Father Malone's Xmas Roundup - Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, Christmas with the Kranks, Seasons of Belief

Weird, Weird. At Last, Navidad, Mama Jemas and welcome back to Father Malone's Weekly Raw. I'm fallow alone and with me the Kringle to my Chris is the festive and frolicking Miss ripley G. I know I'm a liar, I promised you Midnight viewers. I look at John Carpenter's The Fog this week, but it's Christmas.

It's the time of miracles, not a miraculous impression. Does the christmasness of Diehard feel oppressive now? Like it was? One's kind of amusing that that's the film we would all watch at Christmas time. Then we added the Internet and now it's a colossal waste of time.

Anyone's still debating its merits as a Christmas movie, just shut the fuck up. Find another online survey to pursue. This one's dry And if I may offer my own take on Diehard, it is a perfect action film, no doubt about it. But it's also kind of a fantasy about a man proving his wife can't make it in the corporate world. That's a world that means she has to forsake her married name, and it's her company party that invites the trouble, and in the end, the villain is finally dispatched and her life is saved by removing the rolex that the company has given her.

I'm not saying it's intentional. I'm just saying that there are other debates to be had about Diehard than is it a Christmas movie. Instead, we're gonna be taking a page from our own damned playbook and giving a gander to a trio of entertainment pieces that center around a holiday, including one that's a genuine conflict of interest with my own show. We'll get to that at the end. Yeah, I have decided the order.

And guess what, Baby, it's time for you to make like tinselin Shine hit at HP, Thank you HP. The ghost of j Thomas will be out in a bit to tell the Lone Ranger story. OKK nine, it's your television choice for this Yule Tide. Wow, we're kind of leading with the best, aren't we. I can speak with some authority that it's true when they say Catholics have to go to school to learn guilt.

But it's also true that thanks to this nineteen seventy eight special, I was able to learn melancholy from the comfort of My Home, produced and directed by Jim Henson. This is Emma Daughter's Jug Band Christmas. Hang Home. This is Krimit the Frog, and I'd like to tell you about this Christmas special that we did. It's called emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas and it's a nice, warm, gentle story.

And it looks like this. It seems like we've sold just about everything last couple of years. About all I got left is a sense of humor to wash tub. Well, at least there ain't no hole in the wash tub. Your nails won't break, any toes won't.

Shove you, never get a finger when there ain't no hole in the wash tub. All with brand new bunch of muppets. Look at the birds up from the trees. Well we're not birds. We're a jug band sung again.

And it's got wonderful music by Paul William Lazy. Where the. We're a thirty girl don from the Jug Band music. That's a thirty girl then from the Jug Band music. So remember to watch pum Box Office for.

Em and Honor's Drug Band Christmas and Merry Christmas. From the Mother Bank. In nineteen seventy one, the married duo of Lillian and Russell Hoban, the couple who'd created the Francis the Badger series, released a little fable based around O Henry's Bitter Slice of Irony. The Gift of the Magi Emmett Honors jug Band Christmas is about a mother and son living in Frogtown Hollow in the midst of the Great Depression. As Christmas is approaching, they each hope to make the other's Christmas dreams come true by entering a talent contest with fifty dollars as the prize and their otters.

For the past fifty years, the book has barely been in print, so it's a good thing. Jim Henson took an interest in it decided to turn it into a standalone special for HBO, or else it might have disappeared forever, and Henson's interest was born out because it is an incredible piece of children's entertainment and in Henson's hands, became an odd, homespun tale of Americana brought to life with the most cutting edge in puppetry technology and technique. In addition to recognizing the value of the piece itself, Henson wisely viewed emmett Otter as a proving ground for future projects, most specifically the Muppet Movie, which was looming on the horizon. For that film, they'd need to know all their technical innovations were sound, and what better place to fail than a TV special.

In addition, the Muppet Movie was to be a musical, and a composer needed to be auditioned, though truly based on his track record, there needn't be any trial run. But thank god they got together here. By the time he began to write for emmett Otter, Paul Williams had already penned hit songs for the likes of The Monkeys, Three Dog Night, Gladys Night and the Pips, Jackie DeShannon, Sergio Mendez, Chris Christofferson, Claudine Lange and Murray, the Carpenters, and Barbara Streisand in fact, he'd win an Academy A Ward the year Emmenater came out for Evergreen, not to mention, in the two years previous he'd composed the songs and scores for the films Bugsy Malone and Phantom of the Paradise. In all, he'd contributes seven songs to the finished film.

Two were songs based on the titles of songs directly from the book, and the others were suggested by the book as well. Well. Not all of them will get to River Bottom. Now I mentioned it takes place during the depression. That's because everyone is living in lean tos and shacks and using the frozen river as a form of transportation.

Everyone's clothes seem handmade. At one point, someone is fishing a rusty old tin can out of the lake. So it's a little jarring when the antagonists show up on snowmobiles. I guess this is a contemporary tale, but in the way Willie Walker was a contemporary tale. Sure, there are computers, but everything looks like it's bygone Germany.

So Ma, a widow and her son Emmett are looking down the barrel of a giftless Christmas. So they decide to enter a talent contest to win each other their gift, and in order to do so, she sells his tools his only source of income to buy ad dress, and he puts a hole in her washtub, her only source of income to make a wash to base for his jug band. Are these spoilers? You've all seen it. It's nearly half a century old.

The spoiler band on this has fallen and rotted away a long time ago, but you should see it again just to marvel at what Henson has accomplished today. With digital removal, you can just have the puppeteers directly in the shot, which was not an option for Henson when he had to have a scene with Ma and Emmett rowing a rowboat down the center of the as yet frozen river. So he turned to tech wizard Fans Fazakis, who gave us a remote control boat with animated puppets for the wire and they're still pretty incredible. He'd go on to be a major part of Fraggle Rock, an inadvertent lesson Henson was learning through the experience of making this would lay the groundwork for the Dark Crystal. This is an all puppet movie.

The closest we get to a human is a cameo by Kermit the Frog, who introduces the tale. Henson assembled a veritable Muppet dream team of performers Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Dave Golds to bring the characters to life, and the characters are all fucking lively. Emmett has a fun group of friends that make up the band, and I gotta say the band's not bad, though it helps that they have the words and music of mister Paul Williams to play with. I mentioned Americana, and that's the tack Paul Williams took, not just for the jug band portions, but for the ballads as well. They're unmistakably the work of Paul Williams, but they're more focused and less in his style than even the work he'd done on Bugsy Malone, with its faux thirties jazz and ragtime bent.

Here's a bit of the Jug Band's impromptu tune brother. Still learn, but we'll enjoy each listen. Problems, don't worry us. We have a lifetime a surprise. We'll all become magicians and leave the wonder.

In their eyes. They're tuned dumbtails sweetly with Mars ballad our world. We're closer, no than ever before. There's lot in all world, and we're showing more our words, says welcome stranger. Everybody's favorite stories don't tell all the world.

With both songs meeting at the end. Some say. Thet small things, but really enjoy each lesson. I say, repineless as do for us problems worriers, when Hascus change memory, days. Time of so other around in.

That's an innovation, thanks once again to the genius of Paul Williams. Can you Tell I Love Him? Incidentally, at the end of this show, I'm going to put the ballad that Ma sings when the River Meets the Sea in its entirety. It is one of the songs that they sang at Jim Henson's funeral. You should give it a listen.

You'll understand why. But no discussion of Emmett Honor's jug Band Christmas is complete without talking about the River Bottom Nightmare Band. In the book, they're the Riverband Nightmare, and they're just a loud rock and roll band here. I don't know if it was Jerry Jules's excellent screenplay that suggested it, but I have my suspicion that, having recently written the songs for Phantom of the Paradise, which is as glam and as dark as you can get here, the River Bottom Nightmare Band become the dark glam band of my deepest dreams. What's more, even though they've been dicks throughout the entire story, their song is clearly the best.

River Bottom Nightmare. Yeah, it sucks that our heroes lose, and it sucks that they lose to assholes, but meritocracy seems to mean something in muppet Land. And besides, Emmitt and ma end up gainfully employed as musicians with free meals included. But that river Bottom Nightmare Band, oh baby. Quite frankly, I'd be putting their whole song at the end of the episode if it weren't the exact opposite of the spirit of this season.

The grass does not grow on the places where we stop and stand. Indeed, Emmett honors jug Band. Christmas is a fucking delight. Show it to your children, Tell them this is exactly what the depression was like. Everyone was an animal and the worst of us had electric guitars.

It should set them up for this crazy fucking world world we're finding ourselves in. Merry Christmas, everybody, Oh right, we have more recommendations to make or not make. Jesus christ It's Christmas with the Cranks. For the Crank family, Merry Christmas. Celebrating the holidays is everything.

But this Christmas, their only daughter is leaving town the same so Luther Krank got the bright idea to take a holiday. We go away on a cruise and go back in the Caribbean sun from the holiday. Yes, what's the cat? We skip Christmas? We skip Christmas away.

Isn't that a law? But in this tone, skipping Christmas, mister crank, we're selling Christmas trees again this year. We're not going to need a tree is going to be a little difficult. A lot of neighbors are pretty upset from Revolution Studios, Luthor. Your face, it's like it's frozen or something.

I got a botox injection today, total facial movement return in a couple hours. He thought no one would notice. Perfect time to put up prostic. They do not get crossing free rosy free crosty. But the mule tied Nora stop talk to me is about to turn On November twenty fourth, Dad.

I changed my mind and I'm coming. Home for Christmas. We have only twelve hours. We're about a Christmas home coming for Blair and. If people in a community stick together, we're having a party.

I'm getting the hand that he is. Mine this holiday season. You really need a tree right now? What do you got left? Just one nice tree?

I guess we do it for the kids. One man will discover it's the greatest time of year. Luthor that no matter how hard you drive, take the real delicate ones and put them on the sofa. Why that's valuable? Let's say on there, baby's first Christmas?

For how far you go? You could use an UPBROWA No, I don't need a brown. You just can't. I relaxed. Listen Skip Christmas, Kim Allan, I love you, Daddy, Jamie Lee Curtis.

Maybe I was wrong about you. Christmas with the Cranks? What are you? Nor? Booker?

Whoa easy? I need to take a drink before I start this. This is the worst movie ever made? No, it's not subjective. I don't know why I always hem and haw when someone asks me what the worst movie ever made is?

I end up saying something like, well, you know, if I can't get all the way through it, then I guess that must be the worst. Why Christmas with the Cranks doesn't come projectile vomiting out of me is a miss? Because it is. I will willingly watch the entirety of the Hallmark catalog of Christmas films without a break, then watched Christmas with the Cranks ever again? What's so terrible?

About it, every fucking thing. This is a lighthearted Christmas romp based on a novel by John Grisham. Yeah, that one, you know, the lighthearted Christmas guy John Grisham. The novel it's based on was called Skipping Christmas, which was a shock because I thought it would be called Santa in the first Degree or north Pole witness Tampering. It was then adapted by Chris Columbus, who wrote Gremlins Chris Columbus, fucking shame on you, sir.

And then it was directed by Joe Roth, who once ran twentieth Century Fox. In fact, under his leadership, Home Alone got made the Chris Columbus Christmas classic. Was everyone high on their own ass fumes here we can't possibly fail. Number one author, number one Christmas movie guy. Who else?

Uh, Let's get Tim Allen, He's a big Christmas legend. And uh Jamie Lee Curtis, Oh round Holiday. Okay, here's the fucking maddening plot. I'll get to the terrible performances. Trust me, man, I was trying to be so good so close to Christmas.

Oh well, society is to blame Nora and Luther Krank Is that a real name? Don't care it's dumb. They've packed their daughter off to the Peace Corps at Thanksgiving, she's twenty or so, Knowing they're going to be alone for Christmas. Rather than go through the endless rigmarole of outfitting the entire house with lights and mangers and Frosty the Fucking Snowman displays, They're instead gonna spend all the money they'd have done so on their annual Christmas party and do something for themselves, most likely for the first time in two decades. They're going to go on a cruise.

And they did, and they found their love rekindled, And even though they were in a tropical climate, so far from the comforting snows of winter, they even rediscovered a love of Christmas. The end boy, that would have been satisfying. Instead, what we get is Nazi Germany and miniature. The other residents of their neighborhood find out they're not participating in the blocks decorating scheme, and all hell breaks lose. They're hounded everywhere they go by everyone they meet.

How dare you skip Christmas? How dare you not participate in the fun? Let these people lead their fucking lives? What is going on here? And because it couldn't get worse.

The head of the neighborhood Christmas Mafia is played by dan Ackroyd. Now that's probably not a tragedy for most of you, but dan Ackroyd doing a poor Chicago accent in this movie, it really hurts sincerely. But at least he's better than either of our leads, because while I completely side with them in their dilemma, they are wildly unlikable. How can Jamie Lee Curtis be unlikable? Make her the proto Karen, I guess, frumpy fucking mom outfit fits of hysteria, just unpleasant.

And it all gets worse because Jamie Lee Curtis is so fucking obsessed with her daughter that when it turns out she's on her way back for Christmas, the cruise has to be canceled, and the house has to be decorated, and the party must be thrown all at the last second. So now all of the fucking horrible ghouls that have been plaguing them come in handy. I guess. As this microcosm of everything wrong with Christmas and America plays out, I'm exhausted even recounting this movie in my head. And then We're supposed to melt at the end after all the fuckery we've endured.

They want us to walk out just delighted. Have I said it enough? No, you're wrong. Christmas with the Cranks is the worst movie ever made. I'm moving the fuck on.

Let's try and end on a high note in just in time for Christmas Eve. Now, this is the conflict I mentioned earlier because over on the Horror Anthology podcast section of Midnight Viewing, we're currently going through the television series Tales from the Dark Side, and my final choice happens to be from that series. The problem is we haven't gotten to it yet. So while I feel a bit like I'm going a rogue here, there's no helping it. We're not gonna talk about it till long after the holiday is over.

So Chris Mike, forgive me, but my final choice for your holiday viewing this year is Tales from the Dark Side, Season three, episode eleven. It's called Seasons of Belief. Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality, but there is unseen by most an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit, a dark side. It's hard to believe now that there was a time when Christmas was actually sacro sanct. Even though there'd been a handful of Christmas horrors over the years, none had quite caught on.

Though it can be argued that a Christmas Carol is a horror story and everyone knows that tale, probably because it's so relatable. Get cool, rich people, or you're gonna burn while we dance on your grave. I may be speculating when it comes to Diehard, but when it comes to Dickens, there's no debate. So when films like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Gremlins hit the scene, who boy, folks was pissed. Those films high profile were excoriated in the press.

Funny that no one was minding what was going on on television, because I suggest that this is one of the most subversive half hours of television ever broadcast. It's Christmas Eve and a typical nuclear family mom, dad's son, and daughter are all gathered around the fire and train set in Christmas Tree, straight out of Norman Rockwell. If Rockwell was a total misanthrope. Mom is uninterested, Dad is decrepitly old, and the kids are annoying, wanting only to watch television. Given the kid's dismissiveness of the entire idea of Santa Claus, and encouraged by Mom, Dad decides to sit the kids down and tell them a story about another denizen of the North Pole, the fiercest creature ever conceived.

It lives in a cave near Santa's workshop, in an old ship that had been deposited there centuries before, and its name is the Grither. He hates the cold, and he hates the wet, but more than anything, he hates when anyone uses his name. Every time they do, his ears grow larger, so large he can eventually use them as wings, which he'll use to fly to the person's house to dispatch them. Okay, there's so much wrong going on here. The parents have decided that the best way to handle their children's boredom while they're distracting themselves with their own weirdo hobbies is to tell them a horror story that has far worse consequences than coal in your stocking.

They're doing everything in their power to scare the shit out of their children, and when the kids don't believe them, they doubled down, describing the Grither in great detail, hands as big as basketballs, and because they've said his name so much, they tell them he's flying their way as they speak, and then they improv a song that the grither sings. Here it is, You're gonna be singing it later. Why a greed a not escape me? For please. Is human?

So less hams. Are your prayers? The gray. Green fly. To fall.

To k. And it gets better. The mother calls her brother and teaches him the song and has him come to the house and burst in singing it. I kind of wish these were my parents. That song is even worse in the short story that the episode is based on.

Here's how it ends. Your moments are numbered. I'm quite sorry for you. I'm quite sorry for you. My most heartfelt apologies.

That short story was by Nebula and Philip K. Dick Award winning author Michael Bis and was adapted for the show and directed by Michael McDowell. Now, if you're a regular listener of Midnight Viewing, you've been hearing me sing Michael McDowell's praises for some time, as he is a major contributor to Tales from the Dark Side. If Darkseide is the original Twilight Zone. Then Michael McDowell is Charles Beaumont.

Not the flashiest or best known, but a killer. He consistently put out episodes of originality and a near singular vision. That vision people are terrible. When people talk about fantasy and science fiction authors, they usually mention Harlan Ellison when it comes to a withering outlook on humanity. But he wrote science fiction, which automatically makes him hopeful.

Michael McDowell was so unimpressed by his fellow man he conceived of another worldly character whose occupation was to oust them from haunted houses so ghosts can rest in peace. Yes, Michael McDowell created Beetlejuice. Seasons of Belief is one of his best scripts. He added the Christmas setting and the insufferable children. If it goes wrong, it's in his direction.

I'm all for authors getting their shot in what better place to do so than a no pressure half hour of syndicated television. And I think he might have shined on any of the dozen or so other episodes he penned for the series, but this one is special and they really should have handed it off to one of the shows regular maestros Link John Harrison or Michael Gornick. They might have been hesitant to cast these particular child actors. I don't want to slag off children, but their performances go a long way in explaining why the parents act as horribly as they do, and the parents' situation got to be addressed. The father is played by legendary character actor E.

G. Marshall. The E stands for Everett and Marshall is made up. He's seventy two here with what's supposed to be a five and a nine year old, which is totally biologically possible. Human mummy Hugh Hefner was still having kids at seventy five, but it just looks odd considering Barbara Kleenk, who plays mom here is thirty three.

I get it. You have an actor of E. G. Marshall's caliber. Say yes to your Rinky Dink syndicated horror anthology show.

You say yes, and sure there are may December romances. But how about it's just Grandpa. You said it at Christmas, mister McDowell, you can certainly change everything with one line of dialogue, Dad, would you tell the kids a story? These are quibbles, though Seasons of Belief is a hell of a half hour of television, and it's the perfect antidote to all the Sachrin Christmas nonsense we're all being inundated with. And there's still time.

Christmas Eve isn't till Tuesday, Christmas Eve, Eve of Destruction, Eve of Vendetta. You can find the episode on YouTube or some of those vimeo type sites, and if all else fails, check out and all through the house. The Christmas segment from Tales from the Crypt. I'm talking about the Amicus film from seventy one with Joan Collins, not to the HBO series remake by Robert Semchis. They each have their charms, but the original is the best.

Oh that's a Christmas Eve horror as well. Oh you know what, if you want my ultimate horror Christmas flick, it's Black Christmas, the Bob Clark original. Just a masterpiece. It has a moment that frightens me every single time I see it. Without fail, I'm creeping myself out thinking about it right now.

Well, what should I be thinking about? Chicken and belly rubes sounds pretty great, actually, and that's a pretty great place to say goodnight and moreover, happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. Winter is dark and it's long, and it's going to be that way for a while, but spring is waiting for us. Thank you for joining us again here on Father Malone's weekly roundup. If you want to be all Christmas y and give us a gift, head over to patreon dot com slash Father Alone.

There you'll get episodes early and I'm commercial free and you'll get access to our Patreon only shows like Cable Marx Theater, We're Noise Junkies, host HP and I Go Mack and look at the bizarre phenomenon of Broadway productions filmed for cable television in the seventies and eighties. For Ripley Jean, I'm Father Malone. Merry Christmas. Here's that song. When the mountain touches the valley of the clubs top to fly, the sorcealalle.

Is blind, most pasfe. Is for me. Aarm be filled with questions in our hornswiller stand on the river stars, my brother, a patient, my sons. In that sweet and final truel, justice will be. Done Like a baby may need to sleep me And it's.

Note who baby dreams is a mystery. Or mystery, But he's God. We'll find a purpose, and in time you'll understands in. The river. Us when the river.

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