Scrooge (1951)

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It's Holiday Moviepalooza: A Big Bag of Dickens, Week Three, and the guys are ready to dive into yet another version of A Christmas Carol!

This time around, it stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, a man who is basically irritable bowel syndrome personified. He hates Christmas and anybody who doesn't, including his clerk Bob Cratchit (Mervyn Johns) and his nephew Fred (Brian Worth).

It's a card from Mr. Scrooge! It says, "How do you keep an idiot clerk in suspense?
Turn over this card..." Okay, I guess I w--HEY!

Scrooge is, as noted previously in this space, a miserable old fart who only cares about money. But then his business partner, Jacob Marley (Michael Hordern), visits him, despite having been dead for seven years, and warns Scrooge that he is not going to have a very good afterlife if he keeps being such an awful, awful man. There is, however, a chance to set things right. All Scrooge has to do is meet a few of Marley's undead-ish colleagues for a chat. Scrooge is not too keen on the idea, but Marley informs him that he doesn't really have a choice.

Spirit, why are you showing me to dogs fornicating in the alley?

The first of Marley's associates to visit is the Spirit of Christmas Past (Michael Dolan). In the longest segment of the movie, we again see how Scrooge was left at his boarding school for years until his father finally decided to let him come home, as well as his first job with Fezziwig (Roddy Hughes) and his time with Alice (aka Belle in all the other versions, played by Rona Anderson). But then we get to see his first meeting with Marley and the start of their business together. We also see the death of his sister, Fan (Carol Marsh), during Fred's birth, which goes a long way toward explaining why Scrooge dislikes him so much.

No, I am not "basically a ginger Santa Claus," Mr. Scrooge.

Next up is a slightly more low-key Spirit of Christmas Present (Francis de Wolff). He doesn't start out gigantic this time around, and he's not nearly as angry by the end of his time with Scrooge. During their travels, they visit Fred's house, and then head to the Cratchit household, just in time to see Bob bring home Tiny Tim (Glyn Dearman). Bob's oldest daughter is there to visit, and Tim displays an upsetting predilection toward pudding. Bob's wife (Hermione Baddeley) makes it very clear that she doesn't think Mr. Scrooge is worth a toast, but she concedes "because it's Christmas."

Mother Theresa? Is that you?

Finally, the Spirit of Christmas Present leaves Scrooge in the capable, if somewhat quiet, hands of the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come (Czeslaw Konarski), who takes Scrooge around town to show the horrible results of his continued nastiness. Tim is dead, Bob is sad, and Scrooge's maid, Mrs. Dilber (Kathleen Harrison), is a crafty thief who steals from her deceased boss. All-in-all, a pretty dim outlook, almost as bad as the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II.

Now pretend to be a parrot!

Scrooge insists he'll change his ways, blah blah blah...Look, you know how this goes by now, right? But think about this: What, as the fat businessmen ask in the dark version of the future, actually happened to Scrooge's money after he died? Did Fred get it? If so, did he become a jerk like his uncle? Or did he take an alternate route involving cocaine, absinthe, and a string of unsolved prostitute murders in London's West End? You got us. But it's fun to talk about, right?

Jake thought this movie was okay, although he was fascinated with Jacob Marley's ghost, and how he displays an impressive vocal range over the course of a single sentence. This dude is Nicolas Cage-level unstable, and it's pretty awesome.

Derek thought even less of the movie, but he admits that he was distracted by how much Scrooge looks like the Klingon Gowron from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Also, there's Tiny Tim's pudding obsession.

So warm up some bland soup over the fireplace, confront your demons, and check out the latest episode!