Submitted for your approval: 'A Carol for Another Christmas'

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, it’s that time of year again, when all the Xmas specials air.

Except one: “A Carol for Another Christmas (1964),” a bleak reworking of “A Christmas Carol” penned by Rod Serling, and featuring (among others) Peter Sellers.

This special was aired ONCE–and only ONCE–and has since then been sitting in someone’s (“whose” is a mystery) vault collecting dust.

I’m personally flabbergasted that such a work has been just forgotten, never re-broadcast, never released to video, etc.

I first heard about a special “Twilight Zone” Christmas episode (featuring Sellers) many years ago from a friend, who had also heard about it, etc, but had never had in luck in finding any info on it. (It turned out it wasn’t a TZ episode, but it’s easy to see how that confusion could arise.) When AMC aired “The Unknown Peter Sellers” a few months ago, they showed a tantalizing (10-second) clip from this film–my mouth dropped. That was it!

So, bottom line, if anyone knows anyone who has access to this sort of thing, this would be a real gem to have released.

2

Never saw this (and I am a BIG fan of Rod Serling’s work), but my $.02/WAG:

There may have been some problems with copyright, authorship, distribution rights, or any number of reasons (these happened with a couple of TZ episodes, IIRC). Or perhaps some ivory-towered TV exec found it too depressing and shuffled it off to the vaults.

I would suggest first, contacting AMC and asking them to air it in its entirity, and second, if they cannot air it, asking AMC who owns the rights to the movie and contacting them about the possibility of video release.

Sorry I can’t be any help beyond that, but it does sound interesting.