Christmas Creeps

Summer is upon us once again, and that means it's time for a whole bunch of action movies! And in our case, that means action movies that may or may not actually have something to do with Christmas. On this episode we're looking at the 1998 Euro-heist flick Ronin! Robert De Niro and Jean Reno speed across France in pursuit of a stolen briefcase, whose contents may or may not be a danger to world peace. Also, it's Christmas! You didn't think we'd just watch Ronin for no reason, did you? Also in this episode: Bradford discusses his recent vacation to Paris, Jonathan brings up Rugrats in Paris for some reason, and we stumble backwards into the best pitch for an Austin Powers movie ever! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Happy May, friends! This week's show comes to us via listener request. Life is full of twists and turns that you never expect. For instance, we never expected to be talking about the 2017 Netflix film El Camino Christmas this week, but that's exactly what we're gonna do! El Camino Christmas finds a handful of ne'er-do-well drunks, shady cops and innocent bystanders all holed up in a liquor store on Christmas Eve. Life lessons are learned, secrets unearthed, all that good stuff. Perennial Christmas favorite Tim Allen is here to force everyone to sing Christmas carols at gunpoint, which means this is the one Christmas film that accurately captures the way this podcast feels 90% of the time... Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

On this episode we're talking about An All Dogs Christmas Carol! It's the series finale of the All Dogs Go To Heaven animated series, itself a sequel series to Don Bluth's original All Dogs Go To Heaven. This thing went on a whole lot longer than we would have guessed! Now guardian angel dogs living in San Francisco, Charlie and Itchy take it upon themselves to pull a "Christmas Carol" on their nemesis, Carface (voiced by Ernest Borgnine!), to show him the error of his ways. There's also something about a demon dog hatching a plan to steal Christmas presents, but it's not important. What IS important is that Joe gets hoodwinked into playing the donation game himself this week, and he does... well, the important thing is he does it. Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

It's that time again! The gang's all here as we take a listener request and dedicate this week's episode to Daddy's Home 2! Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are all hunky dory as co-step-dads after the original Daddy's Home, so what better way to test that familial bond than by bringing in their own dads (John Lithgow and Mel Gibson, respectively) to help celebrate the holidays and/or completely ruin them? In this episode, we talk about all manner of weird garbage, from the weird logistics of Airbnb, to the complicated legacy of "Do They Know It's Christmas", imagining fake movies made up for this movie, the phenomenon of going to the movies on Christmas Day, and a whole lot more! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

And we're back! On this episode, Nikki returns to help Joe and Bradford break down Disney's most recent holiday offering: The Naughty Nine! On Christmas morning, Andy discovers Santa did not bring him the video game console he asked for. Realizing he's been put on the naughty list, Andy enlists the help of seven kids with expert skills (and one adult who's definitely not Chris Pratt) to fly to the North Pole and steal back the Christmas gifts they rightly deserve. So it's Ocean's Eleven but with kids. Cool. Great. Also in this episode, Joe pitches his own idea for a Christmas kids movie, Bradford explains the distinction between a horse-cop and a cop-horse, and Nikki regrets ever returning to this stupid podcast. Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

It's been a few weeks, but we're finally wrapping up our video game extravaganza! If you haven't listened to part 1 yet, we highly recommend you give that a listen before diving into part 2. (Link's in the show notes!) In this episode, we each discuss our top two games of the year, plus some honorable mentions, and a handful of comments from our very own listeners! See? If you listened to Christmas Creeps, we might put you on the show too. Anywho, now that we've finally gotten Video Game Chat out of our systems, we can get back to the business of talking about terrible Christmas movies. Stay tuned for your regularly scheduled Christmas Creeps! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Happy New Year, Creepazoids! 2024 marks our 10th year of Christmas Creeps, and to celebrate we're kicking off the year with a show we've wanted to do for a long time: Video Game Chat! This week we're taking a break from Christmas movies to talk about the best video games we've played in 2023. They don't have to be new games, just games we played in the last year. Them's the rules.  We realize this episode may not be everyone's cup of tea, but rest assured our regular programming will resume in February. For now though, please enjoy this ridiculous episode in which we all talk so much about video games that we had to break it up into two parts! (Part 2 coming next week!) Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Merry Christmas, Creepazoids! The big day is finally here! On this episode, Joe is joined by his fiancée Nikki to share a few of their favorite Adult Swim Christmas episodes. Nikki brings us "Dethmas", the Christmas episode of Metalocalypse, in which heavy metal band Dethklok get unwittingly roped into not only taking part in a TV Christmas special, but also into entertaining their mothers for Christmas. It's brutal. Then, Joe comes bearing the gift of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and "Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future", the single greatest episode title in television history. To all our listeners, thank you so much for making us a part of your podcast rotation. 2023 has been a bit of a rocky year for us here at Christmas Creeps, but we've still tried to bring you the most entertaining, ridiculous Christmas media podcast of them all. We couldn't do this without you. So have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we'll see you in 2024! Intro: White Christmas (The Drifters) Outro: Happy Christma

On this week's podcast, we're testing out some holiday coffees! Bradford brought us a selection of Nightmare Before Christmas-themed coffees from the good folks at Bones Coffee Company, and we're going to brew a cup of each one right before your very ears. So kick back and pour a cup of whatever ya got with Joe and Bradford as we shoot the breeze on this relaxing late-December morning. You've worked hard this month, you deserve it! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro: The Coffee Song (Frank Sinatra) Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0   Background music by: Heroboard - Music for Creators  

On this episode we discuss Alexander Payne's The Holdovers, a brand new Christmas film about the people left behind while everyone else is off on their own holiday adventures. And to help us break it all down, we welcome back Johnny-5, The Human Robot! The Holdovers is all about folks dealing with the loneliness of the holiday season however they can: Drinking, watching game shows, wandering around at night, crashing Christmas parties. Y'know, general introvert behavior. But there's so much more to it than that. It's really something special. We'll dig into all that, plus the McRib being back, reminisce about our own holdover Christmases, and more! (Also, blanket spoiler warning here. We discuss it all, and recommend you see this one first. But you can do what you want, I'm not your dad.) Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY

This month we're pushing back against the onslaught of Christmas Creep by extending spooky season in a block we're calling SHRIEKSGIVING! On this episode we look at last year's The Killing Tree, about a serial killer who gets reincarnated as a murderous Christmas tree. It is exactly as silly as you'd expect, but somehow, someway... we found this one kinda charming. Also in this episode... Bradford unexpectedly manages to connect The Killing Tree to Xenoblade Chronicles, we accidentally wade into the quagmire of the villain being right but for the wrong reasons, and the guys reminisce about burritos we've eaten. Never a dull moment around here, folks! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro / Outro: "Carol of the Bells" by Bards Bizarre

Greetings Creepazoids! It's the day after Halloween, but that doesn't mean the scares have to stop! This week we're bringing you an episode all about the 1988 film Scrooged, starring Bill Murray as the scroogiest of TV executives and a whole host of Christmas spirits determined to show him the error of his ways. November 1st also Christmas Podcast Day! Today our fellow Christmas podcasters are all covering a different adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", so head on over to social media and search for #ChristmasPodcastDay to join in on the fun! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro / Outro: "Carol of the Bells" by Bards Bizarre

Season's Greetings, spooky friends! It's time once again for our favorite season here on Christmas Creeps: HOME FOR THE HORRORDAYS! Joe's fiancée Nikki joins us this week to help us break down the Cartoon Network miniseries Over The Garden Wall. It's a show about two brothers lost in a creepy, antiquated netherworld called The Unknown, and has a very unique perspective on nostalgia, history, and the changing of the seasons. It's not really Christmasy, but it's perfectly in our wheelhouse and ripe for discussion. And discuss it we do, because on this episode we go deep into the hidden meanings and history behind some of the stranger things in this cartoon. We want to ease you into things this season. You can have a little spooky. As a treat! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro: Adelaide Parade (The Blasting Company) Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Well friends, we did it. This week we cross Home Alone 4 off our list, a film we've honestly been dreading for quite some time. It took us nine years, but we finally watched every Home Alone film. Home Alone 4 was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a Home Alone TV series, ultimately never picked up for a full season. And thank goodness, because this is far and away the worst thing the franchise has ever produced. With the wholly unrelated Home Alone 3 a distant memory, we return to the McCallister clan and an all-new adventure in which Wet/Sticky Bandit Marv once again tries to burgle a home occupied by young Kevin. Hijinks—if you want to call them that—ensue. We're sorry. Feel our pain. Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The summer heat is oppressive. The school year is about to begin. These are the Dog Days of Summer. So of course we watched another talking dog movie! This episode Joe and Bradford experience A Doggone Christmas, a movie about a telepathic talking dog and the children he befriends as he escapes the government agents hellbent on sending him off for experiments, which isn't at all similar to a Steven Spielberg movie about a friendly space alien... Also along the way, Bradford winds up explaining more about train culture, Video Game Chat finds us discussing Pikmin 4, and somehow we wind up talking about Day of the Dolphin. Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

On this episode we've got Pac-Man Fever and it's driving us crazy! Just two short years after the debut of the arcade hit Pac-Man, Hanna Barbera produced a Saturday morning cartoon all about the denizens of Pac-Land. And, naturally, a Christmas episode was soon to follow! Joe and Bradford spend a good portion of this episode on video game chat, as you can imagine. But also we explain our original plans for this episode and why we had to scuttle them, as well as our nostalgia for defunct TV channels, and our own experiences with haunted hotels. And somewhere in all that we talk about how Pac-Man saves Santa! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

This one's been a long time coming. On this episode we discuss a cult classic among holiday specials: Will Vinton's 1987 Claymation Christmas Celebration! And to help us break it all down is special guest Gerry Davila, host of the Totally Rad Christmas podcast! Claymation Christmas has a certain reputation in the pantheon of holiday specials. You either love it for its handcrafted stop-motion and off kilter sense of humor, or you hate it for being a half hour barrage of dad jokes. (At least, that's how my own parents think of it.) Either way, if you lived through the 80s, chances are Claymation Christmas has a special place in your heart. So grab a frosty beverage and let's get a-wassailin'! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Ani-May strikes back for one last hurrah this week! Our pal Dr. Nick returns for this double-length episode to explain the myriad ins and outs of the Mobile Suit Gundam universe as we discuss the 1998 feature film Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz! Earth is about to be invaded by one of its colonies on Christmas Eve, right after the planet decided to rid itself of its protecting force of giant mech suits. Our intrepid team must retrieve the suits before they crash into the sun, and hope they're not to late to save Queen Relena and the planet (and Christmas!) before it can be conquered by pint-sized dictator Mariemaia. If none of that made any sense to you, don't worry! Nick brought charts and graphs (which can be found at christmascreeps.com) to explain everything—and I do mean EVERYTHING—you need to know. And if that's not enough, well then there's more than enough Gundam media out there to help you out. So strap yourselves in for one last blast of Ani-May madness! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gm

And we're back! Ani-May continues with the Christmas episode of Mr. Osomatsu, which as far as this dumb American can tell is an animated sketch comedy series? Bradford referred to this one as being "no chill", but it turned out to be more this guy's speed than the previous episode. Also in this episode, Bradford gives us the skinny on the long history of this series, which dates all the way back to the 60s. Look, I can't promise any of what transpires here is going to make a whole lot of sense, but we're doing our best this week! Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

It's Ani-May once again, the time of year when Bradford takes the reins and forces us to watch a bunch of anime! Like moths returning to the flame, am I right? This week we look at the Christmas episode of Laid Back Camp, fittingly titled "Campmas". How do a bunch of anime girls camping at the foot of Mt. Fuji celebrate Christmas? By day-drinking and cooking good food over a campfire, of course! What more does one need out of life? Also in this episode, Joe and Bradford reminisce about their own childhood camping experiences, indulge in some video game chat, and get real hungry at the mention of s'mores... Questions/Comments? Email us at XmasCreeps@gmail.comTweet us @ChristmasCreepsVisit us on the web at ChristmasCreeps.com! Join us on our Discord channel! Intro/Outro: Happy Christmas, You Guys! (Simon Panrucker) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0