Sarah Michelle Gellar

The Christmas movies that never were

The Santa Clause. Snow Business. Santa’s Slay. Christmas is a time for bad movie-title puns. Time Out pitches a few ideas for future festive favourites...

Baby? Jesus!

Rotund, loveable high school doofus Joe (Hill), finding out that his nerdy, virginal best friend (Hannigan) is pregnant with the new Messiah, poses as the father so her uptight atheist folks don’t get suspicious.

Homey For The Holidays

Starring Steve Carrell, Bill Duke, Queen Latifah

When the key witness in an embezzlement case finds the Witness Protection Agency has shut down over Christmas he has little choice but to black up, move into his noble African-American neighbours’ basement and pretend to be their gang-banging son for the festive season. Inanity ensues.

Single Bells

Starring Peter Mullan

Ken Loach directs Mullan’s hard-hitting one-man play where he also stars as an alcoholic Scottish wife-beater trapped in a whisky distillery over Christmas who questions his life choices.

A Midnight Queer (aka Camp as Christmas)

Starring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart

A pair of ageing thespians, bitter rivals for three decades, find themselves alone at Christmas with no one else to turn to. Curmudgeonly romance and much port-supping ensues.

Silent Knight

Starring Orlando Bloom, Olivia Williams

A battle-weary and faithless medieval knight (Bloom) finds himself unable to speak, until a magical snowbound adventure with a mysterious faerie woman (Williams), who claims to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, restores his Christmas spirit.

North Pole

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Tim Roth

It’s crazy East European accent time again as Mortensen and Roth play a pair of Polish people traffickers who accidentally kidnap Santa and put him to work as an East End bear prostitute.

At Least You’ve Got Your Elf

Starring Leslie Philipps, Annette Crosbie

The inmates of a Southend old folks home are kept prisoner by a cruel, miserly owner, until a wandering elf strays in and sprinkles a little Christmas magic.

Saint Knickerless

Starring Rob Schneider, Carmen Electra

Schneider stars as Rod Hardman, a porn director working on the first hardcore festive flick until Santa gets wind of what’s going on and subjects Rod to a Dickensian voyage in which he learns to love and respect naked women and Christmas.

All-White Christmas

Starring Chris Rock, Reese Witherspoon, R Lee Ermey

New York gangsta Rock has been dating Southern belle Witherspoon for over a year, but now he has to travel down to Alabama for the holidays and meet her Klan. Quite literally! ‘Meet the Parents’ collides with ‘Birth of a Nation’ in this riotous race-relations romp.

Naughty or Nice?

Starring Gerard Depardieu, Juliette Binoche

Santa (Depardieu) shaves his beard, adopts a French accent and heads off to Nice for a well-earned break and a spot of holiday romance with Binoche’s snappy, life-loving café owner.

Nasty Nativity

Ex-TV heartthrobs Gellar, Welling and Valderama play Mary, Joseph and Jesüs, three high school teens who find their friends (Wendy King, Joe Shepherd and Bob Innkeeper) being picked off one by one by a masked loony in a Santa hat.

Hark the Herald Angels Swing

Starring Denzel Washington, Sam Rockwell

Jingle them crazy bells, daddio, as Washington and Rockwell play a pair of hard-living jazz cats down on their luck in ’50s New York, until an incident with a warm-hearted hooker, an out-of-tune sax and a bucketful of hot nog brings their festive groove back.

Gold, Frankincense and Myrtle

Starring Julie Walters, Omar Sharif

An elderly Barnet housekeeper slips through a hole in time and finds herself travelling the Silk Road to Bethlehem in the company of three great Oriental kings, including Sharif’s ageing, kindly hunk Balthasar.