I’m just gonna come out and say it, friends: there are not enough great Easter specials. There are a billion Christmas TV specials, and a healthy number for Halloween, but other holidays often get the short end of the stick. Were it up to me, every single holiday – including Happy Honda Days– would come with at least two specials, one by Rankin and Bass and another starring the Peanuts gang.
However, that doesn’t mean there are NO Easter Specials, and so this week’s Geek Punditry is going to take a look at some of the very few that are out there and worth your time…and believe it or not, the Christmas Kings at Rankin and Bass actually took not one, but THREE swings at Easter Specials.
“I’m Casey Kasem, here to count down America’s top five Easter specials…”
First up was Here Comes Peter Cottontail from 1971. In this special, narrated by Danny Kaye, Peter Cottontail (Casey Kasem) is tapped to become the new Easter Bunny when the incumbent is retiring. Before he takes the job, though, the Easter Bunny is approached by a bitter bunny named Irontail (Vincent FREAKING Price) who hates Easter. What’s more, he’s got a loophole to prevent Peter’s appointment to the top post – apparently the rules say that the Chief Easter Bunny will be whoever delivers the most eggs. He proposes a contest between himself and Peter, but roofies Peter’s rooster with magic bubblegum, preventing it from waking him up on the day of the big delivery competition. Ironheart has only to deliver a single egg to win the title of Chief Easter Bunny.
As Irontail immediately sets out to ruin Easter, Peter runs into Danny Kaye’s character, an inventor named Seymour Sassafras. Seymour hooks up Peter with his time machine, piloted by a caterpillar with a French accent, and sends him back to try to win the contest. But Irontail manages to knock them off course, sending Peter on a trip through time, colliding with every major holiday in his quest to become the true Easter Bunny.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Anybody who thought Barry Allen had a monopoly on screwing up the entire timeline because he tries to use time travel to fix his own screw-up needs to watch this special. It’s pretty bonkers, even considering this is the studio that had Rudolph similarly travel from one time island to another in order to find Baby New Year. But the best reason to watch this special is to listen to Vincent Price himself hamming it up as the villain of a kid’s Easter special. He’s deliciously evil, and somehow absolutely perfect. I wish we’d gotten more of him and a little less of the singing French caterpillar.
Let’s celebrate the holiday by DESTROYING EVERYTHING YOUR CHILD LOVES.
Rankin and Bass’s second Easter special came in 1976 with The First Easter Rabbit. This film is a loose adaptation of Margery Williams’s children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, which I remember reading as a child and finding remarkably depressing. This version is considerably peppier. When a little girl contracts scarlet fever, all of her clothes and toys are tossed aside to be burned, including her beloved stuffed rabbit, Stuffy. A passing sprite named Calliope sees the bunny and takes pity on it, bringing it to life and whisking it off to the North Pole, where the now-living Stuffy meets Santa Claus. Santa convinces him to take on some of the responsibility for the Easter deliveries, but Stuffy winds up in battle with a sort of snow demon named Zero, because there were a LOT of those in the Rankin and Bass universe. The special has a happier ending than the book, if I recall correctly, but it’s still probably my least-favorite of Rankin and Bass’s Easter specials.
“You’ve gotta invite me in if you want me to give you some eggs, Jimmy.”
In-between the other two is the 1977 special The Easter Bunny is Comin’ to Town. In this one, Fred Astaire returns as S.D. Kluger, the mailman who told us Santa Claus’s origin story in Santa Claus is Coming’ to Town. He does it again, this time weaving the tale of an orphaned bunny rabbit named Sunny and how he grew in prominence to become THE one and only Easter Bunny, even overcoming the machinations of an evil bear named Gadzooks who hates ALL holidays. This one is almost a beat-by-beat knock-off of the earlier Santa Claus special. It’s not just the same idea, it’s almost the same PLOT. I suppose a little kid doesn’t notice, but as an adult who spends – I’m going to be honest here – entirely too much time analyzing the structure of children’s animated specials, it stands out like a fireworks display. But what I find amusing is that, despite this being the Easter special most directly copying one of the Rankin and Bass Christmas specials, it’s the ONLY one that doesn’t include an appearance by Santa Claus.
“Oh no, not THIS again…”
I’m more enamored with a non-Rankin and Bass special, one featuring the star of the recent cultural phenomenon The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. I refer, of course, to the 1980 TV special Daffy Duck’s Easter Egg-Citement (or sometimes just The Daffy Duck Easter Special). In this era, there were several Looney Tunes compilation specials – a new cartoon frame story wrapped around classic cartoons from the Looney Tunes catalogue. I like this one mostly because it’s a sort of take on the greatest Daffy cartoon of all time, Duck Amuck. Not unlike that earlier masterpiece, in this special Daffy finds himself at odds with the animator of the cartoon itself. This time, he’s trying to get things suitably in the season for Easter, but stuff keeps happening. As with all of these compilation shorts, the best thing about this is revisiting the classic cartoons…but this isn’t bad.
Not pictured: Lucy, being SERIOUSLY pissed off.
Perhaps the most famous Easter special of them all, though, is the 1974 epic It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown. With Easter approaching, the Peanuts gang is caught up in a series of semi-related storylines, kind of like a Robert Altman film. Peppermint Patty is determined to teach her sidekick Marcie the proper way to dye Easter Eggs, but one misunderstanding after another keeps throwing things into chaos. Snoopy is trying to help his buddy Woodstock build a new birdhouse. Lucy, meanwhile, is planning to win the big Easter Egg hunt by hiding the eggs herself, carefully documenting the location of each. As all of this is going on, Linus constantly tells everyone that they’re wasting their time, because the Easter Beagle is going to take care of everything. As usual, everyone dismisses him except for Sally, although even she’s somewhat skeptical, still remembering the fiasco that happened at Halloween.
There are a few things about this special I find particularly interesting. I’ve always thought it was funny that Linus – the wisest and most philosophical of Charles Schulz’s characters – has such a fundamental misunderstanding of not one, but TWO major holidays. I also like the callback to the Great Pumpkin special, one of the few such callbacks in the major Peanuts specials. Similar to Linus, Marcie is usually painted as the voice of reason whenever Peppermint Patty starts going overboard, so seeing her constantly screw up their efforts to do something as simple as preparing Easter Eggs is actually really funny. But perhaps the best gag in the whole cartoon comes when the gang goes down to the store to pick up some more eggs (following Marcie’s most recent debacle) only to find the whole place already decorated for Christmas.
As you can see, if you’re looking for a truly legendary Easter special to share with your kids…well, the pickins are a little slim. We need more. And I’m not even sure where to find most of these specials these days – I own most of them on DVD, but I don’t know if those DVDs are still available. You can possibly find some of them on YouTube, and the Charlie Brown specials have been in the nefarious domain of Apple TV for a few years now, but other than that, we’re really at quite a loss. So my special message, to the animation studios of the world, is to give us a few more great Easter specials next year. Let’s have the Addams Family grappling with a holiday so dedicated to pastels, let’s see Batman chasing down the White Rabbit on the streets of Gotham City…shoot, I’d even settle for something with Minecraft. I don’t really know much about Minecraft, but I’m led to believe there’s a chicken involved, which certainly implies the presence of eggs.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Sorry to cut this short, but he’s got his own eggs to dye.
Once again, it’s time for Five Favorites, that semi-regular feature here in Geek Punditry where I give you my five favorite examples of something. “Favorite,” of course, is a relative term, and is actually pretty fluid for me. I may think of something tomorrow that would supplant one of the choices on this list if I were to write this again. But for here, for today, I want to talk about five of my all-time favorite Santa Claus stories.
With Christmas only days away, the big guy is up north checking out his list, loading up the sleigh, and slopping the reindeer, so it only seems fair to me that I talk about some of the stories that have made him such a beloved icon to the young and the young at heart for centuries now. Let’s talk about the tales that make St. Nicholas so great.
The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn.
This book, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, has long been a favorite of mine. You see, when Santa decided it was time to tell the truth about his life story, he recruited journalist Jeff Guinn to help him compose the book, a deep dive into the life of the man who was once known as Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.
If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while you’ve probably heard me talk about this book before, because it’s one I return to every few years. Guinn’s book mines actual history, including the true life of Nicholas, and combines it with a sort of subtle, beautiful magic. People expecting a superhero-style origin story for Santa Claus will be disappointed, because the truth is that Nicholas was just sort of “chosen” by unexplained forces, and to this day still doesn’t know why…but he knows that his mission is to give the world the gift of hope.
The story is lovely, and I love the way he mixes real history with fantasy. In fact, the history doesn’t stop with Nicholas’s life, but goes on to show Santa’s interaction with things like the composition of the song “Silent Night,” his influence on Charles Dickens and Clement Clarke Moore, and the lives of some of the very unusual and unexpected helpers he’s accrued in his many centuries on this Earth.
The book has two sequels. How Mrs. Claus Saves Christmas gives us a dive into Oliver Cromwell and his war on Christmas, and how Santa’s wife saved the holiday. The Great Santa Search rounds out the trilogy with a story set in the modern day, in which Santa finds himself competing on a TV reality show to prove who is, in fact, the true Santa Claus. All of the books are great, but the first one is my favorite.
Santa Claus: The Movie
If it’s a superhero origin that you’re looking for, though, this 1985 movie is for you. It was produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind, riding the success of their Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. And in fact, this movie is pretty much a straight rip of the structure of the first Superman movie: it begins with the character’s origin story (Santa and his wife are saved from freezing to death by the elves, who are there to recruit him), spends about half the film showing the hero’s development, and then introduces the villain at about the halfway point. From there we get to the real story, Santa fighting for relevance in a modern world where a corrupt toymaker is stealing his thunder.
I was eight years old when this movie came out, and that was apparently the perfect time to fall in love with it. I still love it. And David Huddleston – aka the Big Lebowski himself – is still my Santa Claus. When I close my eyes and picture St. Nicholas, it’s the David Huddleston version – his smile, his charm, his warm laugh are indelible parts of the Santa Claus archetype in my head. John Lithgow fills in Gene Hackman’s role as the villain, playing a cost-cutting toy executive named B.Z. who sees Christmas as nothing more than a profit margin. Dudley Moore is also along for the ride as Patch, one of the elves who finds himself in a bit of a crisis of faith.
It’s a shame that this movie never got any sequels, because it was set up in such a way that there were many more stories to tell, but it underperformed and apparently did major damage to Dudley Moore’s career. Before this he was a rising comedy icon, and afterwards he fell off the A-list. I still think it’s a fantastic movie, though, and I have to admit that when I watch it, I wonder what would have happened if John Lithgow had ever had a turn playing Lex Luthor.
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
For a different take on Santa’s origin, let’s wind the clock back to 1902. L. Frank Baum is riding the high of his hit children’s book The Wizard of Oz and he’s looking for a new project. Rather than return to Oz, though, he goes in a different direction and a different fairy tale – that of a young child abandoned in the woods and raised by fairies to become the most giving man in the world.
This is a very different take on Santa than most modern versions. It’s light on the fancy and heavy on the fantasy, with Santa being forced to do battle with monsters and creatures that are out to stop his quest to bring toys to children, and a conclusion that feels like it could have fallen out of the likes of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. It’s hard to remember sometimes that the way we think about Santa Claus today was sort of codified by lots of little things over the early part of the 20th century – influences from poems, books, songs, and even the original AI-free Coca-Cola Santa Claus ads. But Baum’s book was before most of those things, and although his Santa doesn’t exactly jive with the Santa we know and love (no North Pole workshop, ten reindeer instead of eight, different fairy creatures instead of elves, and so forth), it’s still a fascinating read. It’s especially interesting if you’re a fan of the Oz books, as I am. This was two years before Baum would go back to his most famous creation and transform Oz from a single novel into a franchise, but it feels like it belongs in that “universe.” In fact, in later books Baum would link many of his unrelated books to the world of Oz through the connections of characters, other fairylands, and creatures that would grow in prominence. If you want to consider this the origin of Santa Claus in the universe of Oz, it’s not hard.
The Year Without a Santa Claus
Let’s get away from origin stories, though. We all love the Rankin/Bass classics, and their Christmas specials are legendary. In the top two specials, namely Rudolph and Frosty, Santa is just a supporting character. But they did give Santa a few specials of his own, and this second one is my favorite. In this 1974 Animagic classic, Mickey Rooney voices a Santa Claus that’s down with a nasty cold. This, coupled with a feeling of apathy from the children of the world about his annual visit, brings him to the conclusion that he’s going to skip a year. As the world faces the prospect of a Year Without a Santa Claus, it’s up to Mrs. Claus and a couple of helper elves to convince the big guy to pop a Zyrtec and get his act together.
This is the best of Rankin/Bass’s Santa-centric specials, although the most memorable thing about this cartoon isn’t Santa itself. We have this special to thank for the introduction of the Heatmiser and Coldmiser, battling brothers and sons of Mother Earth. They’re the best original Rankin/Bass characters by far, they have the best original song from any Rankin/Bass special by far, and even now you see them showing up in merch and decorations every year. It’s not easy for a new character to break into the pantheon of Christmas icons, but the Miser Brothers made the cut thanks to this awesome special and the fantastic musical arrangement of Maury Laws. The boys are a delight.
DC Comics Presents #67: Twas the Fright Before Christmas
Let’s wrap things up with this comic book from 1984. DC Comics Presents was a series in which Superman would team up with a different guest-star in each issue. Usually it was his fellow superheroes like the Flash, Batgirl, or the Metal Men. On occasion he’d have to partner up with a villain like the Joker. On more than one occasion he had to pair off with different versions of himself like Superboy, Clark Kent, or his counterpart from Earth-2. And on one memorable occasion he met up with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, characters who were still on the rise.
But my favorite issue of the book is this one. Written by Len Wein with art by the most iconic Superman artist of the era, Curt Swan, in this issue Superman stumbles upon a little boy who tries to hold up a sidewalk Santa with a toy gun. Superman whisks the child off to his Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole where he determines that the child was hypnotized by a device in the toy, made by his old foe the Toyman. Leaving the Fortress, the boy’s toy zaps Superman with a burst of “white dwarf energy” which knocks him from the sky and leaves them stranded in the Arctic Circle. Luckily, they’re saved by some of the pole’s other residents. Superman and Santa then team up to save Christmas from the machinations of the sinister Toyman.
It’s a pretty silly story, but silly in a fun way. This is towards the end of the era in which Superman was allowed to be a little goofy, just two years before John Byrne would reimagine the character in his classic Man of Steel miniseries. And although that depiction of Superman has largely informed the character in the years since, it’s nice to see that modern writers aren’t afraid to bring back the kinds of things that made this story so memorable every once in a while. It ends with one of my LEAST favorite tropes, especially in a Christmas story (the whole “It was all just a dream…OR WAS IT?” nonsense), but that doesn’t diminish my love for it at all. I tend to go back and read this comic again every Christmas
Once again, guys, ask me tomorrow and there’s a good chance I would pick five totally different stories to populate this list, but as I write it here on December 20th, these are five of my favorite Santa Claus stories of all time. But I’m always open for new ones – what are yours?
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Honorable mention goes to a story John Byrne did for Marvel’s What The?! comic where Santa twists his ankle delivering to Latveria and Dr. Doom has to take over and finish his route for him.
Roast your chestnuts and deck your halls, folks! It’s time once again for Playing Favorites, the Geek Punditry recurring feature in which I ask my pals on social media for categories of some kind of storytelling and I talk about my favorites in those categories. This time around I’m Playing Favorites with Christmas stories. Last week, in part one of this feature that will go down in history with the works of Charles Dickens, Frank Capra, and Quincey Magoo, I talked about some of my favorite Christmas comedies, my favorite Christmas horror movies, my favorite Christmas stories from a preexisting IP, and my favorite songs written specifically for a Christmas movie. This week we’re cracking open the suggestions and looking at a few more different categories. So cinch up your comically-oversized black leather belt! Just like Santa Claus when you leave out an assortment of cookies on Christmas Eve, it’s time to Play Favorites!
Rankin and Bass
Duane Hower asked me for my favorite Rankin and Bass Christmas special. This is a toughie, guys. Rankin and Bass is the studio that I think is most associated with Christmas, the people that gave us Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and that weird Smokey the Bear movie that nobody ever remembers. They branched out to other holidays as well, with Here Comes Peter Cottontail and the Halloween epic Mad Monster Party. They even lent Rudolph to other holidays with Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July. They made their own version of The Hobbit, and in the 80s they gave us afterschool masterpieces such as Thundercats and Silverhawks. What I’m getting at here is…well…I really like the works of Rankin and Bass. So picking a singular favorite would be nearly impossible.
This is what Christmas looked like when we were kids.
The good news is, it’s my dang column and I don’t need to limit myself to just one choice if I don’t want to. I think we can all agree that the best-known and most-beloved of the Rankin and Bass catalog are the best-known and most-beloved for a reason: Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Each of these took a legendary song and extrapolated an entire world based on it. Rudolph’s special created whole new characters that have become a welcome addition to any Christmas village such as Yukon Cornelius, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, and Hermey the Elf (who wants to be a dentist). From Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town we have the Burgermeister Meisterburger – the most fun Yuletide villain since King Herod – and a worthy origin story for the character at the center of the Rankin and Bass universe. And while I don’t know if anyone would argue that Frosty’s arch-enemy Professor Hinkle is as iconic as those others, everybody loves that cartoon and will gladly watch it every year.
Having said all that, let me talk a little bit about some of the other Rankin and Bass specials that may not be as iconic, but that I still enjoy. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, an adaptation of the novel by L. Frank Baum that gives Santa a more fantastic origin than most, and which I am an avowed fan of due to its (tenuous but real) connection to the universe of Baum’s Oz novels, which I’ve mentioned before I really enjoy. And just as last week I marked “The Snow Miser Song/The Heat Miser Song” from The Year Without a Santa Claus as one of the best pieces of music composed for a Christmas film, I also love the special as a whole. Like many a superhero franchise, with Santa’s origin out of the way Rankin and Bass were free to just tell a charming story with the character, expand his world, and keep the magic alive.
“Ten bucks if you eat the yellow snowball, Young Santa.”
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is another one I deeply enjoy. A VERY loose adaptation of the poem by Clement Clarke Moore, in this half-hour an entire city is in danger of being put on Santa’s naughty list because of one anonymous citizen who wrote a letter to the newspaper claiming that Santa is a fraud. You’ve got to wonder why the editor actually chose to run that letter in the first place, or at the very least why he failed to include the disclaimer that the letter only represents the opinion of its writer and not necessarily the opinions of the newspaper, the town, or the National Football League, but at that point the damage was done and it’s up to a clockmaker and his mouse buddy to fix it. If you haven’t watched this one in a while give it a spin this year – I promise when the special’s featured song begins you’ll recognize it.
Rankin and Bass also did a few religious specials in addition to all the secular ones. Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey isn’t really anything to write home about (it’s really Rudolph plus Bambi times Jesus, and Don Bluth did a much better job telling essentially the same story for Disney in Small One), but I have a fondness for their version of The Little Drummer Boy, and it’s certainly worth putting into your Christmas rotation.
Claymation
Amber Foret wanted to know my favorite Claymation Christmas films. I’m not sure if she, too, was thinking of Rankin and Bass, but I’m going to treat it as a separate category, because they’re two different things. While both are examples of stop motion animation, Rankin and Bass used puppets made of wood or metal with real fabric clothing and the like, whereas “Claymation” specifically refers to stop motion created using malleable substances like plasticine. Aardman Animation, creators of the Wallace and Gromit cartoons and Chicken Run films, use the clay technique. I know that a lot of people don’t really care about the difference, but I’m going to differentiate them for two very important reasons.
1: I’m a pedantic son of a bitch that way.
2: It gives me another category.
And there are two Claymation projects that rise to the top. The first, from 1987, is Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration. Vinton – who actually trademarked the term “Claymation” for his own studio – became prominent in the 80s for his work in animation, particularly the California Raisins commercials. In this half-hour special a pair of dinosaurs, Rex and Herb, host a presentation of classic Christmas carols, all while the gluttonous Herb tries to discover the true meaning of the word “wassail.” It’s a great special, with several segments having a bizarre, surreal quality to them. Many, such as the “Carol of the Bells” number, are really funny. Others, like “Joy to the World,” use different techniques to do animation that looks very different than you’d expect. And their rendition of “Oh Christmas Tree” is simply lovely. The special also includes the California Raisins with their legendary rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and a jazzy version of “We Three Kings” that still springs immediately to my mind whenever I hear the song.
Christmas: Bringing together carnivores and herbivores since 65,000,000 B.C.
The other Claymation special I want to talk about is a British production from 1999: Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. Robbie is the son of a very, very famous reindeer (some may even call him the most famous reindeer of all) who, trapped in his dad’s shadow, is trying to make a name for himself. His goal is to become Santa’s navigator, thanks to a nose that has a built-in GPS function, but the only way he’s going to pull it off is by conquering some rather malevolent rivals in the Reindeer Games. Although not an Aardman production, this special is full of the weird, dry British humor that makes me love Aardman, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and the like. There were also two sequels to the special, Legend of the Lost Tribe and Close Encounters of the Herd Kind. The first one is the best, but all three are worth watching. Do your best to find the original British versions, though, rather than the American versions where the voices were all re-dubbed by the likes of Ben Stiller and Brittney Spears. Nothing against them, but come on – if you’ve got Jane Horrocks, Mark Gatiss, and Rhys Ifans doing the voices, why the hell would you replace them?
You know it’s brilliant because they don’t even need to specify which award it won.
A Christmas Without a Lesson
Rene Gauthreaux decided to make things hard on me by asking the biggest stumper of the bunch: my favorite Christmas movie where no one learns a lesson.
Project ALF.
Because y’see, by now he had ALREADY learned that you shouldn’t eat cats.
This one is tough, guys, because the essence of Christmas is redemption. If you think back to the religious meaning of the holiday, it’s baked right into the story. Even if you ignore that, the vast majority of truly great Christmas stories involve somebody finding a way to make peace with their past and embrace their future – A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, Violent Night, and so forth. So picking a Christmas movie where no lesson is learned, let alone a really GOOD such film, is a rather gargantuan task. I thought hard about this one. I wracked my brain. I even went to Letterboxd and scoured over my list of every Christmas movie I’ve ever watched. (What, you mean you don’t have one?)
Finally, I came to the conclusion that the best lesson-free Christmas movie ever made is the wonderfully bizarre Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. This 2010 film from Finland is about a research team and a family that get embroiled in a task to capture the most dangerous game there is, a unique species that is prized by hunters for its strange properties and remarkable abilities, and which are terribly dangerous, but utterly indispensable at the holidays. I don’t want to say too much more, because if you haven’t seen it I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the movie is really funny, totally messed-up, and absolutely not to show the kids if you’re just trying to get them to stop watching Santa Buddies for the 900th time. But if you like weird, you don’t mind little gore, and you can handle a movie with tongue planted firmly in its cheek, Rare Exports is worth checking out.
If there IS a lesson to learn here, it’s probably about that hat.
Christmas Fantasy
Kylie Wells hit me with another toughie: my favorite Christmas fantasy. You wouldn’t think this one would be too difficult, as by rights almost any Christmas story that recognizes the reality behind Santa or Rudolph would inherently count as fantasy, but Kylie specified that she was talking about the sort of “high fantasy” that inhabits the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, and once you apply that filter the list gets much shorter. People have tried to tackle this very specific subgenre several times, and to be honest, most of the efforts have kind of fallen flat. The best one that comes to mind is the Rankin and Bass adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, but I’ve written about that a lot this month, so I don’t want to go back to that well again.
For some reason, the magic of Christmas and the magic of high fantasy just don’t mix very well. In fact, a lot of the efforts are laughable – the 2014 film The Christmas Dragon was actually spoofed in the most recent season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Then a few years ago, while looking for a Christmas movie with my wife, my father, my sister, and her kids, we stumbled upon the 2018 Italian film Legend of the Christmas Witch. When I say this movie is bad…guys, I think it may be safe to call this the Troll 2 of Christmas movies. In fact, although it is not my pick to answer Kylie’s question, I’m gonna recommend you all go and watch this movie just to see for yourself how amazingly, wonderfully bad it is. Every so often Erin, Heather and I talk about seeing if it’s still streaming anywhere (I just checked – as of this writing it’s on FreeVee, Tubi TV, and the Roku Channel) and watching it again with someone else who has not yet had the pleasure. In fact, I’m just going to quote my own review of the film I wrote at the time to give you a taste of what you’re in for:
“At one point in this movie the witch’s boyfriend has to take off his dinosaur mask so he can tell her students to steal a bunch of toy bicycles to ride into the mountains while he distracts the dragonfly drones, and if that doesn’t make you want to watch it I don’t even know what to tell you.”
You have been warned.
Seriously, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Watch it twice.
But for an actual good movie that embraces the elements of fantasy, the best example I can think of is Hogfather, the 2006 miniseries that adapts the late, great Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel of the same name. If you’ve never read a Discworld book you’re missing out – it’s a fantasy series that brilliantly satirizes not only the tropes of fantasy, but also modern culture, with different aspects targeted by the different books. Hogfather isn’t TECHNICALLY a Christmas movie, as Christmas doesn’t exist on the Disc, but it’s about their equivalent: Hogswatch, a holiday in which the good children of the Disc are visited by the Hogfather…except this year, the Hogfather is missing, the entire fabric of belief on the Disc is in jeopardy, and the only person who can possibly save Hogswatch (and the world) is Death. No, like literally, Death. The Grim Reaper. Guy with the scythe. The big “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” He’s the guy who’s gotta save the world.
Him and his granddaughter.
Anyway, it’s a great book and a great miniseries, and damned if I can think of a better fantasy movie for the Christmas season.
I AM HERE TO SAVE THE HOLIDAYS AND DRINK EGG NOG. AND I AM ALL OUT OF EGG NOG.
Atypical Christmas
We’re going to wrap things up by talking about the category I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for. Jon McCarthy wanted to know my favorite “atypical” Christmas movie (Jon, by the way, is an awesome comic book writer and creator of the comics Endangered and Comic Book Trivia. His newest comic, a New Orleans-based horror one-shot called Loup Garou, was released just this past Wednesday, and you should all run out to your local comic shop and buy a copy, or demand they order one for you if they foolishly failed to have one in stock.) Liese Aucoin, similarly, asked about my favorite “Non-Christmas Christmas Stories, other than Die Hard.” (Liese, to the best of my knowledge, has not written any comic books about werewolves in New Orleans.)
Since I think Jon and Liese are basically asking the same thing, I’m going to combine my answer, especially since it gives me a chance to tackle the greatest Christmas controversy since “Who spiked the egg nog?” Namely: what exactly constitutes a Christmas movie? Die Hard, of course, is the originator of this particular meme, when it became popular among a certain part of the population to call it their “favorite Christmas movie” ironically, as it’s an action movie SET at Christmas, but doesn’t really have the usual trappings of Yuletide cheer. Since then, people have stacked up dozens of movies that fit the same criteria: a Christmas setting, but not really a Christmasy story: films in this category include (but are not limited to) Lethal Weapon, Batman Returns, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Rambo.
This has become a surprisingly delicate subject, with some people who get violently angry when you suggest one of these films counts as a Christmas movie. (Ironically, in this instance they are behaving more like Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon than Bob Crachit.) On the other hand, sometimes the people who are in favor of such movies are so obnoxiously smug about it that it can be embarrassing to admit you agree with them lest you be considered a douche by association.
So let me settle this once and for all. First of all: watch whatever you want, whenever you want, and who the hell cares if somebody else agrees with you if something is a Christmas movie or not? Gatekeeping is stupid, life is too short, so enjoy yourself.
Second: I’m going to explain what I PERSONALLY think makes for a Christmas movie, something I outlined in more detail a few years ago, but I have to stress that this is MY criteria. Go ahead and create your own. Doesn’t upset me in the slightest.
For me to count something as a Christmas movie it needs to fit any TWO of the following THREE criteria:
It must take place PRIMARILY during the Christmas season. (Movies with only one scene set at Christmas, like Toy Story or Star Trek: Generations don’t count.)
It must feature a traditional Christmas character in a prominent role. (Santa Claus, Rudolph, the Grinch, Ernest P. Worrell, Jesus…y’know, the usual.)
It must include a traditional Christmas theme such as family, love, fear (that “ghost stories” thing I mentioned last week) or, of course, redemption.
So by my criteria, of COURSE Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, as it meets criteria #1 and #3. (It’s about the redemption of John McClain and the real hero of the film, Sgt. Al Powell.)
Each of these films meet two out of the three criteria, and are therefore equally Christmasy. It’s just science, people.
All right, all that out of the way, what am I picking as my FAVORITE atypical Christmas movies? With Die Hard removed from the equation and taken as a given? Well, there are still several others to choose from. Sure, I like Lethal Weapon and Batman Returns and Iron Man 3 (I honestly think it’s underrated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe pantheon), but I don’t often work those into my Christmas rotation. One movie I DO like watching this time of year? Well obviously it’s the one about that cheerful guy in the red suit with the power to fly all around the world. I’m talkin’ 2019’s Shazam!
The bubble gum even kinda makes it look like he has a very shiny nose.
Based on the DC Comic, we’re treated to the story of young Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel), a foster kid who has been bouncing from one home to another for years in a quest to find his birth mother, whom he was separated from as a small child. He’s recently been placed in a new home when an encounter with an ancient wizard gives him the power to transform into the world’s mightest mortal, Shazam (with his adult form played to perfection by Zachary Levi). The movie is set at Christmastime – the final battle, in fact, takes place at a Christmas festival – so it meets criteria #1. And family is one of the major themes of great Christmas stories, so this film lands criteria #3, telling a truly touching story about “found families,” and how the bonds that forge a true family are based not on blood, but on love. It’s a sweet, exciting movie that I sincerely enjoy. Hell, may be the only person out there who liked the sequel – although admittedly, not as much as the first one.
Wow, guys, I have gone on for a WHILE on this one, but hopefully I’ve given you all some movies to check out in the last ten days until Christmas. I know I’m going to be diving into at least some of these films before Santa drops by on Christmas Eve. Thanks to everyone who gave me a suggestion – once again, it was a lot of fun. And I’ll see you again next time I decide to Play Favorites!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. You know what else you should watch this December? The Rocketeer. It’s not a Christmas movie, Blake just doesn’t think it gets enough love.
Ah, Christmas. My favorite time of year. The time of lights and tinsel, candy canes and egg nog, and most relevant to this blog, movies and stories. I love Christmas in general, but perhaps my favorite thing about it is the surfeit of wonderful stories set around the season, which I indulge in almost to the exclusion of everything else between Thanksgiving and the 25th of December. The thing is, most of my favorite movies and books are evergreen. I can watch Back to the Future in June, I can read Ender’s Game on St. Patrick’s Day, and nothing feels wrong about it. But a great Christmas story just doesn’t feel right unless I’m consuming it sometime after Santa rides in the Macy’s parade and some time before that ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. So in this window, I have to take in a LOT of stuff.
This week I’m Playing Favorites with Christmas. I asked my friends on social media to suggest different categories relating to Christmas movies, books, TV shows, etc., and like I did with horror movies at Halloween, this week I’m going to examine these categories and talk about some of my favorites in each one. And if you’ve got suggestions for more categories – drop ‘em in the comments! There’s still a few movie nights left before Christmas!
“They said this one is about the Donnor Party. I hope it’s good, I love reindeer.”
Christmas Comedies
Lew Beitz is going to kick us off this week by asking for some of my favorite Christmas comedies. A lot of great Christmas movies have funny parts, of course, and I think the trifecta that most people will turn to when asked this question are – in order of release – A Christmas Story (1983), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), and Home Alone (1990).
In A Christmas Story, Bob Clark blended together several semi-autobiographical short stories by Jean Shepherd (who narrates the story) and turned out a timeless movie that captures the essence of childhood at Christmas while still being unceasingly funny. There can be no doubting the iconic status of a movie that has turned a plastic lamp shaped like a woman’s leg in fishnet stockings into a traditional Christmas decoration.
Christmas Vacation is the third and greatest of the Vacation films, about a dad (played by Chevy Chase) who desperately tries to recreate the magic of his youth for his own family, but struggles against a more cynical age. This is not only the best Vacation film, but the best movie Chevy Chase ever made. It was SO good that afterwards a federal judge ruled he was legally prohibited from being funny for the next 20 years. The ban was lifted in 2009, and Chase joined the cast of the show Community.
Home Alone has Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern getting hit in the face with paint cans.
So those, I think, are the big three. But I don’t just want to leave you with the obvious answers, so I’m giving an honorable mention to another beloved Christmas comedy, the 1988 epic Ernest Saves Christmas. I am an unabashed fan of Jim Varney and his Ernest P. Worrell character (go ahead, try to abash me, I dare ya), and this is possibly the purest expression of what Ernest was. Sure, at this point he had already gone to camp, but in that film he was sort of a sweet-hearted, simple agent of chaos in a relatively realistic world. This is the movie where the Ernestverse really started to spiral into screwball comedy. In this film, Ernest is a cab driver that falls in with a guy who tells him he’s Santa Claus. He’s about to retire and needs to find the man who’s been chosen to take his place, an actor on a kids’ TV show, before it’s time for his Christmas Eve run. There’s some wacky stuff with a pair of elves and reindeer caught up in a shipping mishap, but that’s not the real draw of this movie. Seeing the golden, childlike heart of Ernest as he does his best to help Santa is one of the best reasons to love this character, even as he presents us with his funniest film. Choosing a favorite Ernest movie, frankly, is like trying to select a single rose petal as the most beautiful, but there you are.
And if you prefer your Christmas movies with a religious connotation, you’ve got the father, the sons, and the holy ghost right here.
Christmas Songs From Movies
Rachel Ricks has asked me for some of my favorite songs written specifically for a Christmas movie, differentiating them (I assume) from those pre-existing songs that are incorporated into holiday classics, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Human Centipede.”
Again, I’ll mention the most iconic example first, then talk about some others. The most famous – and arguably the best – Christmas song ever written for a movie is probably “White Christmas,” written for the 1942 film Holiday Inn and then used as the title and centerpiece number for the semi-remake of the movie as White Christmas in 1954. It’s a lovely song that I’m sure many people today don’t even realize was from a movie, and those that do know its cinematic origin probably misattribute it to the later, more famous film.
It’s not my personal favorite, though. Two other songs edge it out. For pure fun, you can’t beat “The Snow Miser Song/The Heat Miser Song” from 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus. In this Rankin and Bass classic, as you know, Mrs. Claus has to entreat these two thermally-opposed brothers to cooperate with one another in a convoluted plot to save Christmas. They both eventually agree, but not before performing this absolute banger of a musical number about how awesome they each are compared to their brother and how much better it is when Christmas is cold or hot, depending on which one of them is singing at the time. (The Snow Miser happens to be correct, by the way.) Even though neither song is particularly Christmasy (except for the lines where the brothers proclaim themselves Mr. White Christmas or Mr. Green Christmas, respectively), it’s so catchy and so much fun to sing along to that it’s become a staple on my Christmas playlist.
If you’re Team Heat Miser, you’re just wrong.
But my absolute favorite Christmas song originally written for a movie is “Silver Bells.” This song made its debut in 1951 in the Bob Hope movie The Lemon Drop Kid, about a silver-tongued con artist (Hope, naturally) who winds up owing a massive gambling debt to a gangster and has to come up with a contrived scheme to pay it back by Christmas Eve. The movie is charming and deserves a place with the other great films of its era, but never seems to be mentioned alongside the likes of White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, or Miracle on 34th Street.
“Children laughing, people passing, something something joke, about the shape of my nose…”
As far as WHY I love that song so much…odd as it may sound, I love it because it feels to me like a love letter to New York. The song mentions “city sidewalks” without ever specifying the city, but New York is where much of the film is set and it’s where Hope is wandering when he sings the song. I’ve never really been to New York. (Spent a night in a hotel there once when a flight was canceled, but all I saw was the airport, the hotel, and the shuttle in-between so I don’t count that.) Despite that, though, decades of cultural osmosis has indelibly given me a vision of New York in December as being the most Christmasy city in the world. God knows the city has its problems, but the movies have done a truly magical job of painting it as the place to be for the holidays. It’s the setting for Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone 2, Elf, and plenty of other classics. From the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving to the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center to the Times Square ball drop on New Year’s Eve, there is an intangible yuletide magic associated with New York City that this song captures perfectly. Frankly, if I ever DO go to New York, I hope it’s NOT at Christmas, because I’m pretty sure that the reality would fall very short of the snowglobe fantasy I’ve built up in my mind, in which “Silver Bells” is the background music.
Christmas IPs
Adam Santino asked about my favorite Christmas movies based on a pre-existing intellectual property, such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special. To clarify, for the sake of anyone unfamiliar with the term, Adam is basically asking for my favorite films based on an established brand that happened to have a Christmas-themed special or installment. Christmas Vacation, as I’ve already mentioned, is the gold standard, but there are a lot of possibilities to choose from here, and I think the correct answer is obvious.
Project ALF.
That’s right, the running gag didn’t end on Halloween.
No, but seriously, it will not surprise anyone to find out I’m a devotee of the classics: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Disney shorts like Pluto’s Christmas Tree, and the epic Star Wars Holiday Special. But there are two productions that immediately spring to mind, and they’re both courtesy of the Jim Henson people. The Muppets and their cousins at Sesame Street have each shared the joy of Christmas with us many, many times, but for my money there’s nothing finer than 1992’s A Muppet Christmas Carol. The first major Muppet production after the death of Jim Henson was something of a risk for the studio. Nobody was really sure if the magic would still be there without the man who gave his soul to Kermit the Frog. But the results were remarkable: by casting Michael Caine as Scrooge (as perhaps my favorite Ebenezer Scrooge of all time) and having Gonzo the Great stand in as Charles Dickens to serve as the narrator, they managed to make a film that is not only one of the most textually-faithful adaptations of Charles Dickens’s novel out there, but is still full of the humor, music, and heart that make the Muppets so special. It’s such a shame that Disney has lost the plot on these characters, because one need look no farther than this movie to see just how much potential the Muppets have, how much the Muppets matter, and how perfect they can be.
The other film that comes to mind is from 1978: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. In this special, Big Bird is horrified when Oscar the Grouch tells him there’s no way Santa can fit down the little chimneys in the apartments on Sesame Street, and Big Bird sets out on a quest to figure out how Santa can do his job. There are a few subplots as well, with Cookie Monster struggling to write a letter to Santa and Bert and Ernie doing their own charming twist on The Gift of the Magi, but it’s the main plot that sets this special apart.
It is said that, when Sesame Street was being developed, the idea was that Big Bird would play the part of the naive younger sibling, while Oscar would be the grumpy older sibling with a bit of an attitude. (Not relevant to this story, but Grover was intended to be the neglected middle child, and DANG does that make things make sense.) The dynamic between Big Bird and Oscar is wonderfully authentic, a fact made even more impressive when you remember that the late Caroll Spinney was the performer for both characters. Near the end, when Big Bird has gone missing due to his Santaquest, Maria (played by Sonia Manzano) lays into Oscar in a way that’s less like the mother figure she would eventually become and more like a big sister angry at someone picking on her little brother. It’s her performance in this special that I think explains why she was the first crush for a hell of a lot of viewers (and, if we’re being honest here, of Oscar himself). Finally, the special features Sesame Street’s lovely holiday anthem “Keep Christmas With You” performed by Bob McGrath, a scene that has even more resonance since his passing last year.
The magic of Christmas is best expressed through the power of felt.
Christmas Horror
We’re gonna wrap up Part One of the yuletide “Playing Favorites” column with a suggestion from my wife Erin, who (staying 100 percent on brand) wants to know about my favorite Christmas horror movies. I know that a lot of traditionalists don’t care for scary movies at Christmas, but I think that’s a bit short sighted. The truth is, there is a long tradition of horror taking place at Christmastime, a tradition that goes back much, much farther than even the era of cinema. Before Halloween really took off, weaving creepy yarns next to the fire at Christmas was a longstanding tradition. It’s the reason the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” includes the line “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” And lest we forget, the most famous Christmas novel of all time is about a miserable bastard who is tormented by ghosts until he accepts the fact that he is, in fact, a miserable bastard and swears to get his act together.
All that said, I love a good scary story at Christmas – but I do have my limits. I like ghost stories. I like monsters. But I’m not as big a fan of human monsters at Christmas, and what I’m getting at here is that I’m not really fond of Christmas slasher movies. They’re a whole subgenre that I respect for its place in the canon, but the likes of Silent Night, Deadly Night or Black Christmas aren’t really my cup of tea. I like my Christmas stories with a shot of hope and redemption, and you don’t really get that with the bleaker kinds of horror movies. No, my Christmas horror movies have to offer at least a chance at a happy ending, which is why the greatest of them all is obviously Gremlins. Supposedly Chris Columbus’s original script for the 1984 classic was much darker and more violent than what was put on screen, and while I think that darker version of the story may be interesting, I’m really quite glad they changed focus before the cameras rolled. The movie nicely balances the adorable (Gizmo) with the abominable (all of his Gremlin offspring) in a way that has plenty of jumpscares and just a teeny dash of gore, but at the same time, isn’t so terrifying that I couldn’t show it to my 13-year-old niece. It’s also really funny, which is never a bad thing.
Maybe I spoke too soon about my favorite Christmas song.
The other horror movie that comes to mind this time of year is more recent, 2015’s Krampus. Directed by Michael Dougherty, who also co-wrote it, the film features a family very much at odds with one another: an obnoxious brother-in-law, a pair of bully cousins, a judgmental and overbearing aunt, until finally young Max (played by Emjay Anthony) loses his Christmas spirit and wishes them all away. That night a horrible blizzard cuts the power and traps the family in the house…and then the fun begins.
Dougherty is also the writer and director of the phenomenal Halloween anthology Trick ‘r Treat, which is implied to take place in the same cinematic universe as Krampus, and he brings the same sensibility to the project. Just like Trick ‘r Treat, the evil forces come after characters who have violated the spirit of the holiday and are – in one way or another – due some sort of karmic punishment. Unlike the Halloween film, though (and far more in keeping with Christmas) even the worst characters in Krampus have moments where they show that maybe they’re not irredeemable after all. The ending is a bit of a mind screw and there’s some debate as to what it actually means, although an official graphic novel tie-in Dougherty contributes to gives a bit of information that seems to support the slightly optimistic interpretation of the movie’s finale.
Pictured: optimism.
Whew, that’s plenty of Christmas goodness for you guys to seek out, and we’re just getting started! I’ve got several other suggestions that I just don’t have room for this week, so come back next Friday and look for some more of your categories in Playing Favorites With Christmas Part Two! And if you’ve got a suggestion of your own, there’s still time! Drop it in the comments right here, or on whatever social media post you followed to get here!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He is desperately awaiting the suggestion that allows him to discuss 1982’s Christmas Comes to Pac-Land,so we’re begging you, don’t give him that chance.
A few days ago I was watching TV with my six-year-old son and we happened to land on Disney+, where I saw something that got me excited. Something lovely. Something that was a true work of beauty, a rare creature that seems to always dance on the edge of extinction, only to be pulled back time and again. Something that I want to share with my child.
A new Halloween special.
“Mickey and Friends III: Season of the Witch”
I grew up in the 80s, the apex of holiday specials on television. Oh sure, they weren’t new when I was a kid, but I’m from that generation where the classic specials from the likes of Rankin and Bass and Mendelson-Melendez were still in perpetual rotation and original specials were premiering every year, sometimes many of them. It was simplicity itself to mix the old specials with the likes of the Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the other Saturday Morning heroes of my youth. Like so many things when it comes to the pop culture landscape, it’s changed. And like so many things for those of us of a certain age, it doesn’t feel like it’s gotten better. They don’t show the classic specials on TV all that much anymore, first of all. As people have drifted to the streaming world, the days of everyone needing to be in front of the TV at the same time if they’re going to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are pretty much over. And don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that I can watch the DVD any time I want, but it’s not the same as knowing that they’re watching it next door and down the street and somewhere in Cincinnati at the same time.
This is good, but somehow it’s even better if I’m watching it at the same time as someone I’ve never met in Patterson, New Jersey.
And while it’s true that specials are still being made, I don’t feel like we’re getting them with the frequency that we once did. Of course, part of that may be that they’re now all spread out amongst a thousand streaming services and you don’t even know that they’re there. And those that do exist haven’t broken into the cultural zeitgeist, again, probably because of the preponderance of sources. Even as I was typing this sentence I thought of nearly a half-dozen Halloween specials from the last few years that I’ve watched, but I haven’t re-watched most of them like I do the classics. Great Pumpkin was, and remains, essential viewing before Halloween. So was and is Garfield’s Halloween Adventure. But when I think about going back and watching, for example, LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales from 2021, I know that if I skip it this year I’m not going to feel like I’ve missed anything.
One of these is a legendary piece of animation history based on a globally-beloved property and is appointment viewing every Halloween season. The other one is a Star Wars movie.
LEGO Star Wars, by the way, was also a Disney+ special, and I have to give them credit for turning out more things like this, especially for kids, than most of these streaming services. The new special Eddie and I watched this week was Mickey and Friends: Trick or Treat, in which Donald Duck (of COURSE it’s Donald’s fault) convinces the rest of the gang to trick or treat at a haunted house that happens to belong to a witch who doesn’t appreciate visitors. It isn’t a mind-blowing cartoon, but it’s cute and it’s new and – maybe best of all – it’s stop motion. If a new Halloween special is an endangered species, a stop motion special is a friggin’ unicorn. There was a stop motion Christmas special last year featuring Mickey and Friends as well, and while none of these are going to join the pantheon of the greats, I have to applaud their effort.
Disney+ is also responsible for Muppets Haunted Mansion, another 2021 special in which the Great Gonzo and Pepe the King Prawn spent Halloween the night in…well…Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It had the requisite music and celebrity cameos that one expects from the Muppets, and it was decent. I actually watched that one a second time last year, but I haven’t gotten around to it in 2023, and I’m okay with that. The difficulty here was that this not only had to live up to the great Halloween specials, but also had to live up to great Muppet movies, and in both categories it’s just middling.
If “It’s okay, I guess” was a picture.
So the question has to be, where will the great Halloween specials of the future come from? Don’t get me wrong, I intend to watch Garfield and Charlie Brown every October for the rest of my life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want more. (I feel like I need to get this put on a T-shirt because I seem to say it in this column at least once a month: What do fans want? MORE!) Is there anybody out there carrying the torch of Mendelson, Melendez, Rankin, or Bass?
There are some people doing Halloween content, fortunately. Movies, for example. Feature-length films are in no short supply. Prime Video this year gave us Totally Killer, a time-travel comedy about a girl who goes back to the 80s when her parents were teenagers to face off against the slasher that terrorized them then. Not a family movie, but it was original, and I liked it. Last year there was Spirit Halloween: The Movie, a film about kids who sneak into one of the ubiquitous Halloween pop-up stores overnight, unaware that this particular store is haunted for real. Disney+, again, gave us a sequel to the Halloween favorite Hocus Pocus, which is included here to prove that just because a movie is about Halloween doesn’t automatically make it good.
But that’s not what I’m looking for. I love a good Halloween movie, but a holiday “special” is, to me at least, a different sort of beast. I’m talking about the one-off films, a half-hour to an hour at length, which take characters that we already know and give them a seasonally appropriate adventure. The classics mostly fit into this category – Garfield and the Peanuts gang, for example, spring from the pages of newspaper comics, and even most of the Rankin and Bass Christmas classics were based on preexisting stories. Many of their best specials (and here I’m thinking of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Here Comes Peter Cottontail) were based on popular songs. There were a few based on Bible stories, one on a novel by Oz creator L. Frank Baum, and so forth. There are a few Rankin and Bass classics based on entirely new ideas, but the truth is, those aren’t the ones we remember.
Even their one great foray into Halloween wasn’t wholly original – 1967’s Mad Monster Party was a stop motion feature film that featured characters they couldn’t technically call the Universal Monsters, but anyone who watches it knows they’re really the Universal Monsters. It was easy for the public domain characters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, a generic werewolf – but they even managed to sneak in characters obviously based on copyrighted monsters like the Creature From the Black Lagoon and (people don’t lump him in with the Universal Monsters, but they SHOULD) King Kong. Hell, it even starred Boris Karloff as Baron Frankenstein.
If you haven’t seen this movie, it counts as a character flaw.
Pulling out new specials that fit the mold of the classics depends largely on which characters you can use. Disney, as we said, is making use of the likes of Mickey and his pals, and they worked in their Star Wars and Muppets characters a couple of years ago, but there’s more that could be done. Could you imagine, for example, a Wreck-It Ralph Halloween Special in which Ralph and Vanellope have to make it through a (kid friendly) survival horror game like Silent Hill or Five Nights at Freddy’s? Or more Marvel content – last year they gave us the excellent MCU Halloween Special Werewolf By Night, based on a classic Marvel monster comic from the 70s, and I loved it. But why not an animated special featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy on a “Planet of Terror?” Have Doctor Strange fight some sort of Lovecraftian horror? Heck, tie it into the What If? brand and you could do virtually anything – there’s already a zombie universe out there in the MCMultiverse.
Then across the metaphorical street (by which I mean one row over on the apps on my Roku), we’ve got Disney’s rival, Warner Bros. Their MAX service also has a new Halloween special this year, a Sesame Street show called Oscar’s Handmade Halloween. That’s not bad. I’ll take any Sesame Street content I can get for my kid. But considering the depth of Warner Bros’s catalog, what else have we got? Admittedly, last year there was a Scooby-Doo Halloween movie, and that’s all well and good, but how about the DC Universe? They brought in the Super Sons in an animated movie earlier this year – I would love to see a half-hour cartoon about Superboy trying to convince Robin to go trick-or-treating with him, with all the chaos that would inevitably ensue. How about a new Looney Tunes Halloween special? Witch Hazel is sitting right there in the catalog, guys.
And what about other characters that aren’t necessarily tied into any huge IP farm like Warner Bros or the Walt Disney Pictures Shadow Government and Pedicure Emporium? In this year’s Halloween episode of the Totally Rad Christmaspodcast (a show about Christmas in the 80s, except when it’s about things that aren’t from the 80s and/or aren’t about Christmas), the hosts talked about their love of Monster Cereals. After going after the hard questions (why is Frankenberry British?) they asked the obvious one – how is it possible that Count Chockula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry never got their own animated special? That’s a great question. I suppose the answer is that, when those cereals were ascendant, there were laws in place that prevented children’s programming from being used as advertisements for a product, so they couldn’t make such a special. But those laws have been gone since the early 80s, since the birth and explosion of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Do you mean to tell me that, in the years since, nobody has thought to call up General Mills and get an animated special going?
Look me in the eye and tell me these guys are less deserving of a Halloween special than Raggedy Ann and Andy.
I know that I sound like an old man waxing nostalgically for things from his past that are gone and are never to return, but there’s a good reason for that. I am an old man waxing nostalgically for things from his past that are gone and are never to return. Except for that last part, actually, because I don’t think I’m ready to accept that things like this are gone forever. There are still children in the world – I’ve met at least seven of them – and those kids still watch TV and still like cartoons. And those kids have parents who would love to have new things to watch with them instead of watching that same Mickey Mouse special 17 times before Halloween.
The audience is there. All we need is for somebody to step up and give us the content.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Three words, Disney: Encanto Vs. Freddy. C’maaaaaaaan, you know you wanna.
Blake M. Petit 