Heads up for the Rankin/Bass marathon!

Our pals at ABCFamily are indulging us with the 25 days of Christmas again this year and featuring many Rankin/Bass favorites. There’s a whole marathon on Saturday.

From ABCFamily.com:

The bizarre fever-dream of “Rudolph & Frosty’s Xmas in July” didn’t make the cut, but it is showing at other times in the month (Twice on the 21st) I caught it last night and had to take a break from the weirdness halfway through.

According to my TiVo, the original Rudolph will air on CBS on Tuesday night.

I was going to link to last year’s Rankin/Bass thread, but danged if I can find it! (I thought it was called “It’s Rankin/Bass Christmas Special time again!” but I must be mistaken.)

And here I was, all excited to tape The Lord of the Rings animation I’ve been wanting to see forever…

Oh, well. Is one of these the one with the HeatMeiser? Thats “Year Without a Santa Claus,” no?

Correct! Also the maudlin rendition of “Blue Christmas” by a tiny waifish girl.

Well, I’ll definitely be taping that, then. It’s one of my favorite Christmas cartoon-y specials, and I haven’t seen it in a few years.

I thought this was going to be a thread about Thundercats.

Cripes, that was such a messed-up story!

[spoiler]And was it just me, or was there some implication that Nestor’s mother was some sort of divine being herself, who’d been sent to become the mother of Nestor, just so he could give Mary & Joseph a ride to Bethlehem?

Feh. The OLYMPIAN gods would have just given Mary some winged sandals, or a flying bronze griffin, or something.[/spoiler]

Aka “Hobbit Claus,” as it’s known in our house.

[spoiler]The only X-Mas special to feature—I kid you not—Samurai. And Orcs fighting to the death…literally.

And lil’ baby Santa doing his Lupa di Roma impression with a Lioness.

And, since it’s adapted from a story by L. Frank Baum (yes, that L. Frank Baum), it’s technically taking place in the same continutity as The Wizard of Oz. And, in fact, on the same continent as Oz.[/spoiler]

Ah, alas, I cannot make it today. :frowning: But I woulda been there in less stressful times. Enjoy it for me.

You left out that Nestor is narrated by Roger Miller, giving the whole thing some surreal hillbilly-ish vibe while taking place on the other side of the world.

The “Rudolph & Frosty’s Christmas in July” has them all beat hands down though:

Let me see if I can remember all this…The power that lights Rudolph’s nose is given to him by a goddess named Aurora, who will later “die” and become the Northern LIghts (duh). He will have this power always as long as he never uses it for evil. Rudolph is frolicing with Frosty (and family) at the North Pole when an ice cream man in a hot-air balloon (I think he may have been from the New Year’s special) and and tells them he’s on his way to “the seashore” for the 4th of July. He’s in love with a circus performer there whose mother runs the circus, but it’s in danger of being taken over by some evil landlord or something.

THere’s some evil winter guy with a staff of ice who gets his orders from a huge iceberg with a mouth and he wants to either crush Santa Claus or just Rudolph (I forget) and to do so he’s going to steal Rudolph’s nose-glowing powers by the excruciatingly convoluted plan of getting him to use it for evil. (THere’s still like an hour and a half left, if you can believe it!) The evil winter guy tells Rudolph that he will give Frosty and his family special amulets so they can go down to the seashore and not melt, but they have to be back at the North Pole by the end of the last firework (there are 100 fireworks exactly, btw) but that should be no problem for Rudolph and the great Santa.

Anyway, Rudolph, Frosty & Co, & the ice cream man fly down to “the seashore” to the circus and because it’s the only circus with a flying raindeer with a glowing nose it makes money hand over fist and saves the day. The evil winter dude sends down an evil second-string raindeer to trick Rudolph into using his nose in a way I’m not quite sure I understand. (Something about the evil landlord dressing up like a cop and Rudolph lighting his way to the deposit; when the real cop turns up to pick up the deposit they think Rudolph himself stole it, instead of falling for an absurdly un-clever trick. He can’t tell the reality of what happened because it would somehow render the amulets of Frosty & Family powerless and they’d melt.)

That’s neither here nor there, however, because evil winter guy has trapped Santa & his sleigh in a storm and he can’t get to “the seashore” and save anyone. The fireworks are going off one by one and Rudolph runs away to cry like a sissy and who should happen to float up to shore but that freaky clock-whale from the New Year’s special. He tells Rudolph he has an idea and floats away. By this time the evil winter guy is bored so he decides to trick Frosty as well (just in case we’re not convinced of his evil-ness) by telling him that he’ll turn Rudolph’s nose back on in exchange for the hat that gives him life. (THe idea being he’ll use the hat to make an army of come-to-life snowmen. huh?)

At some point does something selfless and finds his nose works anyway, because goodness comes from within or some crap like that. They all run back to Frosty and family and find them melted into the sand. Along comes the whale with (get this!) JACK FROST (from, Jack Frost, of course) who blows cold air into the sand until the snowpeople reanimate or whatever. Then he continues to blow on them until Santa and his sleigh can come down and pick everyone up. Santa gives the circus animals “magic raindeer feed” and everyone sings a lousy song and flies off into the sunset. SO VERY VERY VERY WONDEROUSLY BAD!

Yeah, you’re right. This thing is completely whacked. I wish I had set up the VCR. Oh well, they have it on VHS at Amazon.

It’s a little late to add, but I thought that I should note that in Little Drummer Boy

[spoiler]…The LDB’s father dies…

On camera…

…by getting a SCIMITAR THROWN INTO HIS CHEST! :eek:

No-freaking-kidding. You even hear the "swish-swish-swish-THUNK"as the blade runs him through. It’s a very “John Woo” moment.

We don’t see what happens to his mother…hopefully, the brigands only let her burn to death when they torch the house.

Jeez…and people give anime a hard time. ;)[/spoiler]

LOL, I just watched a snippet of the “Life & Adventures of Santa Claus” (already mentioned above) and noted that the wizard had an axe that shot some sort of electricity or magic. That was so puzzling to me. An AXE? Like I guess he used it every day as a regular super-shiney axe and it just happened to shoot stuff out the top. The axe was befuddling to me. Why not a regular magic wand, or a sword or something else pointy…how do you aim an axe?