#clive exton

And don’t even get me started on Jeeves and Wooster. It might not have the murder (although it sure has the crime) and they might not have gotten Christopher Gunning, but it’s literally the gayest show in the world.

A Ghost Story for Christmas and  Mark Gatiss’ Latest Ghost Story, The Mezzotint, to Exclusively Premiere on BritBox North America this Christmas!

Gather round the fire for a series of chilling Christmas tales featuring seasonally supernatural stories from Charles Dickens M.R. James and more.

In the UK, it's a long-standing tradition to tell ghost stories at Christmas. There are conflicting opinions on exactly how the tradition started and how long it's been going, but it's often believed to have links with pre-Christian solstice festivals that viewed mid-winter as a time when the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest.

For hundreds of years, people told ghost stories around winter fires until Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came along and effectively threw a giant wet blanket on all the gruesome, decadent Christmas fun. Cromwell even went so far as to ban Christmas carols. Still, like a ghost in a Christmas story, the holiday would come back from the dead.

Following in the tradition, the BBC created A Ghost Story for Christmas back in the 1970s, producing a new ghost story each year at Christmas time. The first five were based on the stories of M.R. James, with the 6th based on a short story by Charles Dickens. Two more were original screenplays by Clive Exton and John Bowen (Bowen later worked with David Cook to create Hetty Wainthropp Investigates). 

The tradition has been revived in recent years by Mark Gatiss, and BritBox North America will exclusively premiere 2021’s holiday haunt, The Mezzotint starring Rory Kinnear on December 24.

On December 20th, BritBox is bringing us the full collection of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas Specials + a few extras for added creepiness.

Complete list of titles:

The Mezzotint

Martin’s Close

The Dead Room

The Tractate Middoth

A Ghost Story for Christmas: A View from a Hill

A Ghost Story for Christmas: A Warning to the Curious

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lost Hearts

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Number 13

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Stigma

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Ash Tree

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Ice House

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Signalman

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Stalls of Barchester

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Whistle and I’ll Come to You [Plus other ghost stories]

Bedlam

Midwinter of the Spirit

The Secret of Crickley Hall

The Small Hand: A Ghost Story

The best part of Red Sonja is the beautifully illustrated DVD cover. Sure the movie features some well-made costumes and some cool sets, but the story is so poorly written, the action so dull, and the acting so bad they poison everything next to them.

The story begins with a magical blue fairy reminding a young woman of what just happened (unfortunately, the audience wasn’t there to witness it). After fiery-haired Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) rejected the advances of Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) the tyrant had her soldiers violate the young woman, burn down her home and murder her family. Years later, a group of priestesses is gathering to destroy a powerful glowing orb (they call it an amulet, but aren’t those usually small and worn around your neck?). The amulet gathers power when exposed to light and now threatens to destroy the entire world so of course, Gedren wants it for herself. Sonja’s only surviving sister (wait, what?) barely makes it out of the temple and bumps into Lord Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger). He and Sonja, along with a ruined young prince (Ernie Reyes, Jr.) and his faithful servant Falkon (Paul L. Smith) go forth, determined to take down the evil Queen.

This is a cheap movie, made in Italy for budgetary reasons and meant to cash-in on Schwarzenegger’s role in the Conan films. Not only is he playing a similar role, he’s kinda the main character. Sonja is an incompetent fighter that gets rescued twice by Not-Conan and often loses her sword. If she weren’t the only one of the group able to handle the glowing amulet (because she’s a woman), she’d serve no purpose.

Brigitte Nielsen is awful in her role. Every line is delivered as if it’s the first time she’s read the script, which makes you wonder if she was cast solely so the production could save on the cost of red wigs. She even screws up in the follow-through, often awkwardly smirking or making faces after each statement, making the bad deliveries seem even worse. Even as a physical performer, she’s nothing special. My instinct is to blame the director for the stiff, dull sequences of swordplay, but aside from being able to twirl her blade at a decent speed, Nielsen doesn’t display any skills in the action scenes whatsoever. She’s so bad she kills any sex appeal the film would have. How is that even possible in a story that features a bloodthirsty lesbian world conqueror, a topless belly dancer (don't get excited, it's in an awkward scene), and a female heroine jumping around with her cleavage exposed during the entire adventure?

The awfulness of this movie does not rest solely on Nielsen's shoulders. Everyone here is bad. Even Schwarzenegger, who is usually charming and has a real presence on-screen, is appalling. Don’t even get me started on child-actor Ernie Reyes, Jr., who would take the title of “worst actor in the film” if he had more screen time than Nielsen.

And we haven't even discussed the writing yet. Dialogue sounds as if someone who doesn’t speak English wrote it. Big action sequences happen off-screen, characters travel huge distances with no explanation and happen to be at the right place, at the right time for no reason. If you’re hoping for goofy, gory sword-and-sorcery fun, you’ll be severely disappointed: only 2 decapitations and a single arm gets lobbed off. In the monster department, the movie sucks. The only contender is a robotic water-lizard, a “killing machine” whose kill count is 0. Even with the sets and costumes, the movie screams CHEAP! In every scene. Check out Sonja’s swordplay teacher; he looks downright ridiculous!

Bad acting, rotten dialogue, a boring story, forgettable characters, no cool monsters, and a lousy script. That’s what you can expect from Red Sonja. As an extra rotten cherry on the shitty sundae, it constantly reminds you of better movies you could be watching, most obviously the Conan pictures. Don’t even give a second glance to Red Sonja. It’s not good. It’s not even acceptable if all you want is a sword-and-sorcery adventure. You can't enjoy it ironically either, so it's a film for no one. (On DVD, July 22, 2014)