All good things must come to an end sometimes. By the close of the 1970s, the Rankin/Bass Christmas holiday specials looked very atrocious in comparison to their earlier productions. In 1979, Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July was released and it’s about as bad as it looks. Even at an hour and a half, it’s twice as long as it should be.
The next year, they returned to form with Pinocchio’s Christmas which is mostly forgettable. It was obvious they had done just about as much as they could do with the format even though I would’ve loved to see them handle Festivus with Paul Frees as a gruffy old curmudgeon.
So, after creeping out Gen Xers with that tree with the thicc ass in The Last Unicorn, they decided to present a special in which a bunch of Wiccan-like characters want to kill Santa Claus. But hold on! They’re actually the nice guys. You see in the Forest of Burzee, the Council of Immortals meet to preside under The Great Ak (voiced by Alfred Drake) on whether to anoint Santa Claus as an Immortal himself, or just let him die of old age.
Yeah, there’s probably a reason this special ending up finishing in the bottom tenth for the week when it premiered on Dec. 17, 1985. It finished 56th out of 65 shows when it aired on CBS. Even though the animation is very impressive as it had gotten sloppy toward the end of the 1970s, the fantasy story might have been a turn-off for some audiences.
It’s one thing to have Rudolph, all cute and cuddly with its red nose. It’s another when The Great Ak has a long white beard and huge horns growing out of his head. Remember this was right in the middle of the Satanic Panic of the era. Even if you didn’t live during this time, you probably saw the fourth season of Stranger Things which focused on it. And there was also parental and Christians organizations target role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.
So, I imagine a lot of parents refused to let their kids watch it. The special is based on the book of the same name by L. Frank Baum, who wrote the books about Oz. Incidentally, Disney’s Return to Oz had opened in theaters that summer and bombed. It was based on Baum’s books, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. The movie which starred a young Fairuza Balk as Dorothy had some very dark and twisted scenes and images especially for a Disney movie at the time.
Life and Adventures has Necile (voiced by Lesley Miller), raising Claus (voiced by Earl Hammond), as he was found as an infant in the Forest. As he gets older, The Great Ak takes him into the mortal world to observe all the mortality and cruelty such as rich and wealthy people living in gluttony criticizing the peasants and Japanese adults teaching children how to fight. Claus determines he must live in this world to somehow make it better.
He begins to make toys to distribute to the children of the world with assistance by other creatures from the Forest. But the Angwas under the rule of King Angwa (voiced by Earle Hyman) wages war with Santa and the Forest species to stop the delivery of toys. While the special tries to sugarcoat a lot of Baum’s story, it’s still too dark for younger children and too cartoonish for older people.
While Arthur Ranking Jr. and Jules Bass are the directors, Romeo Muller, who was a constant writer of the specials is missing while Bass (using the pen name Julian P. Gardner) is credited and he can’t make the right balance for the special so that it can appeal to everyone. Young children probably don’t want to see a special as Claus confronts his own mortality and pending death.
When the Immortals vote unanimously to make him one as well. I get the impression that Claus was literally on his death bed when he’s granted immortality. I’m not saying that all specials have to be dark. I mean, we watched Artax drown in the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story and Judge Doom shove a shoe toon crying into toon dip in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
However the previous year, parental groups call for Silent Night, Deadly Night to be pulled from theaters because advertising features a killer with an axe in a Santa suit. Therefore, I’m sure they also ready to have the talk with their kids about death, especially for Kris Kringle.
It was a swing and a miss for the production company especially 15 years after their much-loved Santa Claus is Coming to Town handled the original of Jolly Old Elf in a better way that mixed comedy with fantasy.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 