
            Set in an undeterminate year of the 1940s, Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) is a nine year-old boy living in the small town of Hohman, Indiana. His older self (voice of Jean Shepherd) narrates his experiences and thoughts through the short weeks before Christmas. As he, a few friends, and his younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella) look into the display window of a local store, Ralphie has his eyes set on the only item he wants for Christmas; an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, with a compass in the stock and "this thing which tells time" (a sundial).Knowing full well that he could never request this item openly to his parents, Ralphie sneaks advertisements for the gun into his parents' magazines the next morning. At the breakfast table, he fails to bring up the subject in casual conversation, and with less subtlety than was intended. He then accidentally lets slip his desire to his mother (Melinda Dillon) who immediately rejects the idea with the dreaded phrase: "you'll shoot your eye out."Disappointed, Ralphie enjoys a reverie about how he alone, armed with his gun, stands between his family and a gang of stripe-shirted ruffians in a Western-style standoff. Meanwhile his grouchy father (Darren McGavin) is forced to battle the temperamental house furnace in the basement amid a slur of inaudible curses.While walking through the frozen, snow-covered neighborhood on his way to school, Ralphie meets up his two friends, Flick (Scott Schwartz) and Schwartz (R.D. Robb), while Randy lags behind, heavily bundled under a thick, wool snow jumper that leaves his arms sticking straight out. Before class, Flick and Schwartz argue over what would happen should someone stick their tongue to a frozen flag pole, engaging in a delicate nuance of phrase during which Schwartz dares Flick to stick his tongue to the pole. Upon the dreaded triple-dog-dare, Flick puts his tongue to the pole to find it stuck tight. He starts screaming but the others run into school as the bell rings. Their teacher, Miss Shields (Tedde Moore), notices Flick's absence and, when she sees him outside, calls the fire department and local police and tries to comfort Flick. As the students watch with excitement, Ralphie feels a pang of guilt. Still, when Flick is escorted to his desk, a bandage around his tongue, and Miss Shields gives a brief speech on how whoever put Flick up to sticking his tongue to the pole should atone for their misdeed. But Ralphie explains that kids know better not to get caught. Miss Shields then gives them an assignment; to write a theme about what they want for Christmas. Ralphie sees this as an opportunity to write about the Red Ryder gun, hoping that his teacher will sympathize with him and secure a little reprieve with her authority as an adult.On the way home, Ralphie, Flick, Schwartz, and Randy are confronted by a local bully named Scut Farkus (Zack Ward) and his toadie Grover Dill (Yano Anaya). Poor Schwartz is subjected to a painful hammerlock before they all run away, screaming shrilly, while Randy lags behind unable to keep up wearing his thick winter clothing.Ralphie makes it home and finishes his theme just as his father comes home, shouting excitedly, before being surrounded by the neighbor's dogs. Ralphie watches from his window above and comments how his neighbors, the Bumpuses, owned dozens of bloodhounds that ignored everyone else on earth except for the Old Man. Mr. Parker exclaims that he won a grand prize in a local magazine sweepstakes, showing his wife the telegram that says it will be delivered that night.During dinner that night, Randy displays his typical dissent for food and refuses to eat until his mother playfully asks him how pigs eat. Randy dives into his food face first, laughing hysterically, while Mr. Parker and Ralphie watch with mild disgust. Then, the doorbell rings and everyone immediately stops. They run to the door where Mr. Parker allows the delivery men to wheel in a large box and opens it with fervor to reveal a lamp that's designed to look like a woman's leg, complete with stocking, high heel shoe, and a shade that looks like a skirt. While Mr. Parker gushes over it, Ralphie's mother is clearly uncomfortable, especially when her husband tells her to display it in the front window for the entire neighborhood to see. Only one thing draws Ralphie and his brother away from the glow of electric sex gleaming in the window, and thats their favorite radio program; Little Orphan Annie.The next day at school, Ralphie hands in his theme and has a momentary daydream where his paper is given the best grade in class before being brought out of it by Miss Shields. After school, he and his friends are once again chased through the alley by Scut and Grover.Upon arriving home, he checks the mail to see that his long awaited package from the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society with his secret message decoder pin has arrived. He listens to the encrypted message on the radio that night and rushes up to the bathroom to decode it, only to realize that the secret message is nothing but an advertisement for Ovaltine. Wiser, but nonetheless disappointed, Ralphie casually swears under his breath.Later that night, the furnace blows black smoke into the kitchen again and the Old Man rushes down to do battle. Mrs. Parker appears complacent as she strolls into the living room with a watering can before a loud crash is heard. Ralphie watches as his father rushes up the stairs and finds his wife holding his broken lamp. She admits it was an accident before shouting, after Mr. Parker claims she was jealous that he won it, that it was the ugliest lamp she's ever seen. Mr. Parker attempts to fix the lamp but it quickly falls apart, much to his wife's amusement. He musters all the dignity he can as he takes the remains to the back yard and buries them. At school, the students bring in apples as small gifts for Miss Shields before Christmas. Ralphie gives her a large fruit basket, hoping that it will help sway her final decision on his paper.That evening, the family goes out to pick a Christmas tree. On the way home, the car blows a tire and Mr. Parker goes outside to fix it. When his mother encourages him to help his father, Ralphie is only happy to do so, but when his father accidentally knocks the hubcap that Ralphie is using to hold the tire bolts out of his hands, Ralphie utters the big one that he heard his father say in private over and over again. Ralphie says: "oh, fudge!" (Actually the F-dash-dash-dash word).At home, his mother puts a bar of soap in his mouth, one that he dislikes in taste above all others he's had the opportunity to sample. His mother asks where hes heard that word and, although Ralphie admits to us that his old man used the word as fluently as an artist would use paint, he chickens out and blurts out his friend Schwartz's name. When Mrs. Parker calls Schwartz's mother and tells her, we hear her screaming maniacally and giving Schwartz a sound beating.Sent to bed early, Ralphie cries to himself and fantasizes about visiting his parents years into the future to reveal that all the soap sessions his mother gave him resulted in premature blindness, causing his parents to moan and grieve over their wrongdoing.At school, Ralphie is handed his theme back from Miss Shields. He looks in horror at the large C+ stamped across the top with the phrase "you'll shoot your eye out". He imagines his teacher clad in a witch's outfit, laughing at him next to his harlequin mother who must have surely gotten to her. Ralphie spends the rest of the day in class feeling depressed and hopeless that he'll never get the Ryder BB gun.On the way home, Ralphie walks alone and is suddenly hit in the face with a snowball. He takes his glasses off and sees Scut Farkus and Grover Dill approach him. Ralphie tears up until Scut starts to mock him and laugh, something that causes Ralphie, in all his disappointment and anguish, to snap and charge angrily at Scut, tackling him to the ground and beating him. Grover runs off as the neighborhood kids cheer Ralphie on. Randy picks up his discarded glasses and goes to get their mother who arrives just as Ralphie is finishing a rant of slurred curses. She gets a distraught Ralphie off of Scut and helps him walk home. Scut is left to pick himself up with a bloodied nose. Ralphie is inconsolable by the time he gets home, though his mother tries to calm him and puts him to bed until dinner. Meanwhile, Randy hides himself under the kitchen sink, crying that "Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie". When Mr. Parker does come home, Ralphie goes downstairs, fearing the worst and knowing full well the mix of bad words he'd said during the fight. However, his mother is sympathetic and downplays the fight to Mr. Parker, giving a grateful Ralphie a reprieve. As Ralphie goes to sleep that night, the "Scut Farkus Affair" behind him, he decides the best way to receive his BB gun is to ask Santa himself.The next night, (Christmas Eve) the family goes downtown to watch the Christmas parade. Ralphie is impatient and keeps asking to leave early so that they can see Santa Claus. As soon as Santa goes by in his float, his parents concede and take him and Randy to the department store where Santa (Jeff Gillen) sits atop a frosty mountain, a long line of kids on one side and a slide going down on the other. Ralphie's parents let him take Randy while they go off on their own. Stuck at the end of a very long line, and with a Santa enthusiast nicknamed Goggles (David Edward) to awkwardly content with, Ralphie can only wonder if he'll make it to see Santa before closing time. When they finally make it to the top, Goggles sits on Santa's lap and immediately starts screaming before being put on the slide. Randy follows suit and Ralphie is escorted by an irritable helper elf (Patty Johnson) to sit on Santa's lap. His perspective, as he's swung around, shows clearly why most kids are afraid of Santa. In shock himself by Santa's intimindating face, Ralphie is unable to tell Santa exactly what he wants. Santa suggests a football to which Ralphie numbly agrees. He comes to his senses just as he's about to go down the slide and stops himself, struggling back to the top where he blurts out what he really wants. He gives his best smile, but Santa merely repeats what Ralphie fears, "you'll shoot your eye out, kid" before putting his boot to Ralphie's forehead and pushing him down the slide. Ralphie's parents collect him and Randy at the bottom and take them home where they decorate the tree (a task that results in blowing a dangerously packed outlet). The boys are then ushered quickly up the stairs to bed.The next morning, Ralphie wakes up to see that fresh snow has fallen overnight and goes downstairs eagerly with his brother, who claims that everything in sight is his. Their parents follow suit and presents are unwrapped with frantic excitement (except for socks). When all is said and done, Randy lies sleeping amid the wrappings with his toy zeppelin as Ralphie sits on the couch with his parents. His father asks if he got everything he wanted that year before pointing out a mysterious package behind the desk. Ralphie goes to unwrap it and finds what he thought he'd never get; the Red Ryder BB gun. His father chuckles as he fills it with BB pellets and asks to try it out. Mr. Parker explains to his wife that he had one when he was eight years old, though she still worries Ralphie will hurt himself. Ralphie runs outside and sets up his metal target board while his father drools over the Christmas turkey his mother is making.Ralphie takes aim, fires, and falls back; the pellet having bounced off the target and hitting him on the cheek, knocking his glasses off. Fearful for a second that he actually did shoot his eye out, the half-blind Ralphie collects himself and looks for his glasses but accidentally steps on them, breaking them. Despondent, he tries to think of a way to explain the accident to his mother and decides that an icicle falling off the garage would have to work. He fakes some tears and goes to his mother. She takes him to the bathroom upstairs to wash his face off (though Ralphie is ecstatic that his plan worked) and gives him an old pair of glasses to use.Meanwhile, the Bumpuses' street bloodhounds get into the house and run rampant through the kitchen, eating all of the turkey. Mr. Parker chases the dogs out, yelling at the top of his lungs, before announcing to everyone that they're going out to eat. They go to a Chinese restaurant where the family listens to the waiters' attempts to sing carols before the main course is brought out, with its head still intact. The owner (John Wong) casually takes out a butcher knife and chops the head off while the family claps and begin to eat.That night, Ralphie sleeps with his Red Ryder held close, the best Christmas gift he ever received, dreaming of hunting ducks and making spectacular shots.
    

A Christmas Story


            
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Kidco


            Jack Brown (Richard Pryor) is an unemployed newspaper reporter living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who is in danger of losing his house to the bank since he and his wife, Angela (Annazette Chase), cannot make their mortgage. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to get a job working for the local paper, The Bugle, he becomes so desperate that he ends up taking a job as a "cleaning lady" for U.S. Bates (Jackie Gleason), an uptight and ruthless businessman who owns the paper and many other businesses in Louisiana. Jack is humiliated as he clumsily attempts to serve food at a luncheon. He is fired, but quickly lands a part-time job as a janitor in a department store owned by Bates.The following evening, "Master" Eric Bates (Scott Schwartz), the 10-year-old, spoiled-and-rotten, brat son of the boss, arrives home from the military academy where he attends and his father sends him to the store and he is told that he "can have anything he wants in the store". Amused at seeing Jack goof around in the store's toy section, Eric informs his father's long-suffering right-hand man, Sydney Morehouse (Ned Beatty), that what he wants is Jack Brown himself. Morehouse fails to convince Eric that human beings cannot be owned. Jack is literally "boxed up" and taken to the large Bates mansion that sits on the outskirts of the city. At first, Jack refuses to have any interaction with the brat Eric, but Bates offers him a deal: in exchange for a generous financial settlement, Jack reluctantly agrees to be Eric's live-in friend during Eric's one-week spring break from military school.Emotionally estranged from his father, Eric takes a liking to Jack but still manages to humiliate him with numerous pranks during the first day and night. After a particularly humiliating incident in the mansion incited by Bates' ditsy and floozy, much younger trophy wife Fancy (Teresa Ganzel), who literally introduces him at a dinner party as Eric's new "toy," Jack grows tired of the situation and leaves. The next day, Jack agrees to return only when U.S. Bates (with Morehouse as his proxy) offers Jack so much money to be Eric's live-in friend for one week, that Jack will not only pay back the bank and numerous bill collectors, but Jack will be able to pay back the entire mortgage on his house as well.Jack returns to the Bates estate, determined to teach Eric how a friend is supposed to be treated. Over the next several days, they slowly bond while participating in mini-cart racing, video games, and even fishing in a stream filled with piranha. Both Jack and Eric begin to open up to one another with stories about their personal lives. Jack tells Eric about him growing up poor and having to look out for oneself. Eric tells Jack about his mother's death when he was very young which his grumpy father tries to forget about by putting all his time in work and leaving no time for anything else while marrying again and again.Over time, Jack sees that Eric isn't the "bad seed" that he puts out to people, but just a mistreated and neglected boy who wants attention and whom is spoiled by his father. Used to getting things his way since all his father ever does is give him gifts and money (calling it love and affection) Eric throws fits when things do not go his way. Eric is so spoiled and hyper-competitive that he enjoys beating Jack at video games, mini-cart racing and board games a little too much. One day, when Jack begins winning at a two-person basketball game, Eric, seeing that he is losing, refuses to play anymore and walks off the court. When Jack scolds Eric for quitting because he is losing asks if he would like to tell Eric's father that he is a quitter as well as a sore loser. Eric replies with the most touching and dramatic line in the movie: "my father doesn't care what I am... as long as I stay out of his way."Another day later, Jack and Eric decide to start a newspaper of their own for fun. After witnessing multiple examples of Bates' cruelty to his housekeeping staff and workers, they dig up dirt on him, such as a story of how he won his elderly and long-suffering butler, Barkley (Wilfrid Hyde-White), in a game of billiards. Jack and Eric then break into Bates newspaper office after-hours as well as the factory to print their paper, but get discovered by the police. At a police station, Eric manages to create a diversion by setting off some firecrackers creating confusion and panic in which Jack and Eric quietly walk out of their jail cell, and out of the front door.Afterwards, Jack and Eric publish their paper, titled 'The Toy' and distribute free copies of it throughout the city. Morehouse finds a copy and, being the ever loyal toady that he is, shows it to Bates and he is outraged. Bates quickly calls Jack and Eric to his office to confront them both, but he keeps his anger in check. Bates orders Jack and Eric to shut down their paper which he sees as humiliating to him and the Bates dynasty. However, Eric is unapologetic and wants to continue the paper. To prove to his son that money can buy anything (including loyalty), Bates offers Jack a reporting job with his newspaper at the end of the week... which is what Jack wanted all along. When Jack accepts, Eric becomes upset and runs out of the office. Outside, Eric scolds Jack for selling out as all of the people that Bates does business with. Jack tells the boy that most men (especially disenfranchised African-American men such as himself) need jobs, just as his priority is to support himself and his wife.At the climax, an swanky outdoor party is held at the Bates estate, attended by prominent citizens who are supporters of a senator (Ray Spruell). They are unaware that members of the KKK are also in attendance. Jack's wife, Angela, tries to bring attention to this with her anti-Klan group that are camped on the Bates mansion in a protest demonstration, but Jack convinces her to leave. He learns the true reason for the party is to get the KKK Grand Wizard (Orwin Harvey) and Senator Newcomb together in a picture, which Bates would then use to blackmail the senator. Senator Newcomb's daughter Honey Russell (Linda McCann) is also in attendance at the party and is accompanied by her husband (Stocker Fontelieu) who is a local district attorney investing Bates for shady business deals and corruption, in which Bates is also hoping to get D.A. Russell a photo op with the Grand Wizard to blackmail him too to stop his investigation of his business activities.Jack and Eric team up one last time to disrupt the party and they crash the events on their mini go-carts where Jack announces to everyone about the Grand Wizard's identity. Jack embarrasses the Grand Wizard by causing him to fall into a bowl of chocolate fudge. The Grand Wizard throws a pie at Jack, but hits a policeman instead, leading to his arrest. Chaos ensues which leads to Jack and Eric driving their mini-carts around the party, knocking down tents, ruining displays, and people jumping out of the path of Jack and Eric's mini-carts into various desert trays which leads to a huge pie-throwing fight among the guests. Bates chases after Jack in a golf cart but ends up crashing into the pool. Jack saves him from drowning since Bates cannot swim, and it seems all is forgiven. That evening with the week up, Jack packs up and returns to his neighborhood to his wife, riding away on a bicycle while Eric sadly waves goodbye.The next day, while riding with Eric in a limousine to the airport to return to military school, Bates tries desperately to have a heart-to-heart talk with his son, but he is not very good at it. All Eric talks about is Jack and that he misses him. Bates tells Eric to forget about Jack. While on the runway to board Bates' private jet, Eric runs off, making his way to Jack's house. Jack refuses to let Eric live with him and gently admonishes Eric to give his father a chance. Bates shows up and offers the newspaper job to Jack again and promises Eric that next year for spring break he can spend one week with him and one with Jack, much to Eric's joy. After they leave, the senator's daughter, Honey Russell, shows up in another limo informing Jack that Fancy has recommended him to look after her son, Eugene, for a few weeks who is home from his own military academy on spring break. Eugene (Davis Hotard) peeks out from the top window and shoots Jack in the forehead with a toy dart... revealing that he is MORE spoiled and obnoxious then Eric. A crazed Jack runs away down the road in fear over this 'here-we-go-again' situation as the end credits roll.
    

Scott Schwartz

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