A Christmas Story/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: Shepherd left behind a vast body of other work about his childhood, but only diehard fans are even aware of it, or of his long career as a radio personality.
  • Cult Classic
  • It Gets Better: First ten minutes are forgettable and pretty slow, with long gaps in the narration and very long shots of toys and kids pressing their noses against windows.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Bob Clark was also the director of the original Black Christmas.
    • The top battling subplot in one of the sequels is oddly reminiscent of Beyblade.
  • Memetic Mutation: "You'll shoot your eye out!", "FRAH-GEE-LEY", etc.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • The scary department store Santa going into slow motion, with the music in the background slowing down to match.
    • Aided and abetted by the 1st Person POV fisheye camera shots as Ralphie goes up to see him. We see a distorted and fast view of a very bitter Santa (with lurid red nose) and two mean elves! HO... HO... HO.....
  • Moment of Awesome: Ralphie beating the crap out of his tormentor Scut Farkus.
  • Special Effect Failure: When the Old Man gets home exclaiming that he had won the contest, he slams one of the Bumpass hound's tails in the door. The "tail" is pretty obviously a piece of fabric folded over once, and sliding around the door seam as if it could be pulled through just fine.
  • Values Dissonance: Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant... let's just say this scene hasn't exactly aged well.
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