A strange concatenation of circumstances hit me today -- it's Christmas Day 2008 at 9:45 AM as I write this.  One was obvious, and one was tenuous, but both had a deep impact in my consideration of this, the last film I watched several weeks ago for the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon and the last Christmas film I'll be posting about this year.  The first was the discovery that a friend of mine, who hosts an excellent radio show in Chicago on the nexus of politics and popular culture, recently presented a special Christmas episode in which the central question was:  has A Christmas Story replaced It's a Wonderful Life as America's most beloved Christmas movie?

On the surface, it's a pretty strange question.  As often as it's shown -- and that's pretty damned often -- Bob Clark's endlessly re-watchable, terrifically funny tale of a young boy's Midwestern holiday misadventures in the late 1940s has never had the cultural ubiquity that Frank Capra's classic had during the years it was out of copyright.  It can hardly be called contemporary anymore; it was made 25 years ago (as celebrated in a deluxe new DVD release that's highly recommended by this writer) and was set only a few years after It's a Wonderful Life.  And the older film is a genuine four-star cinematic acheivment, directed by one of the towering talents of the Golden Age of Hollywood, made for a significant amount of money and starring some of the greatest screen stars of the day.

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Okay, so there's a new Uwe Boll movie coming out.  Big deal, says we.  Sure, we're curious about how the Teutonic uber-hack managed to get Dave Foley to star in his new film (Postal, opening in limited release today).  And sure, we're even more curious about how he got Dave Foley to do a nude scene.  And yes, we must admit that there is something oddly compelling about a filmmaker so universally reviled that a chewing gum manufacturer has helped sponsor a petition to get him to stop directing movies, and who is himself so adamant that he is a cinematical genius that he has challenged his critics to meet him in the boxing ring.  But however rotten this German-come-lately may be -- and he's plenty rotten -- for us here at the Screengrab, there is only one true heir to the crappy moviemaking throne vacated by Ed Wood, and that man's name is Albert Pyun.  The Hack From Hawaii -- who directed his first film in 1982, only four years after Ed Wood's death -- has been responsible for over forty films and direct-to-video releases, at least one of which has already turned up on movie janitor Scott Von Doviak's "Unwatchable" list.  Both in his ridiculously prolific output and his utter lack of talent and shame, Albert Pyun leaves Uwe Boll in the dust.  So instead of trying to find a theater willing to screen Postal this weekend, why not settle down for a film festival with our man Big Al?  To help you in this terrifying endeavor, we've assembled a list of five of Pyun's best works -- and we use the word "best" in the loosest possible application to which the word has ever been put.

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982)

Albert Pyun's first screen credit -- as both director and writer -- is a real doozy that sets the tone for his innumerable too-cheap-to-be-camp movies to come.  A standard-issue steel-and-spells epic ripped straight out of Albert's Friday night dorm room Dungeons & Dragons games, The Sword and the Sorcerer cost about nine dollars to make, with a script too dull for TV and special effects that would have seemed hokey in 1972.  The real treat here is the cavalcade of has-beens populating the cast:  there's well-past-his-prime teen idol George Maharis, his suntan decaying before our very eyes; future Murphy Brown fixture Joe Regalbuto; hulking, self-serious Night Court golem Richard Moll; coked-out Nina Van Pallandt, a million miles from The Long Goodbye; unreconstructed manimal Simon McCorkindale; and, in the lead, none other than Matt Houston star Lee Horsley!  Sadly, this collection of fourth-stringers would be the hottest cast Pyun would ever work with.  It would be all downhill from here.

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