A Christmas Story (1983) - 53 mistakes

Visible crew/equipment: Towards the beginning of the movie when Ralphie's dad is in the basement fixing the furnace and the entire family is staring at the door, you need to keep on eye on the left side of the screen. There is a crewmember in the family room, who is on the screen by mistake. You don't see the person right away, but it is in that sequence when you see the mom in the shot, then you can see the leg of the person very quickly in the background.

Continuity: When Ralphie's dad is going through the wooden box to see his prize there is a lot of straw or whatever in it to keep it packaged. When he's bent down digging through it, he has a lot of it on his back. In the next shot when he is standing up, he's perfectly clean.

Continuity: When Raphie's mother is working on the turkey on Christmas morning, there is a jar of pickles on the table next to the turkey. In the next scene the mother is coming up from the basement carrying a jar of pickles and places them on the table in the same place.

Continuity: When the "old man" first puts the lamp on the edge of the box there is no light fixture on which to place the shade. He then returns the lamp to the box and when he brings it out, there is a place to put the shade. Also as he hands it to the mother and then takes it back to put it on the table, there is no electrical cord visible. However, just before he sets it down on the table you can see a cord in his left hand.

Other: Melinda Dillon's name is misspelled "Dillion" in the end credits.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene after Ralphie beats up Farcus in which Melinda Dillon finds Randie in the cupboard, you can see a shadow moving continuously on the chair pushed under the table on the right hand side of the shot.

Continuity: In the kitchen scene, as Ralphie's father comes in for hot water to thaw the car, and then turns his attention to the furnace, there is a white funnel on the shelf beneath the clock. The camera follows him to the basement steps and the smoke coming from the register. In the next shot, showing the anxious family, Ralphie's mother moves forward and the funnel is not there in this shot.

Continuity: When the teacher is trying to make the kids feel bad for Flick, look at the blackboard. The garland is covering something written that is underlined: all that is seen is a G to the right. As she tells them of the theme, the garland is no longer covering the writing.

Continuity: When Ralphie beats up the neighborhood bully there is snow all over the ground, but only in the immediate yard. Right over the fence the ground is clean. In a later shot when Mom is pulling Ralphie off the bully there is snow in all the yards.

Continuity: In the breakfast scene, after Ralphie's father hopes for a new furnace for Christmas, you see Ralphie and Randy laughing at this notion. Notice Randy's milk glass has fallen over; in the next shot it is upright, and there seems to be more milk in it.

Continuity: When the father is reading the paper on Christmas morning, the dogs run by him coming from the front door, but in the previous scene the only door open for the dogs to come in through was the backdoor.

Continuity: After Melinda Dillon breaks the leg lamp, she holds the broken leg in her arms in a pile of three separate pieces. After Darren McGavin asks "What broke?", the 'leg' magically heals itself into one single, straight, yet loosely-knit piece.

Continuity: When the father comes in for hot water for the car, the furnace goes haywire and black smoke comes out of the register. The father goes to the basement to fix the furnace and yells upstairs for somebody to open the damper. The mother goes over and begins to move the bottom lever and then changes her mind and moves the top lever all the way to the left. In the next shot the top lever is all the way to the right while the bottom lever has miraculously moved all the way to the left.

Continuity: In the playground scene when Flick first sticks his tongue to the flagpole, the street in the background has been snowplowed. The kids all go back in to the classroom without Flick. When the teacher asks "Where's Flick?", and looks out the window and sees him at the pole, the same street in the back ground has not been plowed.

Revealing: In the scene on Christmas morning when the Bumpus' dogs run in and eat the turkey, during the shot of the dad sitting in the chair reading the comics, one of the dogs bumps the camera and jostles it a little bit.

Continuity: When Ralphie fights Scut Farcus, he starts out with snow on his hat and jacket, from the snowball Scut threw at him. Then in the next frame, there's no snow on him. It goes back and forth like that throughout the whole fight scene.

Visible crew/equipment: Camera lights (and perhaps some crew, barely) can be seen in Ralphie's sunglasses, when he is imagining himself as a blind person.

Continuity: In the living room scenes, on the mantel in front of the clock, lighted candles appear and disappear during the movie.

Continuity: When Ralphie gives the huge fruit basket to his teacher, she has to move it aside to see who is behind it. Their height in relation to the basket varies from one shot to the next - a few shots show both of them taller than the basket, which would have allowed the teacher and Ralph to see each other the whole time.

Continuity: Early in the movie when Ralphie catches up with Flick on the way to school, Ralphie is holding a book or folder that has the top left corner folded over. In the next shot when Schwartz joins them, the fold is now on the bottom left side. Ralphie's arm covers the top corner of the book most of the time so look closely during the last few seconds of the scene.

Continuity: Looking out the classroom window, in the scene where the teacher has gone out to help free Flick's tongue from the flagpole, we see the fire truck has arrived and that a police car has just pulled in from the left and has stopped. The shot changes to show Ralphie saying "Oh no," and then another closer shot from outside, during which the police car is again pulling up at the very same spot.

Continuity: When Randy is getting dressed for school, his mittens keep appearing and disappearing from his hands.

Continuity: During dinner Randy has been eating like a "piggie" and his face is covered with food, when the doorbell rings. As he gets up to answer the door he looks to left and his face is clean but then as they go to the door there are mashed potatoes on his face again.

Continuity: In Miss Shield's class there is a roll of scotch tape that is hanging over the edge of a box. A few seconds later, it's moved further on back of the box and not hanging over the edge as much.

Continuity: When Ralphie and the boys first meet Scut Farkas and Grover Dill, Grover Dill's zipper jacket is up all the way and then, it's halfway down. It keeps changing from up to down.

Audio problem: When Ralphie's father opens the crate containing the leg lamp, he says, "Well, it could be anything." Then his mother says, "Maybe they forgot" without moving her lips. Obviously dubbed in later.

Continuity: When Santa pushes Ralphie down the slide with his foot, Santa is actually seated too far away from the slide for his foot to have reached Ralphie's face. In all the wide shots of the scene (especially the very last one as the family leaves the store), you can see that Santa's chair is placed too far away from the entrance of the slide for his foot to have reached the sizable distance to Ralphie's face. But in the tighter P.O.V. shots where Santa is talking to Ralphie just before he gives him the boot, you can see that Santa's chair has been moved over and placed directly in front of the slide so that he can easily reach Ralphie's face. Even better, just as the Elf places Ralphie in Santa's lap, there is a 360 degree panoramic shot that shows just how far away the slide is from Santa's foot.

Continuity: When Randy shows Mommy "how the piggies eat", the shots are obviously out of sequence. There are times when the amount of mashed potatoes on the plate greatly increases from the shot before. And watch the meat loaf a couple shots just before the scene ends. Three large pieces of meat loaf lie scattered on Randy's place mat, but they instantly disappear in the next wide shot.

Continuity: When the dogs steal the turkey and wreck the kitchen, there's a scene of the table broken and no pot holder is on the table. In the next scene, there is a pot holder sitting on the broken table.

Continuity: While Randy and Ralphie are waiting in line to see Santa, the heavy-set lady in the red coat is ahead of them. A short time later,they are in front of the heavy-set lady in the red coat.

Continuity: When Ralphie and Randy go see Santa at Higbee's, Santa's eyebrows are real bushy. And, a few seconds later, they're a lot thinner than what they were.

Factual error: Ralphie's father complains after reading in the paper that "The Sox traded Bullfrog!" which is a reference to Chicago White Sox pitcher Bill Dietrich. Dietrich was released by the Sox, not traded, in 1946.

Continuity: Near the beginning, when Ralphie runs from his house to catch up to Flick, on the way to school, notice that Flick is carrying a school book, which has a beige cover visible to the camera. In the next shot Schwartz joins the group from the very next house on the block, and within a time span of approximately two seconds, Flick's book cover has become blue in color.

Visible crew/equipment: On Christmas morning when Ralphie opens up the bunny suit, you can see stage lights in his glasses.

Other: When Pierre Andre is giving the members of the "Secret Society" their message, listen carefully. The first number is 12. Towards the end of the message he says 12 again. Since the first letter of the first word is "B", and there are no other "B's" in the entire message, I guess this is another one that slipped by the editor.

Continuity: When Ralphie receives his theme with the "C" grade, a map is visible behind the teacher, which stops at the northern border of California. In the next shot, the map now continues north of California.

Visible crew/equipment: As the buck teeth are being handed out at the beginning of the classroom scene, the camera pans to follow Miss Shields and you can very briefly see the shadow of the boom microphone on the wall at the top of the screen.

Continuity: When Ralphie is decoding his secret message from Little Orphan Annie, when the shot is close to the paper, you can see that Ralphie writes in both capital and lowercase letters. As the scene continues, the camera changes angles so that the paper is farther away, and the entire message is written in capital letters.

Continuity: When they set up the lamp for the first time, you can see the mom turn away from the window and put her hands on Ralphie's shoulders from the dad's point of view, outside. Then when the camera shifts inside, she does it again.

Continuity: When the teacher collects all the fake buck teeth from the entire class in one hand, there is no way she can hold all twenty sets of teeth in one hand as we're expected to believe. (20 because there are four rows of five desks in the classroom.) She also doesn't deposit anywhere near twenty sets of teeth when we see her hand pour them in the desk drawer.

Factual error: This film takes place in the mid-to-late 40s. The doorknobs throughout Ralphie's house are too modern for the type of doorknobs used in homes built in that era. This is especially obvious in the kitchen scene when the furnace is smoking and you see the cellar door and in the bathroom scene, when Ralphie is decoding the "secret" message from Pierre Andre. No bathroom door of that era would have a doorknob like the one shown in the film.

Revealing: One shot of the family opening the Christmas presents is from above; if you look quickly near the top of the screen you can see the ceiling cut away and even shadows moving on this area - obviously a set piece.

Continuity: When everyone is shown in a close up as they open up their Christmas presents, take a look at the father. While he is opening his gift, he has a yellow tie around his neck. When he says, "Didn't I get a tie this year?" the tie is not around his neck anymore.

Continuity: In the school classroom scene, the teacher writes "Silas" in cursive on the blackboard and very emphatically dots the "i" in Silas with her chalk. The dot is visible then and even in the long shot from the back of the classroom, however, in the next, more close-up shot, as the students are filing past her desk and handing in their fake buck teeth, there is no dot above the "i".

Continuity: When Ralphie's dad comes in after finding his Oldsmobile has frozen overnight, he tosses his hat onto the dining room table. It tumbles onto a chair next to the table. The next time you see the table, the hat has made its way to the table top.

Continuity: When Ralphie is re-reading his theme to himself, there is a closeup shot of the notebook and his handwriting. In that shot Ralphie has his left hand flat but in the following shot Ralphie has his left hand in a fist.

Factual error: The movie was set in the mid-to-late 1940s, however, the red wagons shown in the display in Higbee's corner window at the beginning of the film, bear a Radio Flyer script logo which was designed in 1967.

Continuity: When the delivery men are wheeling the "major award" into the doorway, it has a rope tied around it. As the camera angle moves inside the house, the rope is gone.

Continuity: When Ralphie receives and decodes the Little Orphan Annie secret message, the last numbers don't match. On the radio, the announcer said the last number is 25. But in close-up shots of the paper Ralphie wrote on, you can see he has written 11 as the last number.

Revealing: Watch when all the kids are putting the fake teeth in their mouth near the beginning of the movie. Ralphie's friend, the kid who sits in front of him, just pretends to put the fake teeth in at that point. Very obvious.

Continuity: After Ralphie's mother calls Mrs. Schwartz because of the F - - word, the narrator says, "Three blocks away, Schwartz was getting his." Yet at the beginning of the movie, when Ralphie leaves his house, he has only walked past 3-4 houses when Schwartz comes out to meet him and Flick.

Continuity: When Scut grabs Schwartz and tries to make him say "uncle", the end of Schwartz's stocking cap is hanging loose in front of him. But in the following shot - showing Scut throwing Schwartz to the ground - the end of the stocking cap is behind Schwartz's back.

Continuity: Just after the fight between Ralphie and Scut starts, there is a shot of the two from the side and already there is quite a bit of blood on Scut's face. But then in a shot from over Ralphie's shoulder, there is no blood visible on Scut's face at all.