‘Yes! Yes I do! I like Christmas! I LOVE Christmas!’
Jim Carrey, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, Bill Murray and now, Reginald Owen. There lies a list of the all the cinematic Scrooges I have imbibed over the last five years. 12 Days of Christmas Films has been a long, arduous, but ultimately rewarding road and while I dread my annual trip to the banks of the river Tim Allen, I will miss drinking deeply from his tepid waters every December. But first, A Christmas Carol…
We know the drill. Scrooge (Reginald Owen) is a dick. He needs the intervention of four ghosts (yes four ghosts. You forgot about Marley) to turn his stupid life around or Tiny Tim will die.
To give you some context into just how goddamn old this version of A Christmas Carol is, lead actor Reginald Owen was born in 1887. This is real olden days people. This film was released 80 years ago.
Despite it’s old age, the years have been kind to this incarnation of Charles Dicken’s famous novella. Owen makes for a convincing, if not quite wicked enough, Ebenezer Scrooge, the ghosts are simple but effective and the heartwarming message of the source material remains. A minor gripe would be the omission of the darker aspects of the original story such as Ignorance and Want hiding under the cloak of that fat bastard The Ghost of Christmas Present but, I guess not everyone needs a lump of coal with their Christmas films to be happy.
When the credits rolled on A Christmas Carol and indeed on the 12 Days of Christmas Films, I felt relief at having made it through another year but also sadness. It’s not often that I get serious but I would like to issue a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has read my stuff this year and helped to make the transition from RobWatchesMovies to Robscene relatively painless.
God bless us, every one.
Merry Christmas, you filthy animals!