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Weekend Discussion Thread: Riffable Holiday SpecialsBoth MST3K and Cinematic Titanic got a mention in this CNN piece about the geekiest Christmas Specials, and that got me to thinking: Since last year we discussed riffable Christmas movies, I thought it would be fun to delve into the Christmas TV specials.
RiffTrax has done “The Star Wars Christmas Special” and “Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey,” but what other TV specials do you think are just begging to be riffed? Me, I am going with this: The Great Santa Claus Switch (1970), with Art Carney and the Muppets. What’s your pick? 111 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Riffable Holiday Specials”Commenting at Satellite News
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It feels mean, since Filmation was a big part of my 80s childhood, but the “He-Man/She-Ra Christmas Special” is pretty riffable. Besides their trademark reduced animation (I can’t fault the reasons behind it, but it’s still pretty bad), it has a feeble justification for why an alien planet celebrates Christmas and Skeletor cuddling a robot-puppy. It’s not “Star Wars” levels of pain, but it’s pretty damn cheesy.
Any of the Tim Allen “Santa Clause” movies. Talk about annoying. I saw the first one by sheer accident since apparently some other movie going on at the time was sold out.
Ah once again CNN has demonstrated why it is no longer considered a legitimate news organization.
The errors in this story are legion.
I have had more challenges finding Waldo.
Thanks for the heads up though.
I would love to see Rifftrax do “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” (Rank & Bass with Fred Astaire)
One of my all time favorites, it has enough corn to make ethanol for a year.
My favorite bad Christmas special is “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas.” He plays with Whoopie Goldberg and Ophra (!) and runs around like a squirrel on crack worrying about what to do with all the fruitcakes. Now that’s entertainment born for a good riffing.
A Charlie Brown Christmas !!
“We Wish You A Turtle Christmas”. I remember watching this way back and had forgotten the title but of course Youtube had it. This was made by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back when they were popular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_U4cthFCLs
Don’t miss the classic song, ‘Deck the halls with pepperoni’. This is a Christmas special loaded with extra cheese.
Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Execrable sequel to a great TV special….
How the Grinch Stole Christmas the live action movie with Jim Carrey, I would just sit back as Mike Nelson used his hate for Jim Carrey to fill us with joy!
“Mac Davis’ Christmas Odyssey Two Thousand And Ten” in which Mac Davis and his family prepare for Commerce Day celebrations – the holiday formerly known as Christmas. Bernadette Peters plays his wife, who likes Commerce Day very much, thank you. Mac gets frequently wistful and reminisces about Christmases gone-by with a thousand-yard stare.
(And while there are satirical elements that ring true, it remains lodged in the same era of Christmas specials that produced the Star Wars Holiday Special. Maybe I’m wrong though, I haven’t seen it since 1978, but it was seared into my brain with one viewing.)
Crumbs. I meant to add this to the other post:
“It Happened One Christmas” starring Marlo Thomas as Mary Bailey, Wayne Rogers as George Hatch, and if you can’t tell already, it’s a switcheroo remake of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” A pale shadow of the real thing, not that someone might not mention the original as fodder, but a worthy subject of riffing.
Santa’s Slay, despite the presence of curling in the movie and the incineration of Fran Drescher.
“[W]hat other TV specials do you think are just begging to be riffed?”
It’s difficult to narrow this topic down to “TV Specials” and not to include movies.
The one that comes to mind is the “Saved By The Bell” two-part Christmas episode.
Are we talking about Christmas movies or TV specials? I’m confused.
“Jingle all the way”! Ahnold has had it coming for a loooooooooooooooong time!
A Carol Christmas with Tori Spelling, William Shatner, and Gary Coleman.
Alf’s Special Christmas (1987) – A crappy sitcom tries to be an emotional tearjerker.
http://www.tv.com/alf/alfs-special-christmas-1/episode/23186/recap.html?tag=episode_recap;recap
Every year at Cineprov! we present two weeks of our Ruining Childhood Memories Holiday Shows where we riff on these type of holiday movies. A staple every year is the He Man And She Ra Christmas Special! This year we broke out A Year Without A Santa Claus and it was a hoot! Rudolph is always a hit as well
Frosty!
I saw this riff on Christmas toy commercials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXl0Barqrgk
My memory is really sketchy on this one, but there was a puppet (not muppets, I promise) christmas special I remember about a bunch of hillbilly rats and frogs and polecats and what-have-you who have a bluegrass band, and they need to win this band contest for some noble cause, but they’re going up against another group called something like The Muddy River Nightmare Band (not the band from Portland, but that’s the closest I can come up with)….anyone else remember this? It’s totally riffable, but everything I’ve tried to search for it with has come up nil. Maybe I dreamed it. I’d also have them take on some old Andy Williams Christmas Specials, or maybe the infamous Bing Crosby one where he and David Bowie sing a duet-that would be sweet. Or any of the Mandrell Sisters Xmas specials. Really, any of the non-animated, all-horrible singing Xmas specials from my youth in the 70’s and 80’s would be great.
lancecorbain- It sounds like you’re describing Emmitt Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, which was Muppet creation…
Star Wars Xmas Special. Hands down.
Oh heck. I didn’t know they already did star wars. Need to find it.
I’m a huge Michael Keaton fan but “Jack Frost” seems like ripe Holiday riffing…if that’s okay.
For TV specials, I think the Bob Hope Christmas specials would be fun to riff. As a college football fan, I always loved the intro of the AP All-American team and Hope’s horrible jokes for each one (I’m sure the riffing would improve the humor quality.)
Any 1970s-1980s variety show Christmas Special would be awesome with riffing. Barbara Mandrell did them, as did Dolly Parton, Julie Andrews, and I think even Bob Hope did one. For most of The Incredibly Strange Creatures they were basically riffing a variety show, so we know it would work!
the other “Jack frost” where jack frost is killer snow man. one riff “Were did that carrot go?” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116671/
Also there a sequel.
Not the biggest Rifftrax fan… (well, only watched a few so gimme time) but the Star Wars Christmas Special is spectacular. I laughed myself silly with those guys…and a special treat with the commercial riffs. Funniest thing is I watched it before without them and only laughed a little. Crazy nostalgia, that. Felt like I was 11 years old again.
No to Emmit Otter. Do you have a soul people..?!!
Yes to The Littlest Angel with Fred Gwyenne and Johnny Whittaker. That one needs a good riffing.
Meant to add my hatred of Jim Carrey’s Grinch. I wouldn’t even want to see that again with the MST3K or Rifftrax guys…
I don’t think there is such a thing as an unriffable Christmas special.
Pinocchio”s Christmas (1980). This was,I think, the last Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation special and they were plainly out of gas by then. They were recyling puppets by then, Jessica Claus from Santa Claus is Coming to Town is remade into a angel or fairy godmother or perhaps Gaderial, who knows. The best voice talent they could manage was Alan King! and the songs are dismally mediocre.
Charlie Brown Christmas. Whenever the other kids talk smack on Charlie Brown for bringing in the small tree, I wish CB would first remind them whose name is in the title and that he can fire any of their asses with one call. Second of all, he should remind them that while they were dancing like a bunch of meth-heads, he was the one who went out in the snow to buy the tree…with his own money at that!
They should riff on the lamer holiday specials that TV’s Frank sent up to the SOL in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
Ruldolf the red nosed reindeer….the whole snow creature and dentist wanna be elf is just freaking strange….
‘Pinocchio’s Christmas’ wasn’t the last Rankin Bass Christmas special. Later there was ‘The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold’ (which, despite characters continually mentioning that it’s Christmas, isn’t actually very Christmas-y) and ‘The Life and Adventures Santa Claus’, a surprisingly dark and well done adaptation of a story by L. Frank Baum of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ fame.
In 2001, there was a special named ‘Santa Baby’, but nothing since.
So many of the Lifetime/Hallmark/ABC Family original Christmas movies are riffable material.
But I’d pick “The Little Match Girl”, a long-forgotten TV movie starring that kid who played “Rudy” on “The Cosby Show” as a betwitching waif who goes around lighting magical matches to improve people’s lives. Somehow. (As opposed to the original story, about an abused and neglected girl who dies of cold exposure while hallucinating. Cheery.)
Re “The Great Santa Claus Switch” : This is the SECOND time I’ve seen Art Carney in an awful Christmas special. I fear two things: that I’m developing a subconscious fear of all things Art Carney, and that he may have produced, MANY, MANY bad Christmas specials I don’t know about yet.
Hey, Art Carney was great in “Night of the Meek”, the Twilight Zone Christmas special!
Other than that, though…*shudder*
“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”.
Fun song. Bad Christmas special.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned BABES IN TOYLAND with Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore.It’s not a special,but pretty bad nonetheless..
I have fond memories of some of the above listed TV specials from my youth. I do agree that the Wookie Holiday thing was pretty bad, and I remember watching its original airing. Please stay away from Bing Crosby’s final Christmas special from ’74…..that duet with David Bowie is exquisite. You have to love stars answering knocks on their doors in these specials and then inviting whomever in to sing songs and perform dance numbers. Classic nostalgic cheese is good for the soul [sorry chicken soup, you lose].
BUT, I do hate when brand new modern specials try to grab nostalgia right out of the gate by rehashing older successful formulas. Any modern day Christmas remake should get the treatment….anything featuring Rhianna, Jessica Simpson, and no more Donnie and Marie ANYTHING.
You just know that this Justin Bieber [sp?] kid is cranking out garbage as we speak. I hate myself that I know who this kid is!
If it counts as a Special, how about Futurama
Santa Claus is Gunning You Down:
“Amy: He knows when you are sleeping,
Farnsworth: He knows when you’re on the can,
Leela: He’ll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
Zoidberg: Oh,
Hermes: You’d better not breathe, you’d better not move,
Bender: You’re better off dead, I’m telling you, dude.
Fry: Santa Claus is gunning you down!”
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Thanks, John Ellis for the info on Rankin/Bass. I grew up watching their early classics when they were still fairly new and they seemed magical. I saw Pinocchio for the first time about 5 years during a marathon of R/B shows and it just seemed so lame, production wise. It was like seeing that that hot girl from high school had turned into Bea Arthur.
Art Carney and Mickey Rooney specialized in the 70s and 80s playing those curmedgeonly old men that Joel mentioned in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. A gold vein of riffable material right there.
There’s any number of Christmas Carol remakes and reworkings that could be done too. I’ve never seen it but Jack Palance did a version where he plays Scrooge in the old west. That sounds promising.
It hasn’t even aired yet but there is a Christmas episode of the children’s show Dino Dan coming up on Nick Jr. It’s about a 7 year old who interacts with the overly docile yet realistic looking CGI dinosaurs roaming his neighborhood which begs the question of who build a housing development in the Land of the Lost. It’s my 4 year old’s favorite. The promo for it show a T Rex pulling Santa’s sleigh. Think of all the Godzilla callbacks and Jurassic Park and Harryhausen riffs they could use beside the holiday ones.
I vote to riff on sequels to any classic Christmas specials (i.e. “It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown”, “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year”, “Frosty Returns”, etc.) These “re-makes” are never nearly as good – or even memorable – as their predecessors.
The He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned BABES IN TOYLAND with Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore.
Ohh…And you thought the cheap-amusement-park sections of Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny looked like a fever dream–
The Keanu/Drew Toyland just gets cold stares of “Uh…WTF are they even trying to do? 0_0 ”
As for the CNN article, somebody forgot to tell him the difference between a “special” and a “movie”–
Now, as for specials, I’ll throw one back in his face: Has anyone ever made it through the long, hard, punishing feature-length slog of “Rudolph & Frosty: Christmas in July”? It’s too dreary and downbeat to actually riff upon, just asking.
And any 70’s variety special (the King Family are only remembered nowadays for them) are symbolic and thematically encapsulating fair game–
Except for the Andy Williams one with John Astin and Captain Kangaroo, that one must remain sacred.
No to Emmit Otter. Do you have a soul people..?!!
Yeah, Jim Henson has an official “No-Riff” card, and that includes Switch!
Yes to The Littlest Angel with Fred Gwyenne and Johnny Whittaker. That one needs a good riffing.
(Much as that was out of my own childhood, I must concede. :( )
This discussion is about TV specials, not movies, right?
If that’s the case, let’s go with that Shrek Holiday Special that I’ve been seeing on TV the last few years. I loathe Shrek with every fiber of my being and to see his green hide ripped a new one by the Rifftrax crew would be sublime.
Also, Rankin & Bass’s Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town has never set well with me. That dandy fop, Fred Astaire could stand to have some air taken out of his sails.
!
Re: Art Carney. At some point, he also made the record ‘Santa And The Doodle-Li-Boop.’ Backed only by a snare drum, he tells a story about Santa getting a letter on Christmas Eve from a kid who wants only a Doodle-Li-Boop for Christmas. Unfortunately, Santa can’t find any in his workshop; they haven’t been a hot item for quite some time. He becomes very discouraged since it’s almost time to leave on his rounds, but Mrs. Claus suggests he check the closet. He does, and it turns out it’s just STUFFED with Doodle-Li-Boops! So he grabs one, sticks it in his sack, and rides off in his sleigh, singing happily about how “Little Tommy’s gonna get a Doodle-Li-Boop, Doodle-Li-Boop, Doodle-Li-Boop…” That’s the stripped-down version. Actually, acted out, it’s much stranger.
And I was rather taken with the recent CHRISTMAS AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER Special. Mariah Carey backed by Urkel and what looked like the original Mouseketeers if they’d gone to Catholic school, Annie Lennox singing ‘God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen’ with a look on her face like Bela Lugosi pulling the switch on the death ray, the lady wearing the giant Muppet vagina, oh it’d just be an embarrassment of riches.
#20:
It’s the “River Bottom Nightmare Band”.
..and it came from “Emmett Otter’s Jugband Christmas”, a cherished childhood memory…that needs to get it’s butt riffed on like no one’s business!
All the talk of Art Carney and not one mention of his classic turn as Santa in “The Night They Saved Christmas”? How can you resist this powerful exploration of our modern society with its searing indictment of fossil-fuel exploration techniques?
Another suggestion I have is one I haven’t seen, because I’m a bit trepidatious about tracking it down and watching it unriffed: “The Christmas Shoes,” a TV movie based on a song about a guy who’s mildly annoyed by the holiday hassle, only to have his mood brightened by the sight of a dirt-poor young boy trying to buy shoes for his terminally-ill mother so she can wear them when she takes the big dirt nap later that night. It’s uplifting fun for the whole family!
And ah, I fondly remember the Barrymore/Reeves version of Babes in Toyland (featuring Richard Mulligan as the villain), but yeah, it was incredibly goofy. Eminently riffable.