On behalf of the entire van Rensselaer clan (including a very mischievous Mr. Tiddles) we wish all of you HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

For deliciously zany Christmas fun, pucker-up for 'THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT.'

Delectably, deliriously, dementedly awful, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is one of the very best Bad Movies of the '90s, no small accomplishment in a decade that also gave us Barb Wire, Boxing Helena, Color of Night and Showgirls.

The fun begins when Geena Davis, a demure, redheaded, schoolteaching single mother who suffers from amnesia and cannot recall having been the world's deadliest hired assassin eight years ago, collides with a reindeer. Voila. Davis begins to get hints of her previous vocation. In a dream sequence Sigmund Freud would have fired a patient for having, goody-two-shoes Davis stands atop a stormy cliff facing her sexy, bottle-blonde image in a mirror. "I want a cigarette," growls the tough-talkin' reflection, to which the nice Davis prissily replies, "I don't smoke." "Ya used to!" snaps the blonde. Director Renny Harlin chooses to cut from this all-too-revealing dream sequence to a dump truck picking up garbage (discuss meaning amongst yourselves).

Soon Davis's dark side starts cropping up during waking hours. The mere chopping of a carrot turns into a dicin', slicin' display of aggression that is, frankly, reminiscent of one of those infomercials for sharp cutlery. Whipping through every vegetable in the kitchen, Davis beams maniacally, "I used to do this. I'm a chef!" Perhaps not. When she nails a tomato to the wall with a perfectly tossed knife, her daughter and boyfriend are justifiably terrified. "Chefs do that," explains Davis. But later, when she tells her kid, who's just fractured a wrist, "Life is pain! Get used to it!" there's no pretending Davis's previous life was benevolent. To make the point even clearer, a one-eyed thug who knew hit woman Davis way back when breaks into the house and hits Davis on the head with a heavy pot, whereupon she knocks him out cold with a cream pie in the kisser, then breaks his neck, and, as her boyfriend watches, tastes the pie filling off the corpse, explaining, "Chefs do that."

Determined to discover the truth about her past, Davis hits the road with "low rent" private eye Samuel L. Jackson. While Jackson watches the classic Robert Altman film The Long Goodbye in a motel room the next evening (two characters are discussing cats, allowing Jackson to utter the line, "Yeah -- pussy is pussy"), Davis looks in a mirror in her room and again sees the skanky blonde version of herself, who suddenly reaches out from the mirror to try to kill her. Alas, she doesn't succeed.

All hell breaks loose when more bad guys from the past show up and try to extinguish Davis and Jackson. The attacks only serve to bring the amnesiac's deadly personality fully to the surface. Davis transforms the drab version of herself into a sleek blonde hit babe, who for some reason is wearing only a bathrobe and excessive eyeshadow. At the sight of a bloodstained arm bandage on Jackson, the new, true Davis suddenly opens her robe, flashes her bare bod at him, then rips off the bandage. "Same principle as deflowering virgins," she says. "I read it in this Harold Robbins book: guy bites her on the ear, distracts her from the pain. Ever try that?" "No," replies Jackson, "I sock 'em in the jaw and yell, 'Pop goes the Weasel!'" This spicy dialogue arouses Davis to pant in Jackson's ear, "I haven't had a date in eight years." Like the rest of us, Jackson isn't buying: "A beautiful white lady seducing the colored help? Get real, sweetheart. I ain't rich, I ain't handsome, and the last time I got blown, candy bars cost a nickel." Who says there's no longer a need for affirmative action?

The next day, a car full of killers chases Jackson, prompting Davis to strap on ice skates to outrace the speeding automobile and blast the villains. The mayhem reached a climax on Christmas Eve when Davis outwits her foes by (1) putting kerosene in a Betsy Wetsy-type doll, (2) taunting a knife-wielding killer with the line, "Oh honey, only four inches?" and, finally, (3) collapsing so that her daughter can reprise the innane line, "Life is pain! Get used to it!" At this point, you'll want to rewind to the scene that provided this movie with its place in Bad Moviedom. Yes, listen once again as Davis, driving an oil rig outfitted with a doomsday bomb, becomes the first (and, we'd bet, the last) action heroine to snarl at her opponents, "Suck my dick!"

For Deliciously Bad Holiday Viewing, NOTHING Can Compare With SANTA CLAUS The Movie!

Ever wonder where Santa came from, and how it's possible he's been around so long? Santa Claus the Movie will tell you. It seems that in a faux medieval land there was a woodcutter who liked to make toys for children. Returning home one snowy Christmas Eve, Claus (David Huddleston) and the missus (Judy Cornwell) and the two reindeer pulling their sleigh froze to death in a sudden storm. But magic starlight reanimates them, as elves in green felt shanghai them to a Brigadoon-like North Pole HQ. "This is your home now," they titter evilly to the undead Santa, and so he's stuck there forever, amongst the barracks full of elves and sweatshops full of toys, which the immortal elves have been making in anticipation of his arrival.

Ancient elf Burgess Meredith tells Huddleston that he is "the chosen one," and that a prophecy foretold his coming. In this way, Santa Claus the Movie is just like The Matrix, only instead of being cool and exciting it's bizarro and satanically corrupt. More mysterious and unanswered is the question of how an immortal elf can become ancient -- or has poor old Burgess been shuffling and moaning his way around since the beginning of time?

Santa -- who is just as wooden as his toys -- seems not a whit disturbed by the prospect of an eternal, unrelenting hell of catering to spoiled kiddies around the globe. "Ho ho ho," you can practically hear him say, "I'm undead! Might as well make the best of it." Clueless by nature, he's prone to saying things like, one Christmas Eve, "Tonight there's not a child alive who's not bursting with joy and happiness," apparently oblivious to all the non-Christian children he won't be visiting. The question of the poor kids who invariably are forgotten by the Fat Guy is pushed aside as well -- though we imagine that Mrs. Claus, who lobbied for the exclusion of bad children at Christmastime, perhaps attached a rider to her bill disenfranchising the poor, as well.

Or maybe Santa is just an inhumanely callous monster -- perfectly understandable, given that he is, in fact, undead. By the time we reach the present day, and the second of the three plots in Santa Claus the movie, Santa has met Christian Fitzpatrick, a homeless street urchin who has to beg food off strangers. Santa takes Fitzpatrick hot-rodding in his sleigh as a special treat to cheer him up... but does Claus give the kid a home, parents, or even a warm winter coat? No. He just drops him off to fend for himself promising to return next Christmas Eve. (Not even a crappy wooden toy? Thanks for the buggy ride, Santa!)

The third - and final - plot involves an elf named Patch, (played with dexterous apathy by Dudley Moore), who defects to work for a sinister toymaker named B.Z., (played with the usual scenery-guzzling gusto of John Lithgow). Upon medical advice, we’re not permitted to discuss this subplot at all. (Our doctors have informed us that our medications cannot be upped any further.) Suffice it to say that in all the annals of pestilent filmmaking, this ranks right up there with the complete works of Michael Bay.

You must see Santa Claus the movie, if only to boggle at the horrifying-depths to which a big studio Christmas film can sink. It actually perverts the spirit of the holiday into something creepy, itchy, and laugh-out-loud insane Just be sure to set aside sufficient funds for a lifetime of therapy afterward.

DELICIOUS ANTICIPATION: This Christmas, the folks at Disney and director Rob Marshall bring Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical masterpiece to the big screen with an amazing cast!

CLICK THIS LINK TO WATCH MERYL STREEP PERFORM A NUMBER IN THE FILM: www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/11/meryl-streep-sings-into-the-woods-video "Into the Woods" is a modern twist on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tales, intertwining the plots of a few choice stories and exploring the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. This humorous and heartfelt musical follows the classic tales of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Jack and the Beanstalk (Daniel Huttlestone), and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy) - all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife (James Corden & Emily Blunt), their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch (Meryl Streep) who has put a curse on them. Rob Marshall, the talented filmmaker behind the Academy Award®-winning musical "Chicago" and Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," helms the film, which is based on the Tony®-winning original musical by James Lapine, who also penned the screenplay, and legendary composer Stephen Sondheim, who provides the music and lyrics. Produced by Marshall, John DeLuca, "Wicked" producer Marc Platt and Callum McDougall, "Into the Woods" hits theaters December 25, 2014.

DELICIOUSLY simple - Who better than Judy herself to wish you all a Merry Merry as we near the end of 2013? MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone! And HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

MERRY MERRY EVERYBODY!

HOPE
YOUR
HOLIDAYS
ARE
JUST
AS
DELICIOUS!

...AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE!

Spend a deliciously dysfunctional Christmas Eve with the Chasseur family in THE REF

It's hard to imagine how The Ref, a caustically hilarious and original movie, got pitched to the big boys at Touchstone. "Dog Day Afternoon meets Reservoir Dogs meets National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!" Nope. "Ordinary People meets Desperate Hours meets Home Alone!" Not exactly. Touchstone went ahead and made the movie anyway, but they never did market it correctly. The problem starts with the title. This is not a sports film, people. Unless you consider the flinging of marital brickbats a sport.

The Ref, which covers the events of one fateful Christmas Eve, is more a collection of stocking stuffers than a present you would find under the tree. That's because, unlike conventional presents, stocking gifts have no rules. Anything could go in the stocking: an orange, a pair of socks, a nifty set of prehistoric animals, a lump of coal, all of the above. And that's The Ref in a nutshell.

Denis Leary, who plays a fast-talking thief named Gus, robs a suburban mansion and sets off all the alarms, so he needs a getaway car and a place to hide till he can figure out how to get around the roadblocks. It's his bad luck to choose as hostages the bickering Chasseurs, whom we've already met in a blackly side splitting, no-holds-barred session with their marriage counselor. To say that Caroline and Lloyd Chasseur (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) are bickerers is to say Mystic Mints are cookies. These two are the most merciless human migraines you've run into since you last looked in the mirror. Gus is flabbergasted at the sheer venom of their attacks on each other, especially since they are living what certainly looks to him like the good life. He is so dumbfounded at the invective they spew that he unwittingly finds himself playing the role of mediator more than hostage-taker (hence the title of the film).

Though Leary has the most immediately funny scenes (he is, as usual, all bottled energy and screw-you attitude) and shows terrific screen timing and presence, it's Davis and Spacey who are the heart of the film. The rest of this prom-night carwreck of a family includes the Chasseur's son, the possibly still redeemable "demon seed" Jesse (Robert Steinmiller Jr.), Glynis Johns as the preposterously overbearing matriarch, and a number of other first-rate familial irritations. Steinmiller proves our theory that the kid who played Alfalfa did not grow up to be killed over a $50 debt; he was cryogenically frozen and subsequently thawed out for this film.

While the acting is what really works in The Ref, the writing comes in a very close second. Screenwriters Richard La Gravaneses and Marie Weiss's dialogue crackles, and just when you think one of the stabbings from one of the spouses will sting fatally, the other volleys back with a kamikaze zinger. It's how you wish your parents had argued, because damn it's entertaining. Potential dvd renters should be forewarned about one thing. At the beginning of the movie, Leary is sprayed with cat urine as he bungles his burglary attempt, and throughout the film, one character after another remarks, "What's that smell?" This is a metaphor, in a way, for you will notice an odor, too. Near the end you're going to say, as you wrinkle your nose and whiff the air, "Is that... Touchstone I detect?" Yes, yes, it is. Touchstone processes good scripts with the same reluctance that W.C. Fields's liver processed alcohol, so, true to their name, they use their touch to turn living things into stone: Leary is never allowed to be quite bad enough, and things do have to work out with mildly tedious agreeability at the end. But these are just quibbles, and, after all, when you grab your stocking off the fireplace mantle, you have to take the socks along with those nifty animal toys.

TWO TURTLE DOVES

THREE FRENCH HENS

FOUR CALLING BIRDS!

YOU KNOW THINGS ARE BAD WHEN ...

A DELICIOUS CHRISTMAS CAKE RECIPE!

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
lemon juice
4 lg eggs
lots of nuts
1 bottle of Vodka
2 cups of dried fruit

Sample the vodka to check quality.
Take a large bowl.
Check the vodka again. (to be sure it is the highest quality.) Pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.
Turn on the electric mixer.
Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add one teaspoon of sugar.
Beat again.
At this point, it's best to make sure the vodka is still okay. Try another cup... just in case.
Turn off the mixer.
Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick fruit off floor
Mix on the turner.
If the fried fruit gets stuck in the beaters, pry it loose with a screwdriver.
Sample the vodka to check for consistensy.
Next, sift two cups of salt (or something... who gives a shit.)
Check the vodka.
Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table.
Add a spoon of sugar, or something. (whatever you can find.)
Grease the oven and piss in the fridge.
Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.
(Don't forget to beat off the turner.)
Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the vodka and kick the cat.
Fall into bed.

SIX GEESE A LAYING