THE WEIRDER SIDE OF CHRISTMAS, PART 2: THE LEPRECHAUN'S CHRISTMAS GOLD

[Be sure to check out Part 1 for a little history on Rankin/Bass Productions]

by Taylor Zaccario 

Part 2 of 3 

THE LEPRECHAUN'S CHRISTMAS GOLD (1981) 

Nothing screams of the Yuletide season quite like a banshee. Presumably, that's what Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass thought when they created their penultimate "Animagic" short, The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold. This unholy splicing of Christmas and St. Patrick's Day goes to show that even the greatest of minds can produce the most idiotic of ideas. 

If Pinocchio's Christmas indicated that Rankin and Bass were running out of material, then The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold proved that they had. The story tries to be two things at once and ends up being neither. It reminds me of that scene from The Silence of the Lambs. Remember the one where Hannibal Lecter slices off that guy's face and uses it as a mask? That's what this short is: a St. Patrick's Day special wearing the skinned face of a Christmas special. But unlike Hannibal, The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold doesn't get away with it. 

(Before you continue on, I recommend you read the rest of this article with a thick Irish brogue. This is the closet way of experiencing the film without actually seeing it.)

Set on Christmas Eve, Dinty Doyle (nice guy but a bit of a putz) is the cabin boy of the good ship, Belle of Erin, bound for Zimbabwe -- I'm just joshing! -- they're going to Ireland, of course. The ship's captain spots a tree on the beach of a small island, and he sends Dinty to bring the tree back for Christmas. 

But misfortune strikes when Dinty plucks the tree from the sand and unwittingly releases a banshee named Mag the Hag. 

No, no, no. This is a Christmas special! I swear! 

Here's the wonky thing about Mag: if she can't find gold before Christmas (tomorrow), she will transform from her corporal state into nothing but tears. Sucks, right? And just before the holidays too. As a banshee, she cannot steal gold; it must be given to her. 

A rainbow suddenly leads Dinty to a hillside of shamrocks, because this movie has a quota of Irish stereotypes it must meet! The hillside splits open and reveals a hidden cache of.... you guessed it!...

Leprechaun gold! The trove is lorded over by Blarney Kilkilarney, a mercurial leprechaun and former gold miner. Blarney loves his gold almost as much as he loves delivering his exposition. He invites Dinty in for a cup of tea and a long-winded flashback sequence that lasts for 10 of the short's 24 total minutes. 

Blarney tells Dinty the story of his life. Blarney was... oh, to hell with it. It's too complicated, and I can't bare the thought of having to type it all out. 

What you need to know is that banshees are shapeshifters, revealed only by their ever present tears and that Mag was imprisoned beneath that tree on the beach by Blarney via the aid of St. Patrick himself and a pine cone. 

Once the flashback ends, Mag slips a mickey into Blarney's tea, causing him to feel compelled to give away the gold. Only he doesn't give it to Mag, he gives it to Dinty. Wanting no part of a leprechaun-banshee kerfuffle, Dinty vamooses for his ship. 

As if being named "Dinty" wasn't bad enough, he discovers his ship is gone. He's marooned. But don't you shed no tears for Dinty! He happens upon a beautiful Irish girl whose been shipwrecked. He takes the gorgeous wee lass (Oh, Jesus, now I'm doing) into his care and tells her all about the gold. He doesn't know what to do with it all. She convinces Dinty to give the gold to her, and she can pay the leprechauns to build a ship to bring them all back to Ireland. 

This is usually the point in the movie where I start clawing at my scalp and smash my fists against the wall.  

Does this make sense to ANYONE!? 

I've seen this short a billion times, and I never know what the hell she's talking about.  Leprechauns don't build ships! What qualifications as miners and shoemakers (the two career opportunities on the island) make them shipbuilders? And where are they getting building materials from? 

That part always grinds my gears. 

But of course, Dinty is a simp and gives her the gold. We viewers have one or two more braincells than the "Dint" Man. We've noticed the tears streaking down this young shipwrecked woman's face. We know Dinty the putz just handed over the gold to Mag the Hag.... 

More stuff happens...

But it doesn't really matter what. Nothing in the short really makes sense, and no one is pretending it does. 

You can group The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold among the rarest and most obscure in Rankin/Bass' holiday output. I remember seeing it only scarcely on TV, shown at 6:00 am on ABC Family Saturday mornings. 

It's a movie that only works because it doesn't work. It belongs in one of those early 20th century freak shows. The kind of place P.T. Barnum would display conjoined rhinoceroses and fake mermaid cadavers. The Christmas elements are jammed so roughly into the story that even I felt sore. Much of what's wrong with the film, unfortunately, comes down to the teleplay. 

I say "unfortunately" because I really admire writer Romeo Muller, who scripted most of the Rankin/Bass classics. He's the man behind Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and a whole host of superior films that he should be exalted for authoring. But this one simply doesn't work. Dinty is too passive a character, sitting by idly listening and reacting to others. The flashback scene regresses the story and takes too much time away from our supposed protagonist, creating an extremely disjointed narrative. 

Perhaps the film's biggest disgrace is it's treatment of Mag the Hag. The redemption and absolution of villains are two cornerstones in Rankin/Bass films. The Abominable Snow Monster (Rudolph), Aeon the Terrible (Rudolph's Shiny New Year), and Jack Frost (Frosty's Winter Wonderland) are just a few examples of villains with justifiable beefs, who learn the error of their methods, and reform. 

Mag is never given the opportunity to leave the Dark Side. All she wants is some gold to prevent herself from turning into tears. That's not unreasonable. But these cheapskate leprechauns can't give her a little bit? Not a coin? Not a bag of gold dust? Throw her a bone! A golden one, even. Her ultimate demise feels like a cruel deus ex machina and leaves Mag's story without proper resolution. #JusticeforMagtheHag

I'm not even going to attempt dealing with the Irish stereotyping going on. It's not even that the film stereotypes the Irish on screen; it's that the film vomits stereotypes of the Irish onto the screen. All of Irish history, mythology, and culture are reduced down to leprechauns, shamrocks, gold, and rainbows. They even manage to slip in a potato reference. 

But remember, I'm still recommending you check it out. It's not all tears and dead banshees. This mutant-hybrid has a few bright spots. Just like in Pinocchio's Christmas, the stop-motion animation is exquisite. All the tunes are toe-tappers, and Art Carney is an enjoyable narrator. The biggest boon to The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold is Ken Jennings. 

You might know Jennings best from his many game show appearances; however, that's a different Ken Jennings. 

This Ken Jennings is an actor, primarily known for his stage performances. I can't objectively tell you if his performance as Dinty is good or bad. I am too awed by his being the original Tobias Ragg in the first Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. But he's honest as Dinty and gives a real, committed performance. 

That's it for bright spots. 

The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold will never rank highly on anybody's Christmas list, but a movie that attempts to meld together pots of gold and Christmas trees deserves 24 minutes of your time.  

Next up in Part 3.... a donkey is mocked, abandoned, and sent off on a divine quest for Bethlehem in...

Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey