Watch Carol for Another Christmas For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 400 Christmas MOVIES. BEWARE OF BOGUS REVIEWS & REVIEWERS. SOME REVIEWERS HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. WHEN ITS A POSITIVE REVIEW THAT TELLS ME THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION. NOW I HAVE REVIEWED OVER 400 Christmas MOVIES. I HAVE NO AGENDA. I AM FARE. THE REASON WHY I REVIEW THEM IS TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN!In Rod Serling's update of Charles Dickens, industrial tycoon Daniel Grudge has never recovered from the loss of his 22-year-old son Marley, killed in action during Christmas Eve of 1944. The embittered Grudge has only scorn for any American involvement in international affairs. But then the Ghost of Christmas Past takes him back through time to a World War I troopship. Grudge also is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future gives him a tour across a desolate landscape where he sees the ruins of a once-great civilization. Not family safe but should be seen by everyone. The threat of nuclear war is the premise and it works! The haunting theme and great performances may seem a little too dark for a holiday theme movie but that is the point. In reality saving the world is not up to a few but ALL OF US! Don't miss this.

Rod Serling Sterling Hayden, Ben Gazzara the UN has been super-effective Daniel Grudge--isolationist Marley, lost son pro-US interventions--but we should be a lot more selective most of these deaths WERE in vain keep talking--so long as you talk you don't fight.... was WWI intervention a good thing?"A Carol for Another Christmas" was apparently shown with no commercials on TV and was sponsored by the United Nations--so it was seen as a very important event. However, when you see it today, it comes off as silly, heavy-handed and incredibly naive. Rod Serling used Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as a starting point for this film. Instead of Ebenezer Scrooge and stinginess, the plot is about Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden) and his hatred of US intervention in foreign problems. However, like in the Dickens story, various ghosts appear to show Grudge the error of his ways and in the end, Grudge is a huge proponent of the UN and US intervention abroad.In 1964, this apparently sat well with audiences. Today, however, it brings up a multitude of issues apart from the bad writing. The idea of the US acting like an international police force has become a hated concept with many nations and isn't very popular here, either. And, the UN has consistently proved that the organization is inept and unwilling to deal with evil. Now if you ignore the politics of the film, you are still left with a production that is about as subtle as a nudist at a Baptist picnic. Heavy-handed and silly--this is one that Serling biographers probably won't mention as it's a rare failure for this brilliant writer. Stupid and awful.

A Carol for Another Christmas (1964) * (out of 4) Rod Sterling wrote this updated version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which centers on a grieving father (Sterling Hayden) who recently lost his son in a war and takes his anger out on everyone around him. The man eventually gets visited by three ghosts (Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle, Robert Shaw) and learns a lesson. A CAROL FOR ANOTHER Christmas was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and if you look around at reviews you'll see that there are many positive ones but I'm not going to be among them. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this here is without question the worst "version" of the Dickens' tale that I've ever seen and it's rather shocking that with a writer and director like this film has that the film could turn out so bad. The idea of updating the story isn't what kills the film. The film is a very anti-war picture that speaks of the evils of war and it pretty much beats the viewer over the head with its message. I don't mind any film being political and I don't mind a message being passed but what I can't stand is when that political message is poorly written and is nothing more than a writer ranting for people to hear his story. I personally grew tired of the dialogue within the first ten-minutes and I really started to hate the characters. Nothing here felt real because it just seemed like one big political rant. Yes, war is evil. Yes, people die in war. The message could have gotten across a lot better without all the preaching and bad dialogue. Not to mention countless bad situations where things happen for no reason other for another speech. The film offers up some fine performances by all and we also get Ben Gazzara, Eva Marie Saint, Britt Ekland and Peter Sellers in brief roles. Fans of the all-star cast are going to be tempted to watch this thing and it's a real shame their talents are so wasted.

'Carol for Another Christmas' features a teleplay by Rod Serling at his most dead-earnest. As often happened with this controversial writer, Serling's script ran afoul of network censors who insisted on major changes ... inevitably making the material much more innocuous. Astonishingly, 'Carol for Another Christmas' manages to be an entertaining drama anyway, well-directed (by old pro Joe Mankiewicz) with a first-rate cast.The story is a blatant reworking of Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol', modernised and addressing the concerns of Americans in the 1960s: a fairly original idea when Serling did it. But in the years from 1964 to the present there have been dozens of rip-offs of Dickens's tale (such as the wretched movie 'Scrooged') ... so, from a 21st-century viewpoint, 'Carol for Another Christmas' suffers because it's now one of many, many, MANY reworkings of Dickens's source material. Fortunately, Serling manages sporadically to improve upon the original. For example, this story has no annoying little Tiny Tim character.In Serling's original script, the main character in 'Carol for Another Christmas' was an embittered industrialist named Barnaby Grudge. This is clearly a Dickensian pun, but Serling also meant it as a pun on 'B. Grudge'... because Grudge begrudges charity to people less fortunate than himself. Television executives insisted that Serling must change this character's name; they were certain that 'Barnaby Grudge' would be perceived as a thinly-disguised attack on Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (same initials). Serling changed the character's name to Daniel Grudge, and Sterling Hayden gives a standout performance in the lead role as Grudge, the surrogate Scrooge.After some surly dialogue with his black servants Charles and Ruby, and an argument with his nephew (Ben Gazzara, giving the worst performance hereabouts), Grudge gets some unwanted advice from a surrogate Marley, and then the story proper begins ... with Grudge getting a look at the state of humanity in Christmases past, present and future. (Rod Serling's birthday was 25th December, and he had a traumatic experience on Christmas Day during his wartime hitch as a paratrooper ... I wonder if either of those facts helped inspire this story. I also wonder if the title of this script was a pun on the name of Rod Serling's wife: Carol.)Grudge's escort to the past is a World War One doughboy, extremely well-played by Steve Lawrence ... yes, the singer who married Eydie Gorme. Steve Lawrence was a very talented actor who seldom got material worthy of his talents: he gives a fine performance here, with some of the best dialogue Rod Serling ever wrote. (I'm a Serling fan, but plausible dialogue was always thin on the ground in Rod Serling's universe.) Lawrence brings Grudge to Japan on Christmas Day 1945, where a Japanese doctor and a U.S. WAVE are trying to help Japanese children who were caught in an American bombing raid. (There does seem to be an unfortunate 'blame America' tone here.)The Ghost of Christmas Present is well-played by the excellent Pat Hingle, an actor who never achieved the stardom he deserved. Grudge finds the stocky Hingle gorging himself on food at a banquet table, while nearby Third World children starve behind a fence. Hingle invites Grudge to join him: Grudge is willing to eat, but not with those starving children watching him. The fact that those children ARE starving does not particularly disturb him.Next stop, the future: with the flash of an atomic bomb, Grudge finds himself in the darkness and rubble which are all that remains after World War Three. These are (intentionally) the most disturbing scenes in the drama. What sort of war was this, Grudge wonders? 'A dandy', replies Robert Shaw in a lacklustre performance as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Civilisation was destroyed in the nuclear war, but now one man is trying to inspire the survivors to rebuild the world ... namely, as a dictatorship with himself as the leader. Peter Sellers gives a fascinating performance (with an American accent, better than the one he used in 'Dr Strangelove') as a dictator named Imperial Me. Unfortunately, Sellers seems to be acting in a completely different movie from everyone else. (Which sums up much of his life and career.)SPOILERS NOW. The character arc of 'Carol for Another Christmas' follows Dickens's novel very closely, so it's no surprise that Grudge/Scrooge ultimately returns to his mansion in the present, where he now sees the error of his ways and he repents. But I found the last scene very annoying and simplistic. As proof that Grudge has reformed, we see him humbling himself by eating breakfast in the kitchen with his black servants. Surely it would be more honest and more ennobling to show Grudge inviting his servants to join him for breakfast in his posh dining room. And the three of them could do the washing-up together. Like so many other liberals, Serling seems more interested in bringing down the mighty rather than uplifting the lowly.'Carol for Another Christmas' occasionally sinks into knee-jerk liberalism or America-bashing, but this TV movie's good points very much outweigh and outnumber its bad points. I'll rate this story 10 points out of 10. God bless us, every one.