Reel Beach: ‘Tis the season to test your holiday movie knowledge with our quiz

By BERNIE FLETCHER

‘Tis the season to watch holiday movies.

We can share tears of despair and joy with Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life or laugh with Ralphie in A Christmas Story. We can gripe with Tim Allen in The Santa Clause or sing along with the Mean Girls.

What’s old is new again. There’s a live version of It’s a Wonderful Life playing at Young People’s Theatre.

Tina Fey has a remake of Mean Girls coming out in theatres on Jan. 12 which includes the talent show. (Fetch still isn’t happening.) There are newer reboots of The Santa Clauses (Disney) and A Christmas Story Christmas (2022).

Santa’s workshop is at the North Pole so it’s only fitting that a lot of holiday movies are filmed in the Great White North.

Ontario is especially popular for Hallmark and Netflix rom-coms like Meet Me Next Christmas with Christina Millan meeting Santa in Toronto last May. The Man who Saved Christmas (2002), The Best Man Holiday (2013) and 8 Bit Christmas (2021) also filmed here.

Have some milk and cookies and try this quiz to test your memory of some classic holiday movies which filmed in the east end of Toronto. Answers are below.

Check your list twice to see if you have been naughty or nice.

HOLIDAY MOVIE QUIZ

1. Mean Girls (2004) filmed on Balsam Road., Beech Avenue and at Malvern Collegiate. What song did the girls sing at their Christmas show?

2. You can see the streetcar yard on Queen Street East when Ralphie gets in a fight in A Christmas Story (1983). What was the name of the bully played by Toronto’s Zach Ward?

3. Where did The Santa Clause (1994) film a polar bear and caribou?

4. Santa Claus first appeared in a very short film way back in 1898. Who played St. Nick himself in One Magic Christmas (1983) with filming in Scarborough? Hint: He played an Amish elder in Witness (1985).

5. What landmark building in the Beach plays a prison in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)?

6. Why didn’t Rudolph get a good report card? Because he went down in history. The voices for the TV classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) were done in Toronto. Was Rudolph played by a boy, a girl, a man or a woman?

7. Where was the police station scene filmed in Black Christmas (1974)? The calls are coming from inside the house, just don’t go up to the attic.

8. Who played Santa in The Christmas Chronicles (2018) (Netflix) with location filming on Coady Avenue in Leslieville?

9. This late, great actor disguised himself as Santa to rob a bank at Eaton Centre in The Silent Partner (1978). John Candy’s character gets married at Kew Beach.

10. It’s the most wonderful time of the year unless you’re an elf trying to finish making all those toys. What was the name of the head elf at the North Pole in The Santa Clause?

Bonus question: Why was the elf depressed? (He had low elf esteem.)

So you better not pout, Santa Claus is coming to town. You can call him St. Nick or Kris Kringle, just don’t call him late for dinner.

Do you know the name of the bully played by Toronto actor Zach Ward in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story?

ANSWERS

Below are the answers to the Reel Beach holiday movie quiz:

1. Jingle Bell Rock.

2. Scut Farkus.

3. The Toronto Zoo.

4. Jan Rubes.

5. R. C. Harris Water Filtration Plant.

6. A woman, but Billie Mae Richards (1921-2010) was credited as “Billy Richards”.

7. The old Number 10 and 55 Station on Main St. before it became Community Centre 55.

8. Kurt Russell.

9. Christopher Plummer.

10. Bernard.