"Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue" (1978)

Nothing surpasses the beauty and elegance of a bad idea.
--Craig Bruce

It has been a longstanding notion of mine that people were very easily entertained in the 1970s, as a majority of the popular culture I've seen from that time was seemingly made to accommodate the lowest of the lowest common denominator. Oh, sure, this was the decade that gave us "Stairway to Heaven", Farrah Fawcett, Fawlty Towers and Star Wars, but on the other end of the spectrum it was also the decade that gave us "Disco Duck", Scrappy Doo, the variety show phenomenon, and one of the most reviled televisual offerings in the history of Farnsworth's box, The Star Wars Holiday Special.

(Of course, other decades had their low points, too - the '80s gave us Saved by the Bell, the '90s inflicted the Backstreet Boys on us, and have yet to recover from the reality TV show craze of the '00s - but the 70s seem to be more remembered as a good decade for bad ideas.)

Talking of Scrappy Doo, the 70s was also the decade where the animation duo of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, once known for popular characters like Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, went to crap. This was the decade where the quality of their creations were in flux, recycling everything from characters to show pitches to animation sequences to fill out entire broadcast network Saturday morning schedules before they had The Smurfs to fall back on. Carbon copy groups of teenagers with talking animals who weren't oversized Great Danes going around solving mysteries, a girl band and their entourage travelling haphazardly through space for no apparent reason, all of their characters from the 60s floating around in an ark battling personified social issues like smog and litter and vandalism, the Harlem Globetrotters as superheroes...

They used the wrong spelling of the word "revue". I have SUCH a good feeling about this one...

Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue was another such misfire, first airing on CBS on January 13, 1978, and like other crappy TV specials I can think of, has justifiably not been re-aired since. It was released on videocassette in 1986, but that's about all the attention it got after it aired. Time Warner probably owns it now, and hasn't seen fit to release it on DVD. (Don't strain yourselves, guys!)

Okay, here's the rundown - the special is supposed to be like a Dean Martin celebrity roast or something, only with ice skaters and ballet and stuff like that. Your masters of ceremonies are country singer and Hee Haw host Roy Clark and One Day at a Time star Bonnie Franklin, flanked by a cavalcade of actors dressed as some of Hanna-Barbera's most beloved characters (and the Hair Bear Bunch) to celebrate the 48th birthday of one Fred Flintstone of The Flintstones, the most popular prime-time animated sitcom ever to be accused of ripping off The Honeymooners.

There's only one slight detail - Fred is absent from this whole affair, as he is sitting at home watching the special on TV, thinking he was supposed to be on the next day, and only just realizes that he's supposed to be at the ice arena now, so much of the special is focused on this particular plot point.

To think many of those people had dreams of skating in the Olympics.

Roy and Bonnie are forced to fill up time to wait for Fred, and the guy in the Jabberjaw costume is not making life any easier for them, as he pretends to be Don Rickles, makes several failed attempts at wisecracks at the honoree's expense (this is a roast, remember) and insists that with the man of the hour nowhere to be seen, they should roast HIM instead.

What's Jabberjaw, you ask? Think Scooby Doo with a talking shark set in Al Gore's dystopian vision of the future, or in a world where the bad guy from The Spy Who Loved Me actually succeeded.

To make matters worse...apparently they couldn't get Frank Welker to play Jabberjaw as he did in the TV show, so voice acting duties went to Don Messick. And I have nothing against Don Messick, his voice is legendary--Scooby Doo, Papa Smurf, Hamton on Tiny Toons--but his attempt to sound like a shark who borrows shtick from both Rodney Dangerfield and Curly Howard comes out sounding like--ughh--his Scrappy Doo voice.

In a nutshell, it's Scrappy Doo once again trying to steal the spotlight from a character more popular that he. Only as a talking shark.

Sharks just aren't popular. Once Jaws came out, the market was pretty much oversaturated.

Variety shows aren't necessarily known for their plots, so here are some edited highlights:

Bonnie dresses up as a polar bear and sings "You Are My Lucky Star" while skating girls dance around and sing the completely unrelated "We're in the Money".

Then we're treated to an unusual comedy vignette from a duo named Course & Young, who I can't even find info on Google about. One of them tries to sing a song but gets distracted by the janitor, who keeps hitting him with a mop, knocking things over, then tries to blow him up and bites him in the leg.

I'll be over here crying for those poor baby seals if you need me...

A Jackson Five-ish group called The Silvers, of whom I have also never heard, sing a song titled "Disco Showdown" while all the dancers and costumed animals get day-yown on the ice.

Sashi Kuchiki, a shirtless guy in a badly-made thong, skates and jumps around with flaming torches while some men and women dressed entirely in yellow give us a fitness workout video.

Roy Clark plays the theme from that one movie Love Story whose name escapes me on the guitar while some lady dances in the background.

This aired during the family hour, right?

And also, for the purpose of entertainment and DEFINITELY not to pad out the special's running time, the audience is treated to some live-action vignettes from another recently-produced live-action Hanna-Barbera program, The Skatebirds. The Skatebirds, for those who don't know (i.e. all of you), was a Banana Splits-style supershow-type dealie starring a trio of live-action people in rollerskating bird costumes getting chased around by someone in a live-action rollerskating cat costume (rollerskating in an ICE skating special, go figure). I couldn't tell you anything else about it, apart from the fact that it gave us among other regular segments a cartoon called The Robonic Stooges, which is just...ughhh...oh lord...that'll take you to some dark places.

Why am I always forgetting which one of them is Fleegle?

Finally, the climax is a grand birthday tribute number where all the cartoon-character-costumed actors dance around with chefs for some reason paying their respects to the still-absent Fred. The Hair Bear Bunch trio tell jokes that stopped being funny in the third grade, some ice dancers in Wally Gator costumes dance around for a bit while one of the Bears chases after them with a flyswatter--why, I do not know--and finally a giant birthday cake flanked with dancing girls is brought out onto the ice.

During this whole farce we get animated updates on Fred's travel to the ice arena, as he and Barney watch the whole affair on a portable TV set in the car on the way there.

Okay, special, explain this to me. In the cartoon segments, which are clearly based in Bedrock, the "place right out of history" where The Flintstones takes place, we are clearly in the prehistoric setting, while the live-action ice skating segments were filmed in Bakersfield Civic Auditorium in 1978 A.D. California. How does this work? Did the ice rink suddenly fall through a hole in the time-space continuum and land 65 million years in the past? Did Fred somehow go through a wormhole and end up in the Bedrock of the late 20th century just in time for his 65,000,048th birthday?

Well, as it turns out, Fred doesn't make it after all, because when it seems that he finally arrives on stage, it's actually another actor in perhaps the worst character costume of the bunch. All the other costumes use fur, but Fred having no fur to speak of, has a head obviously made out of plastic. His mouth doesn't even close.

After that, the special ends and the credits roll.

Roy, get off the screen! You're distracting me from the pretty girl!

So...how does Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue stack up?

To answer that question, let's break down its title.

It isn't exactly "all-star", since not only does it include lesser-known characters like Jabberjaw and the Hair Bear Bunch (and of course the Skatebirds, whose show you can't even find episodes of on YouTube), but I've never even heard of ANY of the musical, comedy or ice skating acts in it. I barely even know anything about the hosts, other than that one of them sang country music and the other was on a TV show that starred Valerie Bertinelli.

And it also didn't have anything in the way of comedy, either. None of the gags were funny, Jabberjaw was just annoying, and the laughter, par for the course in a Hanna-Barbera production, obviously came from a can.

In fact, the only thing that Hanna-Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue promises and actually DELIVERS is...ice. The one thing I can definitely guarantee you is that there is ice in this special. Ice that is both danced and skated upon.

And, honestly, the ice wasn't all that bad.

Fwed Fwintstone wuvs you DIS MUCH.

"Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" (2000)

I hate the goody-goody feelings of Christmas! All this caring and sharing! So I kidnapped Grandma and made Santa Claus the fall guy so I could get all his money! Hey, I deserve to be rich.
--Cousin Mel

It seems with every holiday that comes along, there are always certain unanswered questions to go with them.

Like, why do they call those little candy bars kids get trick-or-treating on Halloween "fun-sized" when everyone knows there's nothing "fun" about a smaller candy bar?

Why do they make grape-flavored Starburst jelly beans every Easter and not grape-flavored Starburst year-round?

But it always seems to be Christmas that has the most curiosity surrounding it.

How can a fat guy in a sleigh fit down a chimney, let alone deliver presents to everyone in the world in one night?

Why does he always deliver the bigger gifts to the kids in a higher tax bracket?

Is Die Hard really a Christmas movie?

But for me, the same question keeps popping up year after year:

WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT A NOVELTY CHRISTMAS SONG ABOUT A DEAD RELATIVE WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT FAMILY HOLIDAY SPECIAL?

Yes, they made a TV special out of the 1979 Elmo and Patsy song about vehicular geriatricide on Christmas.

And it is AWFUL.

I'm not just saying this because I have an aversion to corny holiday specials. It is truly bad.

How bad is it? Well, let me put it this way...I hate the song now. That's right. This special has turned me off of it. FOREVER. I can't hear it anymore without thinking of this steaming pile of elf vomit. It is right down there with WHAM's "Last Christmas", that Mariah Carey song and that annoying one with the singing chipmunks.

Directed by television animation legend Phil Roman (you executive produced Garfield and Friends and co-directed Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, what were you THINKING, man!?) and starring the voice of Elmo Shropshire himself who was also co-writer (J'ACCUSE!!), it was first unleashed on unsuspecting television audiences on the WB (now the CW) in Christmas of 2000. And no one has the common sense to take it off the air yet. They and their partners in crime at Cartoon Network have been showing this multiple times every year since then, for no other reason than to fill up holiday airtime. It has regularly aired on television every Christmas for more than a decade now. It JUST WON'T DIE.

So why would I want to waste my time watching this lukewarm glass of congealed eggnog?

Because nothing says Christmas like a heartwarming TV special about love and caring and family.

And if I have to suffer through it, then so shall you all.

Somewhere there's a Dairy Queen that's missing its mascot.

It all starts in the quaint little town of...Cityville. The town is literally named Cityville. They actually couldn't think of a better name than Cityville. I'm guessing this ISN'T the town with the three super-powered kindergartners and the evil hyper-intelligent monkey with the big hat.

It gets worse. The special focuses on a family named...*snrrkk*...Spankenheimer.

That pretty much sets the tone.

Yeah, they actually had their name legally changed years ago. Before that, they were the Fondlebergs.

Welcome to the Spankenheimer family store, where the staff is friendly, the prices are cheap and you can also get away with shoplifting, because your credit's always good with its proprietor Grandma Spankenheimer.

By the way, her name really is "Grandma." Probably says so on her birth certificate. Turns out her parents were just as unimaginative as the writers.

Well, since there's no point in learning any of the other characters' names, we'll just give you the principal cast. We already know the grandma who I'm guessing at one point in this special will in fact get run over by a reindeer. There's also Jake, the annoying "I-do-believe-in-Santa-Claus-I-do-I-do-I-do-I-do" kid who passes as this story's hero. There's Santa Claus, of course, to encourage this kid's wild imagination. There's a grandpa named Grandpa who mostly sings crappy songs and doesn't really do much anything else. And then there's Cousin Mel, the family entrepreneur who helps run the store with a Southern accent and poorly drawn hair. You can already tell she's the villain from her first line--she's more interested in money and profits and being rich and couldn't care less about warmth and family and giving and stuff.

Her dialogue in a nutshell: "Evil evil evil, rich rich rich, money, money, money...y'all."

Grandma is constantly being made offers to sell the store by the stereotypical CEO of the mega-multi-million-dollar conglomerate who already owns everything else in Cityville. HIS name is Mr. Bucks. Yep, B-U-C-K-S. As in, the synonym for dollars. I'd strangle this cartoon if I could.

Cousin Mel, naturally, has a differing opinion to this, and gets the idea that if people stopped coming to Grandma's store, business would go south and she'd have no choice but to sell it, so she pours some unknown liquid from a perfume bottle into the fruitcake that Grandma distributes every year to customers so as to kill--I mean, SICKEN unsuspecting innocent people.

Yeahhhhhhhh, there's no way that's going to work. Because as it turns out, nobody really eats Grandma's fruitcake. Or even likes it. And they're all too polite to tell it to her face. There's even a song that drives this point home with a series of lame fruitcake gags. As if gags about fruitcake not being safe for human consumption were still funny.

SEE!?! EVEN THE DOG HATES FRUITCAKE! IT'S FUNNY!!!

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, the cast go and reenact the titular song word-for-word, and Grandma has her inevitable accident. Jake sees the whole thing from his bedroom window, but seeing as he's not just the only witness but also an impressionable child, nobody believes him. At least not until morning, when two police officers arrive (one of whom I swear is straight out of Fargo) and find sleigh tracks and a silhouette-shaped Grandma-sized hole in the snow.

Anyway, time passes, Grandma's still missing, her face turns up on milk cartons, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc., etc., etc.

We're in September now, and Cousin Mel still wants to sell the family store. I'm kinda surprised she hasn't done it yet. So she has Grandpa take her to her favorite restaurant and asks him to sign the paper.

But he announces that he'd rather sing.

How the hell do you get "sing" from "sign"? I suppose you could just switch two of the letters, but that joke only works when it's WRITTEN OUT. It doesn't make sense when you say it out loud.

Anyway, Grandpa sees this botched attempt at a wordplay gag as an excuse to sing about Grandma being dead and partying up in heaven with Elvis and all the other dead celebrities.

This was made for KIDS, can you believe it?

"This Grandma is no more, she has ceased to be, she has expired and gone to meet her maker..."

Meanwhile, after nine months of searching, Jake eventually gets the idea that Santa MIGHT have an email address--it turns out he does--and shoots him a post asking him about Grandma. (Why didn't you do this SOONER?!?! Like, maybe RIGHT AFTER THE ACCIDENT!!!) As it happens, Grandma's at the North Pole now, STILL recuperating from her accident and now with a slight case of amnesia. Santa's been taking care of her this whole time.

Speaking of Santa Claus:

This is our Santa Claus? I always thought Santa was plump and jolly with a loving smile on his face. This guy just looks like a hobo in a Santa suit.

Anyway, right now Santa's so obsessed with Cityville being too wrapped up with themselves to think about him, as opposed to the rest of the world, to the point where he's considering canceling Christmas there (not if the church, white Republicans and Bill O'Reilly have anything to say about it) when Quincy, his chief elf, conveniently shows up with a printout of the email identifying "Grandma X", as he calls her. Santa perks right up and has Quincy pick Jake up to take to see Santa while a corny song about Christmas and sharing and such crap plays in the background.

And now your annual dose of Christmas creepiness.

Santa, Jake and Quincy rush Grandma back to Cityville corporate headquarters so they can stop the sale of the store, but dadgummit, Grandma gets lost again thanks to Cousin Mel's transparently evil lawyer. Fortunately, Santa just being there is good enough, so he proves himself to Mr. Bucks, explains what happened, the sale is called off, the store is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.





Oh, wait, there's still twenty minutes left. Cousin Mel drops a bomb on everyone by asking that Santa be arrested for kidnapping, and Jake does his Anakin-at-the-end-of-Episode-III impression.

Oh dear. Christmas the religious holiday is ruined because its most popular secular icon is going to jail.

Incidentally, Cousin Mel's lawyer's name is "I. M. Slime." ...you know, for a Christmas special that takes place in the town of Cityville, I'm not surprised in the least.

Serves him right, taking Christmas away from Jesus.

Meanwhile, in their cabin hideout deep in the mountains--the only mountain in North America where it snows in early autumn--Cousin Mel and her lawyer contemplate Santa Claus rotting in jail and the two of them winning his entire Yuletide operation in front of Grandma, her mind still a blur, and then calculate how much money they could make off it. Let's see, he spends ten or fifteen dollars on every kid on his Nice list, so just multiply that by the millions of kids in the world that are ON his Nice list and...



Okay, I've heard Carrie Fisher's drug-induced solo at the end of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I've heard St. Nick's off-key aria in that Mexican Santa Claus movie. I've heard "Hooray for Santy Claus".

But THIS is the worst song I've ever heard in a Christmas special:

OHHH IT HURTS!! IT HURTS SO MUCH!!! THESE SONGS ARE TERRIBLE!!

WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT!! WHY IS IT A CARMEN MIRANDA NUMBER!! WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE THAT!! WHY ARE THEY MOVING THEIR HIPS BACK AND FORTH!! WHY!!!!!!

That's it. From now on, I'm only celebrating the winter solstice.

Anyway, Santa's trial lasts clear to December, conveniently threatening Christmas. Back at home Jake's dog Doofus smells something in Mel's backpack as she's leaving the house, so Jake has him follow the scent all the way to Mel's cabin hideout.

...Okay, where does this special take place? Where IS Cityville? Midwestern Police Lady is the only person with a northern accent, Cousin Mel is the only person with a southern accent, and yet Jake can just WALK up into the mountains?

With help from Quincy, who has suddenly reappeared, Jake gets Mel out of the cabin long enough to get Grandma and smuggle her back to the store, where he desperately tries to cure her amnesia. Only a whiff of her infamous toxic fruitcake FINALLY restores her memory. (Hey, her fruitcake's finally good for SOMETHING now, right? ...HA!)

Satan plays this special at the end of his holiday parties when he wants all the guests to leave.

At the courthouse, the judge is about to send Kringle up the river when Jake and Grandma conveniently reveal some last-minute evidence, one of which is that Grandma is in fact alive and kicking. Cousin Mel's plan begins to crumble when results of a forensics test are given on the fruitcake found at the scene of the accident (turns out Mel inadvertently slipped "reindeer nip" into her fruitcake, go fig). And when Grandpa brings in a note left at the scene explaining what happened, which Mel also hid, she sings like a canary, admitting that she arranged this whole thing for no other reason than that she likes being rich and she hates Christmas and all this caring and sharing stuff. Well, if that isn't motive enough, I don't know what is.

Santa is acquitted of all charges as Midwestern Police Lady slaps the cuffs on Mel for "almost ruining Christmas", and then chimes in with "that's what you get for being selfish and stupid." You hear that, kids at home?

Mr. Bucks returns with a new proposition to franchise Grandma's store and put her in charge of the potential chain (meaning she'd still have to sell it to him), the whole family has a big hug, and Grandma gets run over one more time when she opens the tainted fruitcake dish on accident. You know, since it was so funny the first time. Sadly, the credits roll before Santa can circle back and run down the rest of them.

"I don't know why we're making a big deal about this. I CLEARLY had the right of way!"

Check out that one guy on the right. "HOLY @#&!! IS THAT REINDEER TALKING?!"
...Yes, that reindeer does talk. Don't ask.

A major hangup I have with specials like this is the cheesy, ham-fisted messages they give about the celebrations meaning nothing and family being the ONLY true meaning of Christmas. I'm not gonna argue, its heart is in the right place, and I too have problems with the over-commercialization of the holiday season, but consider the alternative--if people REALLY took the morals of specials like this seriously, then nobody would buy any gifts or decorations or anything, and I would think that many a childhood memory of Christmas would include the lights, the tree, the presents and the food as well as the whole "getting together as a family" thing. Not to mention sales would plummet and some stores would financially get hit hard, including small home-grown independent stores like Grandma's that have more to lose. The U.S. economy would very well go into recession and millions of people--who have families to support--would be unemployed. I'm not gonna disagree about corporate bigwigs being soulless money-grubbing bastards--let's face it, many of them are--but I don't think everyone's going to buy into a moral as anvilicious as this while we all have mouths to feed and bills to pay the OTHER eleven months of the year. Plus, there's a hint of irony here, considering the rights to these specials are usually owned by big publicly-traded entertainment companies like Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, who I'm sure make SOMETHING off their home video sales.

And that is this special's only GOOD POINT. Never mind the fact that making a lighthearted family TV special about a song as dark as "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" is generally a bad idea to begin with, the animation is piss-poor, the characters are cookie-cutter, the voices are grating, especially Jake's, the story is ridiculous and the songs range from in poor taste to just unbearable. It isn't funny. It isn't heart-warming. It isn't even entertaining. It's like waking up on Christmas morning and finding one of Santa's reindeer took a dump in your stocking.

And yet there is one thing--ONE THING--keeping me from ranking it above the Star Wars Holiday Special as the all-time worst Christmas special ever made...

No gratuitous Wookiee masturbation.

They say Christmas is a time for miracles.

Bah, humbug.

"Mr. T's Be Somebody... or Be Somebody's Fool!" (1984)

Now everybody knows Mr. T don't lie
And it ain't no fun just scrapin' by
So if you want to be cool, just like me
You better try real hard to be somebody!

Return with us now to the dark days of the 1980s, where Reagan was king, communists were scum, and day-glo and leg warmers were acceptable fashion items to be seen in public wearing.

It was also the dawn of the VHS era, where people would insert small black boxes with reels of tape inside them into the slots of special projection machines with buttons on the front and wires on the back connected to the rear of huge window boxes with tubes inside of them and watch movies and family films and all sorts of things. Sometimes recorded on top of other movies without other people's knowing.

With this new invention, schoolteachers across the country finally had a way to keep their students quiet for thirty minutes to an hour at a time while taking a nap or catching up on a trashy romance novel.

Sometimes they had puppets. Sometimes they had kids singing. Sometimes they get uploaded raw on YouTube or re-edited for Everything is Terrible.

The one we're going to do today doesn't have puppets, but it DOES have kids singing. It also has 1980's movie and television icon Mr. T.

No, not THAT Mr. T. Although he was no stranger to classroom videotapes himself.

I mean the OTHER guy. Laurence Tureaud. B.A. Baracus from The A-Team. Clubber Lang from Rocky III. Drinker of milk, wearer of gold chains, pitier of fools. Hero to millions of 1980s children all over the country.

Yeah, him.

And if that isn't enough star power, let's get some up-and-coming young talent like Ice-T, Martika "Toy Soldiers" No-last-name-given from Kids Incorporated and Bumper Townsend from A Different World involved, as well as Topper Carew, who co-wrote the 1983 Mr. T movie D.C. Cab.

And if you don't know who or what any of those are, then screw you for making me feel old.

Our first segment is on the set of a commercial for people who are shy (which doesn't really sell anything). The girl is so shy that she can barely speak her lines, and the director's nagging isn't helping matters. Finally she tells him to shut up, encourages kids to speak up for themselves before angrily storming off the set.

Yeah, yell at the introvert. That'll boost her confidence.

Be honest, she's quite brave to stand in front of a camera. I'd have frozen in my shoes.

Then T starts off the "roots" segment by speaking the kids around a tall tree, and saying that like the tree has roots to grow from, so do you and me and everyone else, even giving details on his background--born in Chicago and descendant of a tribe in Africa. This is followed by all the kids holding hands, swaying back and forth, and singing some corny song about remembering where you came from. Some of them sing with their faces so close to the camera I can smell their breath.

In the "anger" segment, Mr. T tries to teach the kids how to deal with anger while angrily trying to swat a fly buzzing around him, tossing a bag of paper cups everywhere and getting some potato salad on his face. .

Next we come to the "styling" portion of the special ("Everybody got to wear clothes! If you don't, you get arrested!" Ummm.....) where...

Okay, I think we need to go to a photo montage for this. OH GOOD LORD HOW EIGHTIES CAN SOMETHING BE.

Left to right, top to bottom:
Twin sisters Zena and Xena have taken inspiration from Vietnamese prostitute streetware.
Marta, meanwhile, couldn't decide which of her scarves to wear to the shoot.
Jeff here is trying to pass off his grandfather's suspenders as fashionable, and failing miserably.
Athena looks like a cross between a Madonna backup dancer and a chessboard.
Kelly looks like she got shot during her early morning jog.
I would advise Manny to strip a layer or two off before his nethers start to sweat.
And as for Janine, well, let's just say there should be laws against something that pink.

What's that? You want a segment on peer pressure? We've got that too!

Some of the kids from the styling segment are walking along the pier when one of them finds a can of beer and some cigarettes in the garbage and invites his friends to drink and light up (Who would want to smoke a cigarette someone found in a garbage can? And why did someone just throw away an unopened can of beer?) while one of them looks shocked and horrified. One of the kids is spritzed with beer foam, while another burns her finger on the cigarette lighter. Michael Jackson-esque 80's singers New Edition (with a young Bobby Brown) appear out of nowhere to sing the background song and drive the point home, and T suddenly shows up to motivate the unwilling lad into not joining in his friends' illicit activities as they literally shove the beer and ciggies in his face until he finally walks away.

He's already well known for his zero-tolerance policy on "jibba jabba."

The "recouping" segment has a fat guy in suspenders snicker at a kid who trips and falls on the sidewalk. This is followed by a similar scene where the same kid trips and goes into an impromptu break dance in front of the same fat guy, who applauds him before tripping himself. Mr. T uses the word "abso-ludicrous" as if it were an actual word, and then reveals he isn't wearing any pants.

Next we have "Creating" which is...just a break-dancing segment. We'll leave it at that.

From there we cut to an...interesting little vignette where Mr. T interrupts a flame war right when someone's about to let loose a "yo momma" joke to launch into a song about treating your mother right. Complete with some maternal-looking backup singers, it's a number that plays off that "M is for the Many Things She Gave Me" song in that he spells out the word in the lyrics. Entirely in this new-fangled "talk singing" I've heard about.

Actually, it DID make me wish I had listened to my mother. I made so many faces during that bit I'm surprised it didn't freeze like that.

You know, most actors are usually "grounded" before making these sorts of videos.

"Workout" is exactly what is says on the label - Mr. T encouraging a group of kids munching on junk food to get up and get active. The new wave background music about "sweating" and "working your body" made me a little uneasy.

After that, Mr. T and some of the kids put together a rap number about peace, love and brotherhood and stuff like that as a demonstration of how to rap. He ends by encouraging the kids at home to make up a rap of their own, which maybe could have been covered in the "Creating" segment among all the break dancing. Since it's, you know, creating something and all.

"Let's green egg and ham it, sucka!"

Then we get to a classroom setting, where Mr. T is about to give a lecture on friendship, but is called out of the room by a raspy-voiced man who needs some snake poison sucked out of his toe. "A true friend is hard to find," says T and walks off stage.

Okay, ewww.

An 80's female love ballad-type singer takes over the lecture by singing an 80's female love ballad about friendship, I guess, I'm not really paying too much attention to the lyrics of the songs in this video, while we're flashed with pictures of friends and cheesy quips about friendship delivered with all the subtlety of a Hallmark greeting card.

Friendship also sold Care Bears and Teddy Ruxpin dolls back then.

It's also worth mentioning that throughout this video we get little minisodes on "frustration" where Mr. T tries to play a cello solo but gets interrupted in various ways...either he is out of tune, the neighbors upstairs complain, or he throws the bow out of shot to look like he accidentally shot it out of his hand like an arrow from a bow. By this time he finally manages to get through it without issue.

And now it's story-time, and most of the kids we've seen throughout this special have gathered round Mr. T, who tells a story about two teenagers named Ricky and Jackie who live on opposite sides of a town where two rival gangs are butting heads. One the night of a big dance, Ricky gets into a fight with one of the rival gangs, and...T forgets the rest of the story to the kids' dismay, but he admits that it was partially inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the tragic love story about a short romantic fling between an 18-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl where they both commit suicide at the end, and invites the children to read it for themselves.

So...what was THAT supposed to teach? Reading is fun? Don't join street gangs? Love conquers al--okay, maybe not that one.

Our last segment covers "daydreaming", or what I imagine many schoolchildren were doing while this video was on. Here we have a little league baseball game, and there's a girl at bat who dreams of breaking the MLB gender barrier and making the World Series. And since this is an American film, she hits the game-winning home run at the bottom of the ninth with her team down by three runs with bases loaded on a 3-2 count and then the credits roll and it's over whatever I'm done.

Daydreaming about playing sports is okay. Daydreaming WHILE playing sports is ill-advised.

As I mentioned in my Alien from L.A. review, a lot of things from the 80's has not aged well. And this is one of them.

I'll admit that the guy's heart is in the right place, and a lot of the messages are valid, but WOW is this painful to look at. I mean, the outfits from the fashion segment, the video effects, the outfits from the fashion segment, the cheesy songs, the outfits from the fashion segment, the dated R&B synthesizer music...I realize that this is no fault of the special itself and is mainly due to the passage of time, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. As for the kids, they aren't any different from the ones in other videos, just the usual batch of child actors who smile and sing (or maybe just lip sync in this case) even though many of them do go on to bright futures in acting and music.

Strangely enough, though, I could think of no one better back then than Mr. T who would set out to make a video like this. A bad boy with a sensitive side, a self-proclaimed mama's boy who drank his milk and was beloved by children everywhere, who also appeared on a TV show playing a mercenary who beat the crap out of morally-corrupt jerks for picking on the small and defenseless...considering that most actors only do this type of community service after they'd been arrested for drunk driving or drug possession or pleasuring themselves in a porno theater, it really says a lot about Mr. T's character to want to do this willingly.

Preferable to a soulless talking sponge or a guidance counselor any day.

George Peppard made one of these videos once. So much crying...

"You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown!" (1994)

You know America is backwards when Groundhog Day is a holiday and the Super Bowl isn't.
--unknown source

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.

Today, millions of people across the country will gather around their TV sets to watch two of this season's best (or luckiest) NFL teams duke it out for the right to call themselves kings of the professional football mountain.

If you're a football fan from a city that hosts one of these two teams, it'll be a time to sit through four pulse-pounding quarters before either wallowing in defeat or basking in gridiron glory.

If you're just a football fan in general, it'll be a time to participate, whether you have a ticket or not, in the biggest televised sporting event of the year.

Or if you're like me, a graduate of a certain basketball college in the Kansas City area, it'll be a time to go to parties, eat, drink, watch the commercials and make fun of the halftime show.

Speaking of perennial losers...

This was the very first Peanuts special that didn't air on CBS. Makes sense, considering NBC was airing the Super Bowl that year.

It was also the last Peanuts special aired on TV in direct succession to the very FIRST Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas way back in 1965, as well as the last Peanuts special made before Charles Schulz's death in 2000.

Let's get one thing straight off the bat--Charlie Brown does NOT actually play in the Super Bowl in this special. If you're looking for the one where he DOES play football, you're probably thinking of It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown from 1977. I really didn't understand that one...why did everyone keep blaming HIM for losing the game when it was LUCY who pulled the football away? What kind of football player pulls the ball away from his OWN KICKER? When he's trying to make a GAME-WINNING FIELD GOAL?

But I digress.

The best way to attack this special is to split it into two parts. The first part gets underway immediately as the Birds (no relation to the band who sang "Eight Miles High") are gearing up for their postseason run for the AFL Championship. That's AFL as in "Animal Football League", which basically means you get a lot of scenes of animals standing on their hind legs and tackling each other.

Oh yeah, and Snoopy is their head coach. He is Snoopy; question it not.

Their first game is the Eastern Division Championship against their arch-rivals the Cats, and thanks to Snoopy's coaching, the Cats' general ineptitude and some reused animation, the Birds easily dominate their opponents. They win the game 38-0, are Eastern Division champions, and give Snoopy a celebratory Gator--oh wait, that's a brand name--a celebratory CHIRPade bath.

I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition!

After the opening credits, we begin the second part of this special, and what's a Peanuts special that has anything remotely to do with football without that old chestnut where Lucy holds the ball for Charlie Brown to kick only to pull it away at the last second?

Well, this gag is interrupted by the annoucement of a punt-pass-and-kick competition which all the kids decide to enter, the winner recieving a prize of a new bicycle and tickets to "the finals at the Super Bowl." I thought the Super Bowl WAS the finals...

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown takes Lucy's momentary distraction as an opportunity to try and kick that football she's still holding, with the usual results.

Chuck and Linus take some time to practice when they run into a new girl in town named Miss Melody Melody, whom they are both immediatlely smitten for, and tell her about the contest over some ice cream.

Peggy Jean, the little red-haired girl, and now her. Chuck, you sly dog.

Go on. She's pulled the football away hundreds of times. What makes you think she'll do it again?

Speaking of dogs, we go straight to the AFL East-West Conference Championship, where the birds are playing a team composed of anthropomorphic dogs this time. After some more bumblin', fumblin' and stumblin' and more reused animation, the Dogs prove to be just as hopeless as the Cats, getting pummeled 56-0 and sending the Birds off to the World Championship. And Snoopy gets another Chirpade bath.

Well, the brunt of this next part focuses on the punt-pass-and-kick competition, so we'll just talk about the visual aspects.

First off, the reason you will never find this special on DVD anywhere EVER, apart from its trademark-infringing title--all of the characters in this punt-pass-and-kick competition are all wearing helmets with NFL team logos on them. In fact, you may have also seen the NFL logo on the scoreboard during the Birds' football games. Not sure why it's there, since this is the ANIMAL Football League, but perhaps this was written before the merger.

The 49ers? I think a CHIEFS helmet would suit Charlie Brown better.
Lucy in a RAIDERS helmet, however, is a perfect match.

Also--you know how some of the Peanuts characters have last names? Charlie and Sally Brown? Linus and Lucy Van Pelt? One strip even revealed another character's full name as "Peppermint" Patricia Reichardt.

Well, in this special we learn two more. Give a warm welcome to Franklin ARMSTRONG and Marcie JOHNSON.

Schulz didn't really consider the TV specials canon, however, since some of them had Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty going to the same school, so I'm sure they're unofficial surnames.

Getting back to the action here, Charlie Brown actually does really well in punting and throwing the ball. In fact he may very well have this competition in the bag.

That is, until Linus takes the field and trumps him by mere inches.

Linus' fleeting moment of glory is spoiled, however, thanks to a dark horse contestant: Miss Melody Melody, who leaves both of them in her dust and takes the bike and the trip to the Super Bowl. Incidentally, she's wearing a Dallas Cowboys helmet, and...didn't they win the Super Bowl that year?

Linus is noticeably crestfallen. As for Charlie Brown...hey, you came in third place. That's better than your baseball team's done...EVER. Maybe you're playing the wrong sport. Or maybe it's because Lucy's not holding the ball this time, I dunno.

Hey, Melody Melody! You've just won tickets to the Super Bowl! What are you going to do next?
"I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!"

Anyway, now that that's happened, let's return to AFL action, where the Birds are in the World Championship.

And who are they playing next? They've already beaten a team of football-playing cats and a team of football-playing dogs...who do they face in the Championship?

Okay, this special's getting weird.

Yes, it's the Birds against a thundering herd of bison in football uniforms for the world championship.

And it seems the Birds have had it too easy for too long. The Bison clearly have an advantage in size and a cunning strategy. The Birds are in way over their heads now as the Bison prove to be too much for them to handle. How will they pull themselves out of this hole? They're clearly over-matched! The Bison are easily dominating this game! Is there any hope for this squad of plucky avians? Somehow they'll have to come together as a team and find a way to overcome this powerful Bison attack!





Nahh, I'm just kidding. It's just more recycled animation of birds running rings around larger animals. The Birds win 68-0 and become world champions. The only difference is that this time, Lucy is there for some reason to talk down the coach and the team, and she gets the Chirpade bath this time.

Wait...didn't Buffalo LOSE the Super Bowl that year? Surreal.

Look at the ref, tossing the coin like he's done this before.

I think I see how this became the last Peanuts special for a while.

Don't get me wrong, it's not completely terrible or anything. The punt-pass-and-kick plot with Melody Melody wasn't at least. Nobody acted out of character or anything, and Marcie even got a couple of funny lines. ("Splendid Bowl"--tee hee). It's just...not very deep. Melody Melody isn't really that interesting a character--she just appears at one point to establish some kind of love triangle story and then doesn't really come back until the very end. And as for the subplot with Woodstock's football team...BISON? Seriously? I mean, I know there's a dog who can walk on his hind legs and fly in a plane first-class, but...BISON?

Well, it's only a hair MORE plausible than a football team composed entirely of birds beating other larger animal football teams by monumental blowouts.

Plus, the animation is not that great and I haven't heard such grating voices in a Peanuts special since It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. I think you could tell that after thirty-seven specials, four feature films and two TV series, by the time You're in the Super Bowl premiered, they were kind of worn out.

Still, for a Peanuts special, I suppose you could do worse. I mean, there's always It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown.

Ehhh. I prefer soccer anyways.

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

The Prophecy has come to pass, that there would come to us a Chosen One, and that he, having no child of his own, would love all children everywhere, and that he himself would be an artisan, and a craftsman, and a skilled maker of toys.
...
From this day on, now and forever, you will bring all our gifts to all the children in all the world, and all this to be done on Christmas Eve.
...
The night of the world is a passage of endless night for you, until your mission is done. This is your legacy, and your gift, as is the gift of flight. Now, all those within the sound of my voice, and all those on this Earth everywhere know that henceforth, you will be called...Santa Claus. And now, everyone, Merry Christmas.

ANOTHER Santa Claus movie? Well, if it's Christmas...

Yes, conceived by the production team who gave you the first three Superman movies and directed by Jeannot Szwarc, whose name I still haven't learned to pronounce since I reviewed Supergirl last spring, it's Santa Claus: THE MOVIE. That's right. You can forget Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. You can forget the mystical train wreck that was Mexican Santa Claus. You can forget both the original Miracle on 34th Street AND its remake. You can forget every holiday special you've ever seen. Nope, this movie is it. The DEFINITIVE Santa Claus movie. I'm fairly certain they wouldn't have added "THE MOVIE" in the title if it weren't so.

Don't let the above title card fool you. This is Santa Claus: THE MOVIE. Finito. The end. Done.

Now then, the best way to approach this movie I've found would be to split it into two parts, since the first part of the film is very loosely connected to the second. As it's a movie about the origins of Santa Claus, I'm thinking a nice ITALIC font will suit it wonderfully. Also, you might want to bring your children closer to the screen and pretend that I'm reading this to them out loud in a warm, friendly voice.

Here we go...*ahem*

Once upon a time, many years ago somewhere in northern Europe, there lived a kindly old toy-maker and his wife (played by David Huddleston and Judy Cornwell) in a village deep in the forests. This toy-maker was particularly fond of children, but not in the kind of way that gets you sent to prison, and every year around the winter solstice, he and his wife would ride around in their reindeer-driven sleigh and give out toys to all the children of the village.

One year, there was a terrible blizzard, which did not deter the toy-maker and his wife from giving away their toys as they did every year. But while they were out there, the snow blew so hard that the reindeer could not continue, and it looked like the old couple would freeze to death in the blinding snow. Luckily, some unseen force rescues them and deposits them at the North Pole, where they are greeted by a clan of short-statured people known as "Vendequm" (or elves, if you like) who take them back to their big house sitting at the top of the world.

"It's only a model."
"Shh!"

The elves, as it happens, are toy-makers themselves, and have been seeking a middle-aged childless couple who love children dearly to help them give their toys to all the children of the world. With the help of some magical reindeer feed, he and his sleigh driven by eight tiny reindeer will fly all over the world to distribute all of the toys in one night, the shroud of nighttime travelling with him until his job is done.

Finally, the big day arrives, and as the toy-maker is about to set off, he, his wife and the elves are visited by a wise and ancient elf, played by Burgess Meredith, who gives him the name that the whole world will know him by--Santa Claus.

And so, throughout the centuries, every Christmas Eve Santa Claus and his reindeer flew all over the world giving toys to all the children, and his legend was spread to the four corners of the Earth.

All time zones meet at the North Pole, and it's always 4:20 somewhere, dudes!

Of course, over time some minor adjustments were made to the system, including the introduction of "naughty" and "nice" lists to make sure that only the good children received gifts, and Santa at one point was put on a diet after a certain poet described him as having a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly, but nonetheless Christmas cheer was spread throughout the planet.

Well, except for the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim households, but I'm sure their children were still very happy.

"By the way, if you see a man dressed in a caped bat costume, kindly run him over for me, would you? Thanks."

*cough cough* Ullggh. Never doing THAT again.

Part two takes place when we finally get to the late 20th Century and involves two children named Joe and Cornelia. Joe is a homeless boy who mostly hangs around Cornelia's house and stares through her window (this is not creepy in the slightest), and Cornelia is a rich little girl who frequently leaves some food out for him and would later go on to star in The Parent Trap II. It also helps to know one of the elves whom we were introduced to in part one - the one named Patch (Dudley Moore), an inventive elf who's all about technology, modernity and bad elf puns.

And now we meet the villain of our story, a evil cigar-sucking businessman (oh, what other type is there?) named B.Z., played by 3rd Rock's John Lithgow. He makes toys too...only his aren't built as well. In fact, as a Senate hearing scene teaches us, his dolls are more flammable than napalm and his plush toys are stuffed with glass shards, nails and sawdust. Not like he cares or anything; the more profit he makes the better. He's evil, after all.

"Now let's find Donald Trump and spit on his head! Ho ho ho!"

It seems that after centuries of making and delivering toys, the parents of the world are making children too fast for Santa to keep up, so he decides to make one of his elves his assistant. The top two elves for the job are Patch and some other guy whose name I can't remember, and Patch easily wins thanks to a factory-style toy making machine he builds. While delivering these toys, Santa finds Joe, gives him a joyride in his sleigh (NOT CREEPY), tries to impress him with a reindeer trick known as the "Super Duper Looper", a 360-degree loop-de-loop trick but can't when one of his reindeer has a touch of acrophobia, then drops him off at Cornelia's.

Unfortunately for Patch, his machine doesn't prove to be as efficient as he thought, and when his new toys are returned in pieces, Patch, sensing he is to be fired, not only resigns his post, but runs away from the workshop in shame. He arrives in New York City, finds B.Z., and having no knowledge of such things as recalls, lawsuits and product safety regulations, offers to make him some money--I mean, TOYS, make him some toys--to prove himself to Santa somehow.

Five seconds of that commercial and suddenly you're too old to believe in Santa Claus. B.Z. is an evil GENIUS.

Patch's idea is to make lollipops sprinkled with reindeer feed that will make whomever eats them float in the air a la Ed Wynn from Mary Poppins. (Yeah yeah, "you should hear about what they put in hot dogs", I know.) He also builds himself a silly-looking rocket-powered sleigh to deliver them to children. B.Z. reluctantly agrees to give these lollipops away as long as he get to use the classic dope-dealer "first-batch-is-free-the-second-one-will-cost-ya" business model.

Ehh, I prefer happy thoughts and pixie dust. Organic ingredients, fewer calories and no added sugar.

Despite the lack of FDA tests for possibly harmful ingredients, and the fact that the kids are basically eating reindeer chow, the lollipops are a big hit and people all over the country are floating several feet in the air. In fact, they're so popular that apparently the police forgot all about those unsafe toy claims and B.Z. is contemplating starting a second Christmas in March to market some reindeer chow-sprinkled candy canes (I think you'd have to talk to the church about that), while back at the North Pole word of Patch's success sends Santa into a bit of a depression.

Well, maybe kids would like you more if you didn't make all of your toys out of wood. I mean, nothing against wood, it has its charm, but it's the late 20th century and I think most of the major toy manufacturers have moved on to plastics now. I mean, wood DOES have its disadvantages--it's more flammable, it doesn't break as easily, there's a risk of splinters...

Meanwhile, Cornelia wishes a merry Christmas to her step-uncle:

BUM BUM BUMMMM DRAMATIC REVERB!!

One night, while Cornelia brings a sickly Joe inside to warm up, B.Z.'s lackey Towser (Jeffrey Kramer) makes an urgent late-night house call conveniently within earshot. The kids listen as B.Z. vocally anticipating overthrowing Santa Claus and taking over Christmas to where kids will be writing to HIM for presents. Sadly, Joe sneezes, gets caught and is dragged away by the chauffeur to be bound and gagged in the toy factory (apparently the kid's movie equivalent of cement shoes), so he misses the part where Towser mentions that the candy canes explode when exposed to heat.

Cornelia, however, does not.

As they leave, B.Z. is entertaining the idea of covering up this "minor" defect, running away to Brazil and letting Patch take the fall.

It's nice and all, but do the rims keep spinning when it stops?

Patch finds Joe at the factory, discovers Santa gave him a wood carving of himself as a gift (whereas I'm sure a loving family would have sufficed in a heartwarming holiday story such as this), he takes Joe with him to the North Pole on his rocket sleigh to take the candy canes to Santa to deliver for next year. Cornelia contacts Santa for help, and the two of them chase after the rocket sleigh, which is riding along blissfully unaware that the candy canes in the back are starting to get hot.

Meanwhile, at B.Z.'s toy factory, Cornelia has tipped off the police and they've come to arrest him. After snarfing down a handful of his candy canes hidden in his desk drawer, B.Z. attempts to fly out the window to elude the cops...and quickly floats straight upwards into the Earth's atmosphere.

I think we'd better recall those Fizzy Lifting Drinks.

Back to the chase, eventually the rocket sleigh explodes in midair, sending Patch and Joe flying through the air towards certain doom, and only resolving the slightly hinted-at subplot of Santa's reindeer overcoming their fear of heights and pulling off the "Super Duper Looper" can save them!

Apparently.

The story ends back at the workshop, where Patch is welcomed home, the Clauses adopt Joe and Cornelia is allowed to stay until next Christmas. Then they all dance around in celebration.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except for B.Z., who will eventually die of asphyxiation in the vacuum of space while his lifeless body enters a low orbit around the Earth.

"You will bow down before me, Kringle! You and one day your heirs!"

Since its release, many film critics have called Santa Claus: THE MOVIE as one of the worst Christmas movies ever, accusing the thin plot and so-called "garish" production design, while those who grew up with the film consider it a holiday favorite.

Me?

Well...I liked the first part. The filmmakers honestly try to pull off a decent Santa Claus origin story, and for the most part, it's actually pretty solid. David Huddleston does a pretty good Santa, and the special effects and the interiors of Santa's workshop certainly don't hurt. There were some things they don't really explain, though, like why all the elves gathered in one spot directly underneath a telescope and waited for a snowfall for something they called "season's greetings" which came off as kinda superfluous, but it still had its charm.

As for the second part, I can't really make up my mind about it. It is nice in places, like the parts with the kids, but as demonstrated there were some bits and pieces I couldn't help but nitpick. And John Lithgow's B.Z.--good grief. There's over the top, and then there's...that. There's evil, and then there's stuffing teddy bears with nails and sawdust and not giving a damn. There's overacting, and then there's...John Lithgow's B.Z. He comes right out of a freaking cartoon. His character is so typecast that they honestly forgot to give him some other motive than "overthrow Santa Claus."

Regardless, Santa Claus: THE MOVIE isn't really a bad film to sit through at the yuletide season. It's a little bit silly, but not to the extent of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and I can say a considerable amount of effort was put into it. It's a gentle, mostly harmless film, at least for children.

And the best part is we're in international waters - no adoption papers to sign!