Tomb

Have you seen the trailer for Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) yet? It’s an astonishing glimpse at an upcoming Finnish movie, in which a bunch of tough and grizzled Finnish dudes excavate a frozen mountain in Lapland, unwittingly unleashing some kind of dangerous beast. After fearfully peering into the freshly blasted chasm, like the cast of The Thing (1982), and laying out traps, they finally manage to capture their quarry, standing astonished at a terrifying-looking old man before them. One dude breathlessly grabs a walkie-talkie and announces that they’ve found Santa Claus, announcing that they’re holding him for ransom. The Jolly Old Elf glares at them like he’s Hannibal Lecter with a beard.

Whoa.

This already sounds like my kind of Christmas movie: original, subtitled and likely to induce nightmares in children. Still, the image of a captive Santa has been presented to us before. In fact, holiday figures get captured all the dang time. Even Frosty the Snowman got locked up in a greenhouse once. Check out these other tales of Festive Incarceration:

• Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) sees kindly old department store Santa Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) locked up as a suspected lunatic. A hearing to determine Kris’s mental health (or lack thereof) follows, with sensational results. Once the court proves the existence and identity of Santa Claus, I have to wonder — are they going to charge the poor guy with billions of counts of breaking and entering?

• In the Futurama episode “A Tale of Two Santas” (2001), the homicidal Robot Santa returns, as he must every Xmas to attempt to massacre the subjects on his “naughty” list (for example, everybody). Robot Santa gets imprisoned in a block of ice, giving the cast an opportunity to give everyone a nice Christmas for a change, but the terrified population doesn’t go for it. A fake Robot Santa (Bender) tries bringing joy, but gets arrested for crimes against humanity, and faces execution via electromagnet.

• The Magic Christmas Tree (1964) has been called “the worst Christmas movie ever made.” This low-budget debacle tells of a magic Christmas tree that grants three wishes to a selfish little brat. He uses his first wish to bestow Godlike powers on himself and his second wish to imprison Santa Claus in his living room. The kid should have wished for decent production values instead.

• Santa Claus (1959). Oh no! Santa Claus has been chased up a tree by an angry dog! Without his magic flower or pouch of sleepy dust, he won’t be able to escape before morning, and his sleigh and mechanical reindeer will disintegrate in the sunlight! Now Lucifer will take over the world unless Merlin the magician can assist Santa from Father Christmas’s magical Toyland in outer space! (No, I’m not making any of this up.)

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Halloween honcho Jack Skellington doesn’t really want to hurt Santa; he just wants to try doing Santa’s job for the night. Hey, how hard could it be?

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). No, Santa does not get abducted in this classic tale. He doesn’t even exist. The only “Santa” in the story is an impostor. Kinda nihilistic for a kids show, eh?

• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964). C’mon, you knew this one was going to make the list. Mars wants their own Santa Claus, so they kidnap ours. Filthy green bastards….

• Will Vinton’s Claymation Easter (1992). Santa isn’t the only holiday figure to get kidnapped. In this hilarious TV special, the Easter Bunny gets abducted by a scheming pig that wants the EB’s job and the lucrative endorsement deals that presumably come with it. While the Easter Bunny remains imprisoned over a shark tank (and later on, inside a shark), the pig enters a track-and-field competition in order to win the right to be the next Easter Bunny. The swine extravagantly cheats, even using a giant transforming robot to win a race against a bunch of bunnies on mopeds. Brilliant.