15 Great Christmas Movies That Are On The Naughty List

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol has been the basis for more holiday movies, TV shows, and stories than 99% of the works of literature ever produced. However, few adaptations have taken the story's many ghosts and made them quite so menacing as Scrooged. This modernized version of the tale follows Frank Cross (Bill Murray), a greedy, self-centered TV exec who - in the course of producing a TV adaption of A Christmas Carol for his network - is himself visited by multiple ghosts and magical spirits who eventually teach him the importance of being a good person.

However, the eventual emotional redemption doesn't come without a nightmarish and deeply surreal journey into madness featuring ghosts that exude genuine terror, which were brought to life by Tom Burman and Bari Dreiband-Burman, who earned an Oscar nomination for their efforts. The ghost of Lew Hayward (the film's analog for Jacob Marley) has strips of flesh falling off his decrepit skeleton, while the Ghost of Christmas Future appears as the Grim Reaper, but under his robes, his body is a writhing mass of deformed screaming faces. At one point, in a particularly dark vision, Frank is forced to experience being cremated alive. Sure, the movie's heartfelt and sentimental conclusion might bring a tear to your eye - just as long as you're not too traumatized to enjoy it.

One of the most iconic dark Christmas movies of all time, the 1984 horror comedy Gremlins has one of the most disturbing Christmas scenes you could imagine. The film is set during the festive holiday season, as a young man named Billy (Zach Galligan) gets an adorable and mysterious pet, known as a mogwai, as a gift. He names it Gizmo, and through a series of unfortunate mishaps, the sweet Gizmo inadvertently spawns several much more evil and sinister mogwai, who transform into reptilian gremlins and run amok in Billy's small town during the holidays, offing random people and generally causing chaos. Despite all the scenes of mayhem wrapped in Christmas cheer, this could still generally be considered a family film. That is, until, Billy's girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) explains to Billy exactly why she hates the holiday whenever it comes around:

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

So, yeah, that sort of splash of real-life horror instantly overshadows any of the goofy gremlin-based horror found in the rest of the timeless '80s classic.

While the themes of learning the importance of believing in the spirit of the season is standard for Christmas flicks, it's usually by showing the joy that can come from embracing the holiday. The dark horror comedy Krampus goes the opposite direction, operating more like a PSA on the dangers of being grumpy, naughty, and cynical. A young boy named Max (Emjay Anthony) becomes disillusioned about Christmas when he has to spend it with his bickering, dysfunctional family. His sudden lack of faith attracts the Krampus, a giant, horned demon who hunts down and punishes those who have lost the Christmas spirit - like Max, his dad (Adam Scott), and the rest of his entire family.

The holiday soon becomes a fight for survival as a seemingly mystical blizzard envelops the small town and the freakish monster picks the family off, one by one, with the help of living gingerbread men and evil, anthropomorphic toys. The Krampus drags the family down into hell for their transgressions and, in doing so, delivers a powerful message about the importance of keeping Christmas close to your heart - so that it doesn't get ripped out by a savage Krampus.

The 2003 dark Christmas comedy Bad Santa follows thieving con artist Willie Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton), who annually gets a job as a mall Santa, while his partner in crime Marcus (Tony Cox) gets a job as his elf. They use their positions to stake out the mall and eventually rob the stores at night. However, Willie's alcoholism, sex addiction, and general malignant apathy endanger their operation. Willie's mall Santa is the antithesis of what Santa usually represents - he's mean, vulgar, aggressive, suicidal, and he takes a lot more than he gives.

He reluctantly befriends a sad, lonely child named Thurman (Brett Kelly) who almost inadvertently gives him some sense of purpose and empathy. For a movie filled with criminality, gross-out dark humor, and general unpleasantness, it also has a surprisingly uplifting redemption arc as Willie learns to be a slightly better person through the influence of the sad, lonely child - albeit a redemption that's still pretty grim.

Leave it to Tim Burton to take Christmas and make it deeply unsettling. In Burton's 1992 follow-up to his first take on the Caped Crusader, Batman (Michael Keaton) is forced to contend with some new villains threatening the people of Gotham, including the Penguin (Danny DeVito), Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer). The one thing that elevates Batman Returns when it comes to Burton's vision of the Dark Knight is the glaring juxtaposition of Christmas cheer against the art-deco noir aesthetic of Gotham City and its depraved residents. Every bit of the city is dripping with holiday decorations and saccharine attempts at festive joy, but this film gives us a grim look at the deep and abiding truth of Batman's entire existence: Nothing can save Gotham from itself, not false cheer and not even Batman.

With a pack of circus performers bombarding people by jumping out of presents as the Penguin uses the holiday for his own nefarious purposes, Batman Returns presents Christmas in Gotham as the nightmare it really would be. And the film itself - with its cadre of contemptible crooks - makes sure none of them get any sort of redemption. Even Batman burns a man to death with the fiery exhaust from his Batmobile.

No movie has ever nailed the true nature of spending Christmas with family members you cannot stand quite like The Ref, a truly dark crime comedy that follows a burglar named Gus (Dennis Leary) who takes a bickering, hateful, deeply flawed couple hostage. Husband Lloyd (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Caroline (Judy Davis) cannot stop fighting, even on Christmas Eve, and Gus is forced to serve as a marriage counselor/referee in their endless, malignant bickering.

Gus's plans are complicated when Lloyd and Caroline's criminally minded son Jesse walks in, shortly before the family's relatives show up for a planned dinner. Gus pretends to be their counselor as the couple hosts an emotionally sadistic dinner full of sniping, bitterness, and general contempt. This razor-sharp but mean-spirited dramedy features stellar performances from actors playing a bunch of characters you'd never want to spend more than 10 minutes with. And yet, for so many, it feels painfully relatable in a way that makes it more disturbing than most actual Christmas horror flicks.