No, it’s not a dark dream induced by the strange drugs your weird neighbors fed you. The Rosemary’s Baby TV adaptation is really happening. The four-hour miniseries based on Ira Levin’s 1967 horror novel and Roman Polanski’s 1968 film will begin production in January. The story will be set in Paris, probably sometime around the holidays, like the feature film. Satan has a wicked sense of humor, no? In the spirit of bizarre holiday stories, we dug up 13 of the strangest seasonal movies — all featured after the jump. Most of them you can watch online right now. Tell us your favorites, below.
A Santa Claus fever dream from 1972. Saint Nicholas is stranded in Florida, but decides to hang out and tell the local kids a story. A few flower children (literally), talking birds, and a man in a bunny suit later, Santa gets back to work — and we wonder what the hell just happened.
Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, widely considered the first slasher film, features a demented killer who likes to make pervy phone calls to a sorority house using different (and terrifying) speaking voices.
The unintentional hilarity of the Star Wars Holiday Special is a thing Star Wars nerds love to hate. This 1978 mistake will scar you for life — but it features Bea Arthur as a singing Cantina bartender, so there’s that.
Twelve Days of Black Mass
The genre-loving folks at Glass Eye Pix created an online advent calendar/short film, directed by Graham Reznick (Stake Land, The House of the Devil) with the help of designer Beck Underwood (I Sell the Dead), that features a hypnotic montage with a creepy doll.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Celebrate the holidays the Santa Claus Conquers the Martians way: with child abductions, extraterrestrials, goofy polar bear costumes, and Ed Wood-style set design.
Roger Ebert loved this “superior,” offbeat horror movie, describing it as “an R-rated Santa Claus origin story crossed with The Thing (1982).”
Adam Goldberg stars as the “Hebrew Hammer” in this Blaxploitation-style remix of a Hanukkah film.
No, you haven’t stumbled upon some kind of weird and kinky Second Life holiday roleplay. It’s a Barbie Christmas movie, featuring a surreal, animated version of the beloved doll as a modern-day Scrooge.
Psychotronic-style Santa Claus shenanigans with the devil, aided by Merlin the Magician, and produced by a Mexican film studio. Yep.
Christmas witches, talking Christmas trees that practice black magic, a lawn mower that threatens to murder a turtle, and a cat named Lucifer.
A trio of aliens visit one family to learn the meaning of Christmas. That’s 1977 for you.
Scarred by seeing his mom make sexytime with Santa, Brandon Maggart’s unstable Harry slowly loses his mind, dons a Santa costume, and sets out to kill those who are naughty. John Waters loves this cult favorite and called it “the greatest Christmas movie ever made.”
The PTA tried to tear Charles Sellier’s 1984 Santa slasher from theaters, as it was one of the earliest films depicting good ole Saint Nick as a ruthless killer. Television ads were censored, protestors lined up at theaters, and the movie was eventually yanked due to the controversy. Watch the full film.