How Robert Zemeckis Ruined Christmas

"You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Die Hard and Gremlins, But do you recall… The scariest Christmas story of all?" Honestly, I'm not sure at what point I started to question Santa Claus' existence.  However, I vividly recall when I became utterly terrified of the bearded one–and director Robert Zemeckis is to blame.  Yup, that’s right, the onus for my neurosis falls squarely on the filmmaker, who’s known for epochal movies like:  Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Castaway, and The Polar Express, to name a few.  Perhaps I’m being a bit ostentatious.  While Zemeckis is rightfully deserving of the majority of my ire, there are others who need to be called out too.  Namely, Johnny Craig, the writer and illustrator of an obscure comic book from 1953, HBO, and even Jolly Old Saint Nick, who admittedly is kinda creepy anyways.  Despite being beloved by millions, Santa can strike terror in the hearts and minds of young children and even some adults–with his red velvety suit, greasy beard and rosacea-marked cheeks, the omniscient and judgmental powers he possesses, his cat burglar-esque methods and even the whole sit-on-my-lap act. To understand how all this happened and why Zemeckis is primarily at fault, let's go back to June, 1989–'Twas the night of June 10th to be exact.  Wait a minute...you said Christmas, and here we are talking about summer.  Stay with me.  You see with nearly six months out from the Holiday season, the last thing my 13 year old mind was thinking about was Santa Claus.  As an only child, naturally when I was left to my own devices, I would spend that time watching HBO which I discovered by accident on the basement TV.  Back-in-the-day, HBO was just a fledgling premium cable network, not the behemoth that it is today.  Now it’s known for binge-worthy programs like:  Oz, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Westworld, but in the early to late 80’s, original programming was scarce, except for one haunting show–Tales From the Crypt.  And on that cool June night, as I sat in that dark and damp basement of my home, just feet away from the television, the first episode of Tales From the Crypt premiered and I was never the same.  In retrospect, the horror series seems schlocky now, but when you're 13, the dark comedy and depictions of horrific and graphic violence, doused with profanity, and often featuring scenes with nudity were…well…freakin’ awesome!  I mean come on.  Regardless, many episodes were downright terrifying–which brings me to the aforementioned director. [embed]https://youtu.be/uazQU7y8UYI[/embed] And All Through the House was the first episode to air on the inaugural series, and it featured Zemeckis at the helm.  The entire series relied heavily on source material from the Vault of Horror comicbook anthology popular in the late 50’s, and the episode in question, was drawn from issue #35 of the same name.  Zemeckis gives the nearly 40 year-old story a modern update, yet stays true to the noir narrative, following the comics layout almost panel by panel.  It’s a suspenseful and chilling tale about a cheating wife who murders her husband in cold blood for the insurance money and attempts to clean up the mess and dispose of his remains, all while their young daughter stirs in her bedroom above, anxiously awaiting Santa’s arrival on a cold, snowbound Christmas Eve.  Complicating matters, a lady-killing lunatic is on the lam, having recently escaped from a nearby asylum, last seen wearing–you guessed it a Santa outfit–has been seen in the area.  What transpires next was the most frightening, heart-pounding 30 minutes of my young, impressionable little life.  As the murdering spouse attempts to cover up the scene of the crime, she is beset by both the menacing, drooling, grungy-looking, rotten-toothed Santa, played by the late actor Larry Drake and her own innocent, unsuspecting child who is on the verge of stumbling upon the grizzly scene.  Her already grave circumstances, are exasterbated by the fact that she's unable to alert the police, about the dangerous serial killer terrorizing her, without also exposing her own savage crime.  All this culminates into a cruel twist of fate in the end. [embed]https://youtu.be/kjnn9YmlDHc[/embed] In the following days after watching that initial episode, I couldn't shake its jarring impact on my budding adult consciousness–ultimately filling me with dread each time I took the trash outside in the dark, with each passing month, as the weather became colder and more bleak, leading up to Christmas.  Finally, as we entered into the official Holiday season, my parents instinctively requested a Christmas wish list.  Deep down, I wanted to ask for a labotomy, but I knew I couldn't reveal my own secret HBO/Tales From the Crypt obsession.  Instead, I listed a Wayne Gretzky jersey at the top of the notebook paper.  All the while, secretly wishing that my mind would be wiped from the horrors I'd seen months earlier.  I only got the jersey.