9. It Happened One Christmas (1977)
Miracle On 34th Street wasn't the only Christmas classic to get the TV-movie treatment in the '70s. Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life got a gender-reversed remake in the form of It Happened One Christmas, starring Marlo Thomas as Mary Bailey Hatch, a suicidal woman whose guardian angel Clara (Cloris Leachman) shows what her small town would be like without her. For one, the risible Mr. Potter (Orson Welles) would exert a lot more power. Wayne Rogers, Christopher Guest, Doris Roberts, and a young C. Thomas Howell round out a weirdly all-star cast.
10. A Christmas Without Snow (1980)
Another now-obscure TV movie that used to get a yearly airing, A Christmas Without Snow stars John Houseman as a San Francisco choir director trying to whip his hapless crew into shape for a performance of Handel's Messiah. Though it first aired in 1980, the film is one long wallow in '70s malaise, from the after-effects of divorce to the era's ambivalence toward religion. There is a happy ending of sorts, but only after an hour-plus of one calamity after another. Nowadays, schmaltz like this comes with a "Hallmark Hall Of Fame" logo on the front, but A Christmas Without Snow lacked the prestige label, and so has been consigned to the public-domain DVD bins of drugstores everywhere.
11. Jim Reeves, "An Old Christmas Card" (1963)
"An Old Christmas Card" by Jim Reeves
Nearly every aspect of the yuletide has been celebrated in song, but it took country singer Jim Reeves (and songwriter Vaughn Horton) to give old Christmas cards their due. And not just any cards. This is the card the singer's wife gave him on the first Christmas they spent together. "I thrill with every word, every line," Reeves sings, before adding, "Pardon me if a tear falls among my Christmas cheer." The song breaks in the middle for a spoken-word section in which Reeves supposes that his young bride "must have looked through thousands of cards, to find that wonderful poem that still brings a tear to my eye." Just imagine if she'd given him a fruitcake!
12. Santa Vs. The Snowman/The Online Adventures of Ozzie The Elf (1997)
Remember 1997? That blissful period of infinite possibilities but limited expertise between Toy Story and Toy Story 2? When all you had to do to draw millions of slack-jawed consumers was put "online" or "internet" or "web" in the name of your product? That's when ABC proudly rolled out two new animated holiday specials in an hourlong combo package. The Steve Oedekirk-produced, computer-animated Santa Vs. The Snowman had wit (a climatic battle in which hot gingerbread men defeated their snowy foes by hugging them) and staying power (a 3D version played in IMAX theaters in 2005). Not so for Ozzie, the unattractive protagonist of the bottom half of the double bill. Since nothing says "information age" like Will Vinton claymation, the show involved a proactive plasticine elf with a totally outrageous paradigm failing to improve Christmas by adding a bunch of computers to Santa's toyshop. Ozzie, who came into being as the mascot for Santa's homepage, hasn't been seen since the Clinton years—he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, which just seems cruel—but maybe some dot.com whiz kid without a paradox detector could make him the spokes-elf for Cyber Monday.
13. Raggedy Ann And Andy In The Great Santa Claus Caper (1978)
And speaking of modernizations that don't improve Christmas, this chipper little half-hour TV special pitted classic dolls Raggedy Ann and Andy (and their little dog Raggedy Arthur, too) against a big bad wolf with a plot to encase all Santa's toys in an invulnerable transparent substance called "Gloopstick," to ensure they could never fade or be damaged. (Somehow this was also a scheme to turn Santa's workshop into a profitable business.) With cartoon stalwarts June Foray and Daws Butler voicing Raggedy Ann and Andy, and cartoon great Chuck Jones designing and directing, "Great Santa Claus Caper" had the talent base to become an animated-special perennial, like Jones' How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, but somehow its anti-commercial message and unusually schmaltzy message didn't catch on. (Know what melts invulnerable plasticine? That's right. Love.)
14. The Gift Of Winter (1974)
One of the weirder holiday specials that reran throughout the '80s was Witch's Night Out, a 1978 John Leach oddity about blobby monochromatic people with names like Small, Tender, Malicious, and Rotten all discovering the true meaning of Halloween—basically, that it's a time for living out secret fantasies. A similar '70s self-awareness-and-empowerment message reigned in Leach's previous, much more ramshackle TV special featuring the same characters: 1974's The Gift Of Winter. Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner handled most of the character voices and sound effects in this barely animated cartoon—wind noises are clearly them going "Whoooshhhh," while the sound of a mob storming off for a confrontation sounds like several voices proclaiming "Tramp tramp tramp tramp!" (Until the crowd gets tired, whereupon it becomes a whiny "Trudge trudge trudge trudge.") The plot is an odd thing about how boring and dreary winter was before snow was invented, which leads the blobby monochromatic people to break off their Christmas preparations and travel to confront the embodiment of Winter. The whole thing looks so ragged and homemade that it's no wonder it didn't become an enduring hit, but it's fun to imagine Aykroyd, Radner, and Leach cobbling it together in a basement somewhere, like 14-year-old friends getting ready for their big YouTube debut.
15. Nautical-Themed Long John Silver's Mugs (1984)
Collectible drinkware used to be a fast-food staple, as anyone who grew up drinking soda out of R2D2's image can attest. But not even the Norman Rockwell images, the homey tones of the commercial's narrator, or the genial presence of an olde storytelling sailor can make this promotion seem like a good idea. What says Christmas like a tribute to our nautical past?
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments