Ah, A Christmas Story. It's that timeless classic shown every year by Turner Broadcasting, and the film that many people truly associate with the holidays. It's heartwarming, bringing a viewpoint from a time when things were just simpler. It also spawned three horrific sequels / spin-offs that people often forget about.
The original film was released on November 18th, 1983, and while it made an impressive twenty million dollars at the box off on a three million dollar budget, left theaters after its run with little to no lasting impact. A Christmas Story was vaguely remembered by fans, but not the coveted cult classic it would become. In fact, your average person on the street wouldn't even know about the movie.
While it would occasionally appear on cable television throughout the 80's and 90's, this endowment of equating the film to the holiday season wasn't ushered in until 1994. This was when Turner Broadcasting acquired the rights to run it in syndication, and did so by airing it across all three of its networks that year. Popularity quickly increased, and in 1997 TNT began airing the film for twenty-four hours straight starting at 8:00 PM on Christmas Eve. Despite all the streaming services that have come over the recent years, this is a tradition TNT still holds, and will be doing so again in two days.
What many people don't seem to remember is the oddly titled Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven Of Bliss, which came and went in the blink of an eye in 1988. The made for TV special followed the Parker family (of A Christmas Story) on a summer vacation, and stars a young Jerry O'Connell as fourteen year old Ralph.
At first the film only aired on The Disney Channel, but was soon also showing on PBS. It would eventually see a VHS release in 1993, but remained relatively forgotten.
With the popularity of Turner's broadcasting of the original film in 1994, Hollywood once again returned to the Parker family. This time for the film, My Summer Story. This film takes place the following summer of the events which occurred in A Christmas Story, and this time stars a young Kieren Culkin as Ralphie. Other notable cast members included Charles Grodin as The Old Man (AKA Mr. Parker), and Mary Steenburgen as Mrs. Parker.
While it manages to capture the tone of A Christmas Story, it ultimately suffers for simply just not being good. Though the cast members are trying, they simply don't hold up to the originals. The film inevitably flopped.
Then came the ultimate abomination. The official true sequel to the film. 2012's A Christmas Story 2.
This abysmal failure ignores everything established in My Summer Story, possibly for the best, and instead churns out a script very liberally borrowed from the original. It copies and pastes every landmark from the first film from "Oh fudge," to a grumpy Santa Claus, a leg lamp, Chinese food for Christmas dinner, and Flick getting his tongue stuck.
It's horrific in every sense of the word, and truly shocking that despite Hollywood's best efforts, they weren't able to tarnish the beloved original cult classic. It's fortunate that not many people know about these films.
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