Many people will have Scrooged down to watch as part of their regular Christmas routine. I should be one of those people but every year I forget to watch it or am otherwise indisposed and then the moment is over. After Christmas, if I’m in need of a Bill Murray fix I go to Ghostbusters or the mighty Groundhog Day.

So, yesterday I actively made a point of watching Scrooged again for the first time since Ms Spurrier put the film on in high school for us back in 1990 and my irritating mate Stu ruined it by laughing at literally everything. He repeated the same trick with T2 a few years later, despite T2 having like two mildly funny moments.

You know you want to watch this movie immediately.

Anyway. Scrooged still delivers. It is, of course, a reimagining of the classic ‘A Christmas Carol’ and a blatant Bill Murray vehicle. That’s okay though, back in the ’80s Bill Murray was so unfuckwittable that films that were 99% about him looking deadpan were completely acceptable.

Bill plays Frank Cross, a cynical TV executive who is just a empty-hearted suit with a baffling hairdo. After setting up the first part of the film by showing him being a heartless humbugging monster, we get into the ghostly visitations part of the story as the ghosts of christmas past, present and future help Frank take a good, long look at himself.

The insane hair of Bill Murray.

The ghosts themselves are fantastic with David Johansen, the craggy-faced singer for The New York Dolls, putting in an amazing turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past and a hectic Carol Kane doing a fine job as his Present counterpart. The non-speaking, kind of terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future has his moments too and while the story isn’t going to throw any twists at you if you know the story, it’s still a perfect Christmas family movie.

The ending is odd and echoes that of Stripes in that it has Bill doing that odd singing thing that he occasionally does. It probably worked a lot better in a cinema full of whooping Americans but it’s still good fun to see. Not sure you’d get away with such silliness now but Bill Murray can do exactly what the fuck he wants. Them’s the rules.

Joking about the current lack of sci-fi toys promised in old movies such as jet packs is something that comes up every time someone fakes the destination date from Back to the Future on Twitter, but there’s something quite miraculous about the fact that many of you are reading this on a handheld device that lets you communicate with anyone in the world, access most of the sum of human knowledge and will let you order a pizza and then, for reasons unknown, photograph it and share that for all the world to see.

This is brought into sharp focus when you watch a film like WarGames which in 1983 was looking at the cutting edge of technology and now looks like a byproduct from the Industrial Revolution.  Back in the ’80s anything ‘tech’ was in and it was beguiling.  Films like Tron fantasised about what it was like to be in a computer and things like Weird Science even imagined being able to create a Kelly LeBrock with something that would make a current wristwatch look like alien technology.

Tech as heck, son!

In WarGames a young Matthew Broderick is cast as David, a young hacker, who accidentally gets a computer to start a countdown to nuclear armageddon.  This is all made possible when he guesses its password, Joshua, which is the name of its programmer’s son.  Aside from that quaint little touch, the fact that hacking into NORAD would now get you locked away in Camp Waterboarding for the rest of your life whereas here it gets him affectionately rubbed on the head makes you pine for these simpler Cold War days.

The ’80s. When you could hack into military hardware using a typewriter sellotaped to a Vectrex.

WarGames is no ’80s B-movie.  The NORAD set is impressive (and it should be given that it cost a cool million back when a million was an unfathomably large sum of money to spend on boxes with flashing lights on them), the story entertaining and the acting performances are spot on.  Broderick is in less smug form than usual but still manages to make hacking seem cool.  This is aided by him getting to hang out with Jennifer, ably played by the fantastic Ally Sheedy. 

What the end of the world looked like back in the ’80s.

The film’s end sequence is undeniably stupid and makes leaps of faith that don’t help the tension that the film is trying to build up but overthinking WarGames is a mistake you don’t want to make.  It’s a charming film that’s put together well enough that it was nominated for a handful of Oscars and was as enjoyable today as it was back in the ’80s.

As far as random Netflix horror picks on a lazy Saturday afternoon go, Waxwork really is a hidden gem. Sure, the ‘waxwork exhibition comes to life and starts kicking off’ angle had been done before and has been since, but Waxwork is such a well-presented, varied film that it could almost feature in our world-not-famous Portmanteau-a-go-go section.

The film revolves around a gang of college kids who get an invitation to a private showing of a new waxworks from its creepy proprietor (played by a very familiar David Warner that we most remember as Dr David Necessiter from The Man With Two Brains, a film that needs a good rewatching and soon!). They, rather unwisely, take him up on the offer and go to a midnight showing. Personally, I would have walked away as soon as the FUCKING MIDGET answered the door but that’s just me.

Old dude remembers The Alamo.

They are soon picked off one at a time as the find themselves trapped inside the various worlds magically linked to the exhibits. It starts with Tony getting stuck in a cabin with a werewolf which a fun scene but let down slightly by the fact that only a small handful of movies have ever managed to do werewolves right. His would-be rescuers get one of the gorier scenes as one of them is torn in half by the wolf. Fun stuff.

Tony’s girlfriend, China, flips the otherside of the Twilight coin so to speak and ends up in a vampire castle in another gory but solid scene. The rest of the gang escape but some of them come back and end up in scenes featuring a mummy’s curse, the Marquis De Sade and some pretty good zombies.

A proper vampire with no hair gel in sight.

Overall, the story hangs together well and still looks great with its bright palette and decent special effects reminding me of T8MC favourite Fright Night. Particularly enjoyable is the film’s final battle which pre-dates 2012′s fantastic Cabin in the Woods and does almost as good a job in its own charming way.

Anyone got a bandage?

So, overall Waxwork turned out to be a hugely enjoyable horror romp with good action and comedy and a some creative scenes of horror and gore. A new T8MC favourite? Maybe. Waxwork II: Lost in Time may be even better and apparently features Bruce Campbell, so expect us break our remit and take a look at that early ’90s sequel in the next week or so. We can’t wait!

Terror Train is really odd.

I had a choice.  I was either going to watch this (having never seen it before) or go with the tried, tested and thoroughly wonderful Romancing The Stone and have to admit, I was bedazzled by this film’s stupid title.

It turns out that it was a post-Halloween Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle that followed Halloween’s slasher flick template albeit with a few twists and turns.

AGENT!!!!

The set up is predictable enough.  There are a bunch of dickhead high school kids led by Doc (played by the same chap who was Harry the terrible negotiator in Die Hard) who pull a very nasty prank on Kenny, your standard slow kid.  They trick him into thinking he’s about to sleep with Alana (Jamie Lee Curtis) and instead have him kissing a dead body.  It’s all very, very standard early ’80s nonsense.

He goes mad (literally) and three years later they all get on a train.  In fancy dress.  At this point you’re reminded of Trading Places and incredibly sad that you’re watching this instead.  Then the killings start.

The killer. Looking fucking dapper!

Terror Train doesn’t go for too much gore, at least during the kills themselves, but is big on suspense.  At first it’s alright.  The deaths are reasonably creative and the fancy dress element means you’re never sure who’s who.

Then David fucking Copperfield turns up as a smug magician and you fucking hate him because the film becomes an extended magic show for far too long.  The focus on all this magic pretty much signposts that magic is involved and before long, Alana is pretty sure he’s the guy.  Despite the fact that HE HAS A VERY DIFFERENT FACE NOW AND IS INCREDIBLY ARTICULATE FOR A VERY SLOW GUY.

A bird who swallowed a plate (m’lord).

After nine killings, you find out who the killer is and are left pretty surprised.  The ending almost makes the film worth watching despite the incredibly limited set and some very poor acting performances.

Jamie Lee Curtis does an admirable job with the script though and gets through it like a pro but ultimately it’s not a very good film.  It’s also pretty far behind Silver Streak when it comes to badass films set on trains.  I can’t think of another.  Under Siege 2 was bollocks.