Animated Christmas Carols--Part 1

There's a tremendous amount of excitement since Disney's A Christmas Carol is coming out on DVD. Have you seen it? Did you like it? This is just one of many animated versions of Charles Dickens classic book--the most popular tale at Christmas time. Many people still watch Disney's previous adaptation Mickey's Christmas Carol. Other popular animated versions quickly come to mind: Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol; Flintstones Christmas Carol; The Jetsons Christmas Carol; and, Bah Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas movie. All of these still regularly air on TV each year. Are you looking to watch an animated Christmas Carol that maybe you haven't seen in a while? or, one that stands out from the rest? Check out my ten suggestions:

1978's The Stingiest Man in Town

This Rankin/Bass cel animated musical is often overlooked. It is narrated by a cricket, voiced by Tom Bosley (the same actor that played the father on TV's Happy Days) and Scrooge is voiced by Walter Matthau. It's a classic.

1986's The Real Ghostbusters episode "X-Mas Marks the Spot"

The four Ghostbusters unknowingly find themselves in Victorian times and capture three ghosts terrorizing a man. Later when they mysteriously return to their own time, they learn they have altered history and Christmas by eliminating Scrooge's ghosts. This cartoon ambiguously makes the literary character a historical one. But why not? Who you gonna call?

2006's American Dad episode "The Best Christmas Story Never"

Wow! Where do I start to describe this one? When the Spirit of Christmas Past escorts Stan back to Christmas 1970, he ditches the ghost for his own agenda. Through a series of loose connections, Stan blames ‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda for the loss of Christmas spirit for Americans as well as his own disillusionment. It just keeps getting weirder and more wild--and it's worth the ride.

Gumby short entitled "Scrooge Loose"

This early 1960s stop motion program includes a holiday segment with Gumby and Pokey confronting an unhappy Scrooge who looks to sabotage Santa Claus' toy delivery. Santa vs. Scrooge: bring it on!

1987's Bravestarr episode entitled "Tex's Terrible Night"

If you aren't already familiar, this impressive animated series is a Science Fiction Western. Yeah, wow! It also distinguishes itself by incorporating the series' characters in this adaptation of Dickens' tale. The Scrooge character, Tex Hex, is haunted by Shaman who shows him the consequences of his villainous behavior. This is far more sophisticated than one expects from a children's program.

Tex as Bravestarr's Scrooge

For Part 2: click HERE....for five more animated Christmas Carols.

A Valentine Carol

This weekend will be Valentine's Day which reminds me of the 2007 Lifetime Network, made-for-TV movie, A Valentine Carol which stars Emma Caulfield. Caulfield made a name for herself playing one of Brandon's girlfriends on the original Beverly Hills, 90210 and as Anya on another little TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In this movie, she plays Ally Simms, a successful romance talk radio host who is marrying her fiancé on Valentine’s Day. But Ally can also be insensitive and unsympathetic to other people’s feelings and needs for love. The ghost of her former radio host partner, Jackie Marley, warns Ally about the lack of love in her life and urges her to change her life. The ghost takes her to visit several past Valentine’s Day romances and Ally sees how she’s responded to the men in her life. In the Valentine’s Day present, Ally re-connects with her former boyfriends and begins to see what her fiancé Matt is really like--beyond his meeting the standards of her checklist requirements. And, in Valentine’s Day futures, she sees the consequences of her superficial advice and the cynicism played out in her own life. Ally must change her attitude this Valentine’s Day if she wants her marriage to be meaningful and to last.

This is an interesting Valentine’s Day-themed adaptation of the Charles Dicken’s novel A Christmas Carol. Ally serves as a Scrooge-at-love standin for the familiar Ebenezer character while her assistant, Gillian, is the Bob Cratchit character. One change is that there aren’t three separate ghosts for the journey through time--only Marley. Yet this is still a provocative re-interpretation.

The movie regularly airs each Christmas yet I can't find it on the schedule to air this Valentine's Day on Lifetime, or on any of it's ancilliary networks, such as Lifetime Movie Network. One would think that if a network invested in making a holiday-themed movie that they would bother to broadcast it around the holiday. But I'm not the first person to question the programming execs of TV networks. Nor the last.


TRIVIA: Perhaps the character name Ally Simms is a reference to Alastair Sim, the actor well-known for playing the arguably definitive Scrooge in the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol.

The Avengers Christmas

The following is an excerpt from "The 12 Days of Cult TV Classics" listings in the book (pgs. 80-81) of holiday episodes from cult TV series. Below are installments from the classic British spy series The Avengers.

A black-and-white episode of The Avengers classic “Too Many Christmas Trees” from 1965 sees John Steed feeling uneasy after experiencing a week’s worth of disturbing Christmas nightmares. So Peel invites him to join her in attending a Dickens-themed masquerade over the holiday. Here Steed finds the origin of his Christmas dreams in a group conducting psychic experiments, infiltrating and influencing his behavior through his bizarre dreams. He and Peel fight off a masked, murderous Father Christmas in a room full of mirrors, foiling another plot to steal state secrets. Note their costumes: Emma is dressed as Oliver Twist while Steed is Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities.

There’ s also the 1963 New Year’s episode entitled “Dressed to Kill” where Steed is invited to a New Year’s Eve costume party aboard a train. Suspicious of the invitation, Steed, dressed as a cowboy, invites Cathy Gale to trail him. She does, cunningly hidden under monk’s robes. Sure enough, the party guests are left stranded in the club car at a deserted train station. They soon determine that the only thing they have in common is an appointment to purchase a parcel of land at an auction the following day. While they figure out that they are being prevented from making the purchases, they also begin accusing each other for the responsibility for the kidnapping. Could it be the policeman, the archer, Napoleon, or the pussy cat?

Avengers fans will also be familiar with 1969’s episode “Take-Over.” With Tara on her own vacation, Steed heads to the country to visit friends and partake of the relaxing activities of country living, such as hunting and enjoying good food and drink. He’s expected by his friend because they reunite each February to celebrate Christmas--an annual tradition, Steed explains, ever since Steed and he were prisoners in China. They had made their own calendar and later found that they had over-calculated the date, and had been celebrating the holiday in February. But Steed’s Christmas reunion is not to be when he discovers strangers occupying his friend’s home, holding him hostage with a devious scheme in mind. Of course, Steed cleverly fakes his own death, appearing to drown in a mud pit. What latest plot to alter the world’s course is being enacted at his friend’s home?

Here's an interesting extra that's not in the book:

True devotees of the British espionage series may want to put champagne on ice and don a bowler hat in order to celebrate this Christmas in style. You may want to watch the British-made 1951 film A Christmas Carol in order to see a very young Patrick Macnee in the role as the young Jacob Marley in several brief scenes when Scrooge revisits his Christmas past. Critics and fans often agree that this version of the Dickens tale, starring Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, is their favorite rendition. But just between us Avengers fans, we know what makes this version extra special. In at least one version of the re-release of the film onto DVD, Macnee himself provides an introduction to the film.

Degrassi: TNG Christmas

This Friday, 11/27 at 8 pm (EST), Teen Nick will broadcast a new holiday episode of the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. I've only seen the commercials so far but the episode entitled "Ghost of Degrassi Past" seems to promise a plot taken from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and includes a vision of a character, J.T., from seasons past. Several years ago, J.T. was tragically killed in a scuffle by students of the rival high school after a school sporting event in a storyline with longlasting impact. Could J.T. be returning to warn another student of the consequences of his/her behavior--much like the ghost of Jacob Marley?

Most teen dramas come and go but this Canadian-made classic has legs. I'm a long time fan, discovering the show when I was in college in the late 1980s airing on my local PBS station on Sunday mornings. Back then it was called Degrassi Junior High but the series eventually evolved into Degrassi High and later as Degrassi: TNG. There are characters (and actors) on the latest incarnation that were on the original series from twenty years ago but there's more to enjoy here than nostalgia. This unique teen drama focuses more on teen decision-making and living with the consequences. It shares more in common with the much loved ABC Afterschool Specials of my youth than it does with more contemporary dramas such as The OC or Gossip Girl. Anyway, there are two previous holiday episodes from this series: Degrassi Junior High's "Season's Greetings" in 1988 and TNG's "Holiday" from 2003--a two--part, hour long special.