The Movie Blurb Game: Holiday Classics Edition

by Glenn McDonald

The object: The "movie blurbs" below are mashups: They're invented descriptions of what you'd get if you smashed two or more well-known movies together. From the blurb, can you guess the new mash-up movie's title?

Example: Michael J. Fox stars as a time-traveling teenager in this second installment of George Lucas' space-opera trilogy.

Answer: The Empire Strikes Back to the Future

NOTE: In this round, at least one of the movies in each blurb is a generally agreed-upon "holiday classic." And remember, films can be mashed up phonetically — e.g. Nosferatu Kill a Mockingbird.

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. (First-time players, be forewarned: Answers may indeed be posted below — don't scroll down unless you want to cheat.)

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1. Irving Berlin's 1942 classic takes a tragic turn when Bing Crosby starves to death in the Alaskan wilderness.

2. Linus is emotionally scarred for life when Lucy, Schroeder and the gang join the Griswolds for the holidays.

3. Sam Jackson triples the trouble in his nascent action franchise, co-starring Steve Martin and John Candy.

4. Billy Bob Thornton's curmudgeonly Saint Nick gets his arms chopped off in director Alejandro Jodorowsky's transgressive cult classic.

5. Madcap holiday hijinks ensue when Jack Skellington terrorizes frazzled parents Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis.

6. A drunken Stanley Kowalski insists he's the real Santa Claus in Tennessee Williams' perennial holiday favorite.

7. Jimmy Stewart gets a glimpse of what his life would be like if he were in a whimsical, postmodern movie about an oceanographer.

8. All poor Ralphie wants from his parents is a Red Ryder BB gun, but he must first endure the interminable ennui of Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer's marriage.

9. Director Uwe Boll's universally detested videogame adaptation finds an 8-year-old Bob Dylan fending off the hapless burglars trying to rob his family's house. (three films)

10. Codirected by Jodie Foster and Werner Herzog, this deeply weird Christmas tale stars Anna Paquin, a flight of geese, and Michael J. Fox as a plucky little mouse trying to escape a Laotian prisoner camp. (four films)

The answers, after the jump...

1. Holiday Into the Wild

2. A Charlie Brown Christmas Vacation

3. Snakes on a Planes, Trains and Automobiles

4. Bad Santa Sangre

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas with the Kranks

6. Miracle on 34th Streetcar named Desire

7. It's a Wonderful Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

8. A Christmas Story of Us

9. No Direction Home Alone in the Dark

10. Stuart Little Dieter Needs to Fly Away Home for the Holidays