In context even this is problematic, which is impressive.
People can complain about Christmas themed horror all they want, but it taps into three key traditions. You have the Northern European tradition of telling horror stories at Christmas, the horror genre tradition of taking happy situations and warping them, and the horror movie tradition of ripping off anything succesful. You also have the great tradition of misleading posters, which occasional leaves you with something other than a lump of coal.
Before we start, we need to address one key issue about this film: the historic Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier but Westle, who stars in the titular role, is a West Highland White Terrier. The Skye Terrier Club spoke to the press about this when the film was in production, That then gets complicated when in 2022, the president of the Canadian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club claimed it for their preferred breed. Which is to say that some people take these things almost as seriously as this film took its subject matter, and that after am hour of research into this I can conclude that all the breeds mentioned are adorable. Continue reading
This was supposed to be an easy Trash or Treasure to do before the festive season really kicked in. The plan was to find a seasonal movie with a reputation for being a stinker and heap 800 more words of jovial disdain on its head. Could you get any surer shot than a film that’s spent its whole life in the bottom 100 of the Internet Database, has appeared on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and even made the 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made list by the founder of the Razzies? I thought not, and I was wrong. Very happily wrong. And I now know why it shat out money like a gilded Christmas goose when it first hit the cinemas in 1964.
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Trash or Treasure 