over "It’s a Wonderful Life" any day.