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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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“Ebby” with Susan Lucci. bad bad bad.
The Osmond Family Christmas. I probably saw the Osmond Christmas show cause I grew up Mormon andwas subjected to these toothy horrors!!
@80, 100 – Some have “heard of it”, and some own it on Blu-ray. :)
The first half’s actually a pretty good North Pole movie, by big-set 80’s standards, just until the made-for-TV-sitcom kids show up and John Lithgow starts chewing all the scenery…
@93 – I took one look at the fact that Frosty Returns was Melendez picking the bones of Rankin-Bass’s bankruptcy sale, and fled in horror…Now you make me actually want to go WATCH how wrong it was. (That’s what happens when they keep sticking it on the “real” disk.)
@98 – Think it’s been off because…(waah!)…there ARE no more Christmas specials anymore, period: With broadcast now just a contractual obligation to the sponsors, networks have too much money tied up in their Lost/24 franchises to pre-empt them, and only one-hour slots to fill. Only the “money” specials are allowed in nowadays, which means that Charlie, Rudolph and Frosty are the old-guard elite.
(And LDB’s still one of the classics–Yeah, you wanna slap the crabby lil’ pest, but tell me you don’t get chills every time the Vienna Choir Boys start haunting the soundtrack.)
Disney’s new “Prep and Landing” Christmas special is actually pretty good. It fully deserved the Emmy nod.
The recent stop-motion Xmas episode of “Community” was a very funny, self-aware tribute to the classic Rankin/Bass specials. It can be found on hulu.
I stand corrected: Little Drummer Boy will be on the Family Channel. . .7:00am Saturday.
There seems to be a cartoon based on the song “Puff The Magic Dragon”
(In my youth I remember that song and “The Gift Song” by Peter Paul and Mary on the radio during Christmas morning. As important as “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving. But that’s not what the song was about, Arlo wanted to sing about the Draft. …I seem to have digressed.)
“Puff The Magic Dragon”, the special looks like it was made by the ABC “Schoolastic Rock Shorts” people. The five minutes I have seen make for excellent nightmare fuel. It has the graphic design of a bad acid trip!
I think we have a winner!
How about a forgettable Christmas dud starring Hulk Hogan (my childhood hero)? I’ll surely love to see how the MST3K guys handle such a train wreck in the near future…!
Definitely the Jim Carrey Grinch movie that embraces what the classic cartoon condemns.
Scrooged! was kind of dumb too. And since I’ve seen the Blackadder Christmas Carol, Scrooged! is even more pathetic…
Maybe they can do a mashup of every other TV series that tried to ape A Christmas Carol. That will probably drive them crazy – Full House, Urkel, the Bradys, Bewitched! Yeeck!
Except when Married With Children did it. That was cool.
Thanks to everyone who knows more than I do(I bow to your Kung Fu), for giving me the name Emmit Otter. That’s bugged me for years. And I had no idea that was the muppets, I just always assumed it was some knock-off group trying to horn in on Henson’s territory. Wow. Okay, I agree that one is off limits, then, but I still say any recording of a Xmas special from back then, the variety-show type, will suffice. As long as they have commercials, too, a la The Star Wars Holiday Special. I’m not gonna say it’s my favorite, but it is almost the Rifftrax I’ve watched the most times, due to showing it to others. I love it. “He’s got murder in his eyes, that’s a good sign…”
There’s a great Canadian Christmas special called, “Johan’s Gift To Christmas” about a church mouse who inspires the song, “Silent Night”. It’s part live-action and part claymation but the animation is SO bad it makes the Rankin-Bass stuff look like Nightmare Before Christmas.
I realise this is over a week old, but it just dawned on me that, for fun, they could try any of the DW Christmas specials. If they could fork over enough loot to good old Auntie Beeb, of course…