Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Phantom of the Open Hearth [Movie Review]

"The Phantom of the Open Hearth" is a movie released in 1976. The screenplay was also released in a book format. Both were written by Jean Shepherd. I am reviewing the film.

This movie is the first of eight movies generally known as the "Parker Family Saga." It is the same series where "A Christmas Story" can be found, although that seems to be the only one anyone remembers. The whole point of the series was to collect various writings by Jean Shepard and convert them into a movie format.

Although the theme of the film has to do with a face one would sometimes see in the open hearth of a steel mill, bringing good or bad luck to those who see her, the movie was actually an adaptation of "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories." In a likewise fashion to "A Christmas Story," it also combined other stories from his various writings into this one in order to get it to full movie length. As usual, the movie was narrated by Jean Shepherd himself, something that will always make a movie worth watching.

For the first movie outing for the Parker Family, this was a solid introduction. It is essentially a prom film that goes kind of badly, but Shepherd stories usually spin bad times as a character-building issue. They are bad, but they teach us lessons. The movie is also just a supreme look into classic Americana, and it does it all very well.

One thing that you may be surprised about is that this story also implements the leg lamp story. The one from "A Christmas Story" was technically the second movie to have that in it. It's hard to judge which movie did it better. I liked them both!

The family was played perfectly. Ralph is a lot older in this one and thinking about girls. His brother, as usual, never seems to grow up. That seems to be a running thing with these stories. The "old man" is his usual firebrand self. And the mother is like everyone's mother. She's great.

I greatly recommend "The Phantom of the Open Hearth," but there is an annoying caveat. The only way to see this movie in 2025 is to watch it on YouTube, and the quality is atrocious. It may be the worst quality of any movie I have seen on the platform. I had to shrink down the video really small just to get the picture to look okay. That said, my eyes did get used to it, and I enjoyed it a whole lot. Yes, it was worth the eye pain to see it.

This blog was written on November 30, 2025.

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