It was filmed on 35mm.
I’m so glad this thread is here, as it answers a question which came up at work last night and was argued over for several hours - the dentist elf’s name. For some reason, we settled on Timothy, but knew it wasn’t quite right. How wrong we were!
Now, another question to add: what the hell is that sound Rudolph’s nose makes when it glows? Why? Does anything make that noise while glowing?
Because it’s cute, it’s cuuuuuuuuute! flies around room
Easy it is caused by the beating of the wings of the lumimous parisites in his shnoz which cause sympathetic vibrations in Rudolph’s skull that are amplified by his sinus cavities.
Don’t you know anything about micans nose morbus?
Could you provide some more detailed information about this, it sounds quite fascinating?
Jim
I thought it was an unusually high concentration of mistle-chlorians.
We it is a rare condition found in the species Rangifer tarandus. Essentially it is a small luminous pariste found in the tundra called the Recubo bug. It is similar to a lightbug, but is much smaller and it’s glow is tinted by its blood giving it a red look. In its larval stage it can be found in droppings. If a reindeer roots through the droppings the larva will crawl into the nose and continue to grow in the warm damp areas.
Eventually it will pass the pupa stage in fly out the nose of its host. It is in this stage that it adopts its distinct red glow. Occasionally there are cases where the insect will be trapped in the nose of its host. If there are more than one Recubo they will cause the nose to literally glow, this is accompanied by the unique sound caused by the method I described before.
This is known as micans nose morbus.
In the extremely rare case, when there is a swarm of Recubi in the nose, the host has been lifted by them and there is the appearance of flying.
In real life the sound and the constant glow of the nose causes madness and eventually death in the host. It is a horribly sad thing.
And you’ll notice that Fireball is NEVER seen again.
I’m thinking Santa has something against blonde shocks of hair.
PS-and what a nag Mrs was! Santa was mean and Mrs is a fishwife! Lovely people.
I’m with the wife from Europe waaaay upthread (and I didn’t know I was going back in time when I opened this! Very neat)–this is a Christmas story?
Perhaps the original error was basing the whole story on a Monkey Wards promo figure, anyways…
(no comment on the nose infestation post–trying hard not to bring up breakfast over here!)
Ignorance fought yet again by SDMB.
Thank You
Jim
I was going to suggest that the squeal was caused by feedback in the sound recording equipment due to the HF interference from the electronics in Rudy’s nose, but I think we should stick with kingpengvin’s more scientific-sounding (and terrifyingly plausible) explanation.
Interesting theory. It does, however, conflict with the one stating the glowing red nose is a genetic mutation caused by exposure to radioactivity. Apparently, at least one of Rudolph’s parents was exposed to radioactive materials by way of fall-out from Cold War-era above-ground nuclear tests that drifted into the Arctic or flying through an area that was recently contaminated by an atomic blast. Given what we know what exposure to excessive amounts of radiation can do, Rudolph’s parents should’ve been thankful that their offspring was born with just a luminous red nose.
Hmmm… Up until now, it had been looking like very poorly treated film.
As in, are they washing it with eggnog each year?
I just purchased Rick Goldschmidt’s book Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Making of the Rankin-Bass Animated Classic. Interesting stuff. Perhaps most interesting is the original 1963 rough draft script. The story is the same, but there are some scenes and other things which didn’t make it to the final cut. And Sam the Snowman was going to be played by Stubby Kaye instead of Burl Ives, so he’s “a rolly-polly (sic), Runyonesque little snowman…the Nicely-Nicely Johnson of snowmen” and presumably speaks with a New York accent. There are also pictures of some vintage GE commericals featuring the characters and the original closing credits sequence. Good stuff.
BUMP
Happy Holidays 2006
All right then, I’ll announce it as I do each year. The 42nd annual airing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer will be at 8pm EST on Friday, December 8 on CBS (followed by the animated Frosty the Snowman and entertaining-yet-bizarre Bill Melendez effort Frosty Returns). As always, this thread is dedicated to the memory of poopah chalupa, originator of the Dope’s holiday tradition. You’ll go down in history!
I caught it this year for the first time since I was a kid. Awesomely disturbing! But my stupid tape cut off a few minutes from the end. I really wanted to see whether it was a murder or suicide.
Well, I was in my hotel in Toronto (business) last night bored out of my skull and flipping chanels when I happened upon the opening credits. Brought a nostalgic tear to my eye it did.
Was it my imagination or was some footage that was trimmed for extra commercial time restored? There were some scenes I don’t remember seeing in years past.
Merry Christmas! by the way.
If I’m remembering correctly, they didn’t include the “elf practice” scene in there back in the 80’s, but it was restored somewhere around 1990 or so.
Ah-ha! Thanks, interface2x.