by Taylor Zaccario
Part 1 of 3
You know Rudolph and Frosty and Santa and Yukon Cornelius. Mrs. Claus and Heat Miser and Snow Miser and Burgermeister Meisterburger. But do you recall Dinty Doyle and Nestor and Maestro Fireater and Olaf the Donkey-Keeper? Allow me to initiate you with the weirder side of Christmas.
If you've turned on a TV in December since 1964, you've likely encountered the holiday specials from Rankin/Bass Productions. Perhaps you watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969) on CBS, or The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) on ABC Family. Whether you know the company's name or not, it's very likely their films are an aspect of your holiday season.
Founded in 1960 by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, the company produced an amazing output of animated projects for film and television, such as The Hobbit (1977), The Flight of Dragons (1982), and the animated series ThunderCats (1985-1989). (Rankin/Bass Production also had a hand in one of my all-time favorite bad giant monster movies, King Kong Escapes [1965])
But it's for their holiday output and their frequent use of a stop-motion animation technique called "Animagic" that has bestowed their work with immortality. Their more famous Christmas specials, Rudolph and Frosty, have been played every year on CBS since they premiered.
However, some of their lesser-known titles are worth a watch, based solely on just how incredibly bizarre and brazenly odd they are. These may not reach the quality of their upper tier projects; however, I am of the school that believes any film with the names Rankin/Bass on it can't be all together bad. Pure charm saves any of their more middling work.
Here's Part 1 of 3. We begin with a little wooden boy....
PINOCCHIO'S CHRISTMAS (1981)
Did you feel the classic Disney version of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio needed a dream sequence featuring the little wooden boy giving dance lessons to Santa's toys? Then this film is for you!
It's Pinocchio's first Christmas since being chiseled out of a tree limb into the approximation of a boy in puppet form. Geppetto buys his dopey cedar son an arithmetic book, but Pinocchio, being a repellent little brat, returns the book for some cold hard cash. First he decides he's going use the money to buy Geppetto something for Christmas. Unfortunately, the little schmuck gets bamboozled out of the dough by his two "pals", the Cat and the Fox.
From here, Pinocchio undergoes a series of increasingly nightmarish misadventures, straight out of the mind of Hunter S. Thompson on psychedelics.
You ready for this? Okay:
Pinocchio becomes a dancer in a puppet show; falls in love with a non-living puppet named Julietta ala Lars and the Real Girl; kidnaps that puppet and lams it in the Enchanted Forest; stands idly by as the Cat and the Fox are repeatedly barraged by lightning strikes...
But wait! There's more!...
Gets sold into domestic slavery; teaches a duke the meaning of Christmas; catches a ride back home with Santa to have Christmas breakfast with the Blue Fairy and the Talking Cricket.
Oh, did I mention that Geppetto discovers a lookalike marionette that he mistakenly assumes is a dead Pinocchio, and spends several scenes mourning his lifeless son that he himself carved out of wood?
Merry Christmas!
I didn't grow up on this one, and I never owned it on VHS. I remember ABC Family only showed it when I was either heading out or coming back from getting my Christmas tree each year. Either I saw the first half or the second half, but never the whole film. Eventually, I succumbed and bought the DVD.
Pinocchio's Christmas lacks the imagination, thematic unity, and endearing characters that are so emblematic of Rankin/Bass. Pinocchio is the only protagonist in the company's filmography that you hope gets turned into kindling. Words like "jerk", "bratty", "moronic", "obnoxious", "infuriating"should rarely be used when describing a protagonist. Yet, they are perfectly suited in describing Pinocchio.
At a painful 1 hour, the short isn't so much a "short" as a "long". Pinocchio's Christmas was one of the last "Animagic" specials Rankin/Bass produced. It came at a time when the company began to run dry on ideas. It shows in the meandering, padded script and the (mostly) forgettable, uninspired tunes. One song is literally comprised of Pinocchio singing "dancing" over and over again.
Despite my snark, I still want you to see it. The "Animagic" is top notch, perhaps the company's best. The film shows off the technical expertise Rankin/Bass acquired over many years. George S. Irving, more famous for voicing Heat Miser in The Year without a Santa Claus, creates an equally befuddled and heart wrenching Geppetto. The scene in which he clutches the marionette he assumes is Pinocchio and sings a mournful song is genuinely moving.
A little more concision in Romeo Muller's teleplay would have been much appreciated; however, some praise should be given to the script, as it manages to envision a take on Pinocchio that is wholly distinct from both Disney's version and Collodi's original. Yes, it meanders. Yes, it's padded. But Muller's psychedelic slant on the tale and the absurdly forced Christmas elements are so wrong-footed, they become a wreck you must slow down to watch.
Come for the dance sequence. Stay for the Talking Cricket's Brooklyn accent. Best enjoyed while on hallucinogenics.
Next up in Part 2... pots of gold, a banshee named Mag the Hag, Dinty Doyle, Christmas in Killarney, and Sweeney Todd's Ken Jennings in...
The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold
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