Today’s Flop Story!

We’ve mentioned it in passing, but we’ll be BACK AT SF SKETCHFEST this January the 25th! Come see us at Cobb’s Comedy Club at 4pm! Early enough that you’ll have time to go home and walk the kids and put the dogs to bed, or whatever! We hope to see you there!

Have a Floppy Christmas

If you celebrate the season, but have a twinge of Grinch in your heart, perhaps you’d enjoy taking your Christmas revels in the form of bad holiday media? Here are some top-of-the-bottom picks!

MOVIES

Santa Claus: The Movie - Just what kids want out of a family comedy that purports to be THE cinematic word about Santa Claus — Dudley Moore tangled in corporate espionage with John Lithgow over candy canes that make you levitate. Once you watch, listen to our episode about it!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians - Long before Mars needed moms, they needed a Saint Nick, so they kidnapped ours! Notable as the screen debut of young Pia Zadora, later to be famous as the (alleged) beneficiary of a Golden Globes bribery scandal! Probably best to not ingest this uncut, but rather taken in the form of one of the finest MST3K episodes.

Saving Christmas - If you’re curious how America degraded into its current moral swamp, watch this “prosperity gospel” movie which discards most of Jesus’s teachings about “hey maybe be nice to one another” in favor of “if you’re rich, it must mean God thinks you’re neat!” And then listen to our classic Flop House episode where we discussed this slop!

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny - Legendarily unwatchable! Santa crashes his sleigh on a Florida beach and spends his time waiting for elf AAA by telling local children either the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk” or “Thumbelina” (depending on which print you see) — and these stories are just the previous movies made by producer Barry Mahon, inserted in their entirety, to pad this movie’s runtime. Eventually an Ice Cream Bunny shows up. What’s an Ice Cream Bunny? WHO KNOWS?

TV SPECIALS

Noel - If you spend the holidays depressed, maybe avoid this one for fear of spiraling. It’s the tale of a Christmas ornament who spends most of his ageless life packed in an attic, only seeing sunlight during the holiday season (and not even then, once his family ages and dies). Eventually, he’s found by a new family and gets his happy ending, which is (SPOILER ALERT) getting smashed, which frees his soul of this physical hell! Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!

Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa - This was a favorite annual screening of the Flop House Facebook group back in the day. Think the animation in Foodfight! is a cavalcade of Eldrich horrors? You ain’t seen nothing yet! Feast your eyes on Rapsittie, then claw them out!

Next on the Podcast

12/6 - Speaking of the holidays, Alonso Duralde (author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, co-host of Maximum Film) returns to the show with his annual dose of Christmas coal! This year we discuss the Canadian picture The Christmas Martian, which is only 65 minutes long, but feels like 650.

12/13 - We welcome actress and delightful human Amber Nash (best known as the voice of Pam Poovey on Archer, and host of Max Fun’s new show, RePhrasing: An Archer Rewatch Podcast) for a mini all about Hallmark holiday rom-coms!

Plugging Away

TOMORROW, December 6, at 9ET/6PT we’ll be discussing our 1970’s selection for FlopTV S3 — ZARDOZ, John Boorman’s trippy-as-fuck sci-fi picture about a floating stone head and Sean Connery in a red diaper. We hope you can join us! And if you can’t watch live, tickets get you an on-demand link as well! Individual tix and season passes are both available!

Elliott’s book, Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense is finally available! Perhaps it would make a great holiday gift for the joke farmer in your life?

And speaking of holiday gifts, check out this awesome Flop House t-shirt! It comes in a tank top as well! Sometimes we have to flog product! That’s life!

Stuart paints Warhammer models/chats with viewers most Fridays on his Twitch channel.

Dan’s personal newsletter, Dan McCoy’s Special Interests comes out every non-Flop Secrets week!

You Made it to the End!

Here’s a sneak peak of some props from a video Dan made for tonight’s Zardoz FlopTV.