The 1960s and 70s formed the wilderness years of the Christmas movie. Sandwiched between the genre's post-war golden age and its commercial revival in the 1980s, these decades have come to be regarded as the Bermuda Triangle of festive cinema - where many features have become lost in the mists of Christmas past and have subsequently been forgotten by later generations.

Far from a creative backwater, however, this period would bear witness to some of the most fascinating, unconventional and experimental Christmas movies ever to reach the big screen, with features such as "The Apartment", "The Lion in Winter" and "Black Christmas" all subverting expectations of the holiday season to produce compelling narratives and memorable themes through wildly different artistic approaches.

From the author of "The Golden Age of Christmas Movies", "A Righteously Awesome Eighties Christmas" and "A Totally Bodacious Nineties Christmas", this book considers the festive cinema of the sixties and seventies in detail, taking a look at the movies that came to define this unpredictable period in recent history while also reflecting on those features that broke the mould in entirely different ways - including "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny", "The Magic Christmas Tree" and (perhaps most infamously of all) "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". When these tempestuous decades carried the torch for Christmas films, the features on offer may rarely have been traditional, but even today they remain captivating, intriguing and very difficult to ignore for those who are willing to revisit them.