"It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman" (1975)

I hate Superman. The big showoff. I like monogrammed shirts as well as the next guy, but that big red 'S'? Superman? Heh. Anyone without a last name has gotta be a little weird.
--Max Mencken

The 1960s Batman TV series, it seems, is having a resurgence in popularity as of late. Not only did DC Comics launch a new Batman series last year that's based on the show as well as a new line of action figures and toys, but it looks as though after all these years it will finally be coming out on DVD sometime later this year.

For fans of the show, the comic, or just lovers of "adventure, escapism, unadulterated entertainment, the ridiculous and the bizarre", that is very good news indeed. Adam West's Batman will always hold a special place in American pop culture, not only for its continuing influence on present Batman incarnations, but also as being the gold standard in superhero camp. From its eccentric supervillains to its Batclimb cameos to its Bat-gadgets to its Bat-fights and everything else in between, it's a silly, lighthearted superhero romp that's still fun to watch almost fifty years on.

And though many since then have tried to mimic its charm, most have not even come close. Not even the Man of Steel himself.

This TV special is based off the Broadway flop It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, penned by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams It first debuted at the Alvin Theater on March 29, 1966 and closed  three and a half months later despite positive reviews and three Tony Award nominations, but since then it has been revived in theaters across the country, including an updated version performed in Dallas in 2010.

As for the TV special, it aired on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment on February 1, 1975 as an attempt to make back the money it lost on Broadway, but not without some changes to the original script - the show was edited to run in the time allotted, some of the villains were changed from Chinese acrobats to Mafia men, and the musical numbers were updated to sound more 70s-like. Par for the course for most of the TV specials I've reviewed, it has only aired once and has not been rerun since.

I haven't seen the musical myself, but if it's anything remotely like this, then I'm not so sure I want to now.

We begin by meeting our principal cast and learning where they stand on this whole Superman issue:

Kenneth Mars a.k.a. King Triton plays Max Mencken, Daily Planet columnist and smug egomaniac who is decidedly anti-Superman, likely because comparing himself to the Man of Steel makes his penis shrivel.

Lesley Ann Warren a.k.a. Miss Scarlett a.k.a. Cinderella plays Lois Lane, who is (obviously) pro-Superman to the point where she gets all giddy just talking about him.

She is also perpetually high.

Loretta Swit a.k.a. "Hot Lips" as the luscious Sydney Carlton, another reporter who is Max's girl Friday and madly in love with him. She's sort of a Superman-centrist.

David Wayne a.k.a. The Mad Hatter as Dr. Abner Sedgwick, professor at the Metropolis Institute of Technology, mad scientist and part of a fringe group of anti-Superman radicals who sees the Man of Steel as a roadblock on his path to world domination.

I'm guessing Lex Luthor was busy.

And finally David Wilson, who will probably never work in Hollywood again, as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet (and a COLOSSAL mega-dork) who is quite pro-Superman, since...well...he IS Superman.

Oh, yeah, and the unmistakable voice of Gary Owens narrates.

The plot of this special is divided up into chapters, so we'll analyze it in the same manner:

Chapter 1:
WHO HE IS AND HOW HE CAME TO BE

Not much to this part, really. It covers Superman's origin--infant survivor of the destruction of his home planet Krypton, flown on a rocket to Earth, lands in the heart of the clearly labeled "Good Old U.S.A.", found inside a rocketship in the middle of the Kansas wastelands by the couple from the American Gothic painting, develops superpowers, and finally grows into manhood and becomes the legendary SUPERMAN!!

FASTER THAN A PLASTIC SPEEDING BULLET ON A WIRE!

MORE POWERFUL THAN A DRAWING OF A LOCOMOTIVE!

ABLE TO LEAP TALL SUPERIMPOSED BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE FRAME!

Then we get a song about how the people of Metropolis say they need him because he saves their babies from a fire, saves their relatives from muggers, gives the orphans Christmas turkey and flies the policeman's asthmatic son to Albuquerque for no other reason than that the song needed a word that rhymes with "turkey."

Looks like Gerber baby foods learned their lesson after that one marketing fiasco.

Chapter 2:
MERCHANT OF DOOM

Clark Kent settles in at his job as reporter at the Planet and is ignored by everyone around him, including Lois who sits in the desk across from him. And it seems that all the paper ever prints is news about Superman--if it's not Lois writing headlines about him (and singing about how he never tells her he loves her and just saves her all the time in something rejected from Grease) it's Max writing some Fox News-style smear column about him (this time it's about how he disrupts commercial airline flight paths).

Meanwhile, at the Deserted Warehouse deserted warehouse, a convention of Italian mobster stereotypes (three of whom are the nefarious Batman villain False Face, notorious movie biker Eric Von Zipper and...Al from Happy Days) discuss "rubbing out" Superman. Then they sing about how America is such a great place to be a mobster in and how it would be a better one if Superman were dead.

Wow. We've only had three songs so far and already I hate this.

Are they reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or pulling out their guns all at once? The answer isn't worth knowing.

Dr. Sedgwick visits the Daily Planet to quite casually inform them that a death ray he has created at the university has gone crazy and Metropolis is, in fact, doomed. With his superhearing, Clark Kent learns of this, transforms into Superman and heads out to destroy the device, with Sedgwick anticipating he will fail and die in the attempt."Will Superman make it in time?" asks Gary Owens.

Chapter 3:
SUPERMAN MAKES IT!

(Dude! Spoilers!)

Superman...uhh...makes it. The death ray is destroyed and the city is saved. Who makes a friggin death ray, and WHY?

Sedgwick rues this setback, and monologues to the audience why he wants to get rid of Superman: to rule the world. And why does he want to rule the world? Because he want to obliterate Sweden. And WHY does he want to obliterate Sweden? Because he has been snubbed for the Nobel Prize for ten straight years and is a bit of a sore loser, vowing revenge on the entire Nobel Prize committee. In fact, he even sings about it.

Just before his song ends, Gary cuts in and asks "What is the one terrible thing that Dr. Sedgwick will have before he dies?" (What do you think he's been singing about?)

Chapter 4:
SEDGWICK'S REVENGE

(Is this for real?)

Sedgwick finishes his song, which Max overhears, and the two of them decide to team up and destroy him. Then Max takes advantage of the Daily Planet's criminally lenient sexual harassment policy and tries to musically hit on Lois after blowing off another date with Sydney, but Lois rightly brushes him aside to continue brooding over Superman.

"Wanna see how much faster than a speeding bullet I can be?"

Chapter 5:
THE NET TIGHTENS

The mobsters continue discussing rubbing out Superman, making unfunny jokes, mimicking bad Three Stooges visual gags, and finally decide to visit Sedgwick for advice on how to rub out Superman, while he and his new friend Max scheme to make Superman destroy himself.

Meanwhile, Sydney musically hits on Clark, with the musical's most popular song "You've Got Possibilities", which is the least worst song in the whole special and perhaps the only thing that has survived this special.

"Will Clark Kent find happiness with a new love?" asks Gary Owens.

Chapter 6:
CLARK KENT FINDS HAPPINESS

(If you're not gonna take this seriously, why should I bother?)

Clark is happy.

Sedgwick decides to give Superman a chance to disgrace himself at a thank-you-for-trashing-our-death-ray ceremony by staging a calamity. Then they both sing a song about being partners with romantic overtones. I'll say no more about it.

Then the mobsters bust in and ask Sedgwick to rub out Superman. How convenient. Henchmen.

The Three Stooge-fathers.

Chapter 7:
OH CLARK, HAVE YOU BEEN THERE ALL ALONG?

The above chapter title has been a running gag throughout this musical so far. It's what Lois keeps asking Clark whenever he speaks to her.

Anyway, it turns out Clark and Sydney weren't compatible after all, but at least Sydney's little song gave Clark the self-confidence to talk to Lois. Though Lois is slightly disappointed that it's Clark falling for her and not Superman.

In song.

Apparently they had to CUT SOME SONGS OUT to make this special run in the time allotted.

"Wanna see how much faster than a speeding bullet I can be?"

Anyway, while Clark Kent is ironically sent out to cover Superman's big ceremony, Sedgwick, Max and the thugs plot to plant a huge cartoon-sized bomb at city hall to go off during it.

"Will Superman fall into this dastardly trap?"

Chapter 8:
SUPERMAN...TRAPPED!

Superman's big ceremony arrives, and Sedgwick is there to heap false praise on him to a crowd of energetic students. It turns out he's having a laundry named after him. That's gratitude for ya. You'd think he'd get a statue or a plaque or something, but a LAUNDROMAT? Wow.

While he's there, a news bulletin somehow interrupts something that's not on television to report that Metropolis City Hall has blown up. Max is on hand in the newsroom to angrily blame Superman and generally heap abuse on him for not being there to stop it. Needless to say, the crowd instantly get word of this and turn on their hero pretty quickly.

"Think of me the next time you want to clean skid marks off your tighty whities!"

Chapter 9:
GET LOST, SUPERMAN

As Max gloats about the Man of Steel's downfall as if his manhood grew an inch or three--

Okay...Max...can you bend steel bars? Do you have X-ray vision? Super hearing? Can you even FLY? What makes you think you could possibly compete with Superman? I mean, what's YOUR superpower? Smarminess? Obnoxiousness? Having an ego the size of Krypton?

Anyway, as Sydney sings another song of unrequited love, the mafia clones sneak in, kidnap him and steal him back to MIT, where Sedgwick reveals that he has a computer that can deduce the true identity of Superman. After some comic misunderstanding where Sedgwick is convinced that it's Max, eventually they all come to realize that it is, in fact, Clark Kent.

Chapter 10:
CURTAINS FOR SUPERMAN

Cut to Clark Kent's apartment where Superman is...depressed. He sings a sad little song about how depressed he is while somewhere in Germany, Friedrich Nietzsche proceeds to turn over in his grave.

"And none of the other kids would play with me, and...once I accidentally used my X-ray vision on my fifth-grade teacher..."

Sedgwick pays him a surprise visit, sits Superman down and plays psychiatrist with him, i.e. emotionally kicks him when he's down by saying his X-ray vision makes him a pervert, claiming all the good he does covers up guilt for leaving Krypton to explode by being a baby in a rocketship at the time, and finishing up by saying that all his superpowers make him a unloved freak. Supes by this time is too depressed to even wonder how he figured out where his alter ego lives when he and Max invite Lois over to drive the final nail in the coffin by saying she's in love with Clark Kent before getting kidnapped by the mafia clowns.

The next scene has Superman in red cape and blue tights clutching an anchor and proceeding to jump off a bridge.

Some Übermensch YOU turned out to be.

"Is this finally the end of Superman?"

Chapter 11:
SUPERMAN TRIUMPHANT

(Uhh...a guy is attempting suicide here, this is no time for spoilerific chapter title jokes, however weak)

Superman's suicide attempt fails ("super-lungs"...ha ha) and he just pulls himself out of the river when he is greeted a pair of students from the laundry ceremony who teach him that there's nothing wrong with being a freak, and some of history's greatest figures were freaks, like Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus and...Abraham Lincoln.

Yes, they're actually calling Abraham Lincoln a freak. For his Emancipation Proclamation. Because in their words, "freeing the brothers was the freakiest thing of the 1800s". They actually say that.

Also, I guess it's worth mentioning that these kids are named Jerry and Joe, an obvious nod to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of the Superman comic.

"Why are we taking hostages again?"
"I dunno, boss--we started with the dame and then I guess we got carried away..."

Segdwick and Max celebrate Superman's self-destruction by strapping Lois to a chair with a bomb for no reason. Well, actually, the bomb is there to destroy any incriminating evidence against Sedgwick for driving Superman to suicide; as to why they dragged Lois in and tied her to it, your guess is a good as mine.

Then Sedgwick double-crosses Max and ties HIM to a chair which somehow detonates the bomb under Lois' chair from so much as a sneeze.

Then Sedgwick gets double-crossed himself when the mafia guys tie HIM to a chair as well.
 
Anyway, to finally put an end to this farce, Superman busts into Sedgwick's lab, engages the mafia guys in a lame, one-sided onomatopoeia-laden Batfight while singing a song about regaining his self-confidence, rescues Lois and leaves the remaining two malcontents to their apparent deaths when Max hiccups and blows the lab sky-high. Don't worry--in the next scene it turns out the explosion just turned them into good guys and even made them forget Superman's true identity and everything goes back to normal.

"I'm a good guy now. This is my good guy face. I love being a good guy."

Wow. This...is...stupid. Really, really stupid. Not even on the same level as Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, where it's stupid but watchable. Or the Flash Gordon movie, where it's stupid but at least has Brian Blessed and Queen and everyone's at least enjoying themselves.

I think one of the reasons that Batman '66 works well is that it's a show with energy. It's a lighthearted superhero romp that keeps its foot firmly on the gas pedal right up until the final Bat-punch. Every time the Joker comes on screen or the Penguin whips out a gas-spraying umbrella or the Riddler starts giggling maniacally, it adds to the whimsy.

This Superman special doesn't have the same energy. In fact, it doesn't have any energy at all. I wasn't really expecting anything from Alan Moore, but from its Roy Lichtenstein knockoff sets to its bottom-of-the-barrel production values to its lackluster writing, it isn't really all that exciting or compelling or even entertaining. Plus, none of the jokes are funny, most of the characters are annoying, including Superman and ESPECIALLY Max, and as for the songs...well, okay, that "possibilities" song was all right, but the rest of them are pretty forgettable.

In summary, if you think Adam West's Batman is too silly, too ridiculous and too corny for your taste, watch this special and see everything that Batman COULD have been...and thankfully wasn't.

Where's General Zod when you need him?

"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.

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Once upon a time...or maybe twice...there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland.

Eighty thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay...or lie. I'm not too sure.

From the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1963 would emerge a quartet which would forever change the face of popular music.

What could be said about the Beatles that hasn't already been said millions of times by millions of people in the past few decades? Apart from "about time iTunes put their music up in their online store"? Most influential rock band of all time, put out some of the best music ever recorded, sold millions of records, at least three of them went on to successful solo careers after their breakup in 1970, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

With a band as successful as the Fab Four, it seemed only natural that they would make a transition into the motion pictures...and they did, with the 1964 Richard Lester film A Hard Day's Night, regarded by moviegoers all over as one of the greatest rock 'n' roll films of all time. This was followed up one year later with Help!, which I can best describe as A Hard Day's Night with a plot...and also in color. The Beatles weren't too pleased with Help!, and coupled with the poor reception of their 1967 made-for-TV effort Magical Mystery Tour, they were kind of turned off on the whole starring-in-movies thing.

So perhaps it came as a great relief to them that their fourth film would be a little more...animated.

Yellow Submarine was NOT the Beatles' first foray into animation. That honor would go to a 39-episode Saturday morning cartoon series of their namesake produced in 1965 by British animation studio TVC. In it, the band traveled the world, played gigs and got into scrapes not uncommon for any 1960s TV show. The actual Beatles hated it. So when the time came to make this film, TVC threw out their original art and character designs and hired artist Heinz Edelmann to give the movie its trademark psychedelic pop art feel. George Dunning, who had produced the TV series, was chosen to direct.

As for the band themselves, they only agreed to the film as a means of finishing out their movie deal with United Artists, and thus their contribution was minimal. They don't voice themselves, but they did contribute four original songs to the soundtrack--"All Together Now", "Only a Northern Song", "Hey Bulldog" and "It's All Too Much". However, they later saw a draft copy of the finished product and were so impressed by it that they chose to appear as themselves in a live-action cameo at the end of the movie.

The film was remastered and re-released in 1999 for the first time on DVD (I remember giving my sister a VHS copy for Christmas that year) but since then it's gone out of print and hasn't seen another DVD release since. In that time, Robert Zemeckis and Disney had threatened to remake the film with ghastly 3-D motion capture animation and release it in time for the London Olympics next year; luckily those plans were torpedoed by the poor performance of his all-zombie Christmas Carol and the CATASTROPHIC reception of his adaptation of Berkeley Breathed's Mars Needs Moms.

Welcome to Pepperland, a paradise of green pastures and blue skies eighty thousand leagues under the sea, where the air is crisp, the scenery is more colorful than normal, and the music is always playing to the delight of its denizens. Everything's happy and peaceful and love and peace are in the air and all the rest of it. It's also the home of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band--the original one, mind you. Don't know who those other guys were...posers.

We're Sgt. Pepper's. Yes, we're the real Sgt. Pepper's. All you other Sgt. Pepper's' are just imitating.

Meanwhile, far out on the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of Pepperland live some contemptible creatures known as Blue Meanies, who hate music and color and all things nice and won't even answer in the affirmative. No really, they answer every question with "no", even when in the affirmative. They have an army, led by the Chief Blue Meanie, a blue fuzzy thing with rabbit ears and a psychotic demeanor, and his subordinate Max. And they have clowns;

fat men dressed in fezzes who can eat things with their stomachs;

a flying glove;

a squadron of cat-like butterfly stompers;

and some rather tall blokes who like to drop giant green apples on things.

And they're about to launch an invasion. In fact, they just have. Trapping the house band in a giant bubble, they set about laying waste to Pepperland, destroying the landscape, immobilizing civilians, setting off explosions and...dropping giant green apples on things. The Lord Mayor of Pepperland, who only notices that they're under attack when three members of his quartet are suddenly silenced, takes Old Fred (or Young Fred, whichever you like) the sea captain atop an Aztec-like structure where atop sits the titular vessel, and sends him off to points unknown to get help. The submarine takes off just before the Mayor has some giant green apples dropped on him.

After sailing through the title song and opening credits, the submarine finally comes out in Liverpool, England, where after an melancholy inner-city animation sequence to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby", it finds none other than Ringo Starr of the fabulous Beatles, who gets a little nervous as the sub follows him all the way to his house. After docking, Fred makes his situation known to him through the front door via incoherent babbling about submarines and explosions and finishing on Blue Meanies, and Ringo lets him inside their psychedelic TARDIS/cartoon cliche endless hall of doors of a house to gather his friends.

A Frankenstein's monster awakens and drinks a steaming potion to turn itself into John.

George is sitting in a Eastern-style meditation room...but then drives up to Fred and the others from behind.

Paul emerges fresh from an out-of-shot Mozart concert in one of their house's many rooms.

So with all of the Beatles on board, literally and metaphorically, the submarine takes off with the aid of a certain song played to death by those annoying Sprint commercials en route to Pepperland.

Before they get there, however, they must embark on a periolous journey through the many many seas that lie before them. Besides, this is a musical film and we need something to play Beatles songs to.

THE SEA OF TIME

This particular part of the...well, I know there's no water, but let's call it an ocean anyway because I can't imagine a submarine sailing through anything else has the power to alter the passage of time for anyone that passes through it which could be dangerous as there is the risk of death or pre-life and THEN death. Old Fred and the Beatles suddenly become younger (Ringo cries for his mother, very cute) and then age just as rapidly, but a simple sing-song of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and they make it through the area with their present ages.

THE SEA OF SCIENCE

Nothing much happens here--just a set piece for "Only a Northern Song". Most psychedelic moment of the film, though, if you ask me.

THE SEA OF MONSTERS

Whilst observing and occasionally fighting off the local wildlife, and giving the audience some quick visual gags in the process, Ringo accidentally pushes a button which ejects him from the submarine. Fred and the remaining band members must fight off a vacuum monster, a creature with boxing gloves and a swarm of beings made to look like Native Americans to save him.

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice some instruments falling out of the bottom of the sub while the lads are fighting off the boxing monster (plot point), as well as a banner coming out the back with THE ROLLING STONES written on it (not important, just worth mentioning).

The vacuum dude eventually sucks up the submarine, then the background, and then itself, which segues into

THE SEA OF NOTHING

Pretty self-explanatory, this one. Just...nothing. Emptiness. Blankness. Absence of content. Not a good place for the submarine's motor to break down.

Luckily the band finds a local who might help fix it--Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., a little green guy who talks in rhyming couplets and looks a little like a Blue Meanie except for the fact that he's...well, green. And quite polite as well. He's the "Nowhere Man" who spends all day sitting in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Hey, that reminds me of a song.

A song that hurts Jeremy's feeling a little afterward, so Ringo makes up for it by inviting him to join them on the sub.

THE SEA OF HEADS

(also known as the Foothills of the Headlands)

When the sub breaks down again after just having left the Sea of Nothing, Jeremy's attempts to fix it with chewing gum sends it flying off to points unknown, leaving him and the Beatles stranded. As they walk around, John manages to amuse himself with one head that shows pictures of rotoscoped dancing girls and plays "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Love that song.

Some friendly heads with allergies sneeze them in the general direction of

THE SEA OF HOLES

Another self-explanatory one. Big black dots you can fall through as far as the eye can see, one of which will lead them to the Sea of Green, and from there it's a straight shot to Pepperland. John says that this place reminds him of Blackburn, Lancashire. Jeremy notes that now they know how many it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Ringo pockets one of the holes ("I've got a hole in my pocket") while a random Blue Meanie rummaging though the holes pockets Jeremy.

Ringo finds the Sea of Green by stepping on a green hole, and just like that, they've arrived in Pepperland. Ahead of the submarine by a minute or two, even, but let's not deny it a grand entrance.

THE SEA OF...oh wait, this is Pepperland, we've arrived, sorry

It seems Pepperland has fallen into further decay while Fred was gone. The crowd just stands there totally lifeless, everything is drained of color, Blue Meanies are running around bullying people...sounds like military school without the gun practice. After the Lord Mayor revived with a bit of singing and pulled out of the green apple pile, he notices that the help Fred has brought in bears a striking resemblance to the Lonely Hearts Club Band--hey! The could impersonate them and play the music to rally the populace to revolt!

Only one problem--they lost all their instruments in the Sea of Monsters (go back and watch it again--seriously, blink and you'd miss it) and they'll have to infiltrate the Meanie forces to get to the gazebo where they've stashed every music-making device in Pepperland!

Which they do.

Just another case of The Man trying to keep us down.

The next day, after running away from Meanies, armed with contraband musical ammunition and dressed as the locals' hometown favorites, the Beatles launch the first wave of their campaign to take back Pepperland--a performance of the intro track of their Sgt. Pepper's album--not only do they look just like them, but they also know their songs, what are the odds of that?--which awakens the people to take their freedoms back from the blue menace.

The Meanies retaliate by sending in their flying glove, which momentarily worries the populace, but a defiant John takes him on mano-a-mano (pun intended, Spanish speakers) and with the power of the sudden physical materialization of his words as he sings "All You Need is Love", makes a quick job of him. And with the music bringing the color back to the flora and fauna of Pepperland and the audience digging the vibes, the Meanies are sent packing.

Using Ringo's souvenir from the Sea of Holes, the Beatles dissipate the bubble thing silencing the Lonely Hearts Club Band and together, with the help of a old-timey piano, they confound the Meanies' four-headed bulldog into submission while singing "Hey Bulldog" in a musical moment which was never seen in America until the 1999 remastering.

"What is it?"
"I don't know. Some kind of toilet?"
"Maybe if we bark at it, it'll go away."

Ringo finds and frees Jeremy, and raring to join in the fight he stumbles upon the Chief Blue Meanie, distressed at the sight of his once-menacing forces running away in droves and desperate to get something out of this battle. He attempts to kill Jeremy, but as a last request Jeremy recites some poetry which has the power to sprout roses all over the Meanie's body, sending him away too.

Floral print? I'd thought even a Blue Meanie would have more fashion sense than that.

With the Pepperlanders victorious and the Meanies contemplating moving to Argentina, John shows that they are gracious in victory by inviting the Meanies to join them in their never-ending reverie. Max says no--whether he's in the affirmative or the negative is uncertain--but the Chief Blue Meanie corrects him and accepts his oral peace accord as he's finally seen the error of his authoritarian buzz-killing ways and now wants to join his enemies in an act of peaceful co-existence. Either that or it's a side effect of the roses growing out of his torso, I dunno. Either way, we get a nice and trippy ending montage to the tune of "It's All Too Much" as Meanie and Pepperlander unite in a glorious cacophany of peace and love and music and pop art and stuff like that.

Then the actual flesh-and-blood Beatles appear on screen and lead us all in a final reprise of "All Together Now" to ward off the newer and Bluer Meanies that the actual flesh-and-blood John sees approaching the theater. And there's your movie.

You say you want a revolution.

Basic? Yes. Trippy? Mos def. But the art design is unique, the animation is pretty good and it contains some of the best Beatles songs in their catalog (and this was pre-White Album) as well as a fantastic background score by musical director George Martin. The dialogue is pretty fun too--witticisms, musical references, non sequiturs, the occasional pun, and just watching the Beatles bounce lines off each other and everyone else makes it that much more enjoyable. It also has a very anti-establishment message--the oppressive Blue Meanies are described as simply "all the bad people in the world", so they could represent practically anyone--policemen, politicians, Nazis maybe ("Are you bluish? You don't look bluish"), some of them even smoke cigars and drink martinis, so they could represent Wall Street as far as I'd know.

Interpretations and debates of possible influences aside, Yellow Submarine easily ranks right up there as one of the most fun experiences you could ever have watching a movie. It's sad that it hasn't been reissued on DVD since the one in 1999, partly I assume because of the bankruptcy woes of United Artists' parent company MGM, so it's pretty difficult to find a copy today. Maybe if Zemeckis' remake hadn't been cancelled it would have driven up demand, but them's the breaks I'm afraid. It's easily one of the best animated films ever made, at least among the ones I've seen, and fans of the Beatles and/or classic animated movies will love it.

This is a free concert from now on...

33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee (1969)

We have the knowledge—evil though it be—
To twist the mind to any lunacy
We wish. Through this Electro-Thought Machine,
I’ll demonstrate exactly what I mean.
We’ll take the means of mass communication,
Use them for commercial exploitation,
Create the new four-part phenomena:
Four simple minds with talent (little or none),
And through the latest fad of rock and roll,
Conduct experiments in mind control!
On an unsuspecting public they’ll be turned!
I’ll brainwash them, and they’ll brainwash...THE WORLD!!!

When we last left the blog, I had just reviewed the 1968 Monkees movie Head, a 98-minute stream-of-consciousness sketch film which contextually counter-argued accusations that the group was just four pretty faces with no musical talent while deconstructing their TV series and the Hollywood media machine.

I also mentioned that Head tanked in theaters, permanently severed ties between the band and the show’s production company, and signaled the beginning of the end for the Monkees.

Well, between Head and the group finally calling it quits in 1970, they had one last fling as a foursome on the idiot box.

33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee was meant to be one of three Monkees specials to be broadcast on NBC in 1969. With Bob Rafelson and Bert Schnieder no longer around, the band instead were left in the (questionably) capable hands of producer Jack Good, creator of the ABC show Shindig!, one of many mid-60s musical variety shows known for not lasting anywhere near as long as Soul Train or American Bandstand.

NBC was so displeased with the final cut of the special that they chose to air it on April 14, 1969…against ABC’s broadcast of the 41st Annual Academy Awards. On top of that, it was accidentally shown out of order thanks to an engineer who mixed up the tapes. Suffice to say, the ratings were not good.

The Monkees themselves had, and possibly still have, their own issues with the special.

They weren’t happy with Good and director Art Fisher’s sloppy script.

Micky Dolenz, in a commentary track on Rhino’s DVD version, stated that he has mixed feelings over the final product.

Peter Tork called it “the TV version of Head.”

Davy Jones thought it gave the guest stars too much screen time.

Also suffice to say, this special has not been rebroadcast since it premiered as far as I know, which makes it more obscure when combined with the fact that I only know the names of some of these people from Wikipedia and have not heard of a third of the special guests on it. I’m flying into this just as blindly as you are.

So the special opens up with—

Hoo boy.

“WHO ARE YOU?” bellows the disembodied mouth in the poorly chroma-keyed necklace. Pan up to Julie Driscoll’s head.

“IIIII-IIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIII AMMMMMMMMMMMMMM WOMAN!!!” she roars in a voice too big to ignore, and then she takes a very loud bite of an apple and hands it to Brian Auger.

Auger, sitting at an organ on a forklift driven by a man in an ape costume, describes in iambic pentameter to the audience his plan to create a manufactured pop music sensation and use whatever musical talents they have to control the minds of the unsuspecting public through their music. He conjures the Monkees, encases them in long glass tubes, saps them of their identities and with a bite of the apple, is…then not seen for a while.

As the boys pound on their little glass prisons, Julie Driscoll suggests that they use their minds to escape through their own worlds of fantasy. And the boys do just that.

Micky Dolenz duets with Driscoll on a soul music rendition of that old Monkees staple “I’m a Believer”.

Peter Tork dons Eastern attire and sits amongst Indian dancers and a fog machine to perform “I Prithee (Do Not Ask For Love)”.

Michael Nesmith duets with himself as a cowboy on acoustic guitar in “Naked Persimmon (The Only Thing I Believe is True”. (Why he says “rubulator” midway through I can’t honestly say.)

The perpetually typecast Davy Jones dresses as a schoolboy, dances with dollies and sings about dating storybook characters in “Goldilocks Sometime”.

Auger returns during Davy’s bit and announces that the psychoanalysis of his musical soldiers is complete.

Still not as animatronic as N'Sync.

In the next bit, all four Monkees sing “Wind Up Man” while walking around like robots with their batteries running out. This displeases Auger, so he decides to teach them a new song and starts playing a little rhythm on a piano. The camera zooms out to reveal that Auger is standing on another piano being played by the Jerry Lee Lewis…who is standing on another piano being played by the Little Richard…who is standing on yet another piano being played by the Fats Domino.

You still with us?

Suddenly Charles Darwin interrupts the proceedings and suggests that Auger go back to the very beginning, which serves as a segue to—

To answer the question you’ve just now asked yourself, that would be Paul Arnold and the Moon Express’ performance of “Only the Fittest Shall Survive”. I don’t understand it either, nor do I understand why they’ve painted what look like penises on the men’s unitards and vaginas on the women’s unitards.

Next the Monkees are back on stage dressed as monkeys (spelled with a Y here to avoid confusion) and perform Neil Sadaka’s “I Go Ape” while they and their backup dancers run around doing stuff and the film plays back and forth.

At least they’re not masturbating to Diahann Carroll.

Darwin then throws a net over the Monkees and turns it back over to Auger and Driscoll, who perform a cover of the Young Rascals’ “Come On Up” with their band the Trinity before introducing their new “idolized, plasticized, psychoanalyzed and sterilized” Monkees at the Paramount Theater on December 7, 1956 (which looks exactly like the set used at the beginning of the special) which sets off a medley of 1950s rock music. Jerry, Richard and Fats return, and most of the rest of the special’s musical guest list are there as well for what amounts to an at least ten minutes of 50s rock, dancing and stock footage, for much of which the Monkees themselves don’t even appear. Doesn’t it sort of take the focus off of your new manufactured pop group by throwing guest star after guest star in their debut concert?

Objects on screen use more hair gel than it appears.

Well, anyway, the medley goes on for so long that the special loses track of time completely and starts wrapping things up as Auger and Driscoll break their characters (and accents) and say that the whole brainwashing thing has gotten entirely out of hand and what we really want is complete and total freedom.

So that’s the whole mind control plot resolved, basically. It doesn’t really end, it just…stops.

We end at a junkyard, where Davy sings “String For My Kite”, Peter plays Bach’s Solfeggietto on the organ, and then Mike and Micky appear and they all perform “Listen to the Band” as all the guest stars come back and the set fills with hippies. This concert eventually descends into frantic chaos, flagrant video effects and cacophonous noise before they finally quite literally close the book on the whole thing.

(Note the title on the book’s cover – “The Beginning of the End”. How accurate it was—right after production wrapped on this special, Peter Tork, who ironically was the only Monkee to turn up on the first day of shooting Head after the band learned they wouldn’t get writing credits, bought out his contract and left the group for reasons of exhaustion. As a matter of fact, the closing number would be the last time the Monkees were shown as a quartet until the reunion in 1986. Must have been a book of prophesy or something.)

Then Peter sings about California getting nuked during the end credits as we cut back to the interpretive dancers.

"So yeah, we've suddenly decided that brainwashing sucks and we're not going to do it anymore.
Sorry about trying to take over the world and everything."

Those of you who thought that Head didn’t make sense...well, 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee makes even less than that.

The message is essentially the same, but the execution is nowhere near as fluid. We get that it’s supposed to be about the Monkees, but the producers choose instead to focus more on the musical guests. There are moments where the band aren’t even on screen for minutes at a time, Auger and Driscoll have the most prominent parts here, and the Paramount Theater concert gives too much attention to Jerry, Richard, Fats and the rest of its guest roster. In fact, the medley goes on for so long that it completely derails the plot. This feels less like the Monkees’ original vision as seen in Head and more like one of Jack Good’s music programs.

I’m also not certain why the scriptwriter thought turning the Monkees into archetypal 1950s rock singers was his idea of a manufactured music group. Maybe, again, it’s because of the guest stars, many of whom launched their careers in the 1950s, but it really could have been explained a little better. In my opinion, the Monkees’ performance of “Wind Up Man” better fits their message.

I will say this though: most of the music is pretty good, particularly the opening acts from the individual Monkees which gives us a hint as to each member’s musical influence. The end song wasn’t bad either, but I think they were trying too hard with the whole Sgt. Pepper’s-style big finish.

So in summary, come for the music and stay for the…err…well, come for the music.

As for the rest of it, I believe Julie Driscoll said it best—“utter bloody shambles.”

I heard this special was particularly unpopular in the state of Kansas. I can’t IMAGINE why...